Born To Protect

“Did the kids pack lunches?”

She frowned. “I—yes, I believe so.”

“We put our drinks in coolers,” Eric volunteered, leaning back on his hands. “Ow. There’s ice in the coolers.”

Jack shrugged. “There you go, then.”

“The coolers are on the bus.” She sat back on her heels, looking up at him. “I can’t leave the children unsupervised. Could you…?”

“Sorry. I can’t leave you unsupervised, either.”

Her pleasure at his quick, practical response vanished. “I am not thirteen, Mr. Dalton. I am well able to take care of myself.”

“That’s what you think. You two.” The boys still on the bank straightened abruptly. “Can you find your way back to the bus?”

They looked at him. At each other. Back at him. They were little boys, Christina thought. Not soldiers. But as instinctively as any palace flunky, they responded to his tone of command.

“I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Do it, then. Take one of those tray things and bring back ice.”

“It’s half a mile to the parking lot,” Christina objected. “Besides, they’re responsible for measuring—”

“They’re responsible for seeing that their buddy is all right after landing him on the rocks. Go on, now,” Jack ordered, and they went, crashing and sliding along the trail.

Christina drew a tight breath. She would not be dictated to like one of the children. “We should move Eric up the bank. And raise his foot.”

“Right,” Jack said, surprising her by his cooperation. “I’ll take care of it. You do the teacher stuff. Measuring, was it?”

“Temperature and current flow,” she confirmed. She studied Eric, his freckles stark in his pale face. Uncertainty fluttered in her stomach. He was her responsibility. Should she cancel the field trip now?

“We’ll be okay,” Jack said quietly. “I’ll keep cold water on the ankle till the kids get back with the ice. Is there something this guy can do in the meantime? You got another of those clipboards?”

Christina seized the idea thankfully. Activity would distract Eric from his discomfort and make the wait easier. “He can record times for the rest of the class when they measure currents. I’ll go wrap up the water life project, and bring the kids here.”

“Don’t be gone long,” Dalton warned.

Irritation pricked her. Outdoors in Montana, she didn’t need anyone to tell her what to do. This was her place, her area of expertise, and no fish-out-of-water seaman with blue eyes and big muscles was going to order her around.

Still, she was obliged to him. She stifled a sigh. Queen Gwendolyn had instilled in all her children a very strong sense of their obligations.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said, and made her escape.

She was as good as her word, Jack thought.

Christina strode back within five minutes, her charges strung out behind her like a bunch of baby ducks, wading and wobbling off course. And instead of doing her princess-in-a-tower routine, all distant and aloof, she laughed and listened and encouraged them, and splintered his perceptions. Again.

He’d been wrong about her. Once upon a time that kind of misjudgment could have gotten him killed. Now it got him interested.

There were grass stains on the knees of those fancy catalog pants and a streak of mud on her cheek. Her eyes were bright. Her face was flushed, and she smiled often. She looked like one of the damn kids.

And then, in response to the slowly rising temperature, she took off her nylon jacket with all the pockets, and his whole body tightened.

Okay, not like one of the kids, Jack acknowledged. Those were bona fide adult female curves under that plain T-shirt in an expensive fabric blend. But she was no less off-limits than one of the munchkins.

Yeah, she was a blonde, and he dug blondes. Her legs, in tailored khaki, tempted a man to imagine them naked or wrapped around his waist or resting on his shoulders.

But Jack knew his limitations. He didn’t “do” good girls. He didn’t go after the chardonnay and postgraduate degree type. And if he’d ever had any fantasies about making it with a princess, they hadn’t gone beyond tenth grade, when he’d wrestled off Valerie Hardison’s bra after the Boone High School production of Once Upon a Mattress.

Christina Sebastiani was a job. Maybe not even that, if he didn’t like the look of the intelligence packet the old man put together.

Still, Jack could watch and admire and, in his own fashion, pay tribute.

He eased his camera from his pocket. It was a nice little Nikon, light and compact. Nothing like the sleek, inconspicuous numbers he’d carried on missions, with their high-speed film and low-light capabilities, but he’d left his toys, his cameras and guns, behind. Now he shot pictures with a thirty-five millimeter aperture and shot targets with a nine.

He played for a moment with framing and focus and then let his lens see for him. Whir and click on Christina, her profile sharp and perfect as a queen on a silver coin. Click on the slant of sunlight drifting through the trees. Whir and click to catch Eric, fingers cramped and tongue stuck out in concentration as he printed on a chart. Click on Christina again, her blond head bent forward as she conferred with two girls. Click on a willow, leaning down from the bank to trail pale leaves in the dark water. On Christina, laughing. Christina, stretching. Christina… glaring at him.

He lowered his camera.

She stalked toward him, her long legs making a statement of their own. “What are you doing?”

He couldn’t figure what had tweaked her tail. But she was definitely upset. He answered honestly. “Taking pictures.”

“Why?”

“Habit?” When she didn’t smile, he shrugged and elaborated. “I used to be a photographer’s mate. Only then it turned out the Teams needed a photography specialist, so I graduated to intelligence ops.”

Her eyes widened. “You were spying on me?”

“Princess, if I were spying on you, you wouldn’t catch me at it. I was taking pictures, that’s all.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“Trees. Water. Kids. What difference does it make?”

Her gaze slid sideways toward Eric, hunched over the clipboard a few yards away. His right ankle was stretched in front of him, propped on Jack’s jacket and draped with a cold, wet sock.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

So, maybe now was a bad time to confess that he had more than one shot of her. “Yeah, I could have guessed that,” Jack drawled.

She blushed. He didn’t know many women who still did that. He would have bet princesses didn’t. “How is he?” she asked.

Jack tore his attention from the pretty pink color in her cheeks. Who? Oh, yeah. The kid. Eric.

“Not bad,” Jack said. “Hard to tell how much damage was done until the swelling goes down. It hurts, and his toes are getting cold, but that’ll teach him not to mess around near water.”