No way was he letting her walk anywhere unprotected.
Tracking Yasmine down the hall, Drew followed, kept enough distance so she wouldn't hear him and turn until they were well away from the crowd. She stopped in front of her closet-room, twisted the knob and disappeared inside.
Okay, safe and set for the night. He only needed to call for a guard. Let her cry her eyes out in her pillow or whatever it was women did to vent frustrations. Personally, he preferred a trip to the gym or shooting range. But, oh well. To each his own.
And still his feet wouldn't carry him away.
He just wanted a few more minutes with her to reassure himself. To blast away the image of her face superimposing itself over that of the condemned woman earlier. Yasmine was getting to him, no question, and at the moment he couldn't recall a single reason why he should leave.
He surrendered and knocked.
"The door is unlocked as ordered."
Twisting the knob, he swung the door open to find her sitting on the edge of her bed, scarf in her lap. Gleaming black hair streamed down her back.
Lust rolled over him like an M-l tank charging across a fiat stretch of undefended desert.
Yasmine stared up at Colonel Cullen filling her doorway. Finally he was with her. Of his own will. Alone. Now, when she looked foolish and felt far too open.
She could almost hear her mother whispering in her ear. Watch out what you wish for, sugar. You might just get it.
Yasmine considered covering her hair, even if she couldn't quickly twist it into a knot again. But of course seeing a woman's bare head was nothing special to this American man. She twined her favorite rose scarf around her fingers.
She resorted to sarcasm, better than crying. "Well, this is certainly a change, you following me."
He hooked his hands on his gun belt, standing in the open doorway, half in, half out. "Would you rather I call Keagan?''
"You know better and I find it spiteful on your part that you would make me say it."
Laughter rumbled in his broad chest.
"I would prefer that you not laugh at me."
He shook his head. "I'm not laughing at you, but you do amuse me, lady."
Lady? Not little girl. Something warm unfurled inside her like the scarf loosening around her slackened grip. "How do I amuse you?" she asked.
So she could figure out how to do it again.
He stepped farther inside, leaving the door open in a respectful gesture of propriety that touched and stirred her all at once.
"Well, Sheba, I expected to find you bawling your eyes out and instead you're spitting fire."
"Spitting fire? That is not an attractive image."
His eyes made a subtle shift from light blue to intense gray, deep gray, draw-a-woman-in-and-make-everything-else-fade gray. "I disagree."
Her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat, right around that tender spot at the base of her neck where her pulse throbbed faster. Louder in the already small room growing smaller by the heartbeat.
He knelt in front of her on one knee, forearm resting on his other bent knee. "Thing is, I know some of us spit fire because tears are just too damn silly looking. And I'm thinking you don't like looking silly."
"You would be right there."
"It's safe to say neither you nor your sister came across looking anything less than fighting mad."
Shame still burned her face over behaving like such a brat. "We have never gotten along. She resents our mother and I never could stop feeling defensive because Monica hurt her." She held up a hand to forestall the answer she already knew. "I know. I know. Our mother hurt Monica, as well, and it is not my place to solve their issues."
She glanced up through her lashes and found the corners of his blue-gray eyes crinkled with intensity as he listened. Really listened to her when most men would have no use for what her mother would have called "chick issues."