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Rick Ford had spent a lot of his life alone. An only child of emotionally distant parents, shipped off to boarding school where his imaginative antics didn't win him many friends, military trained to maintain loner status.
He'd lost his virginity to a coed named Beverly, and the oddly fond hatred he bore her was why he always used it against Fine when he pissed him off.
When he'd met Gina he thought he might actually have a chance at shedding the lonely life. But a rogue asset caught up with them on the way to a Paris proposal and shoved her into the path of an oncoming Boeing, and that dream had died- along with Gina, a co-pilot with a heart condition and two flight attendants who were run over by the runaway drinks cart.
After that he didn't see the point in trying anymore. The occasional assignment that got him close to someone never led anywhere. Relationships are hard enough when you're not beating confessions out of international arms dealers, let alone if you might be dating an international arms dealer and have to beat a confession out of her. (Handcuffs are kinky; zip ties mean business.)
And you can never really let your guard down.
Then he met Susan Cooper. Sweet, curvaceous, unassuming and smart as hell. He liked her... even if he couldn't admit it because she'd never go for him in a million years and happened to be hopelessly stuck on that pretty boy agent of hers.
He wanted to let his guard down around her because it took a lot of strength to hold up those walls and keep everyone at a distance, and damn it - Ju Jitsu, Kali, Krav Maga, Pilates and water ballet already ate up a lot of his spare time.
He liked her because he was tired and grouchy and really needed a hug more often than not, and she looked like she gave great non-life threatening squeezes.
Most of all he wanted to let his guard down around her because instinctively he knew he could.
So it took planting a tracking device on her before he hopped on that boat. So he'd figured out he was on a lake within five minutes and therefore couldn't actually drive down the coast and had gone looking for her. So a shots contest with Bollinger wasn't the smartest thing when all you had in your system was beef jerky and string cheese.
He'd still gotten to let his guard down. He'd still gotten her to let hers down around him (not that hers were so much steel reinforced concrete walls with laser fields and razor wire like his, as they were that soft netting stuff people use to keep rabbits out of gardens.)
He'd still woken up more than once in the night with her head on his heartbeat and hugging him in her sleep, or spooning her with his nose buried in her hair, or facing one another with her toes curling into his calf muscle.
For the first time in a long time he'd felt safe, not just in the protective circle of her arms but with her - like nothing could touch him as long as she was by his side.
And once he'd gotten her to shut the hell up in the morning (a screaming alarm when one had a hangover was NOT good) he proceeded to remind her why she felt safe in his arms too.