Midnight Shadows Read Free Page A

troubled. Nothing on this earth made him freeze.
    She’d heard countless stories from the men in his company, who’d served with him in the battlefield. The stories were different and yet somehow always the same. They were in Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq/Colombia/Indonesia. It was always either The Fucking Sandbox or The Fucking Jungle. And they were always in a desperate situation until the Senior rode to the rescue and everything got solved, usually with some blood being spilled, usually not theirs. Everyone who knew him as other than a rough-looking but canny businessman, everyone who knew him from before, in his military incarnation, worshipped the ground he walked on.
    Everyone always, always mentioned how tough he was. How cool under fire.
    And yet here he was, frozen at the thought of sex with her.
    God.
    After the operation, he treated her as if she were made of spun glass, feather-light, capable of shattering at the sound of a too-loud voice. Yes, the surgery had been risky, she’d known that going in. Yes, it had taken a lot out of her. It took her a full month to be able to stand upright. But she’d been a good girl, done all her exercises without complaint. Well…maybe a little bit of whining, but Douglas took it in his stride like a champ.
    She wouldn’t shatter if they made love. Yet she had no way of showing him that unless they actually did make love. You couldn’t prove a negative.
    But she was a trouper. Instead of rolling her eyes at him she just smiled, put her arm in his and guided them to the elevator that would take them to Hagios Nikolaus’s amazing beach.
    The elevator was posh—polished bronze and teak. The beach was posh—with wooden walkways flanked by potted palm trees, white canvas and wood cabanas along the back.
    Douglas disappeared into a cabana and emerged a minute later in swim trunks. There weren’t many people on the elegant and comfortable teak lounge beds with white linen canopies, but when Douglas walked down to the beach Allegra could see women’s heads popping up like prairie dogs in the Midwest, as if a silent whistle had been blown.
    Allegra didn’t blame them, not one bit. None of the women were looking at Douglas’s face, they were too busy ogling his body. He was amazing. Huge, with shoulders out to here, completely ripped, all long lean but big muscle. There wasn’t a Greek statue back in the National Gallery of Athens that could hold a candle to him.
    And the way he moved—with athletic grace, each muscle moving exactly as it was designed to do. Just his stride, fully clothed, was enough to make heads turn—as long as no one looked at his face. Nearly naked he could bring traffic to a standstill.
    Sorry, ladies. That’s my man, she thought smugly. You can look but not touch.
    Allegra put down her beach bag, laid out beach towels on two lounge beds and walked hand in hand with Douglas into the water.
    The beach faced southwest and the late afternoon sun turned everything on the beach golden and the water an incredible shade of turquoise. The bottom was sandy and touchable for several hundred yards. The water was warmer than the air and Allegra felt its effects immediately, enveloped by gentle heat. Every single therapist had stressed the benefits of swimming and Douglas had spent a lot of time in the past four months with her in pools, giving her lessons.
    Not many people got taught to swim by a Navy SEAL.
    “Ahhh.” Allegra fell back slowly, lifting her legs, and closed her eyes, trusting in the water, trusting in Douglas, who wouldn’t leave her side. She wasn’t any great shakes as a swimmer but she had floating down pat.
    “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Douglas’s rumble of a voice carried under water. She sighed and nodded her head, reaching out with her hand. He took it and everything bad in the world disappeared.
    The blindness, the surgery, her physical weakness…all gone. She rocked gently in a golden world under a golden sun and music played in her