Friend, Lover, Protector
Friend, Lover, Protector
Sharon Mignerey
Professor Dahlia Jenson Storm Chaser's Log May 10 When rugged Jack Trahern aimed his cool blue gaze my way, I knew that I was about to learn a thing or two. But I never expected to discover that my sister was testifying against a syndicate crime boss, making me a target for murder and Jack my personal guardian.A past filled with heartache still didn't stop the ripple that ran through me each time Jack was near. And though he was afraid that intimacy would leave room for jeopardy we surrendered to passion anyway. But when the danger's gone, will an unforeseen love tempt my bodyguard to stay?
She had felt in control of her life until the moment Jack Trahern had climbed into her car.
“Like I said before, you can go now.” She brushed past Jack, intending to grab his backpack and lead him toward the front door. The narrow galley of the kitchen forced her much closer to him than was comfortable.
“And like I told you, I’m not leaving.” He didn’t budge. He simply watched her with those brilliant blue eyes.
“I can’t stand guys like you.”
“That makes us even, sugar.” He grasped her hands and thrust her away from him, somehow failing to let go.
She looked up, surprised to find his gaze on her face. The look in his eyes could have heated concrete. Oh, Lord, she thought. She wasn’t the only one fighting an attraction.
Friend, Lover, Protector
Sharon Mignerey
SHARON MIGNEREY
lives in Colorado with her husband and two dogs, Angel and Squirt. From the time she figured out that spelling words could be turned into stories, she knew being a writer was how she wanted to spend her life. She won RWA’s Golden Heart Award in 1995, validation that she was on the right path.
When she’s not writing, she loves puttering around in her garden, walking her dogs along the South Platte River and spending time at the family cabin in Colorado’s Four Corners region.
She loves hearing from readers, and you can write to her in care of Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017.
To firefighters, law enforcement officers
and EMT personnel everywhere, thank you.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks, Robin, for thinking of Jack— I hope you like him. Thanks always, to Lynda Cooper for her invaluable advice with the “cop” details—as always, the good stuff is hers and the mistakes are mine. Thank you, Patti and Daniele, for proofreading and making those last hectic days before deadline easy for me.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Prologue
“The money has been deposited in your account,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
Max Jamison didn’t reply, but then, he wasn’t expected to. His clientele was small and trusted him to be discreet and efficient. The less they all knew about one another, the safer it was for all of them.
He took every precaution to ensure no one knew precisely where to find him. His caller had reached him through a series of forwarded lines scattered all over the country. He could have been sitting in Boston or San Diego. Instead he sat in the den of his home in rural Pennsylvania.
“I trust everything is to your satisfaction,” the voice added.
“As soon as I’ve verified the deposit, I’ll make my plans,” Max said. He already knew who his target was. Dr. Dahlia Jensen, an assistant professor at Colorado Mountain University.
“And you received the fax.”
“I did.” Max frowned. Obvious points didn’t need to be covered. All the information he needed to do the job was contained in the fax—the woman’s photograph, address and dossier. He had retrieved the fax from his message box and had followed that up with his own background check on her. Thanks to the Internet, that was now easier than ever. The woman had no unusual habits, if you didn’t classify being a storm chaser as unusual. She was single and lived well within her means. Her only claim to fame was a slew of scholarly papers, all having to do with obscure theories of lightning, published in various scientific journals. He couldn’t lay his finger on a single thing about her that would make her a target for murder.
Carefully, he dismissed that thought, reminding himself that the morality of whether someone deserved to die wasn’t his to determine. He was hired to do a job. No more.
“There is a bonus for you.”
Max didn’t like the sound of that. Bonus by any other name was an additional fee for additional service. He observed a strict protocol, which this conversation violated.
“Contact me via the usual means, and we’ll discuss the matter.” Max severed the connection, deciding this was a job he was no longer interested in doing. Not when the caller knew the rules, knew that details were never discussed over the phone.
He stared unseeingly into the room, then stood and walked across the plush carpet to the window. A lake shimmered in the morning sunlight. A hundred feet from the water’s edge, his sister was in a canoe with her two young children. Recently the twenty-two-year age difference between them had gnawed at him, a reminder he was no longer a young man, no longer had a promising future in front of him. He intended to retire soon.
For himself, he had enough to be comfortable the rest of his life. For his sister and her children…he needed a bit more. Two more jobs, and they would never want for anything.
An instant later, the phone rang. Max turned back to his desk. On the second ring, he crossed the room and sat down in the leather chair. On the third, he drummed his fingers against the felt blotter that protected the teak surface, un-characteristic indecision claiming him. He let the phone ring twice more before picking up the receiver.
“Hanging up again would be most unwise,” the caller said. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. We need to have her held for the next couple of weeks as well as proof that she’s alive.”
“I’m no longer interested in this job,” Max said. “Your money will be returned.”
“We don’t want our money back, Max. You will do this job,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “And the three reasons why are on the lake.”
Max’s blood chilled, and he swiveled his chair around to face the huge window where sunlight streamed from a pristine clear sky. A series of thoughts crowded to the surface, but two prevailed. How had his caller known where to find him? How fast could he get his sister and her children to safety?
“They’d be quite upset, don’t you think, to know what you are. Not a quiet, mild-mannered man who invested well, but a cold-blooded killer.”
Again, Max didn’t reply, certain his caller wanted only a reaction from him—something, anything that could be used as leverage…for blackmail or in a court of law.
“I have in my possession certain…evidence that links you to the Aaron Sheffield murder in Lexington last year.”
Another chill chased down Max’s spine. His caller hadn’t arranged for the Sheffield job.
“Very cool, Max,” the voice continued. “Very controlled. Since you’re not going to ask me what evidence, I may have to make you wait…and wonder. Let me simply say it has to do with a 9mm Glock that was left in a lunch sack at the bottom of a very full trash barrel outside a Seven Eleven store.”
The chill coalesced into a seething, icy knot in the pit of his stomach.
“Now, about the matters at hand,” the voice continued. “You will apprehend the target, you will videotape her, you will send me the tape, and you will hold her until you are told to finish it. Do I make myself clear?”
“Completely.” A kidnapping! Max had never stooped so low. Kidnapping was a messy, dirty business. Too much contact with the target, too much time, too many variables to control. Each one a reason why kidnappers were invariably caught. Max wanted nothing to do with this. Somehow he’d find a way out.
“I knew we’d come to an understanding. And, Max, just so you don’t think I’m bluffing, take a look at the lake.”
Max looked out at the lake, picking up a pair of binoculars, dreading what he would see. A speedboat appeared, headed directly toward his sister and her children.
At the last possible moment, it swerved, clipping the bow of the boat. Wood shattered, water churned and the small boat overturned. The children and his sister bobbed to the surface, their bright orange life jackets doing their job. The speedboat made an arcing turn and at full throttle charged back across the lake.
“Do what you are told, and your family will be fine,” the caller said before hanging up.
Max ran outside to rescue his family. And his mind raced, assessing details about the call. He hadn’t heard the speedboat over the phone, so his caller hadn’t been on the boat. Which meant, like Max, he could be anywhere.
He’d do the job, Max decided. Then he’d track his caller down. That man would never again blackmail him or anyone else.
Chapter 1
“C’mon, Jack Trahern,” Dahlia Jensen muttered beneath her breath when the Daniel E. Baker Building that housed the College of Physical Sciences disgorged a flow of students. She didn’t know which one was hers, but he was late.
Opportunity was vanishing at the same pace as the thunderstorm moving northeast at a good clip. It had the perfect profile for her lightning study, and she was anxious to follow it. Everything she had been working toward these past two years hinged on the data she collected during the next two months: funding for her own grant; a promotion to associate professor.
All she had to do was stay away from her supervisor, Doreen Layard. The tension between them had been escalating for months. If the woman couldn’t find anything obvious to take issue with, she dug until she found something. Dahlia reminded herself that her focus was to do her job to the best of her ability.
With or without today’s student assistant. She glanced again at her watch.
The students either hurried by without giving her a second glance or stopped in groups of two or three to chat. Dahlia wondered which one was Jack Trahern.
She wished she recognized the name. He hadn’t taken any of her classes, which made him either new to the atmospheric science program or a storm chaser wannabe. Too many of the latter had cropped up after last year’s block-buster movie. She had hoped for a student assistant who was competent—at the moment she would settle for one who was prompt.
This was midterm week, and none of her regular students were available. Jack Trahern’s name was at the bottom of the list of undergraduates who wanted to be involved with the program next year—and the only volunteer available today.
One last time Dahlia glanced around the parking lot and grounds in front of the building. She fished her keys from her pocket and looked around again, hoping to see some pimply faced eighteen-year-old looking for her. No such luck.
Instead, a tall athletically built man came out of the building, paused at the top of the steps and gazed out over the parking lot as he put on a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. Dahlia gave him the second look his well-built physique deserved, then opened the door to the van.
“Scoot over, Boo,” she said, to the dog sitting in the driver’s seat of her car after she opened the door. She patted the blond Cocker Spaniel on the head and, tail wagging, Boo dutifully moved to the passenger seat.
Dahlia climbed into the van, unclipped the HAM radio from her belt that kept her in touch with the National Weather Service and set it on the dash, her attention immediately focused on the storm. She rolled down the window the rest of the way. A cool gust of wind swept through the car—outflow from the storm. Yes! This was the time of year she lived for—the volatile season of thunderstorms that began in late April and continued into midsummer.
She started the van, then put it into gear and, looking into the rearview mirror, eased backward out of her parking spot.
The man in the aviator sunglasses appeared behind her. She slammed on the brakes. He stared at her, though the reflective lenses of his glasses made it impossible to tell for sure.
He came up the side of the car toward her.
“Dr. Jensen?” he said, leaning down slightly so he could look at her through the open window.
“Dahlia,” she automatically corrected. She deliberately used her first name to cultivate rapport with her field students.
The guy looked even better up close. His dark hair was cut military short, and his clean-shaven square jaw already showed the shadow of a beard. This was no kid, but a man in his prime.
He took off his sunglasses, revealing deep-set, brilliant blue eyes, beneath thick, nearly black eyebrows. Bracing a hand on the car door, he said, “I’m Jack Trahern.”
This man was far removed from the eighteen-year-old she had been expecting. Kids she could deal with. Kids she could coerce into doing what she wanted. Kids…were one thing, and this man was no kid.
“Jack Trahern?” she echoed finally, and could have kicked herself for her breathless tone. Firming her voice, she said, “You’re late.”
“Sorry. I got hung up.”
“Great,” she muttered, casting an eye toward the heavens. She didn’t have time for this. Not for a tardy student—no matter how gorgeous—certainly not for a man whose mere presence snapped her lonely hormones to attention. “Get in the car.”
He put the shades back on and ambled around the hood of the car as though he had all the time in the world. Even as she mentally cursed him for taking his time, she couldn’t help but admire how he looked. He was tall, six-three or four and he carried himself with an easy, loose-limbed grace. A small black backpack was slung over one shoulder—the omnipresent book bag of college kids and the only thing about him that struck her as remotely studentlike. She was positive she hadn’t seen him around campus before. She would have remembered.
What she did remember, vividly, was swearing off men. If her womanizing ex-husband hadn’t proven to her that she had rotten taste in men, the ex-fiancé who followed him would have—a man who had chosen a drug habit over her. Two long years, and she was finally on her feet again. Finding Jack Trahern in her path was undoubtedly a cosmic joke to find out how serious her intentions really were.
He opened the passenger door, and Boo sat there, wagging her stubby tail.
“Hello there, you beauty,” Jack said, smiling. Boo sat up straighter, her little body wriggling in anticipation.
“Back seat, girl,” Dahlia said, motioning toward the back of the van.
By then Jack had set the pack down and was scratching Boo’s ears, massaging them close to her head, something she loved only slightly more than cookies. The dog looked as though she might dissolve into a puddle. An unexpected longing to be touched—with as much affection—feathered through Dahlia.
“Boo, back seat,” she repeated, her voice more stern.
Boo cast her a decidedly disgusted glance, jumped into the open space between the two bucket seats and plopped herself onto the floor.
“Nice dog,” Jack slid into the seat. “Her name is Boo?”
Dahlia nodded. “When she was a puppy, she was scared of her own shadow.”
“She’s not much of a watchdog, I take it.”
Remembering Boo’s restless prowl around the perimeter of the yard with her nose to the ground just this morning, Dahlia said, “She’s no rottweiler, but she’ll do.”
He chuckled, the accompanying smile revealing a dimple. Gorgeous and a dimple. There was no justice.
She was intensely aware of him, from the breadth of his shoulders and beautifully shaped hands to the button-down fly of his jeans. Dahlia could have sworn the temperature climbed fifty degrees. She flipped on the air conditioner and turned up the fan.
The instant he buckled the seat belt, she put the car into gear, determined to reclaim her usual focus. Even so, the silence stretched, thick and awkward, as she eased into traffic and headed east. It was the time she would have normally reviewed—with her rider—the objectives for their day, defined her expectations and answered questions.
It was a routine she had been through dozens of times, but darned if she could remember where to even start. Each time she opened her mouth to speak, her thoughts vanished. Finally she clamped her lips together, sure that she must look like a fish.
She had the feeling he was watching her behind those reflective sunglasses. Despite her best efforts to choose clothes that minimized the size of her breasts, most guys looked. Usually she took that in stride, though this student—this man—made her feel off balance. She briefly glanced down at herself, relieved that the button-down shirt she had layered over a T-shirt concealed rather than revealed.
“Sorry I’m late,” he finally said.
“No problem,” she automatically answered. No problem? Hah. Jensen, get a grip. The guy was late, and you would have left without him.
“Thanks for waiting, anyway.”
“You’re welcome.” Oh, brother. Dahlia cleared her throat. “I don’t remember seeing your name on the roster for my classes.”
“I haven’t taken any of your classes,” he said.
He didn’t add anything further, which made her glance over at him. His attention had shifted to the mirror outside the passenger door. Curious about what he saw, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The usual assortment of vehicles were on the road, including a police car in the center lane that kept the traffic at an aggravating two miles per hour under the speed limit.
“So why did you sign up for my field crew?”
“I’m thinking about changing majors.”
His answer was ordinary enough, but he acted as though the storm they chased was barely noticeable. No matter how shy, her students seemed as interested in the thunderheads as she did, their focus inevitably on whether they would see tornadoes. Some, in fact, were downright manic about the possibility.
Keeping an eye on the traffic, she riffled though a group of papers in a box between the two seats, at last finding a map. She handed it to Jack.
“We need to take one of the intersecting roads on the other side of I-25,” she said. “I want to get about five miles in front of the storm.”
Navigating the straight county roads of the high plains of Colorado was a simple task but one that usually told her a lot about her would-be assistants. A surprising number couldn’t have guided her off the campus. Jack opened the map up one fold and turned it around when he realized it was upside down. He glanced briefly at the street sign for the upcoming intersection, then continued to handle the map with the ease and dexterity of someone who used maps all the time.
“Your storm’s heading a little north from where it was,” he said. “And it looks to me like it’s picked up a little speed.”
Dahlia mentally gave him points for both observations. Even so, they were beneath the storm to the point she could sense the ozone in the air. Her anticipation increased.
Five minutes after they crossed over I-25, he directed her north onto the graveled road that she would have chosen, and they were making good progress on getting ahead of the storm.
“Are you new at CMU?” she asked.
“You could say that,” he responded.
The laconic reply annoyed her. “And what would you say?”
She glanced at him and found that his attention was once again focused on the side mirror. She looked in the rearview mirror. A car followed them, close enough to be catching the worst of the dust left in their wake.
A moment later Jack said, “What I’d say is that car has been following us since we left the campus.”
She glanced again in the mirror. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” He looked over at her, and she took her eyes off the straight road long enough to meet his glance—hidden behind the reflective sunglasses.
“Do you know them?” she asked. Apprehension slithered through her. She had been with dozens of students that she didn’t know, so riding with a stranger wasn’t new. But this feeling of impending doom was. A feeling that wasn’t supported by a single, substantiated fact.
“Whoever is back there?” He shook his head. “No.”
Reminding herself that tardiness and being good-looking weren’t valid reasons to distrust the man, she gave the other car another careful glance. It was white or beige or tan and looked like a thousand other cars. “I don’t know them, either.”
She lived by empirical evidence, what she could observe and what she could prove. To determine if the car really was following them, she made a left turn at the next intersection. A moment later the car appeared again in her rearview mirror.
At the next crossroads she turned again. Once more the car followed. Her attention became focused on the car behind her as much as the road in front. Surely the car wasn’t really following them. Surely this was some stupid coincidence.
It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
It felt menacingly deliberate.
Contrary to her assertion that she trusted only what she knew, she couldn’t bring herself to pull to the side of the road to let the car pass. She couldn’t have said why she was certain the car would stop, too. Then what? she wondered. Distressing images of murder and mayhem filled her mind. “You’ve been watching too much television, Jensen,” she muttered.
“Pardon?” Jack asked.
“Just talking to myself.” She turned at the next intersection, then watched for the car to appear behind her. From the corner of her eye she could see that Jack was also looking behind them, harsh lines bracketing his mouth.
The car whizzed through the crossroads without turning.
Shaking, and more relieved than she cared to admit, Dahlia slowed the van. The car continued on its way, a rooster tail of dust tracking its progress long after she could no longer see it.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
Dahlia straightened. “Yes.”
“You’re shaking,” he commented.
That he had noticed unsettled her even more. She had been in the field with students hundreds of times. Storms were sometimes dangerous. Nothing else. Not ever. “Like I said, I’ve been watching too much television.”
“I think you should consider calling it a day.” When she scowled, he tacked on, “Maybe.”
She tore her gaze away from his and wrapped her hands around the steering wheel. “I’ve never let flights of imagination determine my work schedule.” She put the car into gear, pulled back into the road and finally returned her attention to the storm. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator. “And I’m not about to start today.”
“Then let me drive,” he said. “You just ran a stop sign.”
“I know where we’re going.”
“So do I,” he countered, motioning toward the storm directly overhead. “We’re following your storm.”
“I’ll drive,” she said, feeling as though she was repeating herself. “I asked you before if you were new in town.”
“I am. Actually you asked if I was new to CMU.”
“Are you?” She took her eyes off the road to look at him.
“I’d have to be if I’m new here, wouldn’t I?” He smiled. “You wanted the answer. Feel any better?”
“No.” She massaged her hand across her forehead. This wasn’t the first or second or thirty-fifth time she had people ride with her she didn’t know. “This is nuts.”
“Agreed.” He sighed. Taking off the sunglasses to rub the bridge of his nose, he met her gaze, his eyes a brilliant turquoise blue that seemed to settle right into her. “You know, we haven’t gotten off to a very good start here,” he said.
“That’s true.”
“What do I have to do to make it better?”
“Be honest with me. Did you sign up because you wanted the thrill of seeing a tornado?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not…” The laugh dissolved as though he had changed his mind about what he intended to say. “Chances are we could chase storms all summer without seeing a single twister.”
“That’s right,” she stated flatly, motioning toward the flat landscape ahead of them. “This is about as thrilling as it gets most days. If you signed up to see tornadoes, you’ll be disappointed.”
“That’s not high on my list of priorities.” He put the glasses back on, his attention again roving over the scenery.
“That’s good because what we’re interested in is lightning.”
“Lightning?” He motioned toward the equipment in the back of the van. “All this is to study lightning?”
As if to punctuate his statement, the cloud overhead flickered and thunder rumbled.
“Why did you sign up to be one of my assistants?” she asked.
“I…” His voice faded away, while his attention fell on a car which was stopped at the crossroads they just went through. When they passed it, he turned around and looked at the vehicle.
“Is that the same car?” she asked.
“Could be,” he said, his voice tight.
“Are you sure you don’t know them?” She studied the vehicle that turned onto the road behind them, hoping he was wrong, having the awful feeling he was right.
“Positive.”
“This is stupid,” she muttered. “Nobody is following me. Nobody has reason to follow me.” Mentally reviewing all the legitimate reasons a car had for being on this same stretch of high plains road, she slowed the van and steered toward the right shoulder, giving the other vehicle plenty of opportunity to pass.
For a moment it followed, then pulled up alongside the van. Good, she thought. It was going to pass. She had intended to let it go by without glancing over, but she had to look, had to reassure herself.
The only person in the car was the man driving it. He met her gaze, then pointed a gun at her. A big gun.
Dumbly she stared at the weapon, her mind blank.
“Holy crap,” Jack snapped. “Step on it! Drive. Go!”
His abrupt command shocked her out of the stupor. She floored the accelerator, and the van shot forward.
From the corner of her eye she watched Jack unzip his pack, his expression taut. A lethal-looking gun appeared in his hand.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God,” she muttered, her foot easing on the accelerator.
“Don’t slow down,” he commanded.
She drove faster. “You have a gun.” The shakes were back, worse, much worse than they had been before. And the car behind them was close. Too close.
She didn’t know people who carried guns. She didn’t want to know people who carried guns.
She pressed harder on the gas pedal. The van shimmied as it clattered over the washboard of the graveled road. The steering wheel became slick beneath her sweaty palms.
A reverberating ping echoed through the van, sounding like a single huge hailstone striking a hollow can. Boo yelped.
“Oh, God, they just shot at us, didn’t they?”
“Damn straight.”
“Boo—she’s okay?”
He reached down to pat the dog, who had wedged herself in between the two seats. “She’s fine.”
“Who is that guy?” she asked, then shook her head, her attention riveted on the weapon. “Forget that, who the hell are you?”
“Your bodyguard.”
Chapter 2
“My bodyguard?” she echoed, her voice squeaking. “A bodyguard? That’s ridiculous!”
Jack couldn’t have agreed more. The whole situation was deadly and getting worse by the second. Unless they got damn lucky damn fast, they were in big trouble.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why ever would I need a bodyguard?”
Jack looked behind them. The car wasn’t gaining, but they weren’t getting any farther away, either. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Later. Just step on it, will you?”
“Step on it,” she muttered. “Yes, sir.” She floored the accelerator. The van shot forward.
A stop sign marked an upcoming intersection. Dahlia must have had the same thought he did, because she showed no sign of stopping—and fortunately no other cars could be seen on the other roads. At the next crossroads, she braked to slow, ignored the stop sign and turned left onto a paved road. Tires squealed and the van swerved, but she managed to keep it on the road.
“Good girl,” Jack said.
“Up yours.”
She drove the way he would have, her handling of the van suggesting that she’d probably had training in evasive maneuvers and chase. He began to hope they’d get out of this in one piece. The car behind them didn’t make the turn as cleanly, and it fell a little farther behind.
He relaxed a little and looked over at the surprising Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D. Where he’d been expecting mousy, starched and boring, she was vibrant and alluring, despite her baggy clothes. She was clearly angry, pink suffusing the flawless skin of her cheeks. Her blond hair was caught in some kind of intricate loose braid that revealed the shell of her ear and the length of her neck and added to her femininity.
She pinned him with a glare from her dark eyes—brown, he realized, intrigued by the contrast to her fair skin and hair.
“Stop staring at me and keep an eye on that jerk behind us.”
“You’ve had high-speed training,” he said, ignoring her comment while keeping one eye on the car following them. “This is some souped-up van you’ve got.”
“I chase thunderstorms,” she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye. “You think I’d take off in a vehicle without any speed and without knowing what I’m doing?”
Jack glanced at the speedometer. Ninety miles per hour was a little faster than his preferred land speed, but he had to hand it to her. She knew how to handle the vehicle.
She didn’t show any sign of slowing even after they headed west and crossed back over I-25. Soon the traffic began to get heavier, and she reduced her speed. The car following them began to gain. It still looked more country than city when they passed the first of the signs that stated they were entering the city limits. Abruptly farms gave way to housing developments and office buildings.
Ahead a flashing light for a railroad crossing came on. The approaching train blared its whistle. Dahlia glanced briefly in the rearview mirror, and her mouth firmed into a straight line. The van gained speed.
Jack shuddered as he realized her intention. There wasn’t enough room to stop before the tracks. She was crazy. He glanced behind them. The car chasing them hadn’t given up, either.
The train was close. Too close.
The train whistled, long and loud and sounded to Jack like a death knell. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“Come on, baby,” Dahlia muttered under her breath, leaning forward as if doing so would make the van go even faster.
The whistle blared again.
The van clattered across the tracks.
The train whizzed past, so close he could feel the compression of air between the train and the van.
“Thank God,” she whispered.
“You’re nuts! Nobody plays chicken with a train.”
She didn’t reply, which was just as well. If looks could kill, he was a goner.
Jack turned to look behind them. The car chasing them had come to a halt on the other side of the train. If luck was with them, the train would be a long one. A very long one.
It was. Each of the cars filled with coal. The train moved much slower than he had imagined.
He let out a sigh and glanced at Dahlia. He had never been with a more magnificent woman. Not just because she drew him physically but because of her courage and determination. Without exception the women he knew would have resorted to tears or hysteria by now. Thank God Dahlia wasn’t one of those.
When she flashed him another glance with her surprisingly dark eyes, he admitted to himself that he liked her even if she had scared a decade off his life. And liking her…that hadn’t been part of the deal.
Three blocks later Dahlia abruptly turned right, and a half block later brought the van to a skidding halt. “Out,” she commanded.
Jack stared numbly at her. “What?”
“You heard me. Out.”
“But, I’m—”
“I don’t want to hear any cockamamy story about bodyguards or anything else. For all I know that guy is after you. Not me. And one way to tell is get rid of you. Out.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” she said. “You’re a crazy person.”
“I’m crazy?” he shouted. “You’re certifiable. You could have gotten us killed.”
“Like we wouldn’t have been if we’d been stuck on the same side of the tracks as that guy. Get out. Right now.” She held up her HAM radio. “Or I’m calling the cops.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.” He opened the door and stepped onto the pavement. “Call the cops, Dahlia Jensen, or better yet, go see them ’cause you’re gonna need them. And do it soon.” He slammed the door, and she sped away.
Frustration and fear for her vied equally with a reluctant admiration. He could only hope that she was going to the cops as she had said. Since he’d deliberately left his pack in the van, he had the opening he needed to look her up as soon as he identified the car following them. Not that he needed an excuse. His best friend had asked him to keep the lady out of harm’s way, and he would, with or without her cooperation.
At the moment, though, he wished he was with his platoon. The intelligence that had come down over the month had them all believing that they’d be deployed for a recon mission. There he knew what to expect, and he had trained for it. Even though he was on medical leave, he was carrying a pager. If the mission went down, he would be called back to be part of the support team.
This business with Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D.—correction, blond bombshell—had him feeling as nervous as he had the first time he’d trained under live fire.
Five minutes later Dahlia pushed open the doors of the police station and marched over to the desk, where a receptionist watched her approach. She had been expecting a crusty desk sergeant like the ones usually seen on television.
“Can I help you?” the young woman asked.
“I’d like to report a crime.” That sounded pretty mundane compared to the fright that raced through her veins.
“Let me get an officer to take your report.”
She called someone named Bob on the phone, and Dahlia stood for the next two minutes drumming her fingers against the counter and refusing an offer of coffee. That was all she needed—more acid in her stomach.
A door slammed, and she watched an officer amble toward her, reminding her of Jack’s deceptively slow walk this morning. The officer, like the receptionist, looked young enough to be a student at the university.
He smiled. “Officer Bob Jones. Can I help you?”
“I was fired at this morning. With a gun,” she added, just in case he didn’t understand.
His eyebrows shot up, and Dahlia sensed she had his attention as she hadn’t before.
“Please. This way.” He led her down the hall, and two minutes later she sat at a table across from him and a concerned-looking sergeant.
Succinctly Dahlia related what had happened and did her best to answer their questions. No, she didn’t know the man shooting at her. When she was asked for a description, she drew a blank—all she remembered was the gun, which looked like any other to her. As for the car, it was beige or light brown or white. Dirty. She couldn’t answer the questions about whether it had two doors or four, its make or model or any other useful details about it, not even if it had Colorado plates.
The two policemen looked at each other and finally Jones said, “You haven’t given us much to work with here.”
Dahlia didn’t like admitting they were right. “I want protection.”
“You think this was personal, then? You have an ex giving you trouble?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t know this guy.” She snapped her fingers. “A bullet hit my van. I heard it ping. So there’s gotta be a dent, right, maybe even a hole?”
The two officers followed her out to her van. After a scant minute of looking, she realized this was going to be futile. She had been caught in several hail storms, so the van was damaged from that. Plus, she usually traveled on gravel roads, and that probably accounted for some of the other damage. Identifying a single small dent made by a bullet from all the others wasn’t going to work. No hole, which meant there wouldn’t be a bullet.
Officer Jones shrugged, then said, “What probably happened here, ma’am, is the fellow was looking for an easy victim to rob. There’s nothing to indicate that you need protection.”
Jones pulled a card from his pocket and passed it to her. “Anything else comes up…you call me.”
It was only after she began driving away that she realized she’d failed to mention Jack Trahern at all. Odd, especially as she had been thinking about him the whole time.
Jack watched Dahlia’s van speed away as he shoved his revolver into the waistband of his jeans and pulled the tail of his shirt out to cover it. Then he calmly walked back to the main thoroughfare and stepped behind an enormous cottonwood tree to wait for traffic to resume after the train went by. At the very least he’d have a license plate number.
This was far different from his normal stakeout as a sniper with the Army Rangers. The last time he had been on surveillance, he had been hidden in a tree in a South American jungle, doing his best to ignore the mosquitoes and covering his team through a sniper’s scope attached to his rifle. Hostages from the American diplomatic corps had been rescued in a mission that would be classified for some time.
The landscape in front of him today was so ordinary it was difficult to imagine that danger lurked on the other side of the long coal train, which rolled past for another six minutes.
The plates turned out to be temporary ones, the paper variety taped to the inside of the filthy window, only the word Colorado legible. He watched the off-white car continue on, committing to memory everything about it. The vehicle was remarkable only in that it was completely unremarkable. The driver, though—Jack would remember him. Thin face and a long thin nose.
A second later a city bus stopped in front of Jack, and a couple of people got off. He fished some coins out of his pocket and boarded the bus.
As he’d done more than once since his buddy Ian had called yesterday afternoon, Jack reviewed what he knew about the situation—the key to keeping ahead of and out-thinking his adversary. Dahlia’s sister, code name Linda, had witnessed an execution-style murder and had been placed into custody after the defendant—a businessman with organized crime connections—began making threats on her. His buddy Ian had taken the woman’s child to Alaska to be with Dahlia’s other sister, code name Rachel. Only, their cover had been blown, and they had been forced into hiding. A guy with connections back to the defendant in the murder case had assaulted Dahlia’s parents, and they now had police protection.
Ian had called Jack after he’d been unable to convince the local police that she needed protection, figuring that Dahlia could be a target.
“This whole thing has blown up in the past twenty-four hours. Rosie and her folks didn’t know anything about all of this until I got here,” Ian had said. “Rosie doesn’t know I’m calling you, and I want to keep it that way. She’s got enough on her mind.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Name your price.”
“Hell, man, don’t insult me. You know I don’t want your money,” Jack said.
“Okay, then. Call it expenses.”
They had talked awhile longer, and Jack had finally agreed to let Ian deposit the funds he wanted into Jack’s account. Not that he planned on using a single penny of the thousands of dollars that had shown up in his account when he’d gone to the bank to withdraw travel money.
Ian had the good fortune to have won a huge lotto. “Friends” had shown up by the truckload, all with some reason why Ian should part with his cash. He’d been generous to a fault, funding everything from the delivery of babies to ski vacations. Jack was determined to be the same kind of friend to Ian he’d been before—one who couldn’t care less about his money.
Jack had first become friends with the man when they were assigned as buddies in Ranger school. That sometimes seemed like a thousand years ago. It had been hate at first sight, and they had to immediately get past their differences. The training was set up to reinforce teamwork, and if they didn’t work as a team, they both would fail. Ten years later, and he didn’t have a closer friend than Ian.
Jack would have preferred going to Alaska to protect Ian’s flank, but if being here was what his best friend needed, Jack would do the job without a second thought. He had a month of accrued leave that he had just begun. With nothing but time and regret on his hands this was a way to fill his time. He had a year left on his hitch, and he’d been given several choices of how to spend that time. None of them appealed to him a bit.
Ian had tried to convince Jack that he could pass himself off as a student, which would provide the cover to protect Dahlia until her sister testified. Jack had been a decade younger the last time he was in a college classroom, and one thing he knew for sure. He didn’t look like a student.
As for the professor—he had imagined an old-fashioned woman who would match the old-fashioned name of Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D. and figured that he’d be spending boring days at the back of a classroom. Until he had arrived last night and had gone to the university, he hadn’t known she chased storms. He would rather jump out of airplanes with a faulty parachute than be anywhere near a thunderstorm. It was an aversion he’d acquired when a tornado flattened the trailer park where he and his mom had lived.
The ride back up University Boulevard wasn’t that long, but along the way Jack kept worrying about all the things that could go wrong. At the top of the list was someone catching up with her before he did. If Dahlia had gone to the cops, he would arrive back at her office on campus before her.
When he got back to his car, he fished the keys out and slid behind the wheel, hoping that Dahlia would arrive soon and head for her office. He moved the car to where he could keep an eye on the faculty parking lot behind the building. By the time a half hour passed without her arrival the dull gnaw in his gut grew into full-fledged worry. He got out of the car and headed for Dahlia’s office. According to the student assistant, she wasn’t expected back.
Jack hurried back to his SUV and headed for her house with the address that Ian had given him and the map he had picked up when he arrived last night.
The trip to Dahlia’s house was a scant fifteen minutes from the campus. He figured her for a condo kind of gal, so the Victorian-era bungalow that matched her address came as a surprise. He liked the lines of the house and the big shade trees that sheltered it. The front door, sitting at the back of the wide porch, was nearly invisible. At night, you could hide a platoon on that porch unless the porch light was on.
Her yard was well kept but plain compared to the vivid flower beds of her neighbor’s. As Jack drove by he looked for her van. It wasn’t in the driveway or beneath the carport. The old guy working in the yard next to hers waved as he came by, and Jack waved back. His concern for Dahlia’s safety came to the surface even as he cautioned himself that she might have gone to the grocery store or somewhere else.
Jack went around the block, then parked beneath a huge shade tree about a half block from her house, where he had a clear view of her driveway.
Dahlia arrived about ten minutes later. She didn’t notice him. He would have preferred it if she had been a little more aware of strange cars in the neighborhood. Deciding the more he knew about her routine, the better, he sat in the car and watched. She parked her van under the carport, then came back to the mailbox at the street, waving to the old man next door. Her dog trotted along at her heels.
Dahlia was taller—a lot taller than he’d thought. He’d noticed earlier that she was stacked. A man would have to be blind not to notice. She had layered a tailored shirt over a T-shirt. The khaki pants were on the baggy side, which made the curve of her hip and the length of her leg all the more tantalizing. The conservative outfit was a hell of a lot more sexy than a blatant display would have been, though he admitted he wouldn’t have minded that, either.
She wandered over to the fence separating her property from her neighbor’s. They stood talking while the guy cut her a bouquet of tulips. When he handed them to Dahlia, she leaned across the short fence separating them and gave the man a lingering hug. She pressed a kiss against the old guy’s cheek.
A memory slammed through Jack, so vivid that instead of Dahlia he saw his ex-wife, Erin.
They had been married maybe three months, and already her pregnancy was showing—but it would, since she was more than five months along. She had come home, waved to him and stopped to give his grandpa a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Jack clenched his hands around the steering wheel and shook his head. Ten years and a hell of a lot of water had passed under that particular bridge. His grandpa had died before the baby was born. And as for the baby and Erin…neither of them had turned out to be his. Everything Jack had thought to be true about his marriage had been a lie.
Since then he’d lived by a simple credo. He didn’t do permanent. He didn’t make babies. He didn’t have sex with a woman he couldn’t walk away from.
He stared at Dahlia and the old man. Deliberately he reminded himself that just because his ex-wife had betrayed him didn’t mean others would. In his head he knew that. In his gut, where he made the important decisions, he didn’t believe it. Memories or not, he was here to do a job. That’s all. No matter how hot she was, no matter how much she drew him.
Okay, he thought. She’s off-limits. Because I’m being paid to protect her, and I sure can’t do that if I’m thinking…about stripping off those baggy clothes and discovering what she’s hiding. Irritated, he hauled his thoughts back. I don’t do permanent. And there she is, permanent right down to the picket fence in her yard. She’s off-limits. End of story.
She gave the old man another hug, and another knot twisted through Jack. Deliberately he catalogued the women that had marched through his life—not that there had been that many—the ones he made damn sure that he could walk away from. As for Dahlia, he liked her. Another reason she was off-limits.
The bouquet in hand, Dahlia went back to her car and scooped up a number of items, including his pack. Jack slouched down in his vehicle, telling himself that the reason he was staying in the car rather than following her into the house was to acquaint himself with the sounds and activity of the neighborhood. Sooner or later he needed to go inside and talk to her. Since she had his pack, he had the opening he needed to get into her house.
You’re here to do a job. Focus, he told himself. Instead he kept thinking about how she’d look without her clothes. He shifted uncomfortably in the seat. Focus. Now that he knew the danger was real—he hadn’t really believed that it was—he needed 100 percent of his concentration on the job at hand.
Unbidden, the luscious expanse of her breasts behind the deep vee of her tailored shirt filled his mind—this time without being covered.
No way was he ready to face her.
Dahlia climbed the steps to her porch, unlocked the door and went inside. The house was quiet except for the almost silent whir of the ceiling fan and the hum of the refrigerator motor. Boo followed her into the house, her nails clicking against the hardwood floor.
Dahlia set everything down except the tulips, which she held as she pulled a vase out of the cupboard. After she had filled it with water and arranged the flowers, she carried the vase to the counter and set it next to the phone. On impulse she picked up the receiver and dialed her sister, Rosie.
Of her two sisters, Rosie was no-nonsense and practical. Dahlia would tell her about today’s adventure, and Rosie would have exactly the right advice to make her feel better.
Every time Dahlia thought about the chase, an adrenaline rush made her shaky and clammy. She would walk over hot coals before admitting it to Jack, but he was right—she could have gotten them killed speeding across the tracks like that. Never once in her life had she taken such a stupid chance, acting like Xena, Warrior Princess, and playing chicken with a train.
Lily, her oldest sister, wouldn’t have believed anyone could be playing chase with guns on back country roads and would dismiss the whole thing as a misunderstanding—such things just didn’t happen, except in the movies.
The ringing on the line ended when Rosie’s voice on her phone answering machine answered. “Hey, it’s me,” Dahlia said. She fingered one of the petals of a tulip. “You know I’m always telling you about my neighbor with the great flower garden. Mr. Masters gave me a bouquet of tulips, which made me think of you.” They talked every Tuesday evening, regular as clockwork. Calling off schedule would alert Rosie that something was up. Dahlia paused, not wanting to leave a message that would alarm her sister. “Give me a call back when you’re done fertilizing or whatever it is you do to those trees of yours. Love ya.”
Dahlia stared at Jack’s pack a moment, torn between ignoring it and opening it. After all, she’d have to look to see if there was an address or anything.
Unzipping Jack’s pack, she peered inside, hoping she’d see a wallet on top. She didn’t. Instead, there was a paperback book, a mystery, a slip of paper tucked between the pages. She set it on the table, then pulled out a charcoal windbreaker. Underneath were a couple of boxes of ammunition. She shuddered as she set those on the table. The final item was a woodworking magazine.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find—the gun and ammunition, sure. What else would a professed bodyguard carry? The Official Handbook of Bodyguard Dos and Don’ts, maybe. Curious about the woodworking magazine she flipped it over, and it fell open to a page with a built-in hutch—one that would be perfect in her own dining room. With a mutter of disgust at the train of her thoughts she turned over the magazine, looking for a subscription label. There was none.
She began stuffing the items back into the bag, when she accidentally knocked the paperback book onto the floor. When she bent to pick it up, the slip of paper fluttered out, and the handwriting on it caught her eye. Three words. Linda. Rachel. Diane.
Dahlia began to shake.
Only she and her two sisters knew those names—their secret code. Nobody else. Not their best friends, not their parents.
They had hated their flower names, given to them by their flower-child mother. How they had wanted ordinary names and an ordinary mother instead of their unconventional one who was as likely to emerge from the house wearing a tie-died caftan as a bikini—not that they’d had much of the latter in the Alaskan village on the inside passage where they had grown up.
Carefully, Dahlia picked up the slip of paper and touched the names. She went back to the phone and called Rosie again. As before, there was no answer.
“Call me. No matter how late.”
Then she dialed Lily’s number. The phone rang and rang without even the answering machine coming on. Reminding herself that didn’t necessarily mean anything—after all, Lily could have just forgotten to turn it on—Dahlia dialed her number at the research lab at the university where her sister worked. Lily’s cheerful voice came over the line.
“Thank God you’re there,” Dahlia said, interrupting.
The voice continued speaking, and Dahlia realized that she had reached yet another answering machine. She groaned in frustration and impatiently waited for the message to end.
“Hey, you,” she said, inserting a note of cheerfulness in her voice, again unwilling to leave a message that would disturb her sister. “I know we talked only a couple of days ago, but I just wanted to hear your voice. How’s that niece of mine? Give her hugs.” Dahlia wound the cord around her finger and finally opted for at least part of the truth. “Give me a call, Lily. I need to touch base with you about something that happened. Love ya.”
She hung up the receiver, feeling oddly bereft and giving herself a pep talk. They were all busy, after all. It was Rosie’s busiest time of year, and Lily was probably holed up in her lab, discovering some new microbe. Getting no answer from them was nothing unusual, after all. But one of them had to know why a man claiming to be her bodyguard had their secret code. The sooner she knew why and how, the better.
She called her office to let the student assistant know that she’d be working from home, and she asked for Jack Trahern’s telephone number. She placed a call to him and discovered the number belonged to a hotel near the freeway. He wasn’t registered, which somehow didn’t surprise her.
She’d give a lot to know what Jack was doing with their secret code, information she wouldn’t find out until she spoke with Rosie and Lily. She called her sisters twice more during the next hour without reaching either one.
When the doorbell interrupted her increasingly anxious mood, it was a relief. Boo roused from a nap underneath Dahlia’s desk, barked and made her usual mad run to the front door. Halfway toward the door, Dahlia paused, remembering the sheer terror she’d felt this morning. Her imagination taunted her with unseen foes who intended her harm.
Chapter 3
Dahlia shook her head, muttering to herself, “Just look out the darned window and see who’s there.”
She glanced out the living room window. A white paneled van was parked in her driveway, and on the porch a man stood holding a huge plant. Though she received deliveries nearly every week, a houseplant was the last thing she expected.
She opened the door.
“Dahlia Jensen?” the man asked.
“Yes,” she responded, her attention snagged by another person coming up her walk at a brisk pace—Jack Trahern.
“This is for you.”
“Are you sure?” She glanced back at the man. Anyone who knew her was aware her green thumb was nonexistent. Her sister Rosie might be able to grow anything, but Dahlia had managed to kill every plant she’d ever had.
The man shrugged. “If your name is Dahlia Jensen, this is for you. Would you like me to bring it inside for you?”
“You might save us all time and put it directly in the garbage.” She opened the screen door to let the man and the monster plant in. “Out of the way, girl,” she said to her dog.
Instead, Boo dashed out the front door and practically leaped into Jack’s arms. He scooped up the wriggling dog, who promptly rewarded him with a lick on his cheek. Dahlia would have preferred it if Boo had bitten him.
Jack came up the steps, his attention focused on the other man, whose face was hidden behind the huge plant in his arms. He handed Dahlia the dog, then added, “Let me take that for you.”
He took the plant from the man, and a chill crawled down his spine. A thin face and nose. Jack was positive this guy was the same man he had last seen driving a nondescript sedan and following them.
“Who’s the plant from?” he asked Dahlia, not taking his eyes from the man and setting the plant on the floor in the hallway.
“My worst enemy,” she responded.
Jack gave her a sharp look.
“Plants hate me,” she added.
“That sounds a little personal.”
The deliveryman glanced from Dahlia to Jack. He held the man’s gaze, committing the man’s face to memory. Jack had the feeling the man was doing the same with him.
“I take it personally when they die,” Dahlia continued.
Without a word the deliveryman went down the porch steps. The instant before he closed the van door, Jack saw that the inside of the van was completely empty. Not a single other plant or flower arrangement. The hair on the back of his neck rose as the van backed out of the driveway. This guy had the same chance of being a deliveryman as Jack had of being the Tooth Fairy.
He closed the front door and locked it. The oval, etched glass in the middle of the door was beautiful—and completely useless at providing any security.
Dahlia moved a couple of steps back into the house and set the dog down.
“Your deliveryman didn’t have anything else in the van.”
She glanced at him without seeming to understand.
“Where do you want this?” He motioned toward the plant.
“I don’t want it at all, but it can go in the kitchen.”
He picked the plant up and followed her down a central hallway. Boo dashed back and forth between them. His gaze fell to Dahlia’s long, long legs revealed by a pair of loose-fitting shorts. Those legs were even better than he had imagined, her Achilles heel sharply defined, her skin smooth. The T-shirt loosely tucked into her shorts clearly emphasized a siren’s body. His own tightened in response.
A woman with a Ph.D. after her name shouldn’t look good enough to be on a centerfold. He didn’t want to be this attracted and distracted. Women with great bodies were nothing new—he’d had his first introduction with the strippers who worked at the club where his mother did. He deliberately forced himself to pay attention to his surroundings.
A living room and dining room were on one side, and a den was the other. Stairs with an old-fashioned banister occupied the rest of the hallway. He followed her through a doorway, and the kitchen, which looked as if it had been added on, ran the entire width of the house.
Instead of setting the plant where she indicated, he opened the door and carried it outside. Chances were good that the plant had been a ruse to get in the house, but Jack figured it was better to err on the side of safety. On the lawn he laid it on its side and pulled the pot away from the plant.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure this is what it looks like.”
“What did you expect? A bomb?”
“Nope. Bugs.”
“Like James Bond?”
“Close enough.” Jack glanced over his shoulder at her. “There’s no tag. Did the guy give you anything to sign?”
She shook her head.
Jack poked through the plant’s stems and leaves searching for anything that didn’t belong. Still suspicious, he spread the roots out. The huge plant was just what it seemed to be.
“Great,” she said. “I can blame you for killing it.”
“You didn’t want it, anyway.” He brushed his hands together, then followed her into the house.
He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, as much to finish calming himself down as to wash away the potting soil. The adrenaline rush that had surged through him when he watched the panel van pull into her drive was still with him.
“You never got a good look at the man driving the car this morning, did you?” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Describe the deliveryman.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“Because he’s the same guy who shot at us.”
Her head came sharply up, and she swallowed. “No way. And if he was, why didn’t he just try to shoot me again?”
“A couple of reasons. First, I showed up. Second, gun-fire tends to attract attention, especially when the neighbors are keeping an eye out like the old guy next door.” He pulled a square of paper towel off the holder next to the sink and began drying his hands. “And third, he doesn’t really want to shoot you. He wants to kidnap you.” He looked around for a trash can, which he found under the kitchen sink.
“That’s ridiculous. But if you know anything at all, then, why? Forget that.” She marched to the kitchen table, picked up a scrap of paper and thrust it at him. “Where’d you get this?”
Jack glanced at his scribbled note with the three names— Linda, Diane, Rachel. “From Ian Stearne.” A note he’d used as a bookmark. He spotted his pack on the counter, which was open, and the book he’d been reading was tossed on the top. Undoubtedly, she had also discovered his ammunition.
“I don’t know anybody named Ian Stearne,” Dahlia said, then shook her head. “No, that’s not right. He’s Lily’s neighbor.”
Jack pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Why don’t you sit down. This is going to take a little explaining.”
She folded her arms over her chest without answering.
“Mind if I do?” He met her gaze and settled into the chair. Keeping his attention firmly on her face was the only possible way to ignore the lush, sexy curves that her gesture accentuated. Mentally cursing the attraction that he didn’t want and that couldn’t have been more inappropriate under the circumstances, he marshaled his thoughts. “Your sister witnessed a murder.”
“That’s not possible. I talk to both of my sisters every week. I would have heard. And which one?”
Jack glanced at the sheet of paper. Linda was really… “Lily. The one who lives in California.”
Dahlia shook her head. “No. She would have called me.”
“I don’t think anybody was supposed to know.” Succinctly as he could, Jack related everything that Ian had told him, ending with, “I told Ian that you needed police protection.”
“But you’re here, anyway.”
“He asked for my help, and I promised that I’d come.”
“Big promise,” she commented.
He shrugged. “I owed him one.”
“Most people have jobs that keep them from dropping everything to rescue a damsel in distress.”
Once again he forced his attention to stay on her face. “I wouldn’t dare call you a damsel in distress—you did a good job of handling things today. And, as for jobs, I just started a month’s leave when he called. I’m in the Army.”
Her eyebrows rose and she looked him up and down. “Okay, that follows, because you sure don’t look like a student. Assuming that I agree to this plan—and I’m not saying I will—how do I know you’re up to the job?”
“You want a résumé?” It had never occurred to him that she would question his ability.
“Yeah, I do. Are you an MP?”
“No. I’m a Ranger.” Still feeling vaguely insulted at her attitude, he listed his training as a member of the Army’s Special Forces that began with surveillance and ended with his stint as an R.I. teaching hand-to-hand combat. He left out that he was also a sniper and had a modest gift with electronics. He didn’t usually pull out the stops about what he did or how well he did it—especially not to impress a woman.
“And if I ask you to leave, what then?”
He stood up. “You didn’t hire me. Ian did.”
“A diplomatic way of telling me that you’re not going anywhere.”
He pointed toward the phone. “Call your sisters again. Call your folks.” He headed toward the sliding glass door at the back of the house. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d believe me, either, if I were in your shoes.”
He stepped onto her porch. Boo followed him out. Dahlia’s backyard was large. No flowers like her neighbor, but well-kept. The trees were mature, and they shaded the house. The leaves were the bright green of spring. Her patio was covered and pleasantly shady. Wicker furniture covered with colorful cushions invited a person to sit.
He didn’t. Instead, he followed a walk that led toward the back fence, assessing the yard from a security perspective.
A chain-link fence separated her yard from the old guy next door—his backyard as full of flowers as his front—tulips and daffodils in bloom. Anyone in that yard could see anything going on in Dahlia’s.
A six-foot privacy fence was on the other side. Peering between the slats, Jack could see the neighbors on that side had a yard similar to Dahlia’s, except they’d added a deck and a hot tub. The fence along the back of the property was also a privacy fence, and beyond Jack could see there was a bike path and a creek.
At the back fence Boo had her nose to the ground, following some scent that began at the corner, then came across the yard to one of the large trees. Looking up, Jack noted the lower branches could be easily climbed. He swung himself up, then stood on the bottom branch. Within seconds he was high enough that he could step on the roof above the patio.
He crossed to the window and became even more alarmed when he discovered that her screen was not attached to the window frame. It was an old-fashioned one secured in a wooden frame. He didn’t find the tabs that should have held it in place—just the holes where they had once been. The first strong wind, and the damn thing would blow away. He lifted the screen off the window frame and leaned it on the wall, pushed the window up and climbed inside. He found himself in Dahlia’s bedroom.
Disturbed that he could so easily get into her house, he glanced around the room. The decor was completely without the usual satin and lace he associated with a woman’s bedroom. Instead it was comfortable looking, overtly feminine only in that he could smell her perfume. A blue-and-beige comforter in an abstract print was thrown over the king-size bed. He wondered who, besides the dog, she shared it with.
The bathroom halfway down the hall was in much the same condition—clean though cluttered—and without a single item of a man’s toiletry. Another bedroom looked over the front yard. A twin bed pushed against one wall was piled high with an assortment of boxes, bags and clothes. An ironing board stood in the middle of the room.
Something about the bathroom nagged at him, and he went back to it, glancing around once again. The scent he was fast associating with Dahlia was stronger here. He opened the medicine cabinet and looked under the sink. Then, the toilet caught his eye. The seat was up. That struck him as strange, given the total lack of anything male in the bathroom.
When he came back into the kitchen, she was on the phone, evidently talking to her mother, her expression softer than the hostile one she’d been directing at him all day.
“Dad’s okay, isn’t he?” She listened intently for a moment, absently scratching her fingernail against something on the countertop. “No, Mom, I’m fine. Just worried when I couldn’t get hold of Lily or Rosie, that’s all.” A second later she managed a laugh, though no smile lit her face. “That’s right. Storm season has just begun, and I’m working hard…yeah…I love you, too.”
She replaced the receiver in its cradle, then glanced at him. “I thought you’d gone outside.”
“Do you have any idea how easy it is to break into your bedroom?” he asked, snapping his fingers. “Climb a tree, cross over the porch roof, and there’s your room.”
“The screen is locked.”
“No. It wasn’t.” He glowered at her. “Don’t you pay any attention to the news, woman? Even if somebody wasn’t after you, you make it damn easy for a burglar or rapist—”
“Stop it. If you’re trying to scare me—”
“Just stating the facts.” He nodded toward the phone. “What did you find out from your mother?”
Dahlia looked at him, her dark eyes troubled. “Lily really is testifying, and Rosie and my niece Annmarie really are in hiding with your friend.” She shook her head, her voice full of hurt and disappointment. “I can’t believe nobody called me.”
“Maybe they didn’t want to worry you.”
“That’s exactly what Mom said. Jeez. You’d think she would have figured out by now that I’ve grown up.” She frowned. “You weren’t lying.”
“I usually don’t.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she returned, irritation back in her voice. “I still don’t need your help.”
Jack took a step toward her. “You do need my help. You saw how much the cops are going to help you—”
“Like the policeman said when I went to the station. They’ll put on extra patrols.”
“Which means they’ll be coming by your house two or three times a day instead of once.”
She had the awful feeling he was right, and she hated it. The last time she had felt this out of control, Brandon had died—never mind they had been divorced for years—and she finally admitted Richard preferred his drug habit over her. At least she hadn’t made the mistake of marrying him. Everything she believed about herself and her life had all fallen apart. This situation was different, but it still felt the same.
“What else did the cops say?” As much as Jack knew better than to hope they would take seriously the threat to Dahlia, he didn’t hold out much hope.
After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “They think I’m crazy.” She frowned. “You’re sure that was the same guy—the one who brought the plant?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’m calling them.” She surged out of her seat.
“You do have another piece of the puzzle to give them.” At this point, he didn’t think she had anything solid, but having the law on the lookout was better than nothing.
She dragged the phone toward her. “The cops might not like what you’re doing here, either.”
“I’ll take my chances.” He held her gaze, then asked, “Have any guys besides me been in your house since you last used the toilet?”
“What?”
“You heard me—or do you use the toilet with the seat up?”
“Of course not.”
“The seat is up.”
“You could have put it up to make me think somebody has been in the house. Just to scare me.”
“Yeah, that would be me,” he retorted. “Nothing better to do with my time than to scare you. How long has your screen been broken? Couldn’t have been long, or it would have blown away.”
She headed for the stairs. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s how I got in the house. The screen wasn’t even attached to the frame.”
From the top of the stairs she stopped to look at him. “That’s ridiculous. I sleep with the window open, and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed—”
“Like the toilet seat being up.” He followed her up the stairs. “Just in case, maybe you should take a look around and see if anything is missing.”
She disappeared inside the bathroom, and he heard the seat plop down. She came past him, her eyes snapping. “I don’t like you very much. I don’t care who hired you, I want you gone.”
“So you’ve said.” He didn’t intend to leave, but there was no point in arguing with her.
His agreement seemed to surprise her, and she turned around to look at him. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
“Every now and then.” He hadn’t stayed alive through numerous skirmishes and operations that were still classified without being sure of himself. “Just check around, okay?”
Watching her in her own room was too intimate, he decided a moment later, unable to take his eyes off her. He’d grown up around women who flaunted their bodies, including his ex-wife. She had known exactly how to play him, to the point where he’d followed her like a junkie after a fix and suspended his judgment in the process. Being around Dahlia brought back all those same feelings. No other woman he’d ever known had Dahlia’s presence. It went beyond being stacked or being tall, but something intrinsic within the woman herself.
Her shoulders slumped, accompanied by “Oh, damn.” Next to the nightstand she bent over and picked something up from the floor. In her hands were pieces of blue ceramic. What it might have once been, Jack couldn’t tell.
She turned on him, her mouth drawn in a straight line of anger despite the tears that shimmered in her eyes. “You swear you didn’t do this.”
He lifted his hands, palms toward her. “I didn’t touch a thing.” Her sudden vulnerability drew him toward her.
“Because if you did—”
“I didn’t.”
“—I’d never forgive you.”
“I didn’t touch anything.” He took a step closer toward her. “Your dog could have accidentally—”
“No.” She knelt and carefully picked up the pieces. “My grandma brought this angel from Norway when she came to this country. It’s all I have left of her.”
Her fingers caressed the fractured pieces of glass, her expression giving him some idea of how much this meant to her. In his mind’s eye it was a short step from destroying her belongings to harming her.
Stuffing the tips of his fingers into his pockets, he moved to the window and looked out, liking what he saw from here even less than he had while climbing the tree. All an intruder had to do was make it across the yard without being seen. After he was in the tree, he wouldn’t be seen—not even by the old man next door.
“If you’ve got some nails and a hammer, I’ll fix your screen.” What he really needed were hinges and a hook and eye, but he could at least do a temporary repair.
“I can fix my own damn screen,” she returned.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” He headed out of the room, pausing at the doorway, glancing back at her. Prickly he could handle, tears would just about do him in.
He knew the feeling that came after a break-in. Somebody else going through your things, taking what they wanted. As a kid, it had happened all too often.
Somebody would come in and steal anything with pawn value—often as not, only their TV—and leave a generally big mess behind. As soon as his mom had the money saved again, she’d buy another. Replaceable—which the broken ceramic clearly was not.
Dahlia went back to the kitchen, and Jack found himself once again following her. She picked up the telephone receiver, then swallowed as if giving herself courage, then dialed. Calmly she asked for the officer she had spoken with earlier, then waited when she was put on hold. She wrapped an arm around herself as though to ward off a chill.
While she was on the phone Jack prowled through her house, checking the windows and locks on the living room on one side of the hall and her office on the other. Security was nonexistent, and the locks wouldn’t keep out a kid much less a professional. Boo followed him through the two rooms while Jack absently listened to Dahlia’s one-sided conversation with the police.
The gist was that she didn’t know the make or model number of the panel van that delivered the plant. Nothing was stolen, just broken. Nobody was hurt. She agreed a toilet seat being up wasn’t exactly hard evidence, and no, dusting it for fingerprints wasn’t warranted. She would let them know if anything else came up.
He came back into the kitchen when he heard her set the receiver down.
“You’re still here,” she accused.
“Yep.”
“Since this isn’t an emergency and nothing was stolen, they aren’t sending an officer out.”
She surged to her feet, and he recognized the nervous energy for what it was when she paced to the sliding glass door and returned.
“Lock my windows. Lock my doors. I might as well fix the screen.” She pulled open a drawer and rummaged through it, then took out a screwdriver and three-inch long screws, way more than she needed to attach the screen to its frame.
“Are you sure you don’t want help?”
“Positive.” She disappeared through a door and clattered down the stairs. After hearing a couple of thumps accompanied by her muttering, she returned carrying a ladder.
Jack opened the sliding glass door for her.
She gave him an accusing glance as she went past him. “You don’t have to stay.”
“So you keep saying.” He picked up the screwdriver and screws, closed the door and followed her across the patio.
After she leaned the ladder against the edge of the patio roof, she took the tools from him without saying a word and climbed the ladder. Not even a minute later she swore, which didn’t surprise Jack a bit.
He followed her up the ladder, then stopped as soon as he could see her. The view was great. From here not only could he see her long tanned legs that gleamed in the sunlight, but the edge of her panties revealed by the wide leg of her shorts. Turquoise became his new favorite color.
As though she was aware he watched her, she turned around and frowned at him. “Are you going to stand there and ogle me all day? Or are you going to be a gentleman and offer me some help?” She pointed at him with the screwdriver. “One crude remark, and I’ll push you off the roof.”
He believed her. Stepping onto the roof, he grinned. “Sure, I’ll help you.” Coming to stand next to her, he held out his hand. She slapped the screwdriver into his palm along with the screws.
Very aware of her scent that teased his attraction into full alert, he set the first screw despite it being more than double the length to do the job and despite the screwdriver being the most awkward she could have chosen.
“It’s irritating that you make that look so easy,” she said.
“I’ve had a lot of practice—”
“Screwing?”
He laughed. “Yeah.” He set the next screw. “When I was a kid, I used to help my grandpa. He could build anything.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“We made a coffee table out of a pallet once. One summer, we tore down his old barn. He recycled most of the lumber. Then we rebuilt it, putting the old wood over a new frame.” He found himself thinking about the cradle they had built together. Erin had taken that with her, along with all the furniture except their bed, when she left. He finished setting the last screw and handed Dahlia back the screwdriver. “There you go.”
“Well,” Dahlia said, patting the screen. “That should at least slow somebody down.”
Jack handed her his pocketknife. “Not by much.”
As if realizing the knife could be used to split the screen, she shot him another of her dark glances. He went back down the ladder, and a second later, she followed.
“Would you like me to put the ladder away?” Before she could answer, he picked it up and waited for her. She stared at him a moment, then finally opened the door.
He headed through the house, taking the ladder back to the door where he had seen her go before. Her basement was one large, open room. Along one wall stood the washer and dryer. A rolling clothes rack was positioned nearby and contained an assortment of pants and shirts that had the fresh aroma of laundry soap. Shelves and boxes filled the rest of the room. He found an open spot along one wall and leaned the ladder against it.
Dahlia stared at the open doorway to the basement stairs, more annoyed and frustrated with the situation by the moment. She had felt in control of her life until the moment Jake Trahern had climbed into her car. Logic dictated that she couldn’t blame him, but she kept feeling that if she could just get him out of her hair, things might be okay again.
The fleeting image of some strange man in her house, touching her things and using her bathroom, which was somehow the creepiest of all, made her shudder. And now, to know that everything Jack told her was the truth. She hated that. She couldn’t even begin to explain how much she detested the conversations with the cops. Looking back, she knew just how lame and stupid her complaints sounded. She, who valued tangible evidence more than most, suspected the officer had written “nut case—watch out for this one” in the file.
Jack came up the stairs and closed the door to the basement.
“Like I said before. You can go now.” She brushed past Jack, intending to grab his pack and lead him toward the front door. The narrow galley kitchen forced her much closer to him than was comfortable. She couldn’t have said when a man ever made her feel small, and right now that was the last thing she wanted.
“And, like I told you, I’m not leaving.” He didn’t budge even an inch. He simply watched her with those brilliant blue eyes as though sorting through his options of how to handle her. That thought alone shortened her temper.
“I want you out of my house.” More annoyed by the second, her tenuous hold on her temper broke, and she pushed against his chest. “I can’t stand guys like you—macho, handsome guys who think they’re God’s gift to the world—”
“That makes us even, sugar.” He grasped her hands and thrust her away from him, somehow failing to let go of her. His glance raked down her, lingering at her breasts. “You don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here.”
“Leave!”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “Won’t.”
His thumbs rubbed across the back of her hands, his hands huge and dark compared to her own. She looked up, surprised to find his gaze on her face, not on her breasts. The look in his eyes could have heated concrete. Oh, Lord, she thought. She wasn’t the only one fighting the attraction.
His brilliant eyes became impossibly brighter, and this close she could see that his lashes were as black as his hair. Somehow he seemed closer, and she decided that she must have moved because he was still as a stone.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered, then dipped his head toward her, and those brilliant eyes were shielded by his lashes. Then his mouth was on hers, the pressure teasing her senses and asking for more. For the briefest second she pushed against him, then stilled except for her pounding heart.
He had let go of her, and she could have stepped away. Only she didn’t. His lips were soft, coaxing, warm. She sighed, and he used that tiny movement to gain entrance to her mouth, his tongue tracing the sensitive inner edge of her lips before tangling with hers.
Within the onslaught she somehow became aware of her own hands, her palms against his chest. His thumbs rubbed the backs of her hands, the gentle pressure moving to the same rhythm as his tongue brushing against hers. The caress of his fingers against her hands somehow felt more intimate than any other touch she had ever received.
On a shuddering sigh she broke the kiss and looked up at him.
This was the most dangerous man she had ever met.
Chapter 4
Dahlia looked at her hands pressed against Jack’s warm, broad chest, then snatched them away. “You need to go.” Pleading, for pity’s sake. Not the order she had intended.
“Yeah. I do.” He brushed his thumb across her cheek, a featherlight caress that lingered after he took his hand away.
Without another word, he backed away from her, then disappeared down the hallway that led toward the front door. She closed her eyes, listening to his footfalls and a second later the sound of the screen door opening and closing.
She had kissed him back. Of all the stupid things she could have done, that topped the list. She pressed her fingers against her lips, opened her eyes and looked around her kitchen, which showed no evidence of a cataclysm.
Dismayed at the depth of longing that one consuming kiss had opened up, she began listing the reasons that it had happened. Danger. According to all the books she had read, that always heightened attraction. And, darn it, there was no point in lying to herself about that: the man was attractive. Gorgeous.
She scowled, deliberately reminding herself of her ex-husband and ex-fiancé, attractive men had turned out to be total lowlifes. You have rotten taste in men, remember?
With a mutter of disgust, Dahlia headed for her office. She’d do what always helped—lose herself in her work. That didn’t keep her from glancing out the front door. A dark-green SUV was parked in front of her house, and he was talking to her neighbor, Emmet Masters. What interest could Jack possibly have in her neighbor?
The loud vibration of booming speakers preceded a car as it came down the street. Dahlia paid more attention than she would have this morning. The car was black as night and polished to a high gleam. No melody could be heard, just the booming vibration of the subwoofers that made her wonder how the two guys slouched inside could hear anything. They both wore reflective sunglasses and had an I-dare-you-to-complain demeanor—probably friends of the kids who lived at the end of the block.
The car moved on, and Dahlia’s attention returned to Jack and Emmet. She folded her arms over her chest and watched. She heard Emmet laugh. She didn’t want Jack making friends with her neighbor, hanging out as if he somehow belonged, and standing in her kitchen kissing her.
More than an hour later she pressed the save button on the computer and headed for the kitchen. The mouthwatering aroma of someone in the neighborhood barbecuing had reminded her that she was hungry.
In the kitchen her gaze lit on Jack’s pack. Which meant he still was around somewhere…or that he’d be back. She was debating the wisdom of simply setting it on her front porch so she wouldn’t have to deal with him when movement in the backyard caught her eye. Boo barked. Before Dahlia reached the sliding glass door, Jack opened it. Boo sped out and the enticing aroma of chicken wafted in.
“You’re cooking,” she accused. “On my grill.”
“Yep.” He just stood there in the open doorway, cool evening air spilling in. Boo danced around his legs, and Jack bent to scratch her ears.
“Some bodyguard you turned out to be. Leaving to get chicken.” Never mind that she had told him to leave, never mind that to have him here meant today’s danger hadn’t been some horrible figment of her imagination.
He straightened and met her gaze head-on. She had the impression he was weighing what to say.
“I went as far as the cooler in the back of my car,” he said.
Her glance slid past him to the porch where a large blue cooler sat. A utility box unlike any she had ever seen was on her picnic table, opened and sitting on its side like a cabinet. The cooking utensils and spices neatly strapped inside were more than she had in her own kitchen. An open bottle of beer made it look as though he’d completely made himself at home. Wrapping her arms around herself, she stepped out of the house. Her fingers trailed over the top of the box, its finish satiny.
He opened the grill lid, which contained not only chicken but fresh vegetables that looked as good as the chicken smelled. After turning the chicken pieces over and brushing them with a marinade from yet another bowl, he closed the lid and took a long pull from the bottle of beer.
Her idea of cooking was boiling water for spaghetti and heating the sauce in the microwave oven. She remembered joking with her sisters once that if she ever found a man who could cook, watch out.
So, the man could cook. And use a screwdriver with an ease she might never master. And kiss better than anyone else. He also carried a gun, and if even half of what he told her about his training was true, he could give Rambo a run for his money.
“You drink on the job?” she accused.
He grinned. “Progress. The lady admits I’m on the job.”
Realizing she had backed herself into a corner, she frowned.
“One beer won’t slow me down, if that’s what’s worrying you. I have enough to share,” he added, extending an unopened bottle toward her. “Ten more minutes, and the chicken will be ready.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then we eat.” He set the beer down on the table.
She shook her head. “After that, what?”
A glimmer of humor appeared in his eyes. “Since I cooked, you get to do the dishes?”
“While you move in,” she finished.
“So we’re back to that.”
“I never left it,” she informed him. “I don’t want your beer, and I don’t want your chicken.” Dahlia, you are such a liar. “Eat your dinner, pack up your stuff and go.” The more she thought about that, the more clear she was. “Tell your friend, thanks but no thanks. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“We’ve already had this conversation. You didn’t hire me. He did. I’m not going anywhere.”
“For all I know that guy this morning was after you.”
He raised an eyebrow, then challenged, “Why didn’t you tell the cops that?”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“If you had, I’d be spending the night in the county jail instead of barbecuing on your back porch.”
Not about to admit to the man that he was right on all counts, she turned away from his penetrating gaze.
“You know why you didn’t tell the cops?”
She refused to turn around but knew that he was messing with the chicken again because she heard the grill open and the sizzle of the marinade dropping on the hot coals, accompanied by an aroma that made her mouth water.
“Because you know I’m right,” he said. “Somebody was in your house. You talked with your mom, so you know I didn’t lie about your sister.”
She turned around. “I don’t know that.” A blatant lie and they both knew it.
“Then you’ll just have to trust me.”
She shook her head. Of all the things possible, trust was dead last even though she knew he’d been completely straight up with her. Dahlia shivered, remembering her conversation with her mother earlier in the day. Some guy attacked her dad just as he was quitting work for the day. Her mom had assured Dahlia that he was fine and had added that his assailant had to be flown to the hospital in Juneau. It still annoyed Dahlia to no end that she hadn’t known any of this was going on until Jack showed up. The whole thing felt too much like it had when she was a kid— Lily, Rosie and their mom with their secrets that little Dahlia wouldn’t understand. She might be the youngest, but she wasn’t the baby anymore.
“It doesn’t make any sense that I’m a target.”
“If I were this guy on trial for executing the assistant D.A.—” Jack took a step closer to her. “And if the D.A. had an ironclad case against me, and if I had unlimited money and no conscience and was determined to stay out of prison, I’d do just about anything to keep the state’s star witness from testifying.”
His voice had dropped to a near whisper.
“You’re scaring me.”
“It’s about damn time.”
“I can’t live like that. Afraid to open my front door.”
“At least you’ll be living.” He turned the chicken again, the ordinary act of cooking so at odds with his statement she had the urge to laugh. She didn’t, though, because she knew it would sound hysterical.
“You have to be wrong.” She went back to the open door and stepped into the kitchen. She picked up his pack and thrust it into his hands. “Come on, Boo,” she said, motioning the dog into the house. Boo sat and looked at her with the quizzical expression that she’d had all afternoon. Dahlia stared at the dog a moment, then met Jack’s glance. “Fine.”
She pulled the sliding glass door closed, then locked it. Jack met her gaze through the glass while her traitor dog sat at his feet. She turned away with the ridiculous urge to cry. Wishing that she’d bought drapes to go over the glass door, she got her food-in-a-box out of the freezer. Meat loaf with peas and carrots and a brownie, ready in six minutes.
She sat down to eat about the same time that Jack did. His dinner looked wonderful, and he seemed to enjoy every bite. Her dog sat at his feet, begging. To Jack’s credit he didn’t feed the dog from his plate. Dahlia picked at her own food, then finally dumped it in the trash, reminding herself that she had refused Jack’s offer.
The evening dragged by, and Jack made no move toward leaving after he heated water in a pot on the grill and cleaned up. That he didn’t need anything from her was vaguely irritating even as she acknowledged his resourcefulness. If the man had left a mess on her porch, she would have had something to complain about.
She retreated to her office, but nothing there held any appeal. There were journals to read, research documents to update and protocols to review for her next set of observations. Instead she played game after game of FreeCell, the conversations with Jack and her mother rolling through her head. She called her sisters again and again, and got their respective phone answering machines.
The minute the clock struck ten, she went to the back-door to get her dog. Boo was sitting on Jack’s lap. In deference to the brisk evening air he’d donned a jacket. Even then, he looked just as at home as he had before.
He looked up when he heard the door open.
Boo jumped off his lap and, wagging her tail, came inside.
“Mind if I use the bathroom before you lock up for the night?” Jack asked standing up.
She stood to the side so he could come through. In his wake he left the crisp aroma of night air. She peeked outside and saw that he’d spread a sleeping bag on the chaise lounge.
By now her sister Lily would have invited the man into the house and made him an honorary member of the family. That’s what you did when you thought the best of others. Lily hadn’t had Dahlia’s experience of being completely wrong in her instincts.
Jack came back down the stairs a moment later. When he reached the door, he stood looking down at her a moment. That in itself was a novelty. At six feet, she rarely looked up to any man. Aware as she was of his scrutiny, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze.
Finally he tapped the door handle. “Lock up,” he said, stepping outside. “Sleep well.”
To wish him the same when she refused to invite him in seemed completely stupid to her, but she responded, “You, too.”
On her way up the stairs she flipped off the lights, plunging the house into darkness. In her room Dahlia emptied the pockets of her shorts, discovering that she still had his pocketknife, which she had forgotten to give back to him. Her imagination took off at a gallop, with thugs breaking into her house, chasing her down the way they had this morning, following her in the supermarket, making her a prisoner of her own fear. Jack had to be wrong. She set the knife down with a thump and stalked to the closet to change into her pajamas.
When she settled into bed, Boo was there to curl against her side. There in the dark she could almost believe this night was like all the others of the last two years. Just her and the dog, rebuilding a life where she focused on her work and came to grips with the fact that she no longer trusted her instincts about men.
Everything about Jack proclaimed him as one of the good guys. Even if she had met him under more ordinary circumstances, she would have noticed him, been drawn to him. In her book that automatically made him off limits. The ultimate Catch 22. If she was attracted, he had to be bad for her. If she wasn’t attracted, he’d probably be an okay guy—who she wouldn’t give the time of day.
On that disturbing thought she fell asleep.
Jack awoke instantly. He remained stock-still, listening for whatever it was that had brought him out of a fitful sleep. Then he heard it—the barely perceptible sound of someone walking across the grass. Without moving his head he looked toward the back fence that separated Dahlia’s yard from a bike path that ran alongside a canal, remembering the invisible path of scent that Boo had followed from the far corner of the yard to the base of the tree. The dark form of a man emerged out of the night. He moved purposefully toward the tree that would give him access to the porch roof and to Dahlia’s bedroom.
Jack had worried about the front porch, which had been black as a cave when he’d checked it before coming back here. He had settled on the lounge, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood and attuned to Dahlia’s movement inside. He had lain there a long time thinking about how he’d like to be sharing that big bed with her. A stupid fantasy to torture himself.
Now he thanked the instincts that had made him choose sleeping under Dahlia’s window. The mere thought of this creep getting into Dahlia’s room made Jack’s blood boil. He would bet everything he owned this guy wasn’t here to steal the TV.
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Sharon Mignerey
Professor Dahlia Jenson Storm Chaser's Log May 10 When rugged Jack Trahern aimed his cool blue gaze my way, I knew that I was about to learn a thing or two. But I never expected to discover that my sister was testifying against a syndicate crime boss, making me a target for murder and Jack my personal guardian.A past filled with heartache still didn't stop the ripple that ran through me each time Jack was near. And though he was afraid that intimacy would leave room for jeopardy we surrendered to passion anyway. But when the danger's gone, will an unforeseen love tempt my bodyguard to stay?
She had felt in control of her life until the moment Jack Trahern had climbed into her car.
“Like I said before, you can go now.” She brushed past Jack, intending to grab his backpack and lead him toward the front door. The narrow galley of the kitchen forced her much closer to him than was comfortable.
“And like I told you, I’m not leaving.” He didn’t budge. He simply watched her with those brilliant blue eyes.
“I can’t stand guys like you.”
“That makes us even, sugar.” He grasped her hands and thrust her away from him, somehow failing to let go.
She looked up, surprised to find his gaze on her face. The look in his eyes could have heated concrete. Oh, Lord, she thought. She wasn’t the only one fighting an attraction.
Friend, Lover, Protector
Sharon Mignerey
SHARON MIGNEREY
lives in Colorado with her husband and two dogs, Angel and Squirt. From the time she figured out that spelling words could be turned into stories, she knew being a writer was how she wanted to spend her life. She won RWA’s Golden Heart Award in 1995, validation that she was on the right path.
When she’s not writing, she loves puttering around in her garden, walking her dogs along the South Platte River and spending time at the family cabin in Colorado’s Four Corners region.
She loves hearing from readers, and you can write to her in care of Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017.
To firefighters, law enforcement officers
and EMT personnel everywhere, thank you.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks, Robin, for thinking of Jack— I hope you like him. Thanks always, to Lynda Cooper for her invaluable advice with the “cop” details—as always, the good stuff is hers and the mistakes are mine. Thank you, Patti and Daniele, for proofreading and making those last hectic days before deadline easy for me.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Prologue
“The money has been deposited in your account,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
Max Jamison didn’t reply, but then, he wasn’t expected to. His clientele was small and trusted him to be discreet and efficient. The less they all knew about one another, the safer it was for all of them.
He took every precaution to ensure no one knew precisely where to find him. His caller had reached him through a series of forwarded lines scattered all over the country. He could have been sitting in Boston or San Diego. Instead he sat in the den of his home in rural Pennsylvania.
“I trust everything is to your satisfaction,” the voice added.
“As soon as I’ve verified the deposit, I’ll make my plans,” Max said. He already knew who his target was. Dr. Dahlia Jensen, an assistant professor at Colorado Mountain University.
“And you received the fax.”
“I did.” Max frowned. Obvious points didn’t need to be covered. All the information he needed to do the job was contained in the fax—the woman’s photograph, address and dossier. He had retrieved the fax from his message box and had followed that up with his own background check on her. Thanks to the Internet, that was now easier than ever. The woman had no unusual habits, if you didn’t classify being a storm chaser as unusual. She was single and lived well within her means. Her only claim to fame was a slew of scholarly papers, all having to do with obscure theories of lightning, published in various scientific journals. He couldn’t lay his finger on a single thing about her that would make her a target for murder.
Carefully, he dismissed that thought, reminding himself that the morality of whether someone deserved to die wasn’t his to determine. He was hired to do a job. No more.
“There is a bonus for you.”
Max didn’t like the sound of that. Bonus by any other name was an additional fee for additional service. He observed a strict protocol, which this conversation violated.
“Contact me via the usual means, and we’ll discuss the matter.” Max severed the connection, deciding this was a job he was no longer interested in doing. Not when the caller knew the rules, knew that details were never discussed over the phone.
He stared unseeingly into the room, then stood and walked across the plush carpet to the window. A lake shimmered in the morning sunlight. A hundred feet from the water’s edge, his sister was in a canoe with her two young children. Recently the twenty-two-year age difference between them had gnawed at him, a reminder he was no longer a young man, no longer had a promising future in front of him. He intended to retire soon.
For himself, he had enough to be comfortable the rest of his life. For his sister and her children…he needed a bit more. Two more jobs, and they would never want for anything.
An instant later, the phone rang. Max turned back to his desk. On the second ring, he crossed the room and sat down in the leather chair. On the third, he drummed his fingers against the felt blotter that protected the teak surface, un-characteristic indecision claiming him. He let the phone ring twice more before picking up the receiver.
“Hanging up again would be most unwise,” the caller said. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. We need to have her held for the next couple of weeks as well as proof that she’s alive.”
“I’m no longer interested in this job,” Max said. “Your money will be returned.”
“We don’t want our money back, Max. You will do this job,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “And the three reasons why are on the lake.”
Max’s blood chilled, and he swiveled his chair around to face the huge window where sunlight streamed from a pristine clear sky. A series of thoughts crowded to the surface, but two prevailed. How had his caller known where to find him? How fast could he get his sister and her children to safety?
“They’d be quite upset, don’t you think, to know what you are. Not a quiet, mild-mannered man who invested well, but a cold-blooded killer.”
Again, Max didn’t reply, certain his caller wanted only a reaction from him—something, anything that could be used as leverage…for blackmail or in a court of law.
“I have in my possession certain…evidence that links you to the Aaron Sheffield murder in Lexington last year.”
Another chill chased down Max’s spine. His caller hadn’t arranged for the Sheffield job.
“Very cool, Max,” the voice continued. “Very controlled. Since you’re not going to ask me what evidence, I may have to make you wait…and wonder. Let me simply say it has to do with a 9mm Glock that was left in a lunch sack at the bottom of a very full trash barrel outside a Seven Eleven store.”
The chill coalesced into a seething, icy knot in the pit of his stomach.
“Now, about the matters at hand,” the voice continued. “You will apprehend the target, you will videotape her, you will send me the tape, and you will hold her until you are told to finish it. Do I make myself clear?”
“Completely.” A kidnapping! Max had never stooped so low. Kidnapping was a messy, dirty business. Too much contact with the target, too much time, too many variables to control. Each one a reason why kidnappers were invariably caught. Max wanted nothing to do with this. Somehow he’d find a way out.
“I knew we’d come to an understanding. And, Max, just so you don’t think I’m bluffing, take a look at the lake.”
Max looked out at the lake, picking up a pair of binoculars, dreading what he would see. A speedboat appeared, headed directly toward his sister and her children.
At the last possible moment, it swerved, clipping the bow of the boat. Wood shattered, water churned and the small boat overturned. The children and his sister bobbed to the surface, their bright orange life jackets doing their job. The speedboat made an arcing turn and at full throttle charged back across the lake.
“Do what you are told, and your family will be fine,” the caller said before hanging up.
Max ran outside to rescue his family. And his mind raced, assessing details about the call. He hadn’t heard the speedboat over the phone, so his caller hadn’t been on the boat. Which meant, like Max, he could be anywhere.
He’d do the job, Max decided. Then he’d track his caller down. That man would never again blackmail him or anyone else.
Chapter 1
“C’mon, Jack Trahern,” Dahlia Jensen muttered beneath her breath when the Daniel E. Baker Building that housed the College of Physical Sciences disgorged a flow of students. She didn’t know which one was hers, but he was late.
Opportunity was vanishing at the same pace as the thunderstorm moving northeast at a good clip. It had the perfect profile for her lightning study, and she was anxious to follow it. Everything she had been working toward these past two years hinged on the data she collected during the next two months: funding for her own grant; a promotion to associate professor.
All she had to do was stay away from her supervisor, Doreen Layard. The tension between them had been escalating for months. If the woman couldn’t find anything obvious to take issue with, she dug until she found something. Dahlia reminded herself that her focus was to do her job to the best of her ability.
With or without today’s student assistant. She glanced again at her watch.
The students either hurried by without giving her a second glance or stopped in groups of two or three to chat. Dahlia wondered which one was Jack Trahern.
She wished she recognized the name. He hadn’t taken any of her classes, which made him either new to the atmospheric science program or a storm chaser wannabe. Too many of the latter had cropped up after last year’s block-buster movie. She had hoped for a student assistant who was competent—at the moment she would settle for one who was prompt.
This was midterm week, and none of her regular students were available. Jack Trahern’s name was at the bottom of the list of undergraduates who wanted to be involved with the program next year—and the only volunteer available today.
One last time Dahlia glanced around the parking lot and grounds in front of the building. She fished her keys from her pocket and looked around again, hoping to see some pimply faced eighteen-year-old looking for her. No such luck.
Instead, a tall athletically built man came out of the building, paused at the top of the steps and gazed out over the parking lot as he put on a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. Dahlia gave him the second look his well-built physique deserved, then opened the door to the van.
“Scoot over, Boo,” she said, to the dog sitting in the driver’s seat of her car after she opened the door. She patted the blond Cocker Spaniel on the head and, tail wagging, Boo dutifully moved to the passenger seat.
Dahlia climbed into the van, unclipped the HAM radio from her belt that kept her in touch with the National Weather Service and set it on the dash, her attention immediately focused on the storm. She rolled down the window the rest of the way. A cool gust of wind swept through the car—outflow from the storm. Yes! This was the time of year she lived for—the volatile season of thunderstorms that began in late April and continued into midsummer.
She started the van, then put it into gear and, looking into the rearview mirror, eased backward out of her parking spot.
The man in the aviator sunglasses appeared behind her. She slammed on the brakes. He stared at her, though the reflective lenses of his glasses made it impossible to tell for sure.
He came up the side of the car toward her.
“Dr. Jensen?” he said, leaning down slightly so he could look at her through the open window.
“Dahlia,” she automatically corrected. She deliberately used her first name to cultivate rapport with her field students.
The guy looked even better up close. His dark hair was cut military short, and his clean-shaven square jaw already showed the shadow of a beard. This was no kid, but a man in his prime.
He took off his sunglasses, revealing deep-set, brilliant blue eyes, beneath thick, nearly black eyebrows. Bracing a hand on the car door, he said, “I’m Jack Trahern.”
This man was far removed from the eighteen-year-old she had been expecting. Kids she could deal with. Kids she could coerce into doing what she wanted. Kids…were one thing, and this man was no kid.
“Jack Trahern?” she echoed finally, and could have kicked herself for her breathless tone. Firming her voice, she said, “You’re late.”
“Sorry. I got hung up.”
“Great,” she muttered, casting an eye toward the heavens. She didn’t have time for this. Not for a tardy student—no matter how gorgeous—certainly not for a man whose mere presence snapped her lonely hormones to attention. “Get in the car.”
He put the shades back on and ambled around the hood of the car as though he had all the time in the world. Even as she mentally cursed him for taking his time, she couldn’t help but admire how he looked. He was tall, six-three or four and he carried himself with an easy, loose-limbed grace. A small black backpack was slung over one shoulder—the omnipresent book bag of college kids and the only thing about him that struck her as remotely studentlike. She was positive she hadn’t seen him around campus before. She would have remembered.
What she did remember, vividly, was swearing off men. If her womanizing ex-husband hadn’t proven to her that she had rotten taste in men, the ex-fiancé who followed him would have—a man who had chosen a drug habit over her. Two long years, and she was finally on her feet again. Finding Jack Trahern in her path was undoubtedly a cosmic joke to find out how serious her intentions really were.
He opened the passenger door, and Boo sat there, wagging her stubby tail.
“Hello there, you beauty,” Jack said, smiling. Boo sat up straighter, her little body wriggling in anticipation.
“Back seat, girl,” Dahlia said, motioning toward the back of the van.
By then Jack had set the pack down and was scratching Boo’s ears, massaging them close to her head, something she loved only slightly more than cookies. The dog looked as though she might dissolve into a puddle. An unexpected longing to be touched—with as much affection—feathered through Dahlia.
“Boo, back seat,” she repeated, her voice more stern.
Boo cast her a decidedly disgusted glance, jumped into the open space between the two bucket seats and plopped herself onto the floor.
“Nice dog,” Jack slid into the seat. “Her name is Boo?”
Dahlia nodded. “When she was a puppy, she was scared of her own shadow.”
“She’s not much of a watchdog, I take it.”
Remembering Boo’s restless prowl around the perimeter of the yard with her nose to the ground just this morning, Dahlia said, “She’s no rottweiler, but she’ll do.”
He chuckled, the accompanying smile revealing a dimple. Gorgeous and a dimple. There was no justice.
She was intensely aware of him, from the breadth of his shoulders and beautifully shaped hands to the button-down fly of his jeans. Dahlia could have sworn the temperature climbed fifty degrees. She flipped on the air conditioner and turned up the fan.
The instant he buckled the seat belt, she put the car into gear, determined to reclaim her usual focus. Even so, the silence stretched, thick and awkward, as she eased into traffic and headed east. It was the time she would have normally reviewed—with her rider—the objectives for their day, defined her expectations and answered questions.
It was a routine she had been through dozens of times, but darned if she could remember where to even start. Each time she opened her mouth to speak, her thoughts vanished. Finally she clamped her lips together, sure that she must look like a fish.
She had the feeling he was watching her behind those reflective sunglasses. Despite her best efforts to choose clothes that minimized the size of her breasts, most guys looked. Usually she took that in stride, though this student—this man—made her feel off balance. She briefly glanced down at herself, relieved that the button-down shirt she had layered over a T-shirt concealed rather than revealed.
“Sorry I’m late,” he finally said.
“No problem,” she automatically answered. No problem? Hah. Jensen, get a grip. The guy was late, and you would have left without him.
“Thanks for waiting, anyway.”
“You’re welcome.” Oh, brother. Dahlia cleared her throat. “I don’t remember seeing your name on the roster for my classes.”
“I haven’t taken any of your classes,” he said.
He didn’t add anything further, which made her glance over at him. His attention had shifted to the mirror outside the passenger door. Curious about what he saw, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The usual assortment of vehicles were on the road, including a police car in the center lane that kept the traffic at an aggravating two miles per hour under the speed limit.
“So why did you sign up for my field crew?”
“I’m thinking about changing majors.”
His answer was ordinary enough, but he acted as though the storm they chased was barely noticeable. No matter how shy, her students seemed as interested in the thunderheads as she did, their focus inevitably on whether they would see tornadoes. Some, in fact, were downright manic about the possibility.
Keeping an eye on the traffic, she riffled though a group of papers in a box between the two seats, at last finding a map. She handed it to Jack.
“We need to take one of the intersecting roads on the other side of I-25,” she said. “I want to get about five miles in front of the storm.”
Navigating the straight county roads of the high plains of Colorado was a simple task but one that usually told her a lot about her would-be assistants. A surprising number couldn’t have guided her off the campus. Jack opened the map up one fold and turned it around when he realized it was upside down. He glanced briefly at the street sign for the upcoming intersection, then continued to handle the map with the ease and dexterity of someone who used maps all the time.
“Your storm’s heading a little north from where it was,” he said. “And it looks to me like it’s picked up a little speed.”
Dahlia mentally gave him points for both observations. Even so, they were beneath the storm to the point she could sense the ozone in the air. Her anticipation increased.
Five minutes after they crossed over I-25, he directed her north onto the graveled road that she would have chosen, and they were making good progress on getting ahead of the storm.
“Are you new at CMU?” she asked.
“You could say that,” he responded.
The laconic reply annoyed her. “And what would you say?”
She glanced at him and found that his attention was once again focused on the side mirror. She looked in the rearview mirror. A car followed them, close enough to be catching the worst of the dust left in their wake.
A moment later Jack said, “What I’d say is that car has been following us since we left the campus.”
She glanced again in the mirror. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” He looked over at her, and she took her eyes off the straight road long enough to meet his glance—hidden behind the reflective sunglasses.
“Do you know them?” she asked. Apprehension slithered through her. She had been with dozens of students that she didn’t know, so riding with a stranger wasn’t new. But this feeling of impending doom was. A feeling that wasn’t supported by a single, substantiated fact.
“Whoever is back there?” He shook his head. “No.”
Reminding herself that tardiness and being good-looking weren’t valid reasons to distrust the man, she gave the other car another careful glance. It was white or beige or tan and looked like a thousand other cars. “I don’t know them, either.”
She lived by empirical evidence, what she could observe and what she could prove. To determine if the car really was following them, she made a left turn at the next intersection. A moment later the car appeared again in her rearview mirror.
At the next crossroads she turned again. Once more the car followed. Her attention became focused on the car behind her as much as the road in front. Surely the car wasn’t really following them. Surely this was some stupid coincidence.
It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
It felt menacingly deliberate.
Contrary to her assertion that she trusted only what she knew, she couldn’t bring herself to pull to the side of the road to let the car pass. She couldn’t have said why she was certain the car would stop, too. Then what? she wondered. Distressing images of murder and mayhem filled her mind. “You’ve been watching too much television, Jensen,” she muttered.
“Pardon?” Jack asked.
“Just talking to myself.” She turned at the next intersection, then watched for the car to appear behind her. From the corner of her eye she could see that Jack was also looking behind them, harsh lines bracketing his mouth.
The car whizzed through the crossroads without turning.
Shaking, and more relieved than she cared to admit, Dahlia slowed the van. The car continued on its way, a rooster tail of dust tracking its progress long after she could no longer see it.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
Dahlia straightened. “Yes.”
“You’re shaking,” he commented.
That he had noticed unsettled her even more. She had been in the field with students hundreds of times. Storms were sometimes dangerous. Nothing else. Not ever. “Like I said, I’ve been watching too much television.”
“I think you should consider calling it a day.” When she scowled, he tacked on, “Maybe.”
She tore her gaze away from his and wrapped her hands around the steering wheel. “I’ve never let flights of imagination determine my work schedule.” She put the car into gear, pulled back into the road and finally returned her attention to the storm. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator. “And I’m not about to start today.”
“Then let me drive,” he said. “You just ran a stop sign.”
“I know where we’re going.”
“So do I,” he countered, motioning toward the storm directly overhead. “We’re following your storm.”
“I’ll drive,” she said, feeling as though she was repeating herself. “I asked you before if you were new in town.”
“I am. Actually you asked if I was new to CMU.”
“Are you?” She took her eyes off the road to look at him.
“I’d have to be if I’m new here, wouldn’t I?” He smiled. “You wanted the answer. Feel any better?”
“No.” She massaged her hand across her forehead. This wasn’t the first or second or thirty-fifth time she had people ride with her she didn’t know. “This is nuts.”
“Agreed.” He sighed. Taking off the sunglasses to rub the bridge of his nose, he met her gaze, his eyes a brilliant turquoise blue that seemed to settle right into her. “You know, we haven’t gotten off to a very good start here,” he said.
“That’s true.”
“What do I have to do to make it better?”
“Be honest with me. Did you sign up because you wanted the thrill of seeing a tornado?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not…” The laugh dissolved as though he had changed his mind about what he intended to say. “Chances are we could chase storms all summer without seeing a single twister.”
“That’s right,” she stated flatly, motioning toward the flat landscape ahead of them. “This is about as thrilling as it gets most days. If you signed up to see tornadoes, you’ll be disappointed.”
“That’s not high on my list of priorities.” He put the glasses back on, his attention again roving over the scenery.
“That’s good because what we’re interested in is lightning.”
“Lightning?” He motioned toward the equipment in the back of the van. “All this is to study lightning?”
As if to punctuate his statement, the cloud overhead flickered and thunder rumbled.
“Why did you sign up to be one of my assistants?” she asked.
“I…” His voice faded away, while his attention fell on a car which was stopped at the crossroads they just went through. When they passed it, he turned around and looked at the vehicle.
“Is that the same car?” she asked.
“Could be,” he said, his voice tight.
“Are you sure you don’t know them?” She studied the vehicle that turned onto the road behind them, hoping he was wrong, having the awful feeling he was right.
“Positive.”
“This is stupid,” she muttered. “Nobody is following me. Nobody has reason to follow me.” Mentally reviewing all the legitimate reasons a car had for being on this same stretch of high plains road, she slowed the van and steered toward the right shoulder, giving the other vehicle plenty of opportunity to pass.
For a moment it followed, then pulled up alongside the van. Good, she thought. It was going to pass. She had intended to let it go by without glancing over, but she had to look, had to reassure herself.
The only person in the car was the man driving it. He met her gaze, then pointed a gun at her. A big gun.
Dumbly she stared at the weapon, her mind blank.
“Holy crap,” Jack snapped. “Step on it! Drive. Go!”
His abrupt command shocked her out of the stupor. She floored the accelerator, and the van shot forward.
From the corner of her eye she watched Jack unzip his pack, his expression taut. A lethal-looking gun appeared in his hand.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God,” she muttered, her foot easing on the accelerator.
“Don’t slow down,” he commanded.
She drove faster. “You have a gun.” The shakes were back, worse, much worse than they had been before. And the car behind them was close. Too close.
She didn’t know people who carried guns. She didn’t want to know people who carried guns.
She pressed harder on the gas pedal. The van shimmied as it clattered over the washboard of the graveled road. The steering wheel became slick beneath her sweaty palms.
A reverberating ping echoed through the van, sounding like a single huge hailstone striking a hollow can. Boo yelped.
“Oh, God, they just shot at us, didn’t they?”
“Damn straight.”
“Boo—she’s okay?”
He reached down to pat the dog, who had wedged herself in between the two seats. “She’s fine.”
“Who is that guy?” she asked, then shook her head, her attention riveted on the weapon. “Forget that, who the hell are you?”
“Your bodyguard.”
Chapter 2
“My bodyguard?” she echoed, her voice squeaking. “A bodyguard? That’s ridiculous!”
Jack couldn’t have agreed more. The whole situation was deadly and getting worse by the second. Unless they got damn lucky damn fast, they were in big trouble.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why ever would I need a bodyguard?”
Jack looked behind them. The car wasn’t gaining, but they weren’t getting any farther away, either. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Later. Just step on it, will you?”
“Step on it,” she muttered. “Yes, sir.” She floored the accelerator. The van shot forward.
A stop sign marked an upcoming intersection. Dahlia must have had the same thought he did, because she showed no sign of stopping—and fortunately no other cars could be seen on the other roads. At the next crossroads, she braked to slow, ignored the stop sign and turned left onto a paved road. Tires squealed and the van swerved, but she managed to keep it on the road.
“Good girl,” Jack said.
“Up yours.”
She drove the way he would have, her handling of the van suggesting that she’d probably had training in evasive maneuvers and chase. He began to hope they’d get out of this in one piece. The car behind them didn’t make the turn as cleanly, and it fell a little farther behind.
He relaxed a little and looked over at the surprising Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D. Where he’d been expecting mousy, starched and boring, she was vibrant and alluring, despite her baggy clothes. She was clearly angry, pink suffusing the flawless skin of her cheeks. Her blond hair was caught in some kind of intricate loose braid that revealed the shell of her ear and the length of her neck and added to her femininity.
She pinned him with a glare from her dark eyes—brown, he realized, intrigued by the contrast to her fair skin and hair.
“Stop staring at me and keep an eye on that jerk behind us.”
“You’ve had high-speed training,” he said, ignoring her comment while keeping one eye on the car following them. “This is some souped-up van you’ve got.”
“I chase thunderstorms,” she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye. “You think I’d take off in a vehicle without any speed and without knowing what I’m doing?”
Jack glanced at the speedometer. Ninety miles per hour was a little faster than his preferred land speed, but he had to hand it to her. She knew how to handle the vehicle.
She didn’t show any sign of slowing even after they headed west and crossed back over I-25. Soon the traffic began to get heavier, and she reduced her speed. The car following them began to gain. It still looked more country than city when they passed the first of the signs that stated they were entering the city limits. Abruptly farms gave way to housing developments and office buildings.
Ahead a flashing light for a railroad crossing came on. The approaching train blared its whistle. Dahlia glanced briefly in the rearview mirror, and her mouth firmed into a straight line. The van gained speed.
Jack shuddered as he realized her intention. There wasn’t enough room to stop before the tracks. She was crazy. He glanced behind them. The car chasing them hadn’t given up, either.
The train was close. Too close.
The train whistled, long and loud and sounded to Jack like a death knell. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“Come on, baby,” Dahlia muttered under her breath, leaning forward as if doing so would make the van go even faster.
The whistle blared again.
The van clattered across the tracks.
The train whizzed past, so close he could feel the compression of air between the train and the van.
“Thank God,” she whispered.
“You’re nuts! Nobody plays chicken with a train.”
She didn’t reply, which was just as well. If looks could kill, he was a goner.
Jack turned to look behind them. The car chasing them had come to a halt on the other side of the train. If luck was with them, the train would be a long one. A very long one.
It was. Each of the cars filled with coal. The train moved much slower than he had imagined.
He let out a sigh and glanced at Dahlia. He had never been with a more magnificent woman. Not just because she drew him physically but because of her courage and determination. Without exception the women he knew would have resorted to tears or hysteria by now. Thank God Dahlia wasn’t one of those.
When she flashed him another glance with her surprisingly dark eyes, he admitted to himself that he liked her even if she had scared a decade off his life. And liking her…that hadn’t been part of the deal.
Three blocks later Dahlia abruptly turned right, and a half block later brought the van to a skidding halt. “Out,” she commanded.
Jack stared numbly at her. “What?”
“You heard me. Out.”
“But, I’m—”
“I don’t want to hear any cockamamy story about bodyguards or anything else. For all I know that guy is after you. Not me. And one way to tell is get rid of you. Out.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” she said. “You’re a crazy person.”
“I’m crazy?” he shouted. “You’re certifiable. You could have gotten us killed.”
“Like we wouldn’t have been if we’d been stuck on the same side of the tracks as that guy. Get out. Right now.” She held up her HAM radio. “Or I’m calling the cops.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.” He opened the door and stepped onto the pavement. “Call the cops, Dahlia Jensen, or better yet, go see them ’cause you’re gonna need them. And do it soon.” He slammed the door, and she sped away.
Frustration and fear for her vied equally with a reluctant admiration. He could only hope that she was going to the cops as she had said. Since he’d deliberately left his pack in the van, he had the opening he needed to look her up as soon as he identified the car following them. Not that he needed an excuse. His best friend had asked him to keep the lady out of harm’s way, and he would, with or without her cooperation.
At the moment, though, he wished he was with his platoon. The intelligence that had come down over the month had them all believing that they’d be deployed for a recon mission. There he knew what to expect, and he had trained for it. Even though he was on medical leave, he was carrying a pager. If the mission went down, he would be called back to be part of the support team.
This business with Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D.—correction, blond bombshell—had him feeling as nervous as he had the first time he’d trained under live fire.
Five minutes later Dahlia pushed open the doors of the police station and marched over to the desk, where a receptionist watched her approach. She had been expecting a crusty desk sergeant like the ones usually seen on television.
“Can I help you?” the young woman asked.
“I’d like to report a crime.” That sounded pretty mundane compared to the fright that raced through her veins.
“Let me get an officer to take your report.”
She called someone named Bob on the phone, and Dahlia stood for the next two minutes drumming her fingers against the counter and refusing an offer of coffee. That was all she needed—more acid in her stomach.
A door slammed, and she watched an officer amble toward her, reminding her of Jack’s deceptively slow walk this morning. The officer, like the receptionist, looked young enough to be a student at the university.
He smiled. “Officer Bob Jones. Can I help you?”
“I was fired at this morning. With a gun,” she added, just in case he didn’t understand.
His eyebrows shot up, and Dahlia sensed she had his attention as she hadn’t before.
“Please. This way.” He led her down the hall, and two minutes later she sat at a table across from him and a concerned-looking sergeant.
Succinctly Dahlia related what had happened and did her best to answer their questions. No, she didn’t know the man shooting at her. When she was asked for a description, she drew a blank—all she remembered was the gun, which looked like any other to her. As for the car, it was beige or light brown or white. Dirty. She couldn’t answer the questions about whether it had two doors or four, its make or model or any other useful details about it, not even if it had Colorado plates.
The two policemen looked at each other and finally Jones said, “You haven’t given us much to work with here.”
Dahlia didn’t like admitting they were right. “I want protection.”
“You think this was personal, then? You have an ex giving you trouble?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t know this guy.” She snapped her fingers. “A bullet hit my van. I heard it ping. So there’s gotta be a dent, right, maybe even a hole?”
The two officers followed her out to her van. After a scant minute of looking, she realized this was going to be futile. She had been caught in several hail storms, so the van was damaged from that. Plus, she usually traveled on gravel roads, and that probably accounted for some of the other damage. Identifying a single small dent made by a bullet from all the others wasn’t going to work. No hole, which meant there wouldn’t be a bullet.
Officer Jones shrugged, then said, “What probably happened here, ma’am, is the fellow was looking for an easy victim to rob. There’s nothing to indicate that you need protection.”
Jones pulled a card from his pocket and passed it to her. “Anything else comes up…you call me.”
It was only after she began driving away that she realized she’d failed to mention Jack Trahern at all. Odd, especially as she had been thinking about him the whole time.
Jack watched Dahlia’s van speed away as he shoved his revolver into the waistband of his jeans and pulled the tail of his shirt out to cover it. Then he calmly walked back to the main thoroughfare and stepped behind an enormous cottonwood tree to wait for traffic to resume after the train went by. At the very least he’d have a license plate number.
This was far different from his normal stakeout as a sniper with the Army Rangers. The last time he had been on surveillance, he had been hidden in a tree in a South American jungle, doing his best to ignore the mosquitoes and covering his team through a sniper’s scope attached to his rifle. Hostages from the American diplomatic corps had been rescued in a mission that would be classified for some time.
The landscape in front of him today was so ordinary it was difficult to imagine that danger lurked on the other side of the long coal train, which rolled past for another six minutes.
The plates turned out to be temporary ones, the paper variety taped to the inside of the filthy window, only the word Colorado legible. He watched the off-white car continue on, committing to memory everything about it. The vehicle was remarkable only in that it was completely unremarkable. The driver, though—Jack would remember him. Thin face and a long thin nose.
A second later a city bus stopped in front of Jack, and a couple of people got off. He fished some coins out of his pocket and boarded the bus.
As he’d done more than once since his buddy Ian had called yesterday afternoon, Jack reviewed what he knew about the situation—the key to keeping ahead of and out-thinking his adversary. Dahlia’s sister, code name Linda, had witnessed an execution-style murder and had been placed into custody after the defendant—a businessman with organized crime connections—began making threats on her. His buddy Ian had taken the woman’s child to Alaska to be with Dahlia’s other sister, code name Rachel. Only, their cover had been blown, and they had been forced into hiding. A guy with connections back to the defendant in the murder case had assaulted Dahlia’s parents, and they now had police protection.
Ian had called Jack after he’d been unable to convince the local police that she needed protection, figuring that Dahlia could be a target.
“This whole thing has blown up in the past twenty-four hours. Rosie and her folks didn’t know anything about all of this until I got here,” Ian had said. “Rosie doesn’t know I’m calling you, and I want to keep it that way. She’s got enough on her mind.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Name your price.”
“Hell, man, don’t insult me. You know I don’t want your money,” Jack said.
“Okay, then. Call it expenses.”
They had talked awhile longer, and Jack had finally agreed to let Ian deposit the funds he wanted into Jack’s account. Not that he planned on using a single penny of the thousands of dollars that had shown up in his account when he’d gone to the bank to withdraw travel money.
Ian had the good fortune to have won a huge lotto. “Friends” had shown up by the truckload, all with some reason why Ian should part with his cash. He’d been generous to a fault, funding everything from the delivery of babies to ski vacations. Jack was determined to be the same kind of friend to Ian he’d been before—one who couldn’t care less about his money.
Jack had first become friends with the man when they were assigned as buddies in Ranger school. That sometimes seemed like a thousand years ago. It had been hate at first sight, and they had to immediately get past their differences. The training was set up to reinforce teamwork, and if they didn’t work as a team, they both would fail. Ten years later, and he didn’t have a closer friend than Ian.
Jack would have preferred going to Alaska to protect Ian’s flank, but if being here was what his best friend needed, Jack would do the job without a second thought. He had a month of accrued leave that he had just begun. With nothing but time and regret on his hands this was a way to fill his time. He had a year left on his hitch, and he’d been given several choices of how to spend that time. None of them appealed to him a bit.
Ian had tried to convince Jack that he could pass himself off as a student, which would provide the cover to protect Dahlia until her sister testified. Jack had been a decade younger the last time he was in a college classroom, and one thing he knew for sure. He didn’t look like a student.
As for the professor—he had imagined an old-fashioned woman who would match the old-fashioned name of Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D. and figured that he’d be spending boring days at the back of a classroom. Until he had arrived last night and had gone to the university, he hadn’t known she chased storms. He would rather jump out of airplanes with a faulty parachute than be anywhere near a thunderstorm. It was an aversion he’d acquired when a tornado flattened the trailer park where he and his mom had lived.
The ride back up University Boulevard wasn’t that long, but along the way Jack kept worrying about all the things that could go wrong. At the top of the list was someone catching up with her before he did. If Dahlia had gone to the cops, he would arrive back at her office on campus before her.
When he got back to his car, he fished the keys out and slid behind the wheel, hoping that Dahlia would arrive soon and head for her office. He moved the car to where he could keep an eye on the faculty parking lot behind the building. By the time a half hour passed without her arrival the dull gnaw in his gut grew into full-fledged worry. He got out of the car and headed for Dahlia’s office. According to the student assistant, she wasn’t expected back.
Jack hurried back to his SUV and headed for her house with the address that Ian had given him and the map he had picked up when he arrived last night.
The trip to Dahlia’s house was a scant fifteen minutes from the campus. He figured her for a condo kind of gal, so the Victorian-era bungalow that matched her address came as a surprise. He liked the lines of the house and the big shade trees that sheltered it. The front door, sitting at the back of the wide porch, was nearly invisible. At night, you could hide a platoon on that porch unless the porch light was on.
Her yard was well kept but plain compared to the vivid flower beds of her neighbor’s. As Jack drove by he looked for her van. It wasn’t in the driveway or beneath the carport. The old guy working in the yard next to hers waved as he came by, and Jack waved back. His concern for Dahlia’s safety came to the surface even as he cautioned himself that she might have gone to the grocery store or somewhere else.
Jack went around the block, then parked beneath a huge shade tree about a half block from her house, where he had a clear view of her driveway.
Dahlia arrived about ten minutes later. She didn’t notice him. He would have preferred it if she had been a little more aware of strange cars in the neighborhood. Deciding the more he knew about her routine, the better, he sat in the car and watched. She parked her van under the carport, then came back to the mailbox at the street, waving to the old man next door. Her dog trotted along at her heels.
Dahlia was taller—a lot taller than he’d thought. He’d noticed earlier that she was stacked. A man would have to be blind not to notice. She had layered a tailored shirt over a T-shirt. The khaki pants were on the baggy side, which made the curve of her hip and the length of her leg all the more tantalizing. The conservative outfit was a hell of a lot more sexy than a blatant display would have been, though he admitted he wouldn’t have minded that, either.
She wandered over to the fence separating her property from her neighbor’s. They stood talking while the guy cut her a bouquet of tulips. When he handed them to Dahlia, she leaned across the short fence separating them and gave the man a lingering hug. She pressed a kiss against the old guy’s cheek.
A memory slammed through Jack, so vivid that instead of Dahlia he saw his ex-wife, Erin.
They had been married maybe three months, and already her pregnancy was showing—but it would, since she was more than five months along. She had come home, waved to him and stopped to give his grandpa a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Jack clenched his hands around the steering wheel and shook his head. Ten years and a hell of a lot of water had passed under that particular bridge. His grandpa had died before the baby was born. And as for the baby and Erin…neither of them had turned out to be his. Everything Jack had thought to be true about his marriage had been a lie.
Since then he’d lived by a simple credo. He didn’t do permanent. He didn’t make babies. He didn’t have sex with a woman he couldn’t walk away from.
He stared at Dahlia and the old man. Deliberately he reminded himself that just because his ex-wife had betrayed him didn’t mean others would. In his head he knew that. In his gut, where he made the important decisions, he didn’t believe it. Memories or not, he was here to do a job. That’s all. No matter how hot she was, no matter how much she drew him.
Okay, he thought. She’s off-limits. Because I’m being paid to protect her, and I sure can’t do that if I’m thinking…about stripping off those baggy clothes and discovering what she’s hiding. Irritated, he hauled his thoughts back. I don’t do permanent. And there she is, permanent right down to the picket fence in her yard. She’s off-limits. End of story.
She gave the old man another hug, and another knot twisted through Jack. Deliberately he catalogued the women that had marched through his life—not that there had been that many—the ones he made damn sure that he could walk away from. As for Dahlia, he liked her. Another reason she was off-limits.
The bouquet in hand, Dahlia went back to her car and scooped up a number of items, including his pack. Jack slouched down in his vehicle, telling himself that the reason he was staying in the car rather than following her into the house was to acquaint himself with the sounds and activity of the neighborhood. Sooner or later he needed to go inside and talk to her. Since she had his pack, he had the opening he needed to get into her house.
You’re here to do a job. Focus, he told himself. Instead he kept thinking about how she’d look without her clothes. He shifted uncomfortably in the seat. Focus. Now that he knew the danger was real—he hadn’t really believed that it was—he needed 100 percent of his concentration on the job at hand.
Unbidden, the luscious expanse of her breasts behind the deep vee of her tailored shirt filled his mind—this time without being covered.
No way was he ready to face her.
Dahlia climbed the steps to her porch, unlocked the door and went inside. The house was quiet except for the almost silent whir of the ceiling fan and the hum of the refrigerator motor. Boo followed her into the house, her nails clicking against the hardwood floor.
Dahlia set everything down except the tulips, which she held as she pulled a vase out of the cupboard. After she had filled it with water and arranged the flowers, she carried the vase to the counter and set it next to the phone. On impulse she picked up the receiver and dialed her sister, Rosie.
Of her two sisters, Rosie was no-nonsense and practical. Dahlia would tell her about today’s adventure, and Rosie would have exactly the right advice to make her feel better.
Every time Dahlia thought about the chase, an adrenaline rush made her shaky and clammy. She would walk over hot coals before admitting it to Jack, but he was right—she could have gotten them killed speeding across the tracks like that. Never once in her life had she taken such a stupid chance, acting like Xena, Warrior Princess, and playing chicken with a train.
Lily, her oldest sister, wouldn’t have believed anyone could be playing chase with guns on back country roads and would dismiss the whole thing as a misunderstanding—such things just didn’t happen, except in the movies.
The ringing on the line ended when Rosie’s voice on her phone answering machine answered. “Hey, it’s me,” Dahlia said. She fingered one of the petals of a tulip. “You know I’m always telling you about my neighbor with the great flower garden. Mr. Masters gave me a bouquet of tulips, which made me think of you.” They talked every Tuesday evening, regular as clockwork. Calling off schedule would alert Rosie that something was up. Dahlia paused, not wanting to leave a message that would alarm her sister. “Give me a call back when you’re done fertilizing or whatever it is you do to those trees of yours. Love ya.”
Dahlia stared at Jack’s pack a moment, torn between ignoring it and opening it. After all, she’d have to look to see if there was an address or anything.
Unzipping Jack’s pack, she peered inside, hoping she’d see a wallet on top. She didn’t. Instead, there was a paperback book, a mystery, a slip of paper tucked between the pages. She set it on the table, then pulled out a charcoal windbreaker. Underneath were a couple of boxes of ammunition. She shuddered as she set those on the table. The final item was a woodworking magazine.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find—the gun and ammunition, sure. What else would a professed bodyguard carry? The Official Handbook of Bodyguard Dos and Don’ts, maybe. Curious about the woodworking magazine she flipped it over, and it fell open to a page with a built-in hutch—one that would be perfect in her own dining room. With a mutter of disgust at the train of her thoughts she turned over the magazine, looking for a subscription label. There was none.
She began stuffing the items back into the bag, when she accidentally knocked the paperback book onto the floor. When she bent to pick it up, the slip of paper fluttered out, and the handwriting on it caught her eye. Three words. Linda. Rachel. Diane.
Dahlia began to shake.
Only she and her two sisters knew those names—their secret code. Nobody else. Not their best friends, not their parents.
They had hated their flower names, given to them by their flower-child mother. How they had wanted ordinary names and an ordinary mother instead of their unconventional one who was as likely to emerge from the house wearing a tie-died caftan as a bikini—not that they’d had much of the latter in the Alaskan village on the inside passage where they had grown up.
Carefully, Dahlia picked up the slip of paper and touched the names. She went back to the phone and called Rosie again. As before, there was no answer.
“Call me. No matter how late.”
Then she dialed Lily’s number. The phone rang and rang without even the answering machine coming on. Reminding herself that didn’t necessarily mean anything—after all, Lily could have just forgotten to turn it on—Dahlia dialed her number at the research lab at the university where her sister worked. Lily’s cheerful voice came over the line.
“Thank God you’re there,” Dahlia said, interrupting.
The voice continued speaking, and Dahlia realized that she had reached yet another answering machine. She groaned in frustration and impatiently waited for the message to end.
“Hey, you,” she said, inserting a note of cheerfulness in her voice, again unwilling to leave a message that would disturb her sister. “I know we talked only a couple of days ago, but I just wanted to hear your voice. How’s that niece of mine? Give her hugs.” Dahlia wound the cord around her finger and finally opted for at least part of the truth. “Give me a call, Lily. I need to touch base with you about something that happened. Love ya.”
She hung up the receiver, feeling oddly bereft and giving herself a pep talk. They were all busy, after all. It was Rosie’s busiest time of year, and Lily was probably holed up in her lab, discovering some new microbe. Getting no answer from them was nothing unusual, after all. But one of them had to know why a man claiming to be her bodyguard had their secret code. The sooner she knew why and how, the better.
She called her office to let the student assistant know that she’d be working from home, and she asked for Jack Trahern’s telephone number. She placed a call to him and discovered the number belonged to a hotel near the freeway. He wasn’t registered, which somehow didn’t surprise her.
She’d give a lot to know what Jack was doing with their secret code, information she wouldn’t find out until she spoke with Rosie and Lily. She called her sisters twice more during the next hour without reaching either one.
When the doorbell interrupted her increasingly anxious mood, it was a relief. Boo roused from a nap underneath Dahlia’s desk, barked and made her usual mad run to the front door. Halfway toward the door, Dahlia paused, remembering the sheer terror she’d felt this morning. Her imagination taunted her with unseen foes who intended her harm.
Chapter 3
Dahlia shook her head, muttering to herself, “Just look out the darned window and see who’s there.”
She glanced out the living room window. A white paneled van was parked in her driveway, and on the porch a man stood holding a huge plant. Though she received deliveries nearly every week, a houseplant was the last thing she expected.
She opened the door.
“Dahlia Jensen?” the man asked.
“Yes,” she responded, her attention snagged by another person coming up her walk at a brisk pace—Jack Trahern.
“This is for you.”
“Are you sure?” She glanced back at the man. Anyone who knew her was aware her green thumb was nonexistent. Her sister Rosie might be able to grow anything, but Dahlia had managed to kill every plant she’d ever had.
The man shrugged. “If your name is Dahlia Jensen, this is for you. Would you like me to bring it inside for you?”
“You might save us all time and put it directly in the garbage.” She opened the screen door to let the man and the monster plant in. “Out of the way, girl,” she said to her dog.
Instead, Boo dashed out the front door and practically leaped into Jack’s arms. He scooped up the wriggling dog, who promptly rewarded him with a lick on his cheek. Dahlia would have preferred it if Boo had bitten him.
Jack came up the steps, his attention focused on the other man, whose face was hidden behind the huge plant in his arms. He handed Dahlia the dog, then added, “Let me take that for you.”
He took the plant from the man, and a chill crawled down his spine. A thin face and nose. Jack was positive this guy was the same man he had last seen driving a nondescript sedan and following them.
“Who’s the plant from?” he asked Dahlia, not taking his eyes from the man and setting the plant on the floor in the hallway.
“My worst enemy,” she responded.
Jack gave her a sharp look.
“Plants hate me,” she added.
“That sounds a little personal.”
The deliveryman glanced from Dahlia to Jack. He held the man’s gaze, committing the man’s face to memory. Jack had the feeling the man was doing the same with him.
“I take it personally when they die,” Dahlia continued.
Without a word the deliveryman went down the porch steps. The instant before he closed the van door, Jack saw that the inside of the van was completely empty. Not a single other plant or flower arrangement. The hair on the back of his neck rose as the van backed out of the driveway. This guy had the same chance of being a deliveryman as Jack had of being the Tooth Fairy.
He closed the front door and locked it. The oval, etched glass in the middle of the door was beautiful—and completely useless at providing any security.
Dahlia moved a couple of steps back into the house and set the dog down.
“Your deliveryman didn’t have anything else in the van.”
She glanced at him without seeming to understand.
“Where do you want this?” He motioned toward the plant.
“I don’t want it at all, but it can go in the kitchen.”
He picked the plant up and followed her down a central hallway. Boo dashed back and forth between them. His gaze fell to Dahlia’s long, long legs revealed by a pair of loose-fitting shorts. Those legs were even better than he had imagined, her Achilles heel sharply defined, her skin smooth. The T-shirt loosely tucked into her shorts clearly emphasized a siren’s body. His own tightened in response.
A woman with a Ph.D. after her name shouldn’t look good enough to be on a centerfold. He didn’t want to be this attracted and distracted. Women with great bodies were nothing new—he’d had his first introduction with the strippers who worked at the club where his mother did. He deliberately forced himself to pay attention to his surroundings.
A living room and dining room were on one side, and a den was the other. Stairs with an old-fashioned banister occupied the rest of the hallway. He followed her through a doorway, and the kitchen, which looked as if it had been added on, ran the entire width of the house.
Instead of setting the plant where she indicated, he opened the door and carried it outside. Chances were good that the plant had been a ruse to get in the house, but Jack figured it was better to err on the side of safety. On the lawn he laid it on its side and pulled the pot away from the plant.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure this is what it looks like.”
“What did you expect? A bomb?”
“Nope. Bugs.”
“Like James Bond?”
“Close enough.” Jack glanced over his shoulder at her. “There’s no tag. Did the guy give you anything to sign?”
She shook her head.
Jack poked through the plant’s stems and leaves searching for anything that didn’t belong. Still suspicious, he spread the roots out. The huge plant was just what it seemed to be.
“Great,” she said. “I can blame you for killing it.”
“You didn’t want it, anyway.” He brushed his hands together, then followed her into the house.
He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, as much to finish calming himself down as to wash away the potting soil. The adrenaline rush that had surged through him when he watched the panel van pull into her drive was still with him.
“You never got a good look at the man driving the car this morning, did you?” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Describe the deliveryman.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“Because he’s the same guy who shot at us.”
Her head came sharply up, and she swallowed. “No way. And if he was, why didn’t he just try to shoot me again?”
“A couple of reasons. First, I showed up. Second, gun-fire tends to attract attention, especially when the neighbors are keeping an eye out like the old guy next door.” He pulled a square of paper towel off the holder next to the sink and began drying his hands. “And third, he doesn’t really want to shoot you. He wants to kidnap you.” He looked around for a trash can, which he found under the kitchen sink.
“That’s ridiculous. But if you know anything at all, then, why? Forget that.” She marched to the kitchen table, picked up a scrap of paper and thrust it at him. “Where’d you get this?”
Jack glanced at his scribbled note with the three names— Linda, Diane, Rachel. “From Ian Stearne.” A note he’d used as a bookmark. He spotted his pack on the counter, which was open, and the book he’d been reading was tossed on the top. Undoubtedly, she had also discovered his ammunition.
“I don’t know anybody named Ian Stearne,” Dahlia said, then shook her head. “No, that’s not right. He’s Lily’s neighbor.”
Jack pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Why don’t you sit down. This is going to take a little explaining.”
She folded her arms over her chest without answering.
“Mind if I do?” He met her gaze and settled into the chair. Keeping his attention firmly on her face was the only possible way to ignore the lush, sexy curves that her gesture accentuated. Mentally cursing the attraction that he didn’t want and that couldn’t have been more inappropriate under the circumstances, he marshaled his thoughts. “Your sister witnessed a murder.”
“That’s not possible. I talk to both of my sisters every week. I would have heard. And which one?”
Jack glanced at the sheet of paper. Linda was really… “Lily. The one who lives in California.”
Dahlia shook her head. “No. She would have called me.”
“I don’t think anybody was supposed to know.” Succinctly as he could, Jack related everything that Ian had told him, ending with, “I told Ian that you needed police protection.”
“But you’re here, anyway.”
“He asked for my help, and I promised that I’d come.”
“Big promise,” she commented.
He shrugged. “I owed him one.”
“Most people have jobs that keep them from dropping everything to rescue a damsel in distress.”
Once again he forced his attention to stay on her face. “I wouldn’t dare call you a damsel in distress—you did a good job of handling things today. And, as for jobs, I just started a month’s leave when he called. I’m in the Army.”
Her eyebrows rose and she looked him up and down. “Okay, that follows, because you sure don’t look like a student. Assuming that I agree to this plan—and I’m not saying I will—how do I know you’re up to the job?”
“You want a résumé?” It had never occurred to him that she would question his ability.
“Yeah, I do. Are you an MP?”
“No. I’m a Ranger.” Still feeling vaguely insulted at her attitude, he listed his training as a member of the Army’s Special Forces that began with surveillance and ended with his stint as an R.I. teaching hand-to-hand combat. He left out that he was also a sniper and had a modest gift with electronics. He didn’t usually pull out the stops about what he did or how well he did it—especially not to impress a woman.
“And if I ask you to leave, what then?”
He stood up. “You didn’t hire me. Ian did.”
“A diplomatic way of telling me that you’re not going anywhere.”
He pointed toward the phone. “Call your sisters again. Call your folks.” He headed toward the sliding glass door at the back of the house. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d believe me, either, if I were in your shoes.”
He stepped onto her porch. Boo followed him out. Dahlia’s backyard was large. No flowers like her neighbor, but well-kept. The trees were mature, and they shaded the house. The leaves were the bright green of spring. Her patio was covered and pleasantly shady. Wicker furniture covered with colorful cushions invited a person to sit.
He didn’t. Instead, he followed a walk that led toward the back fence, assessing the yard from a security perspective.
A chain-link fence separated her yard from the old guy next door—his backyard as full of flowers as his front—tulips and daffodils in bloom. Anyone in that yard could see anything going on in Dahlia’s.
A six-foot privacy fence was on the other side. Peering between the slats, Jack could see the neighbors on that side had a yard similar to Dahlia’s, except they’d added a deck and a hot tub. The fence along the back of the property was also a privacy fence, and beyond Jack could see there was a bike path and a creek.
At the back fence Boo had her nose to the ground, following some scent that began at the corner, then came across the yard to one of the large trees. Looking up, Jack noted the lower branches could be easily climbed. He swung himself up, then stood on the bottom branch. Within seconds he was high enough that he could step on the roof above the patio.
He crossed to the window and became even more alarmed when he discovered that her screen was not attached to the window frame. It was an old-fashioned one secured in a wooden frame. He didn’t find the tabs that should have held it in place—just the holes where they had once been. The first strong wind, and the damn thing would blow away. He lifted the screen off the window frame and leaned it on the wall, pushed the window up and climbed inside. He found himself in Dahlia’s bedroom.
Disturbed that he could so easily get into her house, he glanced around the room. The decor was completely without the usual satin and lace he associated with a woman’s bedroom. Instead it was comfortable looking, overtly feminine only in that he could smell her perfume. A blue-and-beige comforter in an abstract print was thrown over the king-size bed. He wondered who, besides the dog, she shared it with.
The bathroom halfway down the hall was in much the same condition—clean though cluttered—and without a single item of a man’s toiletry. Another bedroom looked over the front yard. A twin bed pushed against one wall was piled high with an assortment of boxes, bags and clothes. An ironing board stood in the middle of the room.
Something about the bathroom nagged at him, and he went back to it, glancing around once again. The scent he was fast associating with Dahlia was stronger here. He opened the medicine cabinet and looked under the sink. Then, the toilet caught his eye. The seat was up. That struck him as strange, given the total lack of anything male in the bathroom.
When he came back into the kitchen, she was on the phone, evidently talking to her mother, her expression softer than the hostile one she’d been directing at him all day.
“Dad’s okay, isn’t he?” She listened intently for a moment, absently scratching her fingernail against something on the countertop. “No, Mom, I’m fine. Just worried when I couldn’t get hold of Lily or Rosie, that’s all.” A second later she managed a laugh, though no smile lit her face. “That’s right. Storm season has just begun, and I’m working hard…yeah…I love you, too.”
She replaced the receiver in its cradle, then glanced at him. “I thought you’d gone outside.”
“Do you have any idea how easy it is to break into your bedroom?” he asked, snapping his fingers. “Climb a tree, cross over the porch roof, and there’s your room.”
“The screen is locked.”
“No. It wasn’t.” He glowered at her. “Don’t you pay any attention to the news, woman? Even if somebody wasn’t after you, you make it damn easy for a burglar or rapist—”
“Stop it. If you’re trying to scare me—”
“Just stating the facts.” He nodded toward the phone. “What did you find out from your mother?”
Dahlia looked at him, her dark eyes troubled. “Lily really is testifying, and Rosie and my niece Annmarie really are in hiding with your friend.” She shook her head, her voice full of hurt and disappointment. “I can’t believe nobody called me.”
“Maybe they didn’t want to worry you.”
“That’s exactly what Mom said. Jeez. You’d think she would have figured out by now that I’ve grown up.” She frowned. “You weren’t lying.”
“I usually don’t.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she returned, irritation back in her voice. “I still don’t need your help.”
Jack took a step toward her. “You do need my help. You saw how much the cops are going to help you—”
“Like the policeman said when I went to the station. They’ll put on extra patrols.”
“Which means they’ll be coming by your house two or three times a day instead of once.”
She had the awful feeling he was right, and she hated it. The last time she had felt this out of control, Brandon had died—never mind they had been divorced for years—and she finally admitted Richard preferred his drug habit over her. At least she hadn’t made the mistake of marrying him. Everything she believed about herself and her life had all fallen apart. This situation was different, but it still felt the same.
“What else did the cops say?” As much as Jack knew better than to hope they would take seriously the threat to Dahlia, he didn’t hold out much hope.
After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “They think I’m crazy.” She frowned. “You’re sure that was the same guy—the one who brought the plant?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’m calling them.” She surged out of her seat.
“You do have another piece of the puzzle to give them.” At this point, he didn’t think she had anything solid, but having the law on the lookout was better than nothing.
She dragged the phone toward her. “The cops might not like what you’re doing here, either.”
“I’ll take my chances.” He held her gaze, then asked, “Have any guys besides me been in your house since you last used the toilet?”
“What?”
“You heard me—or do you use the toilet with the seat up?”
“Of course not.”
“The seat is up.”
“You could have put it up to make me think somebody has been in the house. Just to scare me.”
“Yeah, that would be me,” he retorted. “Nothing better to do with my time than to scare you. How long has your screen been broken? Couldn’t have been long, or it would have blown away.”
She headed for the stairs. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s how I got in the house. The screen wasn’t even attached to the frame.”
From the top of the stairs she stopped to look at him. “That’s ridiculous. I sleep with the window open, and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed—”
“Like the toilet seat being up.” He followed her up the stairs. “Just in case, maybe you should take a look around and see if anything is missing.”
She disappeared inside the bathroom, and he heard the seat plop down. She came past him, her eyes snapping. “I don’t like you very much. I don’t care who hired you, I want you gone.”
“So you’ve said.” He didn’t intend to leave, but there was no point in arguing with her.
His agreement seemed to surprise her, and she turned around to look at him. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
“Every now and then.” He hadn’t stayed alive through numerous skirmishes and operations that were still classified without being sure of himself. “Just check around, okay?”
Watching her in her own room was too intimate, he decided a moment later, unable to take his eyes off her. He’d grown up around women who flaunted their bodies, including his ex-wife. She had known exactly how to play him, to the point where he’d followed her like a junkie after a fix and suspended his judgment in the process. Being around Dahlia brought back all those same feelings. No other woman he’d ever known had Dahlia’s presence. It went beyond being stacked or being tall, but something intrinsic within the woman herself.
Her shoulders slumped, accompanied by “Oh, damn.” Next to the nightstand she bent over and picked something up from the floor. In her hands were pieces of blue ceramic. What it might have once been, Jack couldn’t tell.
She turned on him, her mouth drawn in a straight line of anger despite the tears that shimmered in her eyes. “You swear you didn’t do this.”
He lifted his hands, palms toward her. “I didn’t touch a thing.” Her sudden vulnerability drew him toward her.
“Because if you did—”
“I didn’t.”
“—I’d never forgive you.”
“I didn’t touch anything.” He took a step closer toward her. “Your dog could have accidentally—”
“No.” She knelt and carefully picked up the pieces. “My grandma brought this angel from Norway when she came to this country. It’s all I have left of her.”
Her fingers caressed the fractured pieces of glass, her expression giving him some idea of how much this meant to her. In his mind’s eye it was a short step from destroying her belongings to harming her.
Stuffing the tips of his fingers into his pockets, he moved to the window and looked out, liking what he saw from here even less than he had while climbing the tree. All an intruder had to do was make it across the yard without being seen. After he was in the tree, he wouldn’t be seen—not even by the old man next door.
“If you’ve got some nails and a hammer, I’ll fix your screen.” What he really needed were hinges and a hook and eye, but he could at least do a temporary repair.
“I can fix my own damn screen,” she returned.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” He headed out of the room, pausing at the doorway, glancing back at her. Prickly he could handle, tears would just about do him in.
He knew the feeling that came after a break-in. Somebody else going through your things, taking what they wanted. As a kid, it had happened all too often.
Somebody would come in and steal anything with pawn value—often as not, only their TV—and leave a generally big mess behind. As soon as his mom had the money saved again, she’d buy another. Replaceable—which the broken ceramic clearly was not.
Dahlia went back to the kitchen, and Jack found himself once again following her. She picked up the telephone receiver, then swallowed as if giving herself courage, then dialed. Calmly she asked for the officer she had spoken with earlier, then waited when she was put on hold. She wrapped an arm around herself as though to ward off a chill.
While she was on the phone Jack prowled through her house, checking the windows and locks on the living room on one side of the hall and her office on the other. Security was nonexistent, and the locks wouldn’t keep out a kid much less a professional. Boo followed him through the two rooms while Jack absently listened to Dahlia’s one-sided conversation with the police.
The gist was that she didn’t know the make or model number of the panel van that delivered the plant. Nothing was stolen, just broken. Nobody was hurt. She agreed a toilet seat being up wasn’t exactly hard evidence, and no, dusting it for fingerprints wasn’t warranted. She would let them know if anything else came up.
He came back into the kitchen when he heard her set the receiver down.
“You’re still here,” she accused.
“Yep.”
“Since this isn’t an emergency and nothing was stolen, they aren’t sending an officer out.”
She surged to her feet, and he recognized the nervous energy for what it was when she paced to the sliding glass door and returned.
“Lock my windows. Lock my doors. I might as well fix the screen.” She pulled open a drawer and rummaged through it, then took out a screwdriver and three-inch long screws, way more than she needed to attach the screen to its frame.
“Are you sure you don’t want help?”
“Positive.” She disappeared through a door and clattered down the stairs. After hearing a couple of thumps accompanied by her muttering, she returned carrying a ladder.
Jack opened the sliding glass door for her.
She gave him an accusing glance as she went past him. “You don’t have to stay.”
“So you keep saying.” He picked up the screwdriver and screws, closed the door and followed her across the patio.
After she leaned the ladder against the edge of the patio roof, she took the tools from him without saying a word and climbed the ladder. Not even a minute later she swore, which didn’t surprise Jack a bit.
He followed her up the ladder, then stopped as soon as he could see her. The view was great. From here not only could he see her long tanned legs that gleamed in the sunlight, but the edge of her panties revealed by the wide leg of her shorts. Turquoise became his new favorite color.
As though she was aware he watched her, she turned around and frowned at him. “Are you going to stand there and ogle me all day? Or are you going to be a gentleman and offer me some help?” She pointed at him with the screwdriver. “One crude remark, and I’ll push you off the roof.”
He believed her. Stepping onto the roof, he grinned. “Sure, I’ll help you.” Coming to stand next to her, he held out his hand. She slapped the screwdriver into his palm along with the screws.
Very aware of her scent that teased his attraction into full alert, he set the first screw despite it being more than double the length to do the job and despite the screwdriver being the most awkward she could have chosen.
“It’s irritating that you make that look so easy,” she said.
“I’ve had a lot of practice—”
“Screwing?”
He laughed. “Yeah.” He set the next screw. “When I was a kid, I used to help my grandpa. He could build anything.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“We made a coffee table out of a pallet once. One summer, we tore down his old barn. He recycled most of the lumber. Then we rebuilt it, putting the old wood over a new frame.” He found himself thinking about the cradle they had built together. Erin had taken that with her, along with all the furniture except their bed, when she left. He finished setting the last screw and handed Dahlia back the screwdriver. “There you go.”
“Well,” Dahlia said, patting the screen. “That should at least slow somebody down.”
Jack handed her his pocketknife. “Not by much.”
As if realizing the knife could be used to split the screen, she shot him another of her dark glances. He went back down the ladder, and a second later, she followed.
“Would you like me to put the ladder away?” Before she could answer, he picked it up and waited for her. She stared at him a moment, then finally opened the door.
He headed through the house, taking the ladder back to the door where he had seen her go before. Her basement was one large, open room. Along one wall stood the washer and dryer. A rolling clothes rack was positioned nearby and contained an assortment of pants and shirts that had the fresh aroma of laundry soap. Shelves and boxes filled the rest of the room. He found an open spot along one wall and leaned the ladder against it.
Dahlia stared at the open doorway to the basement stairs, more annoyed and frustrated with the situation by the moment. She had felt in control of her life until the moment Jake Trahern had climbed into her car. Logic dictated that she couldn’t blame him, but she kept feeling that if she could just get him out of her hair, things might be okay again.
The fleeting image of some strange man in her house, touching her things and using her bathroom, which was somehow the creepiest of all, made her shudder. And now, to know that everything Jack told her was the truth. She hated that. She couldn’t even begin to explain how much she detested the conversations with the cops. Looking back, she knew just how lame and stupid her complaints sounded. She, who valued tangible evidence more than most, suspected the officer had written “nut case—watch out for this one” in the file.
Jack came up the stairs and closed the door to the basement.
“Like I said before. You can go now.” She brushed past Jack, intending to grab his pack and lead him toward the front door. The narrow galley kitchen forced her much closer to him than was comfortable. She couldn’t have said when a man ever made her feel small, and right now that was the last thing she wanted.
“And, like I told you, I’m not leaving.” He didn’t budge even an inch. He simply watched her with those brilliant blue eyes as though sorting through his options of how to handle her. That thought alone shortened her temper.
“I want you out of my house.” More annoyed by the second, her tenuous hold on her temper broke, and she pushed against his chest. “I can’t stand guys like you—macho, handsome guys who think they’re God’s gift to the world—”
“That makes us even, sugar.” He grasped her hands and thrust her away from him, somehow failing to let go of her. His glance raked down her, lingering at her breasts. “You don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here.”
“Leave!”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “Won’t.”
His thumbs rubbed across the back of her hands, his hands huge and dark compared to her own. She looked up, surprised to find his gaze on her face, not on her breasts. The look in his eyes could have heated concrete. Oh, Lord, she thought. She wasn’t the only one fighting the attraction.
His brilliant eyes became impossibly brighter, and this close she could see that his lashes were as black as his hair. Somehow he seemed closer, and she decided that she must have moved because he was still as a stone.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered, then dipped his head toward her, and those brilliant eyes were shielded by his lashes. Then his mouth was on hers, the pressure teasing her senses and asking for more. For the briefest second she pushed against him, then stilled except for her pounding heart.
He had let go of her, and she could have stepped away. Only she didn’t. His lips were soft, coaxing, warm. She sighed, and he used that tiny movement to gain entrance to her mouth, his tongue tracing the sensitive inner edge of her lips before tangling with hers.
Within the onslaught she somehow became aware of her own hands, her palms against his chest. His thumbs rubbed the backs of her hands, the gentle pressure moving to the same rhythm as his tongue brushing against hers. The caress of his fingers against her hands somehow felt more intimate than any other touch she had ever received.
On a shuddering sigh she broke the kiss and looked up at him.
This was the most dangerous man she had ever met.
Chapter 4
Dahlia looked at her hands pressed against Jack’s warm, broad chest, then snatched them away. “You need to go.” Pleading, for pity’s sake. Not the order she had intended.
“Yeah. I do.” He brushed his thumb across her cheek, a featherlight caress that lingered after he took his hand away.
Without another word, he backed away from her, then disappeared down the hallway that led toward the front door. She closed her eyes, listening to his footfalls and a second later the sound of the screen door opening and closing.
She had kissed him back. Of all the stupid things she could have done, that topped the list. She pressed her fingers against her lips, opened her eyes and looked around her kitchen, which showed no evidence of a cataclysm.
Dismayed at the depth of longing that one consuming kiss had opened up, she began listing the reasons that it had happened. Danger. According to all the books she had read, that always heightened attraction. And, darn it, there was no point in lying to herself about that: the man was attractive. Gorgeous.
She scowled, deliberately reminding herself of her ex-husband and ex-fiancé, attractive men had turned out to be total lowlifes. You have rotten taste in men, remember?
With a mutter of disgust, Dahlia headed for her office. She’d do what always helped—lose herself in her work. That didn’t keep her from glancing out the front door. A dark-green SUV was parked in front of her house, and he was talking to her neighbor, Emmet Masters. What interest could Jack possibly have in her neighbor?
The loud vibration of booming speakers preceded a car as it came down the street. Dahlia paid more attention than she would have this morning. The car was black as night and polished to a high gleam. No melody could be heard, just the booming vibration of the subwoofers that made her wonder how the two guys slouched inside could hear anything. They both wore reflective sunglasses and had an I-dare-you-to-complain demeanor—probably friends of the kids who lived at the end of the block.
The car moved on, and Dahlia’s attention returned to Jack and Emmet. She folded her arms over her chest and watched. She heard Emmet laugh. She didn’t want Jack making friends with her neighbor, hanging out as if he somehow belonged, and standing in her kitchen kissing her.
More than an hour later she pressed the save button on the computer and headed for the kitchen. The mouthwatering aroma of someone in the neighborhood barbecuing had reminded her that she was hungry.
In the kitchen her gaze lit on Jack’s pack. Which meant he still was around somewhere…or that he’d be back. She was debating the wisdom of simply setting it on her front porch so she wouldn’t have to deal with him when movement in the backyard caught her eye. Boo barked. Before Dahlia reached the sliding glass door, Jack opened it. Boo sped out and the enticing aroma of chicken wafted in.
“You’re cooking,” she accused. “On my grill.”
“Yep.” He just stood there in the open doorway, cool evening air spilling in. Boo danced around his legs, and Jack bent to scratch her ears.
“Some bodyguard you turned out to be. Leaving to get chicken.” Never mind that she had told him to leave, never mind that to have him here meant today’s danger hadn’t been some horrible figment of her imagination.
He straightened and met her gaze head-on. She had the impression he was weighing what to say.
“I went as far as the cooler in the back of my car,” he said.
Her glance slid past him to the porch where a large blue cooler sat. A utility box unlike any she had ever seen was on her picnic table, opened and sitting on its side like a cabinet. The cooking utensils and spices neatly strapped inside were more than she had in her own kitchen. An open bottle of beer made it look as though he’d completely made himself at home. Wrapping her arms around herself, she stepped out of the house. Her fingers trailed over the top of the box, its finish satiny.
He opened the grill lid, which contained not only chicken but fresh vegetables that looked as good as the chicken smelled. After turning the chicken pieces over and brushing them with a marinade from yet another bowl, he closed the lid and took a long pull from the bottle of beer.
Her idea of cooking was boiling water for spaghetti and heating the sauce in the microwave oven. She remembered joking with her sisters once that if she ever found a man who could cook, watch out.
So, the man could cook. And use a screwdriver with an ease she might never master. And kiss better than anyone else. He also carried a gun, and if even half of what he told her about his training was true, he could give Rambo a run for his money.
“You drink on the job?” she accused.
He grinned. “Progress. The lady admits I’m on the job.”
Realizing she had backed herself into a corner, she frowned.
“One beer won’t slow me down, if that’s what’s worrying you. I have enough to share,” he added, extending an unopened bottle toward her. “Ten more minutes, and the chicken will be ready.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then we eat.” He set the beer down on the table.
She shook her head. “After that, what?”
A glimmer of humor appeared in his eyes. “Since I cooked, you get to do the dishes?”
“While you move in,” she finished.
“So we’re back to that.”
“I never left it,” she informed him. “I don’t want your beer, and I don’t want your chicken.” Dahlia, you are such a liar. “Eat your dinner, pack up your stuff and go.” The more she thought about that, the more clear she was. “Tell your friend, thanks but no thanks. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“We’ve already had this conversation. You didn’t hire me. He did. I’m not going anywhere.”
“For all I know that guy this morning was after you.”
He raised an eyebrow, then challenged, “Why didn’t you tell the cops that?”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“If you had, I’d be spending the night in the county jail instead of barbecuing on your back porch.”
Not about to admit to the man that he was right on all counts, she turned away from his penetrating gaze.
“You know why you didn’t tell the cops?”
She refused to turn around but knew that he was messing with the chicken again because she heard the grill open and the sizzle of the marinade dropping on the hot coals, accompanied by an aroma that made her mouth water.
“Because you know I’m right,” he said. “Somebody was in your house. You talked with your mom, so you know I didn’t lie about your sister.”
She turned around. “I don’t know that.” A blatant lie and they both knew it.
“Then you’ll just have to trust me.”
She shook her head. Of all the things possible, trust was dead last even though she knew he’d been completely straight up with her. Dahlia shivered, remembering her conversation with her mother earlier in the day. Some guy attacked her dad just as he was quitting work for the day. Her mom had assured Dahlia that he was fine and had added that his assailant had to be flown to the hospital in Juneau. It still annoyed Dahlia to no end that she hadn’t known any of this was going on until Jack showed up. The whole thing felt too much like it had when she was a kid— Lily, Rosie and their mom with their secrets that little Dahlia wouldn’t understand. She might be the youngest, but she wasn’t the baby anymore.
“It doesn’t make any sense that I’m a target.”
“If I were this guy on trial for executing the assistant D.A.—” Jack took a step closer to her. “And if the D.A. had an ironclad case against me, and if I had unlimited money and no conscience and was determined to stay out of prison, I’d do just about anything to keep the state’s star witness from testifying.”
His voice had dropped to a near whisper.
“You’re scaring me.”
“It’s about damn time.”
“I can’t live like that. Afraid to open my front door.”
“At least you’ll be living.” He turned the chicken again, the ordinary act of cooking so at odds with his statement she had the urge to laugh. She didn’t, though, because she knew it would sound hysterical.
“You have to be wrong.” She went back to the open door and stepped into the kitchen. She picked up his pack and thrust it into his hands. “Come on, Boo,” she said, motioning the dog into the house. Boo sat and looked at her with the quizzical expression that she’d had all afternoon. Dahlia stared at the dog a moment, then met Jack’s glance. “Fine.”
She pulled the sliding glass door closed, then locked it. Jack met her gaze through the glass while her traitor dog sat at his feet. She turned away with the ridiculous urge to cry. Wishing that she’d bought drapes to go over the glass door, she got her food-in-a-box out of the freezer. Meat loaf with peas and carrots and a brownie, ready in six minutes.
She sat down to eat about the same time that Jack did. His dinner looked wonderful, and he seemed to enjoy every bite. Her dog sat at his feet, begging. To Jack’s credit he didn’t feed the dog from his plate. Dahlia picked at her own food, then finally dumped it in the trash, reminding herself that she had refused Jack’s offer.
The evening dragged by, and Jack made no move toward leaving after he heated water in a pot on the grill and cleaned up. That he didn’t need anything from her was vaguely irritating even as she acknowledged his resourcefulness. If the man had left a mess on her porch, she would have had something to complain about.
She retreated to her office, but nothing there held any appeal. There were journals to read, research documents to update and protocols to review for her next set of observations. Instead she played game after game of FreeCell, the conversations with Jack and her mother rolling through her head. She called her sisters again and again, and got their respective phone answering machines.
The minute the clock struck ten, she went to the back-door to get her dog. Boo was sitting on Jack’s lap. In deference to the brisk evening air he’d donned a jacket. Even then, he looked just as at home as he had before.
He looked up when he heard the door open.
Boo jumped off his lap and, wagging her tail, came inside.
“Mind if I use the bathroom before you lock up for the night?” Jack asked standing up.
She stood to the side so he could come through. In his wake he left the crisp aroma of night air. She peeked outside and saw that he’d spread a sleeping bag on the chaise lounge.
By now her sister Lily would have invited the man into the house and made him an honorary member of the family. That’s what you did when you thought the best of others. Lily hadn’t had Dahlia’s experience of being completely wrong in her instincts.
Jack came back down the stairs a moment later. When he reached the door, he stood looking down at her a moment. That in itself was a novelty. At six feet, she rarely looked up to any man. Aware as she was of his scrutiny, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze.
Finally he tapped the door handle. “Lock up,” he said, stepping outside. “Sleep well.”
To wish him the same when she refused to invite him in seemed completely stupid to her, but she responded, “You, too.”
On her way up the stairs she flipped off the lights, plunging the house into darkness. In her room Dahlia emptied the pockets of her shorts, discovering that she still had his pocketknife, which she had forgotten to give back to him. Her imagination took off at a gallop, with thugs breaking into her house, chasing her down the way they had this morning, following her in the supermarket, making her a prisoner of her own fear. Jack had to be wrong. She set the knife down with a thump and stalked to the closet to change into her pajamas.
When she settled into bed, Boo was there to curl against her side. There in the dark she could almost believe this night was like all the others of the last two years. Just her and the dog, rebuilding a life where she focused on her work and came to grips with the fact that she no longer trusted her instincts about men.
Everything about Jack proclaimed him as one of the good guys. Even if she had met him under more ordinary circumstances, she would have noticed him, been drawn to him. In her book that automatically made him off limits. The ultimate Catch 22. If she was attracted, he had to be bad for her. If she wasn’t attracted, he’d probably be an okay guy—who she wouldn’t give the time of day.
On that disturbing thought she fell asleep.
Jack awoke instantly. He remained stock-still, listening for whatever it was that had brought him out of a fitful sleep. Then he heard it—the barely perceptible sound of someone walking across the grass. Without moving his head he looked toward the back fence that separated Dahlia’s yard from a bike path that ran alongside a canal, remembering the invisible path of scent that Boo had followed from the far corner of the yard to the base of the tree. The dark form of a man emerged out of the night. He moved purposefully toward the tree that would give him access to the porch roof and to Dahlia’s bedroom.
Jack had worried about the front porch, which had been black as a cave when he’d checked it before coming back here. He had settled on the lounge, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood and attuned to Dahlia’s movement inside. He had lain there a long time thinking about how he’d like to be sharing that big bed with her. A stupid fantasy to torture himself.
Now he thanked the instincts that had made him choose sleeping under Dahlia’s window. The mere thought of this creep getting into Dahlia’s room made Jack’s blood boil. He would bet everything he owned this guy wasn’t here to steal the TV.
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Sharon Mignerey
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Professor Dahlia Jenson Storm Chaser′s Log May 10 When rugged Jack Trahern aimed his cool blue gaze my way, I knew that I was about to learn a thing or two. But I never expected to discover that my sister was testifying against a syndicate crime boss, making me a target for murder and Jack my personal guardian.A past filled with heartache still didn′t stop the ripple that ran through me each time Jack was near. And though he was afraid that intimacy would leave room for jeopardy we surrendered to passion anyway. But when the danger′s gone, will an unforeseen love tempt my bodyguard to stay?