Guarding Jane Doe
Guarding Jane Doe
Harper Allen
RENEGADE HEARTSIf he hadn't received a letter from a dead woman who'd once saved his life, Quinn McGuire wouldn't have agreed to help a frightened Jane Doe to honor his unpaid debt. As her twenty-four-hour protector, this burned-out soldier for hire would go to the wall to save "Jane" from a madman who claimed she'd committed a heinous crime. When their joint investigation uncovered her past, Quinn thought convincing Jane she was innocent of cold-blooded murder would be his greatest challenge–but he was wrong! Finding the courage to love Jane was…
“From now on, I don’t let you out of my sight, lady.”
Quinn stared at her. “And if I think you’ve finally told me the truth I’ll go to the wall for you.”
There was no mistaking the unwavering conviction in Quinn McGuire’s words.
“Why?” Jane whispered. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Because that’s what having a bodyguard means, up to and including dying for you, if that’s what it takes. But you have to be straight with me. What is it you’re hiding?”
Jane gazed at the impassively silent man in front of her.
He’d just said he’d die for her. Even though she couldn’t remember her past life, she knew no one had ever made such a vow to her before. And all he asked in return was her trust. She shook her head, her expression tortured. Would Quinn still go to the wall for her, when he learned her most closely guarded secret?
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Welcome again to another action-packed month of exceptional romantic suspense. We are especially pleased to bring you the first of a trilogy of new books from Rebecca York’s 43 LIGHT STREET series. You’ve loved this author and her stories for years…and—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! The MINE TO KEEP stories kick off this month with The Man from Texas. Danger lurks around every corner for these heroes and heroines, but there’s no threat too great when you have the one you love by your side.
The EDEN’S CHILDREN miniseries by Amanda Stevens continues with The Tempted. A frantic mother will fight the devil himself to find her little girl, but she’ll have to face a more formidable foe first—the child’s secret father.
Adrianne Lee contributes a terrific twin tale to the DOUBLE EXPOSURE promotion. Look for His Only Desire and see what happens when a stalker sees double!
Finally, Harper Allen takes you on a journey of the heart in her powerful two-book miniseries, THE AVENGERS. Guarding Jane Doe is a profound story about a soldier for hire and a woman in desperate need of his services. What they find together is everlasting love the likes of which is rarely—if ever—seen.
So join us once again for a fantastic reading experience.
Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Guarding Jane Doe
Harper Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harper Allen lives in the country in the middle of a hundred acres of maple trees with her husband, Wayne, six cats, four dogs—and a very nervous cockatiel at the bottom of the food chain. For excitement she and Wayne drive to the nearest village and buy jumbo bags of pet food. She believes in love at first sight because it happened to her.
Books by Harper Allen
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
468—THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY
547—TWICE TEMPTED
599—WOMAN MOST WANTED
628—GUARDING JANE DOE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jane Smith—Even if a bodyguard can protect her from a murderer, she fears that no one can save her from her shadowy past.
Quinn McGuire—Soldier for hire and sometime bodyguard, he’s haunted by the ghosts of his past.
Carla Kozlikov and Gary Crowe—Jane’s neighbors—has their friendship with her put them in danger?
Terry Sullivan—He knows Quinn better than anyone—and he’s powerless to help him.
Donny Fitzgerald—The police detective was once Quinn’s friend, but he can’t allow that to interfere with his investigation.
Jennifer Tarranova—Fitzgerald’s partner, she’s almost sure she’s met Jane before…under very different circumstances.
Sister Bertille—The nun saved Quinn’s life once—and it’s time she called in his debt to her.
To Brian Henry.
Contents
Prologue (#udbe0ea96-72cb-541e-a066-b1e50fa4b215)
Chapter One (#u68e1cbee-406a-5bb7-875c-953bc2e4a615)
Chapter Two (#u69fb74a9-0e9d-5102-8b63-a82a9fd71c94)
Chapter Three (#u62658f3a-1659-579c-b352-a8ab7206e706)
Chapter Four (#ud6cff06c-799f-5611-b37d-4947c6d13718)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
If he hadn’t received the letter from the dead woman that day, Quinn McGuire would never have heard of Jane Smith. He’d been about to leave his apartment to make a secure phone call from the pizza joint down the street, and if the man he’d been planning to call had mentioned the right figure, Quinn would have been catching a night flight out of Boston and the country within hours. But just as he’d shrugged into his ancient leather jacket a hesitant knock sounded at his door and a quavery old voice called out his name.
“Mr. McGuire? It’s Agnes Lavery from downstairs. I’ve got some mail for you.”
Quinn knew he hadn’t left anything incriminating lying about—he never did. But even as he unlocked the apartment door and slid back the heavy-duty dead bolts he’d installed himself when he’d moved in here several years ago, he scanned the room behind him with the caution that was second nature to him.
There were a few reasons why he’d stayed alive for thirty-one years, he thought wryly as he noted the innocuous china mug on the kitchen counter and the half-folded morning paper littering the surface of the table against the wall. They were simple reasons, and easy to remember.
Don’t trust anything. Don’t trust anyone. Watch your back.
But a seventy-two-year-old woman probably wasn’t going to pull a fast one on him, he thought. He unfastened the forged-steel security chain and turned off the alarm sensor. Of course, Paddy Doyle must have been thinking something similar in the split second before that crazy rebel assassin opened the large black bag that had been part of his disguise and had pulled out a weapon big enough to blow even a tough and lucky Irishman like Paddy away for good.
Quinn blinked. For the life of him he couldn’t recall what country or what war that had been. All he could remember was Paddy, his chest torn apart and the life leaking out of him on that dusty street, his blue eyes fading as Quinn held him, and that sweet smile that had driven women wild on five continents lifting the corners of his mouth one last time.
“Another wild goose, boyo,” he’d whispered. Blood so dark it seemed black had welled up and mottled his lips as he gasped his last breath. “Look for me flying home with the rest of them, will you?”
And the moral of that story was that luck was a bitch, Quinn thought abruptly. Entirely. As soon as some poor bastard started depending on her, she’d be sure to shaft him. He opened the door and smiled down at the frail old lady standing there.
“You’re a complete saint, Mrs. Lavery, you are.” He allowed a little more brogue than usual to creep into his voice as he held out his hand for the flimsy airmail weight envelope. He shook his head. “With all the gadding about I do for the head office, it’s a real favor for you to let me use your address. That’s the first thing thieves look for—uncollected letters in a mailbox. And how’s Mr. L. today?”
She was inclined to talk, and for fifteen minutes expounded on everything from her grandchildren to the selection of cookies she planned to bake over the next few weeks in preparation for Thanksgiving. Quinn retained the recipe for strawberry powder jelly balls for as long as it took him to gently disengage himself from the garrulous old lady and to close and bolt the door behind her. Then he wiped his mind clean of all extraneous details. He looked down at the envelope in his hand, the mask of affability that he’d worn for his neighbor gone, his jaw rigid.
It was postmarked Belgium, and it had been mailed a week ago. He already knew what it contained, since the handwriting wasn’t the one he’d grown familiar with over the last seven years. His face expressionless, he ripped it open and let it fall to the floor unheeded as he held up the single sheet of lined paper it had enclosed.
“My dear Mr. McGuire…” it began.
Despite himself a ghost of a smile passed across his features. She’d seen him naked a score of times and still she’d never been able to bring herself to use his first name. He read on, the smile fading.
You know what this is, of course. The doctors tell me that what time I have left should be measured in hours, not days. I have said my goodbyes to everyone here so that I can prepare myself in peace for what is to come, and now this last goodbye is to you. But the real reason I am writing you is this: you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.
Startled, Quinn stopped and reread the last line. The writing was scrawled and uneven but it was still recognizable, and he hadn’t made a mistake. What he was holding in his hand was, more or less, an unpaid bill. He continued reading.
When I nursed you back to health all those years ago I expected no repayment, but you insisted that you were in my debt. Since then you have reminded me many times that I only have to name my price and you will gladly pay it. Mr. McGuire, my price is this—I want you to take on an assignment for me. I want you to use those talents and skills that you have employed in wars all over the world, but this time I want you to use them in the role of a protector. You will know when the right case presents itself, and—
Whatever she had intended to add had never been written. Except for a small splatter of ink on the page, the letter ended there. Quinn squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if he was riding out a wave of pain. When he opened them he turned the paper over in his hand and saw that someone had added a postscript.
Mr. McGuire, Sister Bertille was unable to complete this letter to you, but before she slipped into unconsciousness for the last time she asked me to make sure that I sent it to ‘her Quinn,’ as she always called you. I know you held a special place in her heart, and we will all continue with our prayers for your safety and your soul, as we have done since Sister Bertille came to live with us.
It was signed by the Mother Superior of the convent in Belgium where she’d retreated when the cancer had started to spread, he noted numbly. Apparently somewhere in that tiny country was a group of nuns who knew him by his first name—she’d been pretty damn tricky with that formal “Mr. McGuire” business in her letters, Quinn thought—and who now had taken up the burden of saving his soul that Sister Bertille had obviously carried all these years. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
“So who the hell asked you, Sister?” he muttered. His fist tightened around the flimsy piece of paper, crumpling it. “And what kind of an underhanded scam is this for a nun to be running—calling in your markers and then getting up from the game before a man can negotiate the price, dammit?”
She’d been small, wiry and middle-aged when he’d first met her, with thick-lensed glasses held together by a piece of wire that he’d recognized as the discarded firing pin of some light semi-automatic pistol. She’d worn the traditional nun’s black habit of scratchy coarse material, but in that hellhole of a jungle clinic, she had always seemed cool and unruffled. She’d saved his life.
And now she was dead. Quinn rubbed his arm wearily across his eyes and then walked slowly over to the kitchen table. Unclenching his fist, he tried to smooth out the creases that he’d created in the letter. He’d only known her for a few weeks, but she hadn’t let a month go by since then without writing to him. Sometimes he would come back from an assignment and find four or five envelopes waiting for him, and once in a while he’d scrawled a postcard back, just to let her know he was still in the land of the living.
Jack Tanner. Paddy Doyle. The Haskins kid—the one they’d nicknamed Hemingway, because he’d always been writing in his journal. And now Sister Bertille, who in her own way had been as much a soldier as any of them: going wherever she was sent and fighting for the cause she believed in as implacably as they had. He glanced down at the letter once more, his gaze bleak.
“When mercenaries die, Sister, their souls become wild geese. That’s how the legend goes, anyway,” he whispered softly. “And those of us who are left behind go out and get drunk, and sometimes we persuade ourselves that we hear our friends high up in the night sky, flying through the darkness toward home. I owe you that much, Sister. I owe you a drink or two to your memory, and I’ll wish you safe journey to wherever it is that you believe we go when we die. But what you’re asking of me is impossible. This is the only way of life I know.”
Drunk sounded good, Quinn thought. To hell with the phone call he’d been planning on making earlier; there would always be another job. He’d go out to the nearest bar, stay just sober enough to walk out under his own power at last call, and then he’d come back here and finish off the bottle of Bushmills he kept at the back of the cupboard. Sometime during the evening he’d try to call Terry Sullivan and let him know about Sister Bertille, and if Terry hadn’t grown too respectable to be seen with an ex-comrade, he might even join him in the wake of a woman they’d both known and respected.
A protector, for God’s sake. She’d always told him he was a better man than he knew, he thought in irritation, staring at the still-crumpled letter. It seemed that right up to the end she’d been too damned stubborn to discard her naive belief in him.
He turned away and was halfway to the door when his phone rang. Grabbing it up impatiently, the caller’s first words froze him in his tracks.
“Mr. McGuire? Quinn McGuire? I was given your number by someone who knows you.” The soft voice quavered. Then it steadied. “I—I need a bodyguard. I want to hire you to protect me.”
Chapter One
The bar was smoky, the music was loud and apparently Quinn McGuire wasn’t going to show. He was over an hour late already. Avoiding surreptitiously interested glances from the surrounding tables, Jane took a miniscule sip of the orange juice that she’d been nursing since she arrived. The ice-cubes in it had long since melted, but even the watered-down citrus tang did nothing to relieve the tight parched feeling in her throat. What was she doing here anyway? How had it happened that her life had spun so far out of control that she’d been reduced to waiting desperately in this raucous Irish pub for a man she’d never met?
In marked contrast to this unlikely meeting-place, earlier today the reception area of Sullivan Security and Investigations had given the impression of a professional and successfully run organization. She should have realized right from the start that the firm was well out of her price range, she told herself now with a brief flicker of embarrassment. The Irish trio on the small stage at the far end of the room launched into a new song, and all around her enthusiastic voices took up the refrain. Her temples throbbed dully, and she set her drink down on the sticky tabletop. The female operative she’d finally spoken with had been diplomatic enough not to mention an actual dollar amount, but her keen glance obviously hadn’t missed the fact that Jane’s outfit was working-girl attire, and that her jewelry—a pair of gold-toned studs in her ears and a leather-strapped wristwatch—was department store at best.
The woman had advised her to go back to the authorities to alert them to her most recent problems and had outlined a few basic safety precautions that she should take, a shadow of sympathy on her features. Even as Jane was leaving the reception area on her way out, the woman had come after her, a little breathless. She’d thrust a piece of paper into her hand and told her that the name and phone number written on it belonged to a personal friend of Mr. Terrence Sullivan himself, and that Mr. Sullivan had suggested she call Quinn McGuire to sound him out about the possibility of hiring him for a short while.
At the time Jane had felt as if she’d been thrown a lifeline. Even after that disconcerting phone call with Mr. McGuire, she’d still held onto the possibility that somehow he might be able to extricate her from the nightmare her life had become over the past few weeks. The man had been brusquely antagonistic, and the mention of Terrence Sullivan’s name hadn’t seemed to effect any positive change in his attitude. But when she’d finally apologized for taking up his time and had been about to hang up, he’d grudgingly given her the name of a pub, told her to be there at seven and said he’d meet her.
If she’d had any other options at all she would have thanked him politely and told him she’d changed her mind, she thought bleakly. But that was just it—she’d come to the end of the line and this Quinn McGuire had been her last hope. Now she was forced to face the fact that even the dubious possibility of his assistance had faded.
Gathering up her purse from the chair beside her, she started to rise. She should feel angry at the man, she told herself, but somehow during the last couple of weeks even the capacity for anger had been drained out of her, overridden by the numb and ever-present fear that seemed to be the only emotion she had room for anymore.
“Waiting for me, beautiful?”
Startled, she looked up and met a pair of bright blue eyes. With a slight grin the dark-haired man staring down at her set a glass of beer on the table.
“Mr. McGuire?” she ventured, automatically distancing herself from his familiarity. He had the same lilt to his speech that she’d heard over the phone, she thought, but without the antagonistic edge that he’d displayed earlier. For some reason a flash of confused disappointment overlaid the nervousness that was her usual reaction to men who stepped across the invisible but inviolate boundaries she tried to keep around her. He was tall and well-built, with a hint of muscle filling out the shoulders of the light wool sweater he was wearing, but she’d expected something more. Like what? she asked herself. Did you think he was going to be some kind of superman?
“I’m not McGuire, whoever the hell he is,” he said easily. “But any man crazy enough to stand up a lady like you deserves to lose his chance. What are you drinking, sweetheart?”
“Screw off, boyo. Now.”
It hardly seemed possible that such a big man could come up so unobtrusively, but suddenly he was there. As Jane’s accoster turned and saw who’d just spoken, he swallowed visibly. She didn’t blame him.
Silvery-gray eyes stared out of an implacably expressionless face that looked as if it had been carved from teak. In stark contrast, his close-cropped hair seemed to have been bleached to pewter by the same tropical sun that had tanned him so darkly. He was wearing olive-drab chinos, and an olive-drab T-shirt strained over his massive torso. He looked about as solid and unyielding as an oak tree. Even though he hadn’t raised his voice, the tables around them fell silent.
“You’d be McGuire, I’m thinking.” The dark-haired man smiled weakly in a valiant attempt to retain some of his previous jaunty charm.
“You don’t have to know my name. You don’t have to do anything but walk away.” The softly spoken words were uninflected and matter-of-fact, but at them the other man swallowed again.
“Sure. No problem, entirely.” Not even meeting Jane’s wide-eyed gaze, he edged hastily away, halting nervously as the other man spoke again.
“Your beer, boyo. Don’t rush off without it, now.” The big man handed his glass to him and, without looking to see if he’d left, sat down across from her.
“Quinn McGuire. Sorry I’m late.” He crossed muscular forearms on the table and met her eyes with no hint of apology in his as he made the terse introduction. “I had some business to attend to.”
Besides the slight brogue, there was the faintest hint of a slur to his speech. Jane stared at him, taking in the other signs that had escaped her notice until now. His economy of movement appeared to be an integral part of him, but there was an additional stillness about his attitude that gave the impression of a man who was trying very carefully to stay focused. Those pale silver eyes, veiled by startlingly dark lashes, seemed to be looking through her and past her. For a moment, she had the disconcerting feeling that either he or she was a ghost.
But that was stupid. It was obvious what his problem was.
“Are you drunk, Mr. McGuire?” she asked incredulously.
“Not enough.” As he spoke, a waitress came up to their table and set a squat glass of some dark amber liquid down in front of him. He handed her a bill, waving away the change. “Don’t let me run dry tonight, Molly,” he said, nodding at the glass. “And it looks like the lady’s drinking screwdrivers. Bring her another, would you?”
“It’s plain orange juice, and I’m fine,” Jane said tersely. She waited until the young woman had moved out of earshot. “Is this the business you had to attend to, Mr. McGuire? Did I take you away from an important appointment with a bottle of rye?”
He gave her a pained glance, the mild expression of disgust looking out of place on those otherwise hard features. “Rye? I’d pour it on a wound if I didn’t have anything else handy, but I’d never drink the stuff. No, darlin’, it was good Irish whiskey. But enough of this small talk. You said Terry gave you my name?”
“He must have made a mistake. It’s obvious you’re not interested.” For the second time in a few minutes, she reached for her purse and stood. “I’m sorry I took you away from your more pressing engagements, Mr. McGuire.”
Despite herself, her voice trembled on the last few words. It was the exhaustion, she thought. It was the fact that she hadn’t had a normal night’s sleep for weeks, and that for days now she’d been living on her nerves, waiting for the next incident. She had no more resources left to draw upon, no more strength. Tonight had utterly defeated her.
She’d pinned all her hopes on this encounter, and the man had shown up drunk.
“My name’s Quinn. Sit down.” There was a harsh edge to his tone, but she’d had enough. The look she gave him was steadily assessing and at it, something flickered at the back of those gray eyes.
For a moment she’d thought she’d seen contrition, Jane thought. More likely it had been relief.
“I’ll never know you well enough to be on a first-name basis with you, Mr. McGuire. I doubt that many people are.” With an effort, she fought back the telltale trembling that had started up again. “I also doubt that you care. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—”
“Stop calling me that.” Like a snake striking, one large hand shot out and wrapped itself around her wrist. His grip was firm but even as she reflexively pulled away from him he let her go. His gaze met hers opaquely. “It’s a bad night to be stirring up old memories. Call me Quinn. And please—sit down.”
She didn’t move. She wouldn’t let herself look down at the wrist he’d grasped and released so swiftly, for fear of letting him see how badly he’d rattled her. “Quinn, then. But the rest still stands. I asked you here because I was told that you might be able to help me, and you seem to have slotted me in between bouts of partying.” Even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and high, and she took a deep breath, willing her tone down to a more normal register. “You made it clear earlier that you weren’t really interested in this meeting, so don’t feel you have to go through the motions now just to oblige me. You don’t owe me anything.”
She smiled tightly at him, holding on to the last of her composure, and turned to leave. Behind her she heard him speak.
“Dammit, Sister. You’ve got absolutely no intention of letting me go to hell in my own way, have you?” His words were quietly bitter and Jane looked back at him, startled. She almost expected to see someone else at the table with him, his voice had been pitched so low, but it was her eyes that Quinn McGuire met. “You’re wrong, lady. I owe you, all right. I’m guessing one of my old debts just got transferred.”
“I don’t understand.” She hesitated. For the first time, he seemed to be looking at her as if he was really seeing her, and his scrutiny caught her off-balance. She flushed a little, wishing suddenly that she presented a more pre-possessing sight—and that desire itself was totally unlike her.
She knew she wasn’t the type to turn heads. There just wasn’t anything so special about her, which made what had been happening to her that much harder to understand. Her hair was about as ordinary a brown as it could get. Her eyes were standard-issue blue. She weighed less than she had a few weeks ago, but she had an average figure for her average height. Her skin, a warm ivory tone, was her best feature, and her mouth was a little wider than she thought attractive.
Men didn’t usually look twice at her. She wanted to keep it that way.
“The Star of the County Down,” Quinn murmured, confusing her further. “Irishmen write songs about women like you.” The pewter eyes darkened and then cleared. “I wasn’t at a party tonight. I was holding a private wake for a friend.”
An explanation was the last thing she’d expected from him, and that particular explanation disarmed her completely. Jane caught her breath in swift compassion. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled with the strap of her purse awkwardly, knowing how inadequate her response sounded. “I—I had no idea. You must want to be alone—”
“I want you to sit down, but I’m damned if I know how to get you to do it.” Under the T-shirt the massive shoulders lifted slightly, as if he was attempting to shrug off the burden of his earlier mood. One corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “Why don’t we start all over again?”
Maybe she was projecting her own feelings onto him, Jane thought slowly, but behind the easy manner she could have sworn there was an edge of desolation in that incongruously soft voice. Still holding his gaze and clutching the strap of her purse, she lowered herself cautiously back onto the chair, her posture rigid as she tried to keep as much distance between them as possible.
“I called Sullivan after I spoke with you this afternoon,” Quinn said, frowning slightly. “He said you think someone’s watching you. He told me there’ve been some incidents—and that these incidents have been escalating.”
“Escalating?” A jagged little bubble of laughter escaped her. “That’s one way to put it. Except when I told the police about this, they said the situation hadn’t escalated to the point where they could justify an investigation. When they can spare the manpower they send a patrol car cruising by my apartment, but I’m still walking around alive and unharmed, which means that my case isn’t high priority—yet.”
“So whoever’s targeting you is still at the skirmishing stage,” Quinn continued. “He hasn’t officially declared all-out war. He must have some kind of battle plan that he intends to follow.”
Her head jerked up, her features pinched “Skirmishing? Battle plan? We’re not playing soldiers here.”
He stared at her impassively, seemingly unfazed by her outburst. Smoke-filtered light from the bar beside them gleamed palely on his hair, and his eyes, silvery and reflective, betrayed no hint of his inner thoughts.
“What exactly have you been told about me?” he asked.
“Just that you were a friend of Terrence Sullivan,” she answered, taken aback. “I went to Sullivan Investigations to hire someone to find out why I’m being stalked—and to keep me alive in the meantime. I—I assumed that’s what you did.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m wrong, aren’t I? Just what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a professional soldier,” he said shortly.
She frowned. “You’re in the military? Are you on leave right now?”
“I put in my time for Uncle Sam.” In the first extraneous gesture she’d seen him make, Quinn raked back a short strand of sun-bleached hair. “Now I choose my own wars, Ms. Smith.”
“You’re a—a mercenary?”
Dear God, she thought. She’d expected an ex-cop, or maybe a private eye who could hold his own in a physical confrontation, and instead she’d gotten some kind of hired gun. He was a soldier of fortune, for heaven’s sake!
“I told you—I’m a professional soldier. It’s what I was trained for.” He picked up his glass and drained most of it, setting it back down on the table with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t work for just anyone, and I never take on an assignment that could conflict with my loyalties as a citizen of this country. But there’s always trouble somewhere in the world. Right now it appears that someone’s waging war against you.”
She stared at him, her thoughts chaotic. Quinn had just voiced the feeling she’d had for weeks now. She had felt like some unknown person had declared war on her—a very private, very personal war, but war nonetheless. And from the start she’d had the conviction that her enemy wasn’t interested in taking prisoners.
With Quinn McGuire on her side there was a possibility that she might be able to turn the tide of this one-sided battle, Jane thought slowly. But before they came to any definite arrangement he had to know just what she was up against.
As a soldier, he would want as much information as he could about both his enemy—and his ally. How was she supposed to tell him that her adversary wasn’t the only participant in this war whom she knew nothing about?
“You said earlier that tonight was a bad night for stirring up old memories, McGuire.” Her voice was barely above a murmur, but his eyes narrowed in response. She went on, knowing that she was picking her way through a minefield. “You sound like a man who’s got too many of them.”
“Everybody’s got something they wish they could forget,” Quinn said harshly. His eyes seemed almost silvery. “Everyone’s got a few too many memories.”
“Not me.” Jane stared back at him, her own eyes shadowed. “I don’t know anything about my life up until the time when I came to in a hospital bed eleven weeks ago—not even what my real name is or where I come from or if I have a family.”
Her voice cracked. She fought to keep it under control. “And the only person who can fill in the blanks for me is my stalker.”
Chapter Two
Quinn shook his head. “You can’t remember a thing about your life. That’s quite a trick. Could you teach me, do you think?”
His tone was tinged with admiration. She stared at him. “It’s called amnesia,” she said shortly. “It’s not a trick, it’s a medical condition. When I came to in hospital I was told I’d been hit by a car. I had head trauma.”
“Head trauma, was it?” His attitude wasn’t exactly mocking, but there was something off-kilter about the way he was responding. He shoved his glass to one side, his elbow on the table. “What happened next? When did you first figure out this fella was followin’ you?”
His accent had thickened, and again the impulse to get up and leave crossed her mind. But even drunk, the man’s very appearance would provide some protection. He was physically intimidating just sitting there, half-slumped across the table.
“It was a few days after I left the—” She drew in a sharp breath. Looking down at the strong tanned fingers that rested idly on her forearm, she forced her voice to remain even. “We’re not on a date, Mr. McGuire. Please remove your hand.”
“It’s Quinn, as I told you before. And the hand stays. It’s for your own good.”
“What do you mean, for my own good?” Her jaw was so tight she could hardly get the question out.
“I keep a low profile, but who I am and what I do isn’t a complete secret to those in the business,” he said softly. His thumb moved up the length of her forearm in an unobtrusive stroking motion. Her fingertips curled against the smooth surface of the table. “Our conversation was beginning to look too much like what it was—a business negotiation. And there just might be a curious soul or two around who would find it interesting to question you later, to find out what new project I’m considering.” He smiled. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Let’s throw them a bone to keep them satisfied, and try to blend in with the other couples in the room.”
“Pretend this isn’t—this isn’t business? If you think it’s necessary, I’ll play along, but not to this extent. Being touched—” Her gaze slid away from his. “Being touched makes me nervous. I don’t like it.”
“I’m not about to start groping down the front of your dress, lady.” The thumb that had been stroking her forearm stilled. “We’re making the barest of human contact.”
“I still don’t like it.” Her voice was firmer this time, she noted with shaky relief. “Please let me go.”
This last request was unnecessary. Already he’d released her, but although there was now a space of a few inches between her arm and his hand, her flesh still retained the heat of his touch.
“I’ve gotten the message—there’s a no-man’s-land around you and I won’t be trespassing again. Let’s hear your story.”
His soft voice was as emotionless as if he were asking her for the time of day, and suddenly Jane knew she’d made a mistake. There’d been no need to fear any blurring of the barriers between herself and this man. Even if she’d involuntarily let her own down, they were nothing compared to the wall that she belatedly perceived around him.
For reasons she didn’t understand, there was a part of her deep inside that was frozen. But Quinn McGuire was ice through and through—glacial ice. He wasn’t like other men. She had nothing to fear from him in that respect.
Except it wasn’t him you were afraid of a moment ago, was it? a small voice in her head asked. It was yourself—and the way you felt when he touched you.
She sat up straighter. “Three days after I was released from the hospital I found work with a cleaning company.” Her shrug was a taut lifting of her shoulders. “It was all I could get. I was a non-person, officially at least, but the rest of the night cleaning crew were in the same situation as I was—no papers, no legal status.”
“Already this doesn’t make sense,” he said carelessly. “Tell me this—why didn’t the doctors contact the authorities when they learned you were suffering from amnesia? Why didn’t they run a check with missing persons?” He lifted his glass and looked at her through the golden liquid, as if he were examining her through a microscope. “You’ll have to shore up the gaps in your fairy tale, darlin’. It’s still a little shaky.”
“You think I’m lying? Why, in heaven’s name? What would I have to gain?”
“Like I said, what I do for a living isn’t a total secret to certain people.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “A couple of years ago a woman tried to spin me a story about needing her husband eliminated. I found out she was a reporter hoping to do an exposé on murder-for-hire.”
“I’m not a reporter—” Jane began, but he didn’t let her finish.
“I’ve had the odd head wound myself, angel. I’ve seen men who’ve totally forgotten their names, what country they were in, what year it was. But they all regained their memories within a day or two.”
“I know it’s rare.” She pushed a stray strand of hair away from her face distractedly. “I’ve gone to the library and read everything I could on it. But it happens. It happened to me, whether you believe it or not.”
“The rest of it doesn’t hang together either.” Folding his arms on the table, he lowered his voice. “Here’s how it would have happened in real life…. The police would have written up a description of you and gone back to the station to file a report. From then on it would be a matter of matching you up with someone who’d been listed as a missing person.” He shook his head. “What wouldn’t happen is that a woman in your supposed condition could just be discharged without any question. You’ve lost your audience, darlin’. Go home.”
“They were going to contact the police. When I learned that I ran.” Jane looked away. “I didn’t even know why I was running. All I knew was that I didn’t want to talk to anybody about who I could be or where I might have come from. I just wanted to be left in peace. But that didn’t happen.”
The broad shoulders shifted slightly, as if he was restless and getting ready to leave. “I could ask you where a penniless woman found the change for the phone calls to prospective employers. I could ask how you got bus fare those first few days. For God’s sake—I could ask what the hell you were wearing while you trudged around the city looking for work—you said you’d been in an accident, so presumably your clothes were a write-off.”
“And I’d tell you. But you don’t want to hear it.” Slowly she shook her head at him, her eyes never leaving his. “Soldiering is what you do, McGuire, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you seem to be at war right now. What I haven’t figured out is who you’re supposed to be fighting…because it can’t be me. You haven’t let yourself learn enough about me to count me as an enemy.”
“That’s right, I haven’t.” A muscle at the side of his jaw might have moved, but it was hard to tell. The rest of his face remained immobile. “And you know just as little about me, but you keep making these off-the-cuff assessments. Why don’t you finish this last one? If I’m not at war with you, who the hell is this mysterious enemy I’m supposed to be fighting?”
A moment ago she wouldn’t have had an answer for him. But at the unnecessary harshness of his tone, it was suddenly clear what her only response could be.
“No mystery, Mr. McGuire,” she said softly. “It’s you. For some reason you’re at war with yourself.”
“That’s crazy.” His answer was as immediate as a burst of gunfire. Then he took a deep breath. “When I take up arms, darlin’, I’m facing a real foe, not some unresolved Freudian conflict with my inner child.” His shrug was mocking. “Sorry to blow your theory out of the water, but I’m a simple man. What you see is what you get. Sure, I’ve made some mistakes in the past, but in my business you can’t afford to lose your focus. Believe me, I don’t waste a whole lot of time in soul-searching.”
“Then why did you bring up the subject of past mistakes, McGuire? I didn’t say anything about that.” She searched his features curiously. “I don’t think what you see is what you get with you at all. I think there’s a very different man underneath that hard exterior—maybe a better man than you realize. Maybe he’s the man you’re at war with.”
Quinn stared at her—but not the flat, angry stare he’d directed at her earlier. With a start Jane saw raw pain film his eyes, before all expression was quickly veiled as the thick dark lashes came down. As if he had a headache, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.
“Dammit, Sister, if I’d known you’d turn out to be this persistent, I would have told you to let me die the first time we met. Is it an emissary you’re sending me now instead of letters?”
His words had been barely audible, but she caught the gist of them. They didn’t make any sense, she thought, confused. “I may not know who I am, McGuire, but one thing I’m sure of is that I’m not your sister. You’ve got me mistaken with someone else.”
He opened his eyes, his gaze meeting hers. “That must be what I’m doing, darlin’,” he said heavily. “But when you quote her almost verbatim, you can’t blame a man for feeling a little beleaguered.” He saw her lack of comprehension. “Just someone I knew once. She’s dead.”
She still didn’t understand what he was talking about, but what did it matter now? she thought in defeat. She hadn’t convinced him to help her, and when she left this place she’d be walking out alone into the night. He’d made up his mind about her. Nothing she’d come up with had persuaded him to change it.
Maybe only his own words could, she thought with sudden hope.
“I’m your unpaid bill, Mr. McGuire,” she said, taking a shot in the dark. “I’m the debt you referred to earlier—the debt that got transferred. She saved your life, didn’t she?”
Jane was just piecing together fragments of his own incomprehensible remarks, not even knowing if they would make any sense to him, but Quinn’s reaction told her that one of those fragments had found its mark. His head jerked up, the pale gaze a little out of focus, and when he spoke his voice was low and strained.
“Dammit, yes—you saved my life. I never denied it, and I never tried to get out of repaying you, Sister. But now you’re trying to save my soul—and to do that, you want me to turn my back on the rest of them. I’m telling you once and for all I can’t do it!”
Jane felt as if she’d just pulled the pin on a grenade and had it blow up in her face. She scrambled to bring some semblance of normality back to this suddenly chilling conversation.
“She’s dead, Quinn. Whoever she was, she’s dead and gone.” Needing only to assuage the naked pain that etched his features, she placed her hand lightly on his clenched fist. “I’m not her, and I’m not her emissary. And whatever debt you feel you owed her, she sounds like the kind of woman who wouldn’t ask more of you than you could pay. I should go now.” Her eyes sought his. “I should have gone before I reminded you of all this. I’m sorry.”
Slowly his hand relaxed. He looked down at it, and at hers, pale against his own tanned skin. “I’ve just come off a bad assignment,” he said softly. “The way things have been going lately, I’m sure the next one will be much the same. I know you’re not her, darlin’. I’m not that far gone. Chalk it up to a slip of the tongue, will you?”
It hadn’t been, she knew. For a moment he hadn’t been seeing her in the seat opposite him, but a ghost—a ghost who, for reasons she’d never know, had some kind of loving hold over him.
“You’re touching me.” His low comment interrupted her thoughts. “I thought you said you didn’t do that.”
“I don’t.” With a jerk she drew her hand back, flustered. “I mean—I didn’t know…I didn’t realize I’d—”
“It’s okay, I won’t report you this time.”
He was actually smiling, she saw with a slight shock. The expression took some of the harshness from his features, and all of a sudden she realized that he was a devastatingly good-looking man. Trust Quinn McGuire, she thought shakily, to keep the most dangerous weapon in his arsenal concealed until he really needed it. With an effort, she brought her attention back to what he was saying.
“The police are right. If a stalker’s determined enough, sooner or later he’s going to accomplish what he sets out to do—unless he loses your trail or someone puts him out of action permanently. And that’s illegal. They call it murder,” he added dryly. “But tell me what’s been happening to you, and I’ll see if I can come up with any kind of strategy.”
At his words, she almost sagged with relief. She was well aware that just making that concession went against the man’s ingrained wariness. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and he was still making no promises. But his cautious acceptance of her was a start. She had a ghost to thank for that, she thought.
“I couldn’t sleep at night in the hospital. At first it was just because of the—the pain. But my physical injuries weren’t that bad, and after a few days that wasn’t what was keeping me up.” She swallowed. “I’d lied to the doctors. I’d given them a false name, the most common one I could think of, and told them I was a street person so they wouldn’t ask me too many questions. But I knew they didn’t really believe me.”
“Why did you lie right from the start? If you knew your memory was a blank, wouldn’t you have wanted them to investigate?” Quinn was still playing devil’s advocate, but this time with no edge to his voice.
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t an adequate answer, but it was the only one she had to give him. “I realize how crazy it sounds, but as soon as I regained consciousness and found that I couldn’t remember a single thing about myself, I felt like—” She stopped, her eyes squeezing shut for a second. Opening them, she took a deep breath and went on, feeling his gaze on her. “I felt like I’d been given a second chance. I didn’t want to know who I’d been before. I just wanted to slip into this new, empty life and start fresh.”
“That doesn’t sound so crazy.” His expression was unreadable. “Go on.”
She looked at him. “Anyway, at night the cleaning crew would come through the wards. One of them was an older woman—Olga Kozlikov. She would stop by my bed and talk to me sometimes, when the nurse on duty wasn’t watching. She said she was Russian, and had come here to make a new life for herself.”
“So you had a common bond.” He raised his glass and drained it. “Two refugees, right?”
Jane was startled into an unwilling smile. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but you’re right. One night I told her a little about my situation, and she seemed to understand how I felt. She said she’d lived for so long fearing the authorities under the old regime in Russia that she herself still didn’t trust the police, even though she knew it was very different here in America. She told me she’d help me.”
“So she set you up with some clothes and some money and helped you find a job?”
She nodded. “Three or four days after I was admitted, the doctor who’d been monitoring me suggested it might be a good thing if I talked to the police about the accident. That scared me, because there really wasn’t much to tell—a dozen witnesses had given statements saying that I’d run right out into the road, and there’d been no way that the woman who’d hit me was responsible. And although no one knew that I had complete amnesia, I’d told them I had no recollection at all of the accident.”
“And that’s true? You don’t remember it?” He gave her a searching look. “Whatever you’ve told anyone else, it’s important that you don’t lie to me, do you understand? If I think you are, then this meeting’s over.”
“I haven’t lied to you.” She sighed. “I’ve just left something out. When I was brought into emergency, apparently I was as high as a kite. They couldn’t give me any medication for twenty-four hours, because my system was full of drugs already. For the next couple of days I went through withdrawal—not as bad as if I’d been a longtime user, but bad enough.”
“What had you been on? Did the doctors tell you?”
“They rattled off some pharmaceutical names at me, but as far as I was concerned they could have been talking another language. I didn’t know what they were. But since I walked out of the hospital I swear I haven’t taken so much as an aspirin, Quinn. Whoever I used to be, the person I am now doesn’t take drugs.”
Unwaveringly, her eyes met his, and finally he gave a curt nod. “I believe you. If you were a junkie you’d be out trying to score, not sitting here talking to me.”
“And if I were an addict, then no one could help me but myself. But drugs aren’t my problem, and I don’t think I can handle this on my own anymore.” She felt the prickle of tears behind her eyelids, and forced them to remain where they were. “The night before the police were supposed to come and talk to me, I just walked out of the hospital. Olga had arranged for me to be hired on by the same firm she worked for, with a crew that cleaned an office building downtown, and at first everything was fine. Olga’s niece Carla was a nurse at the same hospital, and Olga persuaded her to help me get a small apartment in the rooming-house where she lived. I had a home, I had a job, and the new life I’d wanted was beginning to become a reality. Then he left the first sign for me to find.”
“What do you mean, the first sign?” Quinn frowned.
“Just that.” She clasped her hands tightly together on the table. “I was teamed up with another woman and we cleaned the same area each night. Everyone worked in teams of two or three, and the area that Martine and I cleaned was a secretarial pool. On my third night there, we walked in and all the computers were on. All the monitors displayed a single line of type, sized large enough so that I could see it from the doorway, and they all said the same thing—I Know Who You Are.”
“That was it?” Across from her he raised his eyebrows. “For God’s sake, woman, it was probably a prank directed at someone who worked there.”
“I told myself that.” Stung, she glared at him. “My first reaction was that it was meant for me, because it seemed to fit my situation, but then I realized just how ridiculous that was. Martine and I cleaned the office, finished the rest of our area, and went back to the company depot with the rest of the workers like usual. I always took the same bus home every night and got off at a stop only a few steps away from my place. Except when I got off at my stop that night I saw that the bus shelter had been papered over with flyers. They were bright yellow, and in big black letters was—was—”
This time she couldn’t control the shaking. Her head bent, she didn’t see the waitress pause by their table, but when Quinn pushed the full glass across to her she looked up.
“Drink.” His tone brooked no argument, but she shook her head at him anyway.
“I don’t—”
“I said drink.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “It’ll help.”
Reluctantly she raised the glass to her lips, opening her mouth just enough for a trickle of the amber liquid to pass down her throat. But even that miniscule amount was enough to distract her, at least temporarily.
“It’s awful,” she sputtered.
“It’s not awful, you heathen, it’s good Irish whiskey. Look at your hand now—steady as a damn rock.”
She had stopped shaking, Jane saw. But she was only at the beginning, and there was much more to come. If she took a drink each time the tremors started she’d have to be carried out by the time she finished telling him everything.
Quinn took up where she’d left off. “The flyers had the same message as what was on the computer monitors?”
Jane nodded. “It was raining a little, and at first I didn’t look up. When I did the bus was just pulling away, and it felt like those garish yellow posters were screaming at me, each one saying the same thing. I was sure that whoever had put them there was somewhere close by, watching me, and I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was inside my apartment.” She grimaced. “Not very brave of me, was it?”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. That’d be enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.” He pronounced his e’s to sound more like a’s, and despite herself she smiled faintly at hearing such a quaint turn of phrase coming from a man as tough and hard-bitten as McGuire. Her smile faded as she continued.
“That was nine weeks ago. Since then the messages have come every few days, and always in a different way.”
“Like how?” He reached for his drink, forgotten at her elbow, and took a thoughtful sip.
“Like being whitewashed on the inside of the window of an abandoned store that I pass on Sundays. Like being written on a scrap of paper and tucked into the serviette I took from a dispenser in the coffee shop I frequent before work—I still can’t figure out how he managed that one.”
“He knows your routine. He probably knows which table you usually choose to sit at, and the approximate time you’d show up, if you were going to be there at all that night. If you’d checked, you probably would have found the first half-dozen or so serviettes had been tampered with, just to make sure one of them got to you.” Quinn rubbed his jaw. “Of course, whoever’s doing this could be a woman. What else?”
“More of the same until this week. It’s getting worse—that’s why I eventually went to the police.” She looked away, her gaze fixed on nothing. “Three nights ago Martine and I were taking bags of garbage to the service elevator. I was coming down the corridor and I could see Martine at the elevator, throwing her bags in. Then it looked as if she fell forward into the elevator, and the doors closed.”
Her eyes closed briefly and then opened again. “Serge, our supervisor, and another man took the regular elevator down to the basement, because that was where the service elevator was preset to go when the cleaning staff was working. I stayed where I was, waiting for them to come back. I thought Martine had had a fainting spell or something, and I was out of my mind with worry for her. Then I saw the indicator light above the service elevator show that it was beginning to climb again, and I assumed that Serge and Julio had found her and were bringing her up in it. But when the doors opened, Martine was in there alone, and she was screaming.”
Nothing, not whiskey, not the fact that she was in a crowded room with people all around her, not even Quinn McGuire’s reassuringly broad-shouldered presence across from her could stop the shaking now. The coldness of remembered terror seeped through her.
“She was hysterical. Someone had pulled her into the elevator and then the lights had gone off and the doors had closed. She’d felt a knife at her throat, and her attacker warned her to keep quiet or he’d kill her. Just before they reached the basement, he whispered in her ear that he had a message he wanted her to pass on—to me.”
“The same message you’d been getting all along?” Quinn sounded grim.
“I Know Who You Are,” Jane agreed dully. “But this time there was an addition. The message Martine gave me was two sentences.”
“What was the second one?”
Her stricken gaze met his. “And I Know What You Did.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “How the hell could the police ignore you after that, dammit? What did they say when they came?”
“They weren’t called. The incident wasn’t reported.” At his incredulous expression she leaned forward, her words coming out in a rush. “I told you—the people I worked with weren’t about to draw attention to themselves. I’m pretty sure Martine was an illegal immigrant, and when I told her I was going to call the police, she said she would deny everything. The rest of the crew backed her up. They all liked me, but not enough to risk being deported. And not enough to continue working with me, either,” she finished hopelessly. “I was fired that night.”
Quinn grimaced. “Sooner or later your stalker’s going to stop playing around.”
“Playing? You call what he’s done so far playing?” Shocked, she stared at him. “He’s turned my life into a nightmare! He obviously knows everything I do, everywhere I go, and he’s either right behind me or just one step ahead of me, day and night!”
“That being true, he could have killed you by now,” he said brutally. “But he hasn’t. That’s why I say he’s just playing with you.”
“If driving me slowly out of my mind is playing, then yes, I suppose you’re right, McGuire.” She could feel the tears spilling over, and she knew that people nearby were looking at her, but she was past caring. “But you’re forgetting one vital component in his game plan—he knows who I really am. That gives him a weapon to use against me, and I can’t fight back!”
“Sure you can. You’ve got the same information he has, only you won’t admit it.” He crossed his arms, the short sleeves of the T-shirt he was wearing straining over his biceps. “I could agree to take on the job of keeping you safe, and while I was by your side, you would be. But as soon as I left, you’d be in danger again. The only person who can find out who your stalker is and why he’s targeting you is yourself. And for some reason you don’t want to do that.”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I can’t do that. My memory’s a blank!” She was shaking again, Jane noted with a detached part of her mind. But this time it was from anger.
“It’s a blank because you want it to be a blank.” Those pale eyes met hers emotionlessly. “I told you, true amnesia’s so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Besides, if you really wanted to find out who you were and why someone wants to harm you, you’d tell the police the truth and let them investigate you—and you haven’t, have you?”
“No.” She looked down at her hands. “No, you’re right. I haven’t told them the truth. I haven’t asked them if I match the descriptions of any missing women, and I don’t intend to.”
“Then your stalker will just bide his time until you’re unprotected again.” He shook his head. “The best advice I can give you is to disappear into yet another life, lady. I can help you get out of town without being followed, but that’s all I can do for you, since you’re so determined not to help yourself.”
He was turning her down. After everything she’d told him—and except for the amnesia, he hadn’t seemed to doubt her story—he was turning her down. She couldn’t believe it. She said the first foolish thing that came into her head.
“Is it the money? I don’t have much, but Serge gave me a couple of weeks termination pay so I’d keep quiet about what—”
“It’s not the money.”
“But you’re not on an assignment right now.” She heard a shrill edge to her voice, and attempted a more reasonable tone. “If you’re between jobs, why can’t you take this on?”
“I’m only between jobs because I took your phone call today, instead of making one of my own.” He shrugged. “If you’d called half an hour later, I doubt that we’d ever have met. If you call again tomorrow, I won’t be there to answer.”
“You’re going off to fight another war,” she said slowly. “I guess I should have known mine would be too insignificant to interest you. My little war doesn’t have the elements you’re looking for.”
“And just what the hell is that cryptic comment supposed to mean?” His gaze had been idly glancing around for the waitress. Now it sharpened.
“You seem to think I’m not willing to put up a fight, McGuire—that some part of me is willing to die. I think you’re putting your own motives onto me.” She felt for her purse, her movements jerky and awkward. “You’re the one who keeps letting yourself be led to the slaughter. Every time you walk away alive there’s a little twinge of disappointment in you, isn’t there?”
“I go into an assignment aiming to walk out alive. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His stare was flat, his posture rigidly tense. He raked a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Dammit, I’m not the one who hated my life so much that I sealed it up in a box and buried it six feet under.”
“Even if your theory’s right, at least I want to hold onto some kind of existence. That’s the difference between us.” Getting out of her seat, she stood, looking down at the man she’d hoped would be her salvation. “You won’t admit it, but that’s the reason behind every choice you make. I want to live, but deep down, you want to die. Did she realize that, too—that sister of yours who won’t leave you alone?”
“You just crossed the line, darlin’. Back off.”
He’d half-risen, and with the difference in their heights, that brought his gaze on a level with hers. His face was inches from hers, and even at that moment Jane felt her focus slipping away. His eyes were like crystal, she thought, her breath catching in her throat. Everything else about the man was harshly masculine, but those mesmerizing eyes and those thick, sooty lashes belonged on the parfit gentil knight she’d wanted him to be.
It was one more reason not to believe in fairy tales. She drew back, suddenly uncomfortable at his nearness.
“Have a nice war, Mr. McGuire,” she said coldly. “I doubt that our paths will ever cross again.”
For one long last moment their gazes remained locked, his still brilliant with anger, and hers, she knew, showing nothing at all. She’d tried, Jane told herself tiredly. She’d tried, and failed. Now her Pandora’s box of troubles had lost its only saving grace. All of a sudden she knew that the tears that had been threatening all night were about to burst forth in a humiliating flood.
“Let me get you out of town, at least,” Quinn began. His anger had faded as completely as hers had, and there was a rough sympathy in his voice.
“I’ll arrange something myself.” She shook her head furiously, wanting only to get away before she dissolved right in front of this man and a whole roomful of strangers, most of whom were already casting interested glances her way. “You’re right, it probably is the best option. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—” She saw a tiny muscle tighten at the corner of his mouth, and changed what she’d been about to say. “Goodbye, Quinn.”
Even before his name had left her lips she’d turned abruptly on her heel. The next second she was blindly making her way through the crowded tables toward the back of the room where the washrooms were, both hands clenched around the strap of her shoulder bag, her face averted.
If she was lucky—and God knew she deserved some small scrap of luck tonight—there would be no one in the ladies’ room. She would lock herself in a cubicle and cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she would get up, splash cold water on her face, and leave—preferably without running into Quinn McGuire.
She’d only known the man for an hour or so. For most of that time they’d been antagonists. If he was right, and she could wipe her memory at will, then it should be easy for her to forget that moment when his hand had touched her arm and his thumb had stroked her skin.
But Quinn’s theory was wrong. And she had a feeling she’d be proving it wrong for a long, long time to come.
Chapter Three
She’d been about to cry. No, Quinn corrected himself, she’d already started to cry by the time she’d spun around and taken off from him in that clumsy half-walk, half-run that had nearly cannoned her into a handful of bar patrons and at least one waitress before she’d disappeared into the washrooms. He’d seen the tears shimmering at the corners of those dark blue eyes, and they’d made him feel like a dog.
He’d done the right thing, there was no doubt about that. “No doubt at all, McGuire,” he murmured under his breath. “Someone had to make her face facts.” He downed the last of the whiskey in his glass, and wondered if he was drinking out of the same side as she had. She hadn’t been wearing lipstick—as far as a mere male could tell, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup at all on that poreless, creamy-pale skin—so there was no way of knowing what part of the rim her lips had touched. But he thought he could taste her.
He drew himself up sharply. He’d been heading for drunk tonight. Obviously he’d achieved his goal, if he was sitting here trying to persuade himself that under the smoky, peaty flavor of Bushmills he could discern a hint of crushed strawberries. But that would be what she’d taste like, he thought unwillingly. Like the wild strawberries he could just barely remember picking when he’d been a boy—the small, sweet ones that had looked like tiny jewels against the green, green grass.
The woman had stirred up far too many memories, he thought abruptly. He needed another drink.
Like magic, his waitress appeared, her smile a little harried as she set down a new glass, but then turning to a puzzled frown as Quinn stopped her from taking the empty one away.
“Humor me, Molly. Leave the glass here, and take this.” He dropped a thick wad of bills on the round cork-topped tray she carried. “That should cover the tab I’ve been running. The rest is for you.”
This time her smile was real. He’d made one woman happy tonight, he thought ruefully, as he lifted his glass and stared into the golden liquid. He’d made one happy, and he’d torn another one’s world apart.
Actually, if he were honest with himself, the odds were more like two to one. He was forgetting the nun.
…you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.
He’d welshed on his debt. He could call it whatever the hell he wanted, but what it came right down to was that Quinn McGuire had weaseled out of an old debt. He closed his eyes, and there she was in front of him, the way he always remembered her….
In the antiquated conditions of the jungle hospital, she’d worked miracles. Of course, she hadn’t taken credit for them. There’d been a gleaming brass crucifix above her packing-crate desk. It had been the only thing in the place, besides the few surgical tools, that hadn’t been allowed to tarnish in the tropical humidity.
She’d been changing his dressing. Whenever he thought of her, that was how she appeared in his mind’s eye, but she looked like no one’s idea of an angel of mercy. If truth be told, Quinn had often thought, she’d always seemed forbiddingly unapproachable in the heavy black habit that she persisted in wearing. She had a slight limp, the legacy from a bout of polio when she’d been a child, he’d learned, and besides her bat-like attire, she’d been as blind as one. Her speech was sharp, and her English, though good, was heavily accented.
“You want to die. I want you to live. We’ll see who wins, Mr. McGuire,” she’d said grimly the first time he’d drifted up out of unconsciousness. One look at those angry brown eyes, ludicrously magnified behind the thick lenses she wore, had been enough to send him spiraling down into oblivion again. But she’d dragged him back, again and again, pitting her faith and her steely strength of will against the shadowy figure with the scythe. Only once had she even come close to losing hope, and that had been the day that his fever had climbed to its highest. He had been delirious, and whatever he’d been babbling, it had shaken her badly. All he could remember of that delusional day and night were two things.
He’d had wings, and he’d known if he only let himself go he would find himself soaring straight up from the sweat-soaked sheets he was lying on into a colder, lighter sky than the blazingly blue one that hung over the hospital. He’d heard them calling him, and he’d felt himself rising to meet them—
—and the second thing he remembered was Sister Bertille’s angular face, her mouth working soundlessly, huge tears standing out behind her crooked glasses, pressing a heavy, chilling weight against his forehead and bringing him crashing back down to earth. Just before dawn the fever had broken. He’d opened his eyes and she’d been sitting beside his bed in a golden pool of light from the gas lantern above her, her rosary in her hands and her mouth slightly open in exhausted sleep. He could still feel the heavy weight on his forehead, and with returning lucidity, he’d reached up and removed it. It had been the cross she usually wore around her neck.
You will know when the right case presents itself…
She’d been right. He had known. And still he’d done his level best to get out of it. Hell.
“You’re a stupid man entirely, Quinn McGuire,” he said out loud. “A stupid, bad man. A debt’s a debt, and you must have been crazy to think that you could get out of paying it with a clear conscience.”
He’d catch her on her way out and tell her he’d changed his mind. She didn’t have to know why, and although the nun was part of it, Quinn wasn’t sure he knew the whole reason either. If anyone needed someone to protect her, though, Jane Doe did.
Even if only half of what she’d told him was the truth.
“…know who you are. It was creepy!”
“It had to be some crackpot. I kept expecting some jerk to look over the stall partition, for God’s sake.”
The two young women passing his table had taken a couple more steps before what he’d overheard them say registered. Before they’d taken a third, Quinn was up and out of his seat and somehow blocking their way. One of them was a blonde, and she gave a little jump.
“Hey, you scared me!” Her gaze took him in, and she relaxed visibly. “I think he should buy us a drink to make up for it, right, Kathy?”
Before her friend could answer, Quinn’s hand shot out and held her lightly by the shoulder. “I heard you say something just now—know who you are. What were you talking about?”
“Do you mind?” The blonde’s flirtatiousness was instantly replaced by peevish annoyance. “The hand, mister. Get it off me.”
“It’s important,” he said impatiently, letting her go and curbing his own irritation with difficulty. “What did you mean by that?”
“We saw it in the washroom.” The blonde’s companion had been watching his face. Now she spoke quietly and quickly. “Those words were written on the mirror over the sinks in lipstick or something. It gave me a bad feeling—”
But already he’d dodged around them, and was heading toward the back of the room. He elbowed a beefy young man in a Yale sweatshirt out of the way, and heard an aggrieved shout and the crash of breaking glass behind him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him back, and without looking around he grabbed it and threw it off.
He was about ten feet away from the entrance to the washrooms when the lights went out. The whole room was plunged into pitch-blackness, and he heard a woman’s terror-filled, choked-off scream coming from somewhere ahead of him.
“No need to panic, people. Sure, and we’ll have the lights back on in a minute. Everybody just stay calm and remain where you are.”
Someone was trying to stem the panicky hubbub that had started up. The women’s washroom had to be nearby, Quinn told himself in frustration as he fought his way through the crowd and felt along the wall. There was a flimsy, freestanding partition that had shielded the washroom entrances from the view of the main room, so he hadn’t been able to note the exact location previously, but this was where Jane had gone. He came to a dead end, and realized he’d gone the wrong way.
Her scream—it had been hers, he knew it in his bones—had ended abruptly. That meant that even now she could be beyond his help. What had he told her? Something about if her stalker were serious, he would have killed her by now? Something criminally callous like that?
If the nun had ended up where she’d hoped, she could damn well bully God into giving him some help, he thought harshly as he felt a knob, turned it and swung the door back on its hinges with a crash.
Moonlight streamed through high-set, slightly open windows. Along one wall was a shadowy line of cubicles, each one of them open. Along the other wall was a long vanity, with sinks set into it and a mirror stretching its whole length. The place was empty.
He caught a reflection of movement in the darkened mirror, and instinctively looked around. There was nothing there. He looked back at the mirror, and the same wavering reflection caught his eye again.
Then he was whirling around and looking up at the ceiling just beyond the last stall and his heart was turning over in horror.
She’d been hanged by the neck, and even as he realized what he was looking at, her feet stopped twitching.
“Mother of God and all the saints…” The sickened prayer came automatically, but Quinn wasn’t relying on divine intervention. Already he had smashed open the door of the last stall, was clambering up onto the back of the toilet tank and hoisting himself to a precarious balance on the metal partition. The open ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes, and he grabbed one to steady himself, even as he wrapped his other arm around Jane’s limply dangling body. He lifted her up to ease the pressure on her neck, and her head lolled over onto one shoulder.
The lights—why hadn’t they gotten the damned lights working yet? Her dress had come undone, most of the buttons that had marched primly down the front probably somewhere below on the floor, and he could feel bare flesh against the forearm he had around her chest.
He had to get her down, lights or no lights. Whatever was around her throat was no longer cutting off her air supply, but if she still had a heartbeat, he couldn’t feel it. One-handed, he couldn’t fumble with a knot in the dark and keep her supported at the same time, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to get her down the logical way.
The building wasn’t new. The plumbing, in the washrooms at least, would be either zinc or lead, and neither of those metals was known for its strength. Judging from the trickle of cold water that was dripping onto him, there was a leaky joint only inches away from her noose. If he let go of his pipe, and grabbed hers as he jumped from the top of the washroom stall, the weight of one oversize Irishman would be more than enough to break the join and send them both, pipe and all, crashing to the floor.
All he had to do was hope the break was clean, and close enough to the knot that she slid straight off. Anything else didn’t bear thinking about.
He had a whole cartload of Belgian nuns praying for him, apparently. Surely that should buy him some grace.
Quinn let go of the pipe that had kept him balanced. He grabbed intuitively for the one that was Jane’s make-shift gallows and again jumped into darkness, his grip around her as tight as fear and muscle could make it.
As his hand found the second pipe, he gave it a massive downward tug, and for a moment he had the terrible conviction that the damn thing was built more solidly than he’d guessed. Then he heard a sharp cracking noise, and all of a sudden it was as if he and the woman he was holding had pitched off the top of a cliff and were riding a waterfall.
It wasn’t much of a drop, and he hit the floor immediately, breaking her fall with his body. The water was cascading from the broken pipe above them, and at any other time he would have taken a moment to drag her away from the icy flow. But he didn’t have moments, Quinn thought grimly. If her heart had stopped beating, he was going to have to get it started again.
He straddled her, pulling the two halves of her dress open and hearing it rip farther down than he’d intended. Impatiently he shoved aside the sodden scrap of cotton bra that was in the way, and bent down to her, listening for the sound he wanted more than any other to hear right now. There was no heartbeat. His own seemed to stop.
So this was how Sister Bertille had felt, all those years ago, he thought coldly, placing the heels of his palms flat on Jane’s chest. It was personal—him against the blackness that already had wrapped around her like a shroud. “I want her to live,” he muttered, pressing abruptly and forcefully down on the fragile bones beneath his hands. “We’ll see who wins.”
The cold water continued to stream down onto his back, turning his T-shirt into a second skin, but he was shielding the brunt of it from the woman beneath him. As seconds turned into minutes, and still he felt no answering echo under his palms, he began to think of her heart as an entity all to itself. As he continued in his desperate attempts to get it started again, he began to address it—not Jane, but her heart.
He was going a little crazy, he knew. He didn’t care.
“She doesn’t remember, but you do,” he grunted. “You must. There would have been a first kiss—remember how you sped up, how you felt as if you were going to melt? There had to have been times when she was a girl, catching the eye of a boy, and looking away. You beat faster then, didn’t you? And tonight when I held her and stroked her skin, and felt that velvety softness beneath my fingertips—don’t tell me you weren’t putting in a little overtime then, because I knew damned well you were. I could feel you, for God’s sake. No matter what she said, you were responding to me, weren’t you? Respond now, dammit!”
Two things happened at once.
Suddenly the lights went on. And as if the surge of power that had run through the electrical system had transferred itself to her, at that instant Jane’s eyes flew open. They were glazed and unfocused, but they were open—and her heart was beating, Quinn realized, all by itself.
Around her neck was a bright yellow nylon rope, like some obscene necklace, and her hands went up to it reflexively. She still hadn’t spoken, and neither had he, but for the minute there was no need to. Sliding his hands gently from her exposed breasts, Quinn pulled the two halves of her ruined wet dress together, his eyes on hers.
“I had to. You understand?” he asked softly. She’d shown panic earlier when his touch had been much less intrusive. He was suddenly worried that after all she’d been through, finding him over her like this would shock her into hysteria.
“Take it—” Her voice was a painful croak. Her eyes held a plea. “Take it off my neck, Quinn. Get it off me.”
The note of hysteria he’d worried about was there, but understandably so. Lifting her cautiously to a sitting position, he pushed aside the swath of sodden chestnut hair that obscured the back of her neck. His mouth was tight with anger as he saw the slipknot that had been fashioned in the yellow nylon. He drew the loose end of the rope through, flinging it as far across the room as he could. To cover his outrage he hoisted her a foot or so to one side, out from under the direct flow from the pipe above.
“Why are we wet? Where did all this water come from?”
She could barely speak, but he knew she needed to. She was distracting herself with non-essentials, trying to keep the horror that she’d just lived through at bay, if only for a few more seconds.
“I broke a pipe to get you down, but that’s not important right now. Do you want the police involved?” He brought his hand to her chin, tipping it up so that her gaze locked on his.
“The police?” She shook her head, violently enough so that wet strands of her hair clung to her cheekbones. “No. I told you before, I—I don’t want them asking questions. I just want to get out of here.”
“I know you do. But what’s happened tonight would make them take you seriously now. If you caught a glimpse of your attacker they could have a sketch-artist—”
“I didn’t see him. All I saw was that—” Her glance darted toward the scrawled message on the mirror and quickly away again. “Then the lights went out and he—and he—”
“Don’t try to talk about it now.” He shot a worried look over his shoulder. “Look, any minute now someone’s going to come through that door. We’d better get moving.”
For the first time she looked down at herself. He was no longer straddling her, but his arm was still around her back, supporting her. He sensed the instant that she finally took in her revealing state and the fact that she was pressed up against a wet male body. Without conscious volition, he glanced down too.
Although he’d tried to cover her up a few minutes ago, the ruined dress no longer could conceal the body beneath it—a body that was all graceful contours and surprisingly ripe curves. Creamy-pale breasts were tipped with a soft wash of pink, that even as he watched deepened to a rose blush. He’d thought of wild strawberries earlier. He was thinking of them now.
And it was a damn good thing he knew how to perform CPR, because he was pretty sure his own heart had just stopped.
“Please—please don’t look at me!”
Her voice, high and thin, was shot with panic. He ripped his gaze away immediately, silently berating himself. He hastened to redeem the situation before it got completely out of hand.
“Here, cover yourself up with this.” She was hunched over, her arms crossed in front of her, and he sat back on his heels, quickly stripping off his T-shirt. The thing was nothing more than a wet rag—an oversized wet rag that would hang down nearly to her knees—but it would hide what she wanted to hide.
Still averting his eyes, he tossed it in her direction.
“Thank you.” Her reply was barely audible. He waited until he figured she’d put it on, and then turned back to her—and once again his heart missed a beat.
He wasn’t going to tell her, but there was a reason why wet T-shirt contests were popular with a certain kind of crowd. She was demonstrating that reason right now, though she seemed unaware that the soaked cotton of his shirt was clinging lovingly to her every curve, and that her nipples were tautly outlined.
“I’m sorry.” Her words were still no more than a whisper. “I know you just saved my life.”
“Forget it. Now that you’re decent, let’s try to slip out of here without attracting too much attention.” He sounded brusquer than he’d intended, and he could also hear that he’d fallen into the broad brogue that he thought he’d grown out of years ago. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “There’s got to be a back exit somewhere around—”
He broke off, disconcerted by the expression on her face. Her lips were slightly parted, and the flush he’d seen lower down on her body had crept up to her cheeks. Her eyes were wide, and so dark that they looked almost a true navy blue. She was looking at him. She was looking at—
He was acutely conscious of the fact that he was naked from the waist up—not shirtless, not unclad, but buck-naked. There was something about the devouring way she was gazing at his chest that made that term the only appropriate one. But for God’s sake, there was nothing shocking about peeling his shirt off, even in front of a woman. This wasn’t the Victorian era.
She looked as if she was about to swoon.
“You’re very…very large,” she said faintly. “I hadn’t realized…” Slowly she brought her hand up. Lightly her fingertips ghosted across the surface of his skin. Between her parted lips Quinn realized that her breathing had shallowed and quickened.
She wasn’t the kind of woman he was used to. When he was on assignment, he found it easy to stay away from the sexual roulette of picking up a partner for the night. If the urge became absolutely unbearable, he resorted to fantasy, and despite what he’d been told as a boy, he hadn’t gone blind yet. But when he was back in Boston, he usually had some kind of short-term, casual relationship going. That was the kind of woman he looked for—someone who wasn’t looking for permanence, who took sex not irresponsibly, but lightly.
This emotionally fragile, sexually repressed woman wasn’t his type. But the hesitant, questing touch of her fingers on his chest was setting his blood on fire like no other female ever had. Worst of all, he doubted that she had any idea of what she was doing to him—but at any moment she’d be bound to. It wasn’t something a man could hide for long, especially in wet khakis that were plastered to his body.
Her glance travelled downward just as he’d feared, paused, and flew up again. Her face had been pink before. Now it blazed with color as her eyes met his.
Then her lashes came down, her head tipped back on her neck, and she moved infinitesimally toward him. Quinn found himself closing the tiny gap between them, found his hand cupping the back of that delicate, seal-wet head and found his own eyes closing like a boy moving into the mystery of his first kiss.
Her lips were cool, and beaded with water. He felt water running from the short ends of his hair, down his face like tears, to join up with the drops he could taste on her. He felt water dripping from her scalp to his hand behind her neck, felt water splashing from the pipe above them, felt it soaking through the fabric of his khakis as he kneeled there.
It wasn’t like kissing a woman. It was like kissing a mermaid.
And then her lips opened beneath his, and there was suddenly no doubt that he was kissing a woman—the essence of woman, distilled and condensed, so unadulterated that he knew that he’d never had anything this real before. He’d never come close to this. He tasted her, felt her taste him, and his grip tightened on the back of her neck, bringing her closer. His other hand came up to her face, and he was certain he felt her sigh softly against his mouth.
Then everything changed. He felt her stiffen, and opened his eyes just in time to see hers fly wide with shock. She pulled away from him, her hand going to her mouth as if to shield it from his.
“No!” She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. “No—I don’t do this. This—this isn’t me!”
She wasn’t playing coy. There was real denial in her eyes, and her face was chalky-white. Quinn suddenly saw himself as he realized she was seeing him—too big, too male, too much tanned, battered hide showing. He felt as if he was looming over her. He knew he only had a split second before the situation spiraled out of control.
“It’s not you,” he agreed, careful not to make any move that she might construe as threatening. His hands hung loosely at his sides. “It was the shock of what you’d just been through. That’s why it happened—it was just a reaction.”
“But you kissed me back!” She was hugging herself, as if she was afraid she would fly apart if she didn’t hold on tight, and his heart turned over.
He’d thought compassion had been burned out of him long ago. It seemed he was wrong. He had no idea what had turned this beautiful, warm woman against her own nature, what had made her shrink from a mere touch, let alone the passion she’d displayed only moments ago. But someone, sometime, had damaged her. It would have been a man. Quinn felt his hands tighten into fists, and it took an effort to relax them.
“I kissed you back,” he admitted. “It won’t happen again. Can you accept that?”
Her gaze searched his face. Slowly the arms she’d wrapped around herself became less rigid, and she nodded, her eyes never leaving his. “I can accept that. I think you’re a man of your word, McGuire.”
There were a few different answers he could have given to that, but Quinn didn’t get the chance. Even as he began to get to his feet, holding out his hand for her to take or not, as she chose, he heard a perfunctory knock and the door behind him burst open.
“Mother of God—what’s been happening in here?” The outburst came from a short man with thinning red hair and astonished blue eyes. The green vest he wore strained over a paunch that probably owed much of its existence to the beer on tap in the bar. Quinn had seen him once or twice during the evening, and had guessed he was the owner of the place.
“I come in here to check that the lights have come on all right, and what do I find but a complete disaster area!” the man sputtered. He looked with appalled confusion around the flooded room, frowning in bewilderment at the lipsticked message on the mirror. “I Know Who You Are? Okay, I’ll bite—who the hell are you?”
The man’s tirade stopped as Quinn rose to his full height. Jane, to his surprise, had taken his hand and had risen with him. She stood beside him, almost, but not quite, touching him, the enormous T-shirt she was wearing making her seem more insubstantial than she was. She was tougher than she looked, he thought abruptly—just like another woman he’d once known.
I surrender, Sister, he thought in wry defeat. It was a losing battle I was fighting from the first, wasn’t it? Very carefully, he put a protective arm around Jane’s sodden shoulders.
“What the hell does it look like?” he growled. “I’m the lady’s bodyguard, of course.”
Chapter Four
“What did you think having a bodyguard meant, for God’s sake? Of course I’m staying overnight—from now on I don’t let you out of my sight, lady.”
“That’s out of the question.” Without looking at the furious man beside her on the porch, Jane opened her purse and took out her keys. “And could you please keep your voice down? Most of the tenants here don’t keep late hours, and I’d prefer them not to hear me arguing on the front steps with a man at this time of night.”
He took the keys from her hand. “Why are you so determined to fight me every step of the way? Didn’t I go along with you back at the bar when you said you didn’t want the police involved, even though it took all the damn charm I had to convince the owner that he didn’t want the publicity?”
“Charm? You blackmailed the man.”
“Yeah, well, that’s my version of charm. No one ever dangled me by my heels over the parapet of Blarney Castle, just so I could kiss a bloody stone. Which key fits this door?”
The house was a converted Victorian, and like the big Irishman towering over her, it had no charm at all. They were standing right beneath the one light that illuminated the front entrance, and with a sinking heart Jane saw a curtain twitch at a ground-floor window.
Quinn was still bare-chested. Even the taxi driver who’d brought them here had stared so the vinegary old lady who’d rented her room to her would certainly have something to talk about if she saw them here.
“It’s the brass one,” she whispered angrily. “You can come in and wait while I change out of your T-shirt, but that’s all.”
“We’ll see about that.” The porch light picked up the glints of pewter in his hair and carved grim shadows around his mouth. He started to insert the key in the lock and then scowled, turning the knob. The door opened. “Top-notch security you’ve got here,” he said briefly, shooting her a glance.
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Harper Allen
RENEGADE HEARTSIf he hadn't received a letter from a dead woman who'd once saved his life, Quinn McGuire wouldn't have agreed to help a frightened Jane Doe to honor his unpaid debt. As her twenty-four-hour protector, this burned-out soldier for hire would go to the wall to save "Jane" from a madman who claimed she'd committed a heinous crime. When their joint investigation uncovered her past, Quinn thought convincing Jane she was innocent of cold-blooded murder would be his greatest challenge–but he was wrong! Finding the courage to love Jane was…
“From now on, I don’t let you out of my sight, lady.”
Quinn stared at her. “And if I think you’ve finally told me the truth I’ll go to the wall for you.”
There was no mistaking the unwavering conviction in Quinn McGuire’s words.
“Why?” Jane whispered. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Because that’s what having a bodyguard means, up to and including dying for you, if that’s what it takes. But you have to be straight with me. What is it you’re hiding?”
Jane gazed at the impassively silent man in front of her.
He’d just said he’d die for her. Even though she couldn’t remember her past life, she knew no one had ever made such a vow to her before. And all he asked in return was her trust. She shook her head, her expression tortured. Would Quinn still go to the wall for her, when he learned her most closely guarded secret?
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Welcome again to another action-packed month of exceptional romantic suspense. We are especially pleased to bring you the first of a trilogy of new books from Rebecca York’s 43 LIGHT STREET series. You’ve loved this author and her stories for years…and—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! The MINE TO KEEP stories kick off this month with The Man from Texas. Danger lurks around every corner for these heroes and heroines, but there’s no threat too great when you have the one you love by your side.
The EDEN’S CHILDREN miniseries by Amanda Stevens continues with The Tempted. A frantic mother will fight the devil himself to find her little girl, but she’ll have to face a more formidable foe first—the child’s secret father.
Adrianne Lee contributes a terrific twin tale to the DOUBLE EXPOSURE promotion. Look for His Only Desire and see what happens when a stalker sees double!
Finally, Harper Allen takes you on a journey of the heart in her powerful two-book miniseries, THE AVENGERS. Guarding Jane Doe is a profound story about a soldier for hire and a woman in desperate need of his services. What they find together is everlasting love the likes of which is rarely—if ever—seen.
So join us once again for a fantastic reading experience.
Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Guarding Jane Doe
Harper Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harper Allen lives in the country in the middle of a hundred acres of maple trees with her husband, Wayne, six cats, four dogs—and a very nervous cockatiel at the bottom of the food chain. For excitement she and Wayne drive to the nearest village and buy jumbo bags of pet food. She believes in love at first sight because it happened to her.
Books by Harper Allen
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
468—THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY
547—TWICE TEMPTED
599—WOMAN MOST WANTED
628—GUARDING JANE DOE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jane Smith—Even if a bodyguard can protect her from a murderer, she fears that no one can save her from her shadowy past.
Quinn McGuire—Soldier for hire and sometime bodyguard, he’s haunted by the ghosts of his past.
Carla Kozlikov and Gary Crowe—Jane’s neighbors—has their friendship with her put them in danger?
Terry Sullivan—He knows Quinn better than anyone—and he’s powerless to help him.
Donny Fitzgerald—The police detective was once Quinn’s friend, but he can’t allow that to interfere with his investigation.
Jennifer Tarranova—Fitzgerald’s partner, she’s almost sure she’s met Jane before…under very different circumstances.
Sister Bertille—The nun saved Quinn’s life once—and it’s time she called in his debt to her.
To Brian Henry.
Contents
Prologue (#udbe0ea96-72cb-541e-a066-b1e50fa4b215)
Chapter One (#u68e1cbee-406a-5bb7-875c-953bc2e4a615)
Chapter Two (#u69fb74a9-0e9d-5102-8b63-a82a9fd71c94)
Chapter Three (#u62658f3a-1659-579c-b352-a8ab7206e706)
Chapter Four (#ud6cff06c-799f-5611-b37d-4947c6d13718)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
If he hadn’t received the letter from the dead woman that day, Quinn McGuire would never have heard of Jane Smith. He’d been about to leave his apartment to make a secure phone call from the pizza joint down the street, and if the man he’d been planning to call had mentioned the right figure, Quinn would have been catching a night flight out of Boston and the country within hours. But just as he’d shrugged into his ancient leather jacket a hesitant knock sounded at his door and a quavery old voice called out his name.
“Mr. McGuire? It’s Agnes Lavery from downstairs. I’ve got some mail for you.”
Quinn knew he hadn’t left anything incriminating lying about—he never did. But even as he unlocked the apartment door and slid back the heavy-duty dead bolts he’d installed himself when he’d moved in here several years ago, he scanned the room behind him with the caution that was second nature to him.
There were a few reasons why he’d stayed alive for thirty-one years, he thought wryly as he noted the innocuous china mug on the kitchen counter and the half-folded morning paper littering the surface of the table against the wall. They were simple reasons, and easy to remember.
Don’t trust anything. Don’t trust anyone. Watch your back.
But a seventy-two-year-old woman probably wasn’t going to pull a fast one on him, he thought. He unfastened the forged-steel security chain and turned off the alarm sensor. Of course, Paddy Doyle must have been thinking something similar in the split second before that crazy rebel assassin opened the large black bag that had been part of his disguise and had pulled out a weapon big enough to blow even a tough and lucky Irishman like Paddy away for good.
Quinn blinked. For the life of him he couldn’t recall what country or what war that had been. All he could remember was Paddy, his chest torn apart and the life leaking out of him on that dusty street, his blue eyes fading as Quinn held him, and that sweet smile that had driven women wild on five continents lifting the corners of his mouth one last time.
“Another wild goose, boyo,” he’d whispered. Blood so dark it seemed black had welled up and mottled his lips as he gasped his last breath. “Look for me flying home with the rest of them, will you?”
And the moral of that story was that luck was a bitch, Quinn thought abruptly. Entirely. As soon as some poor bastard started depending on her, she’d be sure to shaft him. He opened the door and smiled down at the frail old lady standing there.
“You’re a complete saint, Mrs. Lavery, you are.” He allowed a little more brogue than usual to creep into his voice as he held out his hand for the flimsy airmail weight envelope. He shook his head. “With all the gadding about I do for the head office, it’s a real favor for you to let me use your address. That’s the first thing thieves look for—uncollected letters in a mailbox. And how’s Mr. L. today?”
She was inclined to talk, and for fifteen minutes expounded on everything from her grandchildren to the selection of cookies she planned to bake over the next few weeks in preparation for Thanksgiving. Quinn retained the recipe for strawberry powder jelly balls for as long as it took him to gently disengage himself from the garrulous old lady and to close and bolt the door behind her. Then he wiped his mind clean of all extraneous details. He looked down at the envelope in his hand, the mask of affability that he’d worn for his neighbor gone, his jaw rigid.
It was postmarked Belgium, and it had been mailed a week ago. He already knew what it contained, since the handwriting wasn’t the one he’d grown familiar with over the last seven years. His face expressionless, he ripped it open and let it fall to the floor unheeded as he held up the single sheet of lined paper it had enclosed.
“My dear Mr. McGuire…” it began.
Despite himself a ghost of a smile passed across his features. She’d seen him naked a score of times and still she’d never been able to bring herself to use his first name. He read on, the smile fading.
You know what this is, of course. The doctors tell me that what time I have left should be measured in hours, not days. I have said my goodbyes to everyone here so that I can prepare myself in peace for what is to come, and now this last goodbye is to you. But the real reason I am writing you is this: you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.
Startled, Quinn stopped and reread the last line. The writing was scrawled and uneven but it was still recognizable, and he hadn’t made a mistake. What he was holding in his hand was, more or less, an unpaid bill. He continued reading.
When I nursed you back to health all those years ago I expected no repayment, but you insisted that you were in my debt. Since then you have reminded me many times that I only have to name my price and you will gladly pay it. Mr. McGuire, my price is this—I want you to take on an assignment for me. I want you to use those talents and skills that you have employed in wars all over the world, but this time I want you to use them in the role of a protector. You will know when the right case presents itself, and—
Whatever she had intended to add had never been written. Except for a small splatter of ink on the page, the letter ended there. Quinn squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if he was riding out a wave of pain. When he opened them he turned the paper over in his hand and saw that someone had added a postscript.
Mr. McGuire, Sister Bertille was unable to complete this letter to you, but before she slipped into unconsciousness for the last time she asked me to make sure that I sent it to ‘her Quinn,’ as she always called you. I know you held a special place in her heart, and we will all continue with our prayers for your safety and your soul, as we have done since Sister Bertille came to live with us.
It was signed by the Mother Superior of the convent in Belgium where she’d retreated when the cancer had started to spread, he noted numbly. Apparently somewhere in that tiny country was a group of nuns who knew him by his first name—she’d been pretty damn tricky with that formal “Mr. McGuire” business in her letters, Quinn thought—and who now had taken up the burden of saving his soul that Sister Bertille had obviously carried all these years. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
“So who the hell asked you, Sister?” he muttered. His fist tightened around the flimsy piece of paper, crumpling it. “And what kind of an underhanded scam is this for a nun to be running—calling in your markers and then getting up from the game before a man can negotiate the price, dammit?”
She’d been small, wiry and middle-aged when he’d first met her, with thick-lensed glasses held together by a piece of wire that he’d recognized as the discarded firing pin of some light semi-automatic pistol. She’d worn the traditional nun’s black habit of scratchy coarse material, but in that hellhole of a jungle clinic, she had always seemed cool and unruffled. She’d saved his life.
And now she was dead. Quinn rubbed his arm wearily across his eyes and then walked slowly over to the kitchen table. Unclenching his fist, he tried to smooth out the creases that he’d created in the letter. He’d only known her for a few weeks, but she hadn’t let a month go by since then without writing to him. Sometimes he would come back from an assignment and find four or five envelopes waiting for him, and once in a while he’d scrawled a postcard back, just to let her know he was still in the land of the living.
Jack Tanner. Paddy Doyle. The Haskins kid—the one they’d nicknamed Hemingway, because he’d always been writing in his journal. And now Sister Bertille, who in her own way had been as much a soldier as any of them: going wherever she was sent and fighting for the cause she believed in as implacably as they had. He glanced down at the letter once more, his gaze bleak.
“When mercenaries die, Sister, their souls become wild geese. That’s how the legend goes, anyway,” he whispered softly. “And those of us who are left behind go out and get drunk, and sometimes we persuade ourselves that we hear our friends high up in the night sky, flying through the darkness toward home. I owe you that much, Sister. I owe you a drink or two to your memory, and I’ll wish you safe journey to wherever it is that you believe we go when we die. But what you’re asking of me is impossible. This is the only way of life I know.”
Drunk sounded good, Quinn thought. To hell with the phone call he’d been planning on making earlier; there would always be another job. He’d go out to the nearest bar, stay just sober enough to walk out under his own power at last call, and then he’d come back here and finish off the bottle of Bushmills he kept at the back of the cupboard. Sometime during the evening he’d try to call Terry Sullivan and let him know about Sister Bertille, and if Terry hadn’t grown too respectable to be seen with an ex-comrade, he might even join him in the wake of a woman they’d both known and respected.
A protector, for God’s sake. She’d always told him he was a better man than he knew, he thought in irritation, staring at the still-crumpled letter. It seemed that right up to the end she’d been too damned stubborn to discard her naive belief in him.
He turned away and was halfway to the door when his phone rang. Grabbing it up impatiently, the caller’s first words froze him in his tracks.
“Mr. McGuire? Quinn McGuire? I was given your number by someone who knows you.” The soft voice quavered. Then it steadied. “I—I need a bodyguard. I want to hire you to protect me.”
Chapter One
The bar was smoky, the music was loud and apparently Quinn McGuire wasn’t going to show. He was over an hour late already. Avoiding surreptitiously interested glances from the surrounding tables, Jane took a miniscule sip of the orange juice that she’d been nursing since she arrived. The ice-cubes in it had long since melted, but even the watered-down citrus tang did nothing to relieve the tight parched feeling in her throat. What was she doing here anyway? How had it happened that her life had spun so far out of control that she’d been reduced to waiting desperately in this raucous Irish pub for a man she’d never met?
In marked contrast to this unlikely meeting-place, earlier today the reception area of Sullivan Security and Investigations had given the impression of a professional and successfully run organization. She should have realized right from the start that the firm was well out of her price range, she told herself now with a brief flicker of embarrassment. The Irish trio on the small stage at the far end of the room launched into a new song, and all around her enthusiastic voices took up the refrain. Her temples throbbed dully, and she set her drink down on the sticky tabletop. The female operative she’d finally spoken with had been diplomatic enough not to mention an actual dollar amount, but her keen glance obviously hadn’t missed the fact that Jane’s outfit was working-girl attire, and that her jewelry—a pair of gold-toned studs in her ears and a leather-strapped wristwatch—was department store at best.
The woman had advised her to go back to the authorities to alert them to her most recent problems and had outlined a few basic safety precautions that she should take, a shadow of sympathy on her features. Even as Jane was leaving the reception area on her way out, the woman had come after her, a little breathless. She’d thrust a piece of paper into her hand and told her that the name and phone number written on it belonged to a personal friend of Mr. Terrence Sullivan himself, and that Mr. Sullivan had suggested she call Quinn McGuire to sound him out about the possibility of hiring him for a short while.
At the time Jane had felt as if she’d been thrown a lifeline. Even after that disconcerting phone call with Mr. McGuire, she’d still held onto the possibility that somehow he might be able to extricate her from the nightmare her life had become over the past few weeks. The man had been brusquely antagonistic, and the mention of Terrence Sullivan’s name hadn’t seemed to effect any positive change in his attitude. But when she’d finally apologized for taking up his time and had been about to hang up, he’d grudgingly given her the name of a pub, told her to be there at seven and said he’d meet her.
If she’d had any other options at all she would have thanked him politely and told him she’d changed her mind, she thought bleakly. But that was just it—she’d come to the end of the line and this Quinn McGuire had been her last hope. Now she was forced to face the fact that even the dubious possibility of his assistance had faded.
Gathering up her purse from the chair beside her, she started to rise. She should feel angry at the man, she told herself, but somehow during the last couple of weeks even the capacity for anger had been drained out of her, overridden by the numb and ever-present fear that seemed to be the only emotion she had room for anymore.
“Waiting for me, beautiful?”
Startled, she looked up and met a pair of bright blue eyes. With a slight grin the dark-haired man staring down at her set a glass of beer on the table.
“Mr. McGuire?” she ventured, automatically distancing herself from his familiarity. He had the same lilt to his speech that she’d heard over the phone, she thought, but without the antagonistic edge that he’d displayed earlier. For some reason a flash of confused disappointment overlaid the nervousness that was her usual reaction to men who stepped across the invisible but inviolate boundaries she tried to keep around her. He was tall and well-built, with a hint of muscle filling out the shoulders of the light wool sweater he was wearing, but she’d expected something more. Like what? she asked herself. Did you think he was going to be some kind of superman?
“I’m not McGuire, whoever the hell he is,” he said easily. “But any man crazy enough to stand up a lady like you deserves to lose his chance. What are you drinking, sweetheart?”
“Screw off, boyo. Now.”
It hardly seemed possible that such a big man could come up so unobtrusively, but suddenly he was there. As Jane’s accoster turned and saw who’d just spoken, he swallowed visibly. She didn’t blame him.
Silvery-gray eyes stared out of an implacably expressionless face that looked as if it had been carved from teak. In stark contrast, his close-cropped hair seemed to have been bleached to pewter by the same tropical sun that had tanned him so darkly. He was wearing olive-drab chinos, and an olive-drab T-shirt strained over his massive torso. He looked about as solid and unyielding as an oak tree. Even though he hadn’t raised his voice, the tables around them fell silent.
“You’d be McGuire, I’m thinking.” The dark-haired man smiled weakly in a valiant attempt to retain some of his previous jaunty charm.
“You don’t have to know my name. You don’t have to do anything but walk away.” The softly spoken words were uninflected and matter-of-fact, but at them the other man swallowed again.
“Sure. No problem, entirely.” Not even meeting Jane’s wide-eyed gaze, he edged hastily away, halting nervously as the other man spoke again.
“Your beer, boyo. Don’t rush off without it, now.” The big man handed his glass to him and, without looking to see if he’d left, sat down across from her.
“Quinn McGuire. Sorry I’m late.” He crossed muscular forearms on the table and met her eyes with no hint of apology in his as he made the terse introduction. “I had some business to attend to.”
Besides the slight brogue, there was the faintest hint of a slur to his speech. Jane stared at him, taking in the other signs that had escaped her notice until now. His economy of movement appeared to be an integral part of him, but there was an additional stillness about his attitude that gave the impression of a man who was trying very carefully to stay focused. Those pale silver eyes, veiled by startlingly dark lashes, seemed to be looking through her and past her. For a moment, she had the disconcerting feeling that either he or she was a ghost.
But that was stupid. It was obvious what his problem was.
“Are you drunk, Mr. McGuire?” she asked incredulously.
“Not enough.” As he spoke, a waitress came up to their table and set a squat glass of some dark amber liquid down in front of him. He handed her a bill, waving away the change. “Don’t let me run dry tonight, Molly,” he said, nodding at the glass. “And it looks like the lady’s drinking screwdrivers. Bring her another, would you?”
“It’s plain orange juice, and I’m fine,” Jane said tersely. She waited until the young woman had moved out of earshot. “Is this the business you had to attend to, Mr. McGuire? Did I take you away from an important appointment with a bottle of rye?”
He gave her a pained glance, the mild expression of disgust looking out of place on those otherwise hard features. “Rye? I’d pour it on a wound if I didn’t have anything else handy, but I’d never drink the stuff. No, darlin’, it was good Irish whiskey. But enough of this small talk. You said Terry gave you my name?”
“He must have made a mistake. It’s obvious you’re not interested.” For the second time in a few minutes, she reached for her purse and stood. “I’m sorry I took you away from your more pressing engagements, Mr. McGuire.”
Despite herself, her voice trembled on the last few words. It was the exhaustion, she thought. It was the fact that she hadn’t had a normal night’s sleep for weeks, and that for days now she’d been living on her nerves, waiting for the next incident. She had no more resources left to draw upon, no more strength. Tonight had utterly defeated her.
She’d pinned all her hopes on this encounter, and the man had shown up drunk.
“My name’s Quinn. Sit down.” There was a harsh edge to his tone, but she’d had enough. The look she gave him was steadily assessing and at it, something flickered at the back of those gray eyes.
For a moment she’d thought she’d seen contrition, Jane thought. More likely it had been relief.
“I’ll never know you well enough to be on a first-name basis with you, Mr. McGuire. I doubt that many people are.” With an effort, she fought back the telltale trembling that had started up again. “I also doubt that you care. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—”
“Stop calling me that.” Like a snake striking, one large hand shot out and wrapped itself around her wrist. His grip was firm but even as she reflexively pulled away from him he let her go. His gaze met hers opaquely. “It’s a bad night to be stirring up old memories. Call me Quinn. And please—sit down.”
She didn’t move. She wouldn’t let herself look down at the wrist he’d grasped and released so swiftly, for fear of letting him see how badly he’d rattled her. “Quinn, then. But the rest still stands. I asked you here because I was told that you might be able to help me, and you seem to have slotted me in between bouts of partying.” Even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and high, and she took a deep breath, willing her tone down to a more normal register. “You made it clear earlier that you weren’t really interested in this meeting, so don’t feel you have to go through the motions now just to oblige me. You don’t owe me anything.”
She smiled tightly at him, holding on to the last of her composure, and turned to leave. Behind her she heard him speak.
“Dammit, Sister. You’ve got absolutely no intention of letting me go to hell in my own way, have you?” His words were quietly bitter and Jane looked back at him, startled. She almost expected to see someone else at the table with him, his voice had been pitched so low, but it was her eyes that Quinn McGuire met. “You’re wrong, lady. I owe you, all right. I’m guessing one of my old debts just got transferred.”
“I don’t understand.” She hesitated. For the first time, he seemed to be looking at her as if he was really seeing her, and his scrutiny caught her off-balance. She flushed a little, wishing suddenly that she presented a more pre-possessing sight—and that desire itself was totally unlike her.
She knew she wasn’t the type to turn heads. There just wasn’t anything so special about her, which made what had been happening to her that much harder to understand. Her hair was about as ordinary a brown as it could get. Her eyes were standard-issue blue. She weighed less than she had a few weeks ago, but she had an average figure for her average height. Her skin, a warm ivory tone, was her best feature, and her mouth was a little wider than she thought attractive.
Men didn’t usually look twice at her. She wanted to keep it that way.
“The Star of the County Down,” Quinn murmured, confusing her further. “Irishmen write songs about women like you.” The pewter eyes darkened and then cleared. “I wasn’t at a party tonight. I was holding a private wake for a friend.”
An explanation was the last thing she’d expected from him, and that particular explanation disarmed her completely. Jane caught her breath in swift compassion. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled with the strap of her purse awkwardly, knowing how inadequate her response sounded. “I—I had no idea. You must want to be alone—”
“I want you to sit down, but I’m damned if I know how to get you to do it.” Under the T-shirt the massive shoulders lifted slightly, as if he was attempting to shrug off the burden of his earlier mood. One corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “Why don’t we start all over again?”
Maybe she was projecting her own feelings onto him, Jane thought slowly, but behind the easy manner she could have sworn there was an edge of desolation in that incongruously soft voice. Still holding his gaze and clutching the strap of her purse, she lowered herself cautiously back onto the chair, her posture rigid as she tried to keep as much distance between them as possible.
“I called Sullivan after I spoke with you this afternoon,” Quinn said, frowning slightly. “He said you think someone’s watching you. He told me there’ve been some incidents—and that these incidents have been escalating.”
“Escalating?” A jagged little bubble of laughter escaped her. “That’s one way to put it. Except when I told the police about this, they said the situation hadn’t escalated to the point where they could justify an investigation. When they can spare the manpower they send a patrol car cruising by my apartment, but I’m still walking around alive and unharmed, which means that my case isn’t high priority—yet.”
“So whoever’s targeting you is still at the skirmishing stage,” Quinn continued. “He hasn’t officially declared all-out war. He must have some kind of battle plan that he intends to follow.”
Her head jerked up, her features pinched “Skirmishing? Battle plan? We’re not playing soldiers here.”
He stared at her impassively, seemingly unfazed by her outburst. Smoke-filtered light from the bar beside them gleamed palely on his hair, and his eyes, silvery and reflective, betrayed no hint of his inner thoughts.
“What exactly have you been told about me?” he asked.
“Just that you were a friend of Terrence Sullivan,” she answered, taken aback. “I went to Sullivan Investigations to hire someone to find out why I’m being stalked—and to keep me alive in the meantime. I—I assumed that’s what you did.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m wrong, aren’t I? Just what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a professional soldier,” he said shortly.
She frowned. “You’re in the military? Are you on leave right now?”
“I put in my time for Uncle Sam.” In the first extraneous gesture she’d seen him make, Quinn raked back a short strand of sun-bleached hair. “Now I choose my own wars, Ms. Smith.”
“You’re a—a mercenary?”
Dear God, she thought. She’d expected an ex-cop, or maybe a private eye who could hold his own in a physical confrontation, and instead she’d gotten some kind of hired gun. He was a soldier of fortune, for heaven’s sake!
“I told you—I’m a professional soldier. It’s what I was trained for.” He picked up his glass and drained most of it, setting it back down on the table with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t work for just anyone, and I never take on an assignment that could conflict with my loyalties as a citizen of this country. But there’s always trouble somewhere in the world. Right now it appears that someone’s waging war against you.”
She stared at him, her thoughts chaotic. Quinn had just voiced the feeling she’d had for weeks now. She had felt like some unknown person had declared war on her—a very private, very personal war, but war nonetheless. And from the start she’d had the conviction that her enemy wasn’t interested in taking prisoners.
With Quinn McGuire on her side there was a possibility that she might be able to turn the tide of this one-sided battle, Jane thought slowly. But before they came to any definite arrangement he had to know just what she was up against.
As a soldier, he would want as much information as he could about both his enemy—and his ally. How was she supposed to tell him that her adversary wasn’t the only participant in this war whom she knew nothing about?
“You said earlier that tonight was a bad night for stirring up old memories, McGuire.” Her voice was barely above a murmur, but his eyes narrowed in response. She went on, knowing that she was picking her way through a minefield. “You sound like a man who’s got too many of them.”
“Everybody’s got something they wish they could forget,” Quinn said harshly. His eyes seemed almost silvery. “Everyone’s got a few too many memories.”
“Not me.” Jane stared back at him, her own eyes shadowed. “I don’t know anything about my life up until the time when I came to in a hospital bed eleven weeks ago—not even what my real name is or where I come from or if I have a family.”
Her voice cracked. She fought to keep it under control. “And the only person who can fill in the blanks for me is my stalker.”
Chapter Two
Quinn shook his head. “You can’t remember a thing about your life. That’s quite a trick. Could you teach me, do you think?”
His tone was tinged with admiration. She stared at him. “It’s called amnesia,” she said shortly. “It’s not a trick, it’s a medical condition. When I came to in hospital I was told I’d been hit by a car. I had head trauma.”
“Head trauma, was it?” His attitude wasn’t exactly mocking, but there was something off-kilter about the way he was responding. He shoved his glass to one side, his elbow on the table. “What happened next? When did you first figure out this fella was followin’ you?”
His accent had thickened, and again the impulse to get up and leave crossed her mind. But even drunk, the man’s very appearance would provide some protection. He was physically intimidating just sitting there, half-slumped across the table.
“It was a few days after I left the—” She drew in a sharp breath. Looking down at the strong tanned fingers that rested idly on her forearm, she forced her voice to remain even. “We’re not on a date, Mr. McGuire. Please remove your hand.”
“It’s Quinn, as I told you before. And the hand stays. It’s for your own good.”
“What do you mean, for my own good?” Her jaw was so tight she could hardly get the question out.
“I keep a low profile, but who I am and what I do isn’t a complete secret to those in the business,” he said softly. His thumb moved up the length of her forearm in an unobtrusive stroking motion. Her fingertips curled against the smooth surface of the table. “Our conversation was beginning to look too much like what it was—a business negotiation. And there just might be a curious soul or two around who would find it interesting to question you later, to find out what new project I’m considering.” He smiled. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Let’s throw them a bone to keep them satisfied, and try to blend in with the other couples in the room.”
“Pretend this isn’t—this isn’t business? If you think it’s necessary, I’ll play along, but not to this extent. Being touched—” Her gaze slid away from his. “Being touched makes me nervous. I don’t like it.”
“I’m not about to start groping down the front of your dress, lady.” The thumb that had been stroking her forearm stilled. “We’re making the barest of human contact.”
“I still don’t like it.” Her voice was firmer this time, she noted with shaky relief. “Please let me go.”
This last request was unnecessary. Already he’d released her, but although there was now a space of a few inches between her arm and his hand, her flesh still retained the heat of his touch.
“I’ve gotten the message—there’s a no-man’s-land around you and I won’t be trespassing again. Let’s hear your story.”
His soft voice was as emotionless as if he were asking her for the time of day, and suddenly Jane knew she’d made a mistake. There’d been no need to fear any blurring of the barriers between herself and this man. Even if she’d involuntarily let her own down, they were nothing compared to the wall that she belatedly perceived around him.
For reasons she didn’t understand, there was a part of her deep inside that was frozen. But Quinn McGuire was ice through and through—glacial ice. He wasn’t like other men. She had nothing to fear from him in that respect.
Except it wasn’t him you were afraid of a moment ago, was it? a small voice in her head asked. It was yourself—and the way you felt when he touched you.
She sat up straighter. “Three days after I was released from the hospital I found work with a cleaning company.” Her shrug was a taut lifting of her shoulders. “It was all I could get. I was a non-person, officially at least, but the rest of the night cleaning crew were in the same situation as I was—no papers, no legal status.”
“Already this doesn’t make sense,” he said carelessly. “Tell me this—why didn’t the doctors contact the authorities when they learned you were suffering from amnesia? Why didn’t they run a check with missing persons?” He lifted his glass and looked at her through the golden liquid, as if he were examining her through a microscope. “You’ll have to shore up the gaps in your fairy tale, darlin’. It’s still a little shaky.”
“You think I’m lying? Why, in heaven’s name? What would I have to gain?”
“Like I said, what I do for a living isn’t a total secret to certain people.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “A couple of years ago a woman tried to spin me a story about needing her husband eliminated. I found out she was a reporter hoping to do an exposé on murder-for-hire.”
“I’m not a reporter—” Jane began, but he didn’t let her finish.
“I’ve had the odd head wound myself, angel. I’ve seen men who’ve totally forgotten their names, what country they were in, what year it was. But they all regained their memories within a day or two.”
“I know it’s rare.” She pushed a stray strand of hair away from her face distractedly. “I’ve gone to the library and read everything I could on it. But it happens. It happened to me, whether you believe it or not.”
“The rest of it doesn’t hang together either.” Folding his arms on the table, he lowered his voice. “Here’s how it would have happened in real life…. The police would have written up a description of you and gone back to the station to file a report. From then on it would be a matter of matching you up with someone who’d been listed as a missing person.” He shook his head. “What wouldn’t happen is that a woman in your supposed condition could just be discharged without any question. You’ve lost your audience, darlin’. Go home.”
“They were going to contact the police. When I learned that I ran.” Jane looked away. “I didn’t even know why I was running. All I knew was that I didn’t want to talk to anybody about who I could be or where I might have come from. I just wanted to be left in peace. But that didn’t happen.”
The broad shoulders shifted slightly, as if he was restless and getting ready to leave. “I could ask you where a penniless woman found the change for the phone calls to prospective employers. I could ask how you got bus fare those first few days. For God’s sake—I could ask what the hell you were wearing while you trudged around the city looking for work—you said you’d been in an accident, so presumably your clothes were a write-off.”
“And I’d tell you. But you don’t want to hear it.” Slowly she shook her head at him, her eyes never leaving his. “Soldiering is what you do, McGuire, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you seem to be at war right now. What I haven’t figured out is who you’re supposed to be fighting…because it can’t be me. You haven’t let yourself learn enough about me to count me as an enemy.”
“That’s right, I haven’t.” A muscle at the side of his jaw might have moved, but it was hard to tell. The rest of his face remained immobile. “And you know just as little about me, but you keep making these off-the-cuff assessments. Why don’t you finish this last one? If I’m not at war with you, who the hell is this mysterious enemy I’m supposed to be fighting?”
A moment ago she wouldn’t have had an answer for him. But at the unnecessary harshness of his tone, it was suddenly clear what her only response could be.
“No mystery, Mr. McGuire,” she said softly. “It’s you. For some reason you’re at war with yourself.”
“That’s crazy.” His answer was as immediate as a burst of gunfire. Then he took a deep breath. “When I take up arms, darlin’, I’m facing a real foe, not some unresolved Freudian conflict with my inner child.” His shrug was mocking. “Sorry to blow your theory out of the water, but I’m a simple man. What you see is what you get. Sure, I’ve made some mistakes in the past, but in my business you can’t afford to lose your focus. Believe me, I don’t waste a whole lot of time in soul-searching.”
“Then why did you bring up the subject of past mistakes, McGuire? I didn’t say anything about that.” She searched his features curiously. “I don’t think what you see is what you get with you at all. I think there’s a very different man underneath that hard exterior—maybe a better man than you realize. Maybe he’s the man you’re at war with.”
Quinn stared at her—but not the flat, angry stare he’d directed at her earlier. With a start Jane saw raw pain film his eyes, before all expression was quickly veiled as the thick dark lashes came down. As if he had a headache, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.
“Dammit, Sister, if I’d known you’d turn out to be this persistent, I would have told you to let me die the first time we met. Is it an emissary you’re sending me now instead of letters?”
His words had been barely audible, but she caught the gist of them. They didn’t make any sense, she thought, confused. “I may not know who I am, McGuire, but one thing I’m sure of is that I’m not your sister. You’ve got me mistaken with someone else.”
He opened his eyes, his gaze meeting hers. “That must be what I’m doing, darlin’,” he said heavily. “But when you quote her almost verbatim, you can’t blame a man for feeling a little beleaguered.” He saw her lack of comprehension. “Just someone I knew once. She’s dead.”
She still didn’t understand what he was talking about, but what did it matter now? she thought in defeat. She hadn’t convinced him to help her, and when she left this place she’d be walking out alone into the night. He’d made up his mind about her. Nothing she’d come up with had persuaded him to change it.
Maybe only his own words could, she thought with sudden hope.
“I’m your unpaid bill, Mr. McGuire,” she said, taking a shot in the dark. “I’m the debt you referred to earlier—the debt that got transferred. She saved your life, didn’t she?”
Jane was just piecing together fragments of his own incomprehensible remarks, not even knowing if they would make any sense to him, but Quinn’s reaction told her that one of those fragments had found its mark. His head jerked up, the pale gaze a little out of focus, and when he spoke his voice was low and strained.
“Dammit, yes—you saved my life. I never denied it, and I never tried to get out of repaying you, Sister. But now you’re trying to save my soul—and to do that, you want me to turn my back on the rest of them. I’m telling you once and for all I can’t do it!”
Jane felt as if she’d just pulled the pin on a grenade and had it blow up in her face. She scrambled to bring some semblance of normality back to this suddenly chilling conversation.
“She’s dead, Quinn. Whoever she was, she’s dead and gone.” Needing only to assuage the naked pain that etched his features, she placed her hand lightly on his clenched fist. “I’m not her, and I’m not her emissary. And whatever debt you feel you owed her, she sounds like the kind of woman who wouldn’t ask more of you than you could pay. I should go now.” Her eyes sought his. “I should have gone before I reminded you of all this. I’m sorry.”
Slowly his hand relaxed. He looked down at it, and at hers, pale against his own tanned skin. “I’ve just come off a bad assignment,” he said softly. “The way things have been going lately, I’m sure the next one will be much the same. I know you’re not her, darlin’. I’m not that far gone. Chalk it up to a slip of the tongue, will you?”
It hadn’t been, she knew. For a moment he hadn’t been seeing her in the seat opposite him, but a ghost—a ghost who, for reasons she’d never know, had some kind of loving hold over him.
“You’re touching me.” His low comment interrupted her thoughts. “I thought you said you didn’t do that.”
“I don’t.” With a jerk she drew her hand back, flustered. “I mean—I didn’t know…I didn’t realize I’d—”
“It’s okay, I won’t report you this time.”
He was actually smiling, she saw with a slight shock. The expression took some of the harshness from his features, and all of a sudden she realized that he was a devastatingly good-looking man. Trust Quinn McGuire, she thought shakily, to keep the most dangerous weapon in his arsenal concealed until he really needed it. With an effort, she brought her attention back to what he was saying.
“The police are right. If a stalker’s determined enough, sooner or later he’s going to accomplish what he sets out to do—unless he loses your trail or someone puts him out of action permanently. And that’s illegal. They call it murder,” he added dryly. “But tell me what’s been happening to you, and I’ll see if I can come up with any kind of strategy.”
At his words, she almost sagged with relief. She was well aware that just making that concession went against the man’s ingrained wariness. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and he was still making no promises. But his cautious acceptance of her was a start. She had a ghost to thank for that, she thought.
“I couldn’t sleep at night in the hospital. At first it was just because of the—the pain. But my physical injuries weren’t that bad, and after a few days that wasn’t what was keeping me up.” She swallowed. “I’d lied to the doctors. I’d given them a false name, the most common one I could think of, and told them I was a street person so they wouldn’t ask me too many questions. But I knew they didn’t really believe me.”
“Why did you lie right from the start? If you knew your memory was a blank, wouldn’t you have wanted them to investigate?” Quinn was still playing devil’s advocate, but this time with no edge to his voice.
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t an adequate answer, but it was the only one she had to give him. “I realize how crazy it sounds, but as soon as I regained consciousness and found that I couldn’t remember a single thing about myself, I felt like—” She stopped, her eyes squeezing shut for a second. Opening them, she took a deep breath and went on, feeling his gaze on her. “I felt like I’d been given a second chance. I didn’t want to know who I’d been before. I just wanted to slip into this new, empty life and start fresh.”
“That doesn’t sound so crazy.” His expression was unreadable. “Go on.”
She looked at him. “Anyway, at night the cleaning crew would come through the wards. One of them was an older woman—Olga Kozlikov. She would stop by my bed and talk to me sometimes, when the nurse on duty wasn’t watching. She said she was Russian, and had come here to make a new life for herself.”
“So you had a common bond.” He raised his glass and drained it. “Two refugees, right?”
Jane was startled into an unwilling smile. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but you’re right. One night I told her a little about my situation, and she seemed to understand how I felt. She said she’d lived for so long fearing the authorities under the old regime in Russia that she herself still didn’t trust the police, even though she knew it was very different here in America. She told me she’d help me.”
“So she set you up with some clothes and some money and helped you find a job?”
She nodded. “Three or four days after I was admitted, the doctor who’d been monitoring me suggested it might be a good thing if I talked to the police about the accident. That scared me, because there really wasn’t much to tell—a dozen witnesses had given statements saying that I’d run right out into the road, and there’d been no way that the woman who’d hit me was responsible. And although no one knew that I had complete amnesia, I’d told them I had no recollection at all of the accident.”
“And that’s true? You don’t remember it?” He gave her a searching look. “Whatever you’ve told anyone else, it’s important that you don’t lie to me, do you understand? If I think you are, then this meeting’s over.”
“I haven’t lied to you.” She sighed. “I’ve just left something out. When I was brought into emergency, apparently I was as high as a kite. They couldn’t give me any medication for twenty-four hours, because my system was full of drugs already. For the next couple of days I went through withdrawal—not as bad as if I’d been a longtime user, but bad enough.”
“What had you been on? Did the doctors tell you?”
“They rattled off some pharmaceutical names at me, but as far as I was concerned they could have been talking another language. I didn’t know what they were. But since I walked out of the hospital I swear I haven’t taken so much as an aspirin, Quinn. Whoever I used to be, the person I am now doesn’t take drugs.”
Unwaveringly, her eyes met his, and finally he gave a curt nod. “I believe you. If you were a junkie you’d be out trying to score, not sitting here talking to me.”
“And if I were an addict, then no one could help me but myself. But drugs aren’t my problem, and I don’t think I can handle this on my own anymore.” She felt the prickle of tears behind her eyelids, and forced them to remain where they were. “The night before the police were supposed to come and talk to me, I just walked out of the hospital. Olga had arranged for me to be hired on by the same firm she worked for, with a crew that cleaned an office building downtown, and at first everything was fine. Olga’s niece Carla was a nurse at the same hospital, and Olga persuaded her to help me get a small apartment in the rooming-house where she lived. I had a home, I had a job, and the new life I’d wanted was beginning to become a reality. Then he left the first sign for me to find.”
“What do you mean, the first sign?” Quinn frowned.
“Just that.” She clasped her hands tightly together on the table. “I was teamed up with another woman and we cleaned the same area each night. Everyone worked in teams of two or three, and the area that Martine and I cleaned was a secretarial pool. On my third night there, we walked in and all the computers were on. All the monitors displayed a single line of type, sized large enough so that I could see it from the doorway, and they all said the same thing—I Know Who You Are.”
“That was it?” Across from her he raised his eyebrows. “For God’s sake, woman, it was probably a prank directed at someone who worked there.”
“I told myself that.” Stung, she glared at him. “My first reaction was that it was meant for me, because it seemed to fit my situation, but then I realized just how ridiculous that was. Martine and I cleaned the office, finished the rest of our area, and went back to the company depot with the rest of the workers like usual. I always took the same bus home every night and got off at a stop only a few steps away from my place. Except when I got off at my stop that night I saw that the bus shelter had been papered over with flyers. They were bright yellow, and in big black letters was—was—”
This time she couldn’t control the shaking. Her head bent, she didn’t see the waitress pause by their table, but when Quinn pushed the full glass across to her she looked up.
“Drink.” His tone brooked no argument, but she shook her head at him anyway.
“I don’t—”
“I said drink.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “It’ll help.”
Reluctantly she raised the glass to her lips, opening her mouth just enough for a trickle of the amber liquid to pass down her throat. But even that miniscule amount was enough to distract her, at least temporarily.
“It’s awful,” she sputtered.
“It’s not awful, you heathen, it’s good Irish whiskey. Look at your hand now—steady as a damn rock.”
She had stopped shaking, Jane saw. But she was only at the beginning, and there was much more to come. If she took a drink each time the tremors started she’d have to be carried out by the time she finished telling him everything.
Quinn took up where she’d left off. “The flyers had the same message as what was on the computer monitors?”
Jane nodded. “It was raining a little, and at first I didn’t look up. When I did the bus was just pulling away, and it felt like those garish yellow posters were screaming at me, each one saying the same thing. I was sure that whoever had put them there was somewhere close by, watching me, and I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was inside my apartment.” She grimaced. “Not very brave of me, was it?”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. That’d be enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.” He pronounced his e’s to sound more like a’s, and despite herself she smiled faintly at hearing such a quaint turn of phrase coming from a man as tough and hard-bitten as McGuire. Her smile faded as she continued.
“That was nine weeks ago. Since then the messages have come every few days, and always in a different way.”
“Like how?” He reached for his drink, forgotten at her elbow, and took a thoughtful sip.
“Like being whitewashed on the inside of the window of an abandoned store that I pass on Sundays. Like being written on a scrap of paper and tucked into the serviette I took from a dispenser in the coffee shop I frequent before work—I still can’t figure out how he managed that one.”
“He knows your routine. He probably knows which table you usually choose to sit at, and the approximate time you’d show up, if you were going to be there at all that night. If you’d checked, you probably would have found the first half-dozen or so serviettes had been tampered with, just to make sure one of them got to you.” Quinn rubbed his jaw. “Of course, whoever’s doing this could be a woman. What else?”
“More of the same until this week. It’s getting worse—that’s why I eventually went to the police.” She looked away, her gaze fixed on nothing. “Three nights ago Martine and I were taking bags of garbage to the service elevator. I was coming down the corridor and I could see Martine at the elevator, throwing her bags in. Then it looked as if she fell forward into the elevator, and the doors closed.”
Her eyes closed briefly and then opened again. “Serge, our supervisor, and another man took the regular elevator down to the basement, because that was where the service elevator was preset to go when the cleaning staff was working. I stayed where I was, waiting for them to come back. I thought Martine had had a fainting spell or something, and I was out of my mind with worry for her. Then I saw the indicator light above the service elevator show that it was beginning to climb again, and I assumed that Serge and Julio had found her and were bringing her up in it. But when the doors opened, Martine was in there alone, and she was screaming.”
Nothing, not whiskey, not the fact that she was in a crowded room with people all around her, not even Quinn McGuire’s reassuringly broad-shouldered presence across from her could stop the shaking now. The coldness of remembered terror seeped through her.
“She was hysterical. Someone had pulled her into the elevator and then the lights had gone off and the doors had closed. She’d felt a knife at her throat, and her attacker warned her to keep quiet or he’d kill her. Just before they reached the basement, he whispered in her ear that he had a message he wanted her to pass on—to me.”
“The same message you’d been getting all along?” Quinn sounded grim.
“I Know Who You Are,” Jane agreed dully. “But this time there was an addition. The message Martine gave me was two sentences.”
“What was the second one?”
Her stricken gaze met his. “And I Know What You Did.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “How the hell could the police ignore you after that, dammit? What did they say when they came?”
“They weren’t called. The incident wasn’t reported.” At his incredulous expression she leaned forward, her words coming out in a rush. “I told you—the people I worked with weren’t about to draw attention to themselves. I’m pretty sure Martine was an illegal immigrant, and when I told her I was going to call the police, she said she would deny everything. The rest of the crew backed her up. They all liked me, but not enough to risk being deported. And not enough to continue working with me, either,” she finished hopelessly. “I was fired that night.”
Quinn grimaced. “Sooner or later your stalker’s going to stop playing around.”
“Playing? You call what he’s done so far playing?” Shocked, she stared at him. “He’s turned my life into a nightmare! He obviously knows everything I do, everywhere I go, and he’s either right behind me or just one step ahead of me, day and night!”
“That being true, he could have killed you by now,” he said brutally. “But he hasn’t. That’s why I say he’s just playing with you.”
“If driving me slowly out of my mind is playing, then yes, I suppose you’re right, McGuire.” She could feel the tears spilling over, and she knew that people nearby were looking at her, but she was past caring. “But you’re forgetting one vital component in his game plan—he knows who I really am. That gives him a weapon to use against me, and I can’t fight back!”
“Sure you can. You’ve got the same information he has, only you won’t admit it.” He crossed his arms, the short sleeves of the T-shirt he was wearing straining over his biceps. “I could agree to take on the job of keeping you safe, and while I was by your side, you would be. But as soon as I left, you’d be in danger again. The only person who can find out who your stalker is and why he’s targeting you is yourself. And for some reason you don’t want to do that.”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I can’t do that. My memory’s a blank!” She was shaking again, Jane noted with a detached part of her mind. But this time it was from anger.
“It’s a blank because you want it to be a blank.” Those pale eyes met hers emotionlessly. “I told you, true amnesia’s so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Besides, if you really wanted to find out who you were and why someone wants to harm you, you’d tell the police the truth and let them investigate you—and you haven’t, have you?”
“No.” She looked down at her hands. “No, you’re right. I haven’t told them the truth. I haven’t asked them if I match the descriptions of any missing women, and I don’t intend to.”
“Then your stalker will just bide his time until you’re unprotected again.” He shook his head. “The best advice I can give you is to disappear into yet another life, lady. I can help you get out of town without being followed, but that’s all I can do for you, since you’re so determined not to help yourself.”
He was turning her down. After everything she’d told him—and except for the amnesia, he hadn’t seemed to doubt her story—he was turning her down. She couldn’t believe it. She said the first foolish thing that came into her head.
“Is it the money? I don’t have much, but Serge gave me a couple of weeks termination pay so I’d keep quiet about what—”
“It’s not the money.”
“But you’re not on an assignment right now.” She heard a shrill edge to her voice, and attempted a more reasonable tone. “If you’re between jobs, why can’t you take this on?”
“I’m only between jobs because I took your phone call today, instead of making one of my own.” He shrugged. “If you’d called half an hour later, I doubt that we’d ever have met. If you call again tomorrow, I won’t be there to answer.”
“You’re going off to fight another war,” she said slowly. “I guess I should have known mine would be too insignificant to interest you. My little war doesn’t have the elements you’re looking for.”
“And just what the hell is that cryptic comment supposed to mean?” His gaze had been idly glancing around for the waitress. Now it sharpened.
“You seem to think I’m not willing to put up a fight, McGuire—that some part of me is willing to die. I think you’re putting your own motives onto me.” She felt for her purse, her movements jerky and awkward. “You’re the one who keeps letting yourself be led to the slaughter. Every time you walk away alive there’s a little twinge of disappointment in you, isn’t there?”
“I go into an assignment aiming to walk out alive. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His stare was flat, his posture rigidly tense. He raked a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Dammit, I’m not the one who hated my life so much that I sealed it up in a box and buried it six feet under.”
“Even if your theory’s right, at least I want to hold onto some kind of existence. That’s the difference between us.” Getting out of her seat, she stood, looking down at the man she’d hoped would be her salvation. “You won’t admit it, but that’s the reason behind every choice you make. I want to live, but deep down, you want to die. Did she realize that, too—that sister of yours who won’t leave you alone?”
“You just crossed the line, darlin’. Back off.”
He’d half-risen, and with the difference in their heights, that brought his gaze on a level with hers. His face was inches from hers, and even at that moment Jane felt her focus slipping away. His eyes were like crystal, she thought, her breath catching in her throat. Everything else about the man was harshly masculine, but those mesmerizing eyes and those thick, sooty lashes belonged on the parfit gentil knight she’d wanted him to be.
It was one more reason not to believe in fairy tales. She drew back, suddenly uncomfortable at his nearness.
“Have a nice war, Mr. McGuire,” she said coldly. “I doubt that our paths will ever cross again.”
For one long last moment their gazes remained locked, his still brilliant with anger, and hers, she knew, showing nothing at all. She’d tried, Jane told herself tiredly. She’d tried, and failed. Now her Pandora’s box of troubles had lost its only saving grace. All of a sudden she knew that the tears that had been threatening all night were about to burst forth in a humiliating flood.
“Let me get you out of town, at least,” Quinn began. His anger had faded as completely as hers had, and there was a rough sympathy in his voice.
“I’ll arrange something myself.” She shook her head furiously, wanting only to get away before she dissolved right in front of this man and a whole roomful of strangers, most of whom were already casting interested glances her way. “You’re right, it probably is the best option. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—” She saw a tiny muscle tighten at the corner of his mouth, and changed what she’d been about to say. “Goodbye, Quinn.”
Even before his name had left her lips she’d turned abruptly on her heel. The next second she was blindly making her way through the crowded tables toward the back of the room where the washrooms were, both hands clenched around the strap of her shoulder bag, her face averted.
If she was lucky—and God knew she deserved some small scrap of luck tonight—there would be no one in the ladies’ room. She would lock herself in a cubicle and cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she would get up, splash cold water on her face, and leave—preferably without running into Quinn McGuire.
She’d only known the man for an hour or so. For most of that time they’d been antagonists. If he was right, and she could wipe her memory at will, then it should be easy for her to forget that moment when his hand had touched her arm and his thumb had stroked her skin.
But Quinn’s theory was wrong. And she had a feeling she’d be proving it wrong for a long, long time to come.
Chapter Three
She’d been about to cry. No, Quinn corrected himself, she’d already started to cry by the time she’d spun around and taken off from him in that clumsy half-walk, half-run that had nearly cannoned her into a handful of bar patrons and at least one waitress before she’d disappeared into the washrooms. He’d seen the tears shimmering at the corners of those dark blue eyes, and they’d made him feel like a dog.
He’d done the right thing, there was no doubt about that. “No doubt at all, McGuire,” he murmured under his breath. “Someone had to make her face facts.” He downed the last of the whiskey in his glass, and wondered if he was drinking out of the same side as she had. She hadn’t been wearing lipstick—as far as a mere male could tell, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup at all on that poreless, creamy-pale skin—so there was no way of knowing what part of the rim her lips had touched. But he thought he could taste her.
He drew himself up sharply. He’d been heading for drunk tonight. Obviously he’d achieved his goal, if he was sitting here trying to persuade himself that under the smoky, peaty flavor of Bushmills he could discern a hint of crushed strawberries. But that would be what she’d taste like, he thought unwillingly. Like the wild strawberries he could just barely remember picking when he’d been a boy—the small, sweet ones that had looked like tiny jewels against the green, green grass.
The woman had stirred up far too many memories, he thought abruptly. He needed another drink.
Like magic, his waitress appeared, her smile a little harried as she set down a new glass, but then turning to a puzzled frown as Quinn stopped her from taking the empty one away.
“Humor me, Molly. Leave the glass here, and take this.” He dropped a thick wad of bills on the round cork-topped tray she carried. “That should cover the tab I’ve been running. The rest is for you.”
This time her smile was real. He’d made one woman happy tonight, he thought ruefully, as he lifted his glass and stared into the golden liquid. He’d made one happy, and he’d torn another one’s world apart.
Actually, if he were honest with himself, the odds were more like two to one. He was forgetting the nun.
…you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.
He’d welshed on his debt. He could call it whatever the hell he wanted, but what it came right down to was that Quinn McGuire had weaseled out of an old debt. He closed his eyes, and there she was in front of him, the way he always remembered her….
In the antiquated conditions of the jungle hospital, she’d worked miracles. Of course, she hadn’t taken credit for them. There’d been a gleaming brass crucifix above her packing-crate desk. It had been the only thing in the place, besides the few surgical tools, that hadn’t been allowed to tarnish in the tropical humidity.
She’d been changing his dressing. Whenever he thought of her, that was how she appeared in his mind’s eye, but she looked like no one’s idea of an angel of mercy. If truth be told, Quinn had often thought, she’d always seemed forbiddingly unapproachable in the heavy black habit that she persisted in wearing. She had a slight limp, the legacy from a bout of polio when she’d been a child, he’d learned, and besides her bat-like attire, she’d been as blind as one. Her speech was sharp, and her English, though good, was heavily accented.
“You want to die. I want you to live. We’ll see who wins, Mr. McGuire,” she’d said grimly the first time he’d drifted up out of unconsciousness. One look at those angry brown eyes, ludicrously magnified behind the thick lenses she wore, had been enough to send him spiraling down into oblivion again. But she’d dragged him back, again and again, pitting her faith and her steely strength of will against the shadowy figure with the scythe. Only once had she even come close to losing hope, and that had been the day that his fever had climbed to its highest. He had been delirious, and whatever he’d been babbling, it had shaken her badly. All he could remember of that delusional day and night were two things.
He’d had wings, and he’d known if he only let himself go he would find himself soaring straight up from the sweat-soaked sheets he was lying on into a colder, lighter sky than the blazingly blue one that hung over the hospital. He’d heard them calling him, and he’d felt himself rising to meet them—
—and the second thing he remembered was Sister Bertille’s angular face, her mouth working soundlessly, huge tears standing out behind her crooked glasses, pressing a heavy, chilling weight against his forehead and bringing him crashing back down to earth. Just before dawn the fever had broken. He’d opened his eyes and she’d been sitting beside his bed in a golden pool of light from the gas lantern above her, her rosary in her hands and her mouth slightly open in exhausted sleep. He could still feel the heavy weight on his forehead, and with returning lucidity, he’d reached up and removed it. It had been the cross she usually wore around her neck.
You will know when the right case presents itself…
She’d been right. He had known. And still he’d done his level best to get out of it. Hell.
“You’re a stupid man entirely, Quinn McGuire,” he said out loud. “A stupid, bad man. A debt’s a debt, and you must have been crazy to think that you could get out of paying it with a clear conscience.”
He’d catch her on her way out and tell her he’d changed his mind. She didn’t have to know why, and although the nun was part of it, Quinn wasn’t sure he knew the whole reason either. If anyone needed someone to protect her, though, Jane Doe did.
Even if only half of what she’d told him was the truth.
“…know who you are. It was creepy!”
“It had to be some crackpot. I kept expecting some jerk to look over the stall partition, for God’s sake.”
The two young women passing his table had taken a couple more steps before what he’d overheard them say registered. Before they’d taken a third, Quinn was up and out of his seat and somehow blocking their way. One of them was a blonde, and she gave a little jump.
“Hey, you scared me!” Her gaze took him in, and she relaxed visibly. “I think he should buy us a drink to make up for it, right, Kathy?”
Before her friend could answer, Quinn’s hand shot out and held her lightly by the shoulder. “I heard you say something just now—know who you are. What were you talking about?”
“Do you mind?” The blonde’s flirtatiousness was instantly replaced by peevish annoyance. “The hand, mister. Get it off me.”
“It’s important,” he said impatiently, letting her go and curbing his own irritation with difficulty. “What did you mean by that?”
“We saw it in the washroom.” The blonde’s companion had been watching his face. Now she spoke quietly and quickly. “Those words were written on the mirror over the sinks in lipstick or something. It gave me a bad feeling—”
But already he’d dodged around them, and was heading toward the back of the room. He elbowed a beefy young man in a Yale sweatshirt out of the way, and heard an aggrieved shout and the crash of breaking glass behind him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him back, and without looking around he grabbed it and threw it off.
He was about ten feet away from the entrance to the washrooms when the lights went out. The whole room was plunged into pitch-blackness, and he heard a woman’s terror-filled, choked-off scream coming from somewhere ahead of him.
“No need to panic, people. Sure, and we’ll have the lights back on in a minute. Everybody just stay calm and remain where you are.”
Someone was trying to stem the panicky hubbub that had started up. The women’s washroom had to be nearby, Quinn told himself in frustration as he fought his way through the crowd and felt along the wall. There was a flimsy, freestanding partition that had shielded the washroom entrances from the view of the main room, so he hadn’t been able to note the exact location previously, but this was where Jane had gone. He came to a dead end, and realized he’d gone the wrong way.
Her scream—it had been hers, he knew it in his bones—had ended abruptly. That meant that even now she could be beyond his help. What had he told her? Something about if her stalker were serious, he would have killed her by now? Something criminally callous like that?
If the nun had ended up where she’d hoped, she could damn well bully God into giving him some help, he thought harshly as he felt a knob, turned it and swung the door back on its hinges with a crash.
Moonlight streamed through high-set, slightly open windows. Along one wall was a shadowy line of cubicles, each one of them open. Along the other wall was a long vanity, with sinks set into it and a mirror stretching its whole length. The place was empty.
He caught a reflection of movement in the darkened mirror, and instinctively looked around. There was nothing there. He looked back at the mirror, and the same wavering reflection caught his eye again.
Then he was whirling around and looking up at the ceiling just beyond the last stall and his heart was turning over in horror.
She’d been hanged by the neck, and even as he realized what he was looking at, her feet stopped twitching.
“Mother of God and all the saints…” The sickened prayer came automatically, but Quinn wasn’t relying on divine intervention. Already he had smashed open the door of the last stall, was clambering up onto the back of the toilet tank and hoisting himself to a precarious balance on the metal partition. The open ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes, and he grabbed one to steady himself, even as he wrapped his other arm around Jane’s limply dangling body. He lifted her up to ease the pressure on her neck, and her head lolled over onto one shoulder.
The lights—why hadn’t they gotten the damned lights working yet? Her dress had come undone, most of the buttons that had marched primly down the front probably somewhere below on the floor, and he could feel bare flesh against the forearm he had around her chest.
He had to get her down, lights or no lights. Whatever was around her throat was no longer cutting off her air supply, but if she still had a heartbeat, he couldn’t feel it. One-handed, he couldn’t fumble with a knot in the dark and keep her supported at the same time, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to get her down the logical way.
The building wasn’t new. The plumbing, in the washrooms at least, would be either zinc or lead, and neither of those metals was known for its strength. Judging from the trickle of cold water that was dripping onto him, there was a leaky joint only inches away from her noose. If he let go of his pipe, and grabbed hers as he jumped from the top of the washroom stall, the weight of one oversize Irishman would be more than enough to break the join and send them both, pipe and all, crashing to the floor.
All he had to do was hope the break was clean, and close enough to the knot that she slid straight off. Anything else didn’t bear thinking about.
He had a whole cartload of Belgian nuns praying for him, apparently. Surely that should buy him some grace.
Quinn let go of the pipe that had kept him balanced. He grabbed intuitively for the one that was Jane’s make-shift gallows and again jumped into darkness, his grip around her as tight as fear and muscle could make it.
As his hand found the second pipe, he gave it a massive downward tug, and for a moment he had the terrible conviction that the damn thing was built more solidly than he’d guessed. Then he heard a sharp cracking noise, and all of a sudden it was as if he and the woman he was holding had pitched off the top of a cliff and were riding a waterfall.
It wasn’t much of a drop, and he hit the floor immediately, breaking her fall with his body. The water was cascading from the broken pipe above them, and at any other time he would have taken a moment to drag her away from the icy flow. But he didn’t have moments, Quinn thought grimly. If her heart had stopped beating, he was going to have to get it started again.
He straddled her, pulling the two halves of her dress open and hearing it rip farther down than he’d intended. Impatiently he shoved aside the sodden scrap of cotton bra that was in the way, and bent down to her, listening for the sound he wanted more than any other to hear right now. There was no heartbeat. His own seemed to stop.
So this was how Sister Bertille had felt, all those years ago, he thought coldly, placing the heels of his palms flat on Jane’s chest. It was personal—him against the blackness that already had wrapped around her like a shroud. “I want her to live,” he muttered, pressing abruptly and forcefully down on the fragile bones beneath his hands. “We’ll see who wins.”
The cold water continued to stream down onto his back, turning his T-shirt into a second skin, but he was shielding the brunt of it from the woman beneath him. As seconds turned into minutes, and still he felt no answering echo under his palms, he began to think of her heart as an entity all to itself. As he continued in his desperate attempts to get it started again, he began to address it—not Jane, but her heart.
He was going a little crazy, he knew. He didn’t care.
“She doesn’t remember, but you do,” he grunted. “You must. There would have been a first kiss—remember how you sped up, how you felt as if you were going to melt? There had to have been times when she was a girl, catching the eye of a boy, and looking away. You beat faster then, didn’t you? And tonight when I held her and stroked her skin, and felt that velvety softness beneath my fingertips—don’t tell me you weren’t putting in a little overtime then, because I knew damned well you were. I could feel you, for God’s sake. No matter what she said, you were responding to me, weren’t you? Respond now, dammit!”
Two things happened at once.
Suddenly the lights went on. And as if the surge of power that had run through the electrical system had transferred itself to her, at that instant Jane’s eyes flew open. They were glazed and unfocused, but they were open—and her heart was beating, Quinn realized, all by itself.
Around her neck was a bright yellow nylon rope, like some obscene necklace, and her hands went up to it reflexively. She still hadn’t spoken, and neither had he, but for the minute there was no need to. Sliding his hands gently from her exposed breasts, Quinn pulled the two halves of her ruined wet dress together, his eyes on hers.
“I had to. You understand?” he asked softly. She’d shown panic earlier when his touch had been much less intrusive. He was suddenly worried that after all she’d been through, finding him over her like this would shock her into hysteria.
“Take it—” Her voice was a painful croak. Her eyes held a plea. “Take it off my neck, Quinn. Get it off me.”
The note of hysteria he’d worried about was there, but understandably so. Lifting her cautiously to a sitting position, he pushed aside the swath of sodden chestnut hair that obscured the back of her neck. His mouth was tight with anger as he saw the slipknot that had been fashioned in the yellow nylon. He drew the loose end of the rope through, flinging it as far across the room as he could. To cover his outrage he hoisted her a foot or so to one side, out from under the direct flow from the pipe above.
“Why are we wet? Where did all this water come from?”
She could barely speak, but he knew she needed to. She was distracting herself with non-essentials, trying to keep the horror that she’d just lived through at bay, if only for a few more seconds.
“I broke a pipe to get you down, but that’s not important right now. Do you want the police involved?” He brought his hand to her chin, tipping it up so that her gaze locked on his.
“The police?” She shook her head, violently enough so that wet strands of her hair clung to her cheekbones. “No. I told you before, I—I don’t want them asking questions. I just want to get out of here.”
“I know you do. But what’s happened tonight would make them take you seriously now. If you caught a glimpse of your attacker they could have a sketch-artist—”
“I didn’t see him. All I saw was that—” Her glance darted toward the scrawled message on the mirror and quickly away again. “Then the lights went out and he—and he—”
“Don’t try to talk about it now.” He shot a worried look over his shoulder. “Look, any minute now someone’s going to come through that door. We’d better get moving.”
For the first time she looked down at herself. He was no longer straddling her, but his arm was still around her back, supporting her. He sensed the instant that she finally took in her revealing state and the fact that she was pressed up against a wet male body. Without conscious volition, he glanced down too.
Although he’d tried to cover her up a few minutes ago, the ruined dress no longer could conceal the body beneath it—a body that was all graceful contours and surprisingly ripe curves. Creamy-pale breasts were tipped with a soft wash of pink, that even as he watched deepened to a rose blush. He’d thought of wild strawberries earlier. He was thinking of them now.
And it was a damn good thing he knew how to perform CPR, because he was pretty sure his own heart had just stopped.
“Please—please don’t look at me!”
Her voice, high and thin, was shot with panic. He ripped his gaze away immediately, silently berating himself. He hastened to redeem the situation before it got completely out of hand.
“Here, cover yourself up with this.” She was hunched over, her arms crossed in front of her, and he sat back on his heels, quickly stripping off his T-shirt. The thing was nothing more than a wet rag—an oversized wet rag that would hang down nearly to her knees—but it would hide what she wanted to hide.
Still averting his eyes, he tossed it in her direction.
“Thank you.” Her reply was barely audible. He waited until he figured she’d put it on, and then turned back to her—and once again his heart missed a beat.
He wasn’t going to tell her, but there was a reason why wet T-shirt contests were popular with a certain kind of crowd. She was demonstrating that reason right now, though she seemed unaware that the soaked cotton of his shirt was clinging lovingly to her every curve, and that her nipples were tautly outlined.
“I’m sorry.” Her words were still no more than a whisper. “I know you just saved my life.”
“Forget it. Now that you’re decent, let’s try to slip out of here without attracting too much attention.” He sounded brusquer than he’d intended, and he could also hear that he’d fallen into the broad brogue that he thought he’d grown out of years ago. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “There’s got to be a back exit somewhere around—”
He broke off, disconcerted by the expression on her face. Her lips were slightly parted, and the flush he’d seen lower down on her body had crept up to her cheeks. Her eyes were wide, and so dark that they looked almost a true navy blue. She was looking at him. She was looking at—
He was acutely conscious of the fact that he was naked from the waist up—not shirtless, not unclad, but buck-naked. There was something about the devouring way she was gazing at his chest that made that term the only appropriate one. But for God’s sake, there was nothing shocking about peeling his shirt off, even in front of a woman. This wasn’t the Victorian era.
She looked as if she was about to swoon.
“You’re very…very large,” she said faintly. “I hadn’t realized…” Slowly she brought her hand up. Lightly her fingertips ghosted across the surface of his skin. Between her parted lips Quinn realized that her breathing had shallowed and quickened.
She wasn’t the kind of woman he was used to. When he was on assignment, he found it easy to stay away from the sexual roulette of picking up a partner for the night. If the urge became absolutely unbearable, he resorted to fantasy, and despite what he’d been told as a boy, he hadn’t gone blind yet. But when he was back in Boston, he usually had some kind of short-term, casual relationship going. That was the kind of woman he looked for—someone who wasn’t looking for permanence, who took sex not irresponsibly, but lightly.
This emotionally fragile, sexually repressed woman wasn’t his type. But the hesitant, questing touch of her fingers on his chest was setting his blood on fire like no other female ever had. Worst of all, he doubted that she had any idea of what she was doing to him—but at any moment she’d be bound to. It wasn’t something a man could hide for long, especially in wet khakis that were plastered to his body.
Her glance travelled downward just as he’d feared, paused, and flew up again. Her face had been pink before. Now it blazed with color as her eyes met his.
Then her lashes came down, her head tipped back on her neck, and she moved infinitesimally toward him. Quinn found himself closing the tiny gap between them, found his hand cupping the back of that delicate, seal-wet head and found his own eyes closing like a boy moving into the mystery of his first kiss.
Her lips were cool, and beaded with water. He felt water running from the short ends of his hair, down his face like tears, to join up with the drops he could taste on her. He felt water dripping from her scalp to his hand behind her neck, felt water splashing from the pipe above them, felt it soaking through the fabric of his khakis as he kneeled there.
It wasn’t like kissing a woman. It was like kissing a mermaid.
And then her lips opened beneath his, and there was suddenly no doubt that he was kissing a woman—the essence of woman, distilled and condensed, so unadulterated that he knew that he’d never had anything this real before. He’d never come close to this. He tasted her, felt her taste him, and his grip tightened on the back of her neck, bringing her closer. His other hand came up to her face, and he was certain he felt her sigh softly against his mouth.
Then everything changed. He felt her stiffen, and opened his eyes just in time to see hers fly wide with shock. She pulled away from him, her hand going to her mouth as if to shield it from his.
“No!” She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. “No—I don’t do this. This—this isn’t me!”
She wasn’t playing coy. There was real denial in her eyes, and her face was chalky-white. Quinn suddenly saw himself as he realized she was seeing him—too big, too male, too much tanned, battered hide showing. He felt as if he was looming over her. He knew he only had a split second before the situation spiraled out of control.
“It’s not you,” he agreed, careful not to make any move that she might construe as threatening. His hands hung loosely at his sides. “It was the shock of what you’d just been through. That’s why it happened—it was just a reaction.”
“But you kissed me back!” She was hugging herself, as if she was afraid she would fly apart if she didn’t hold on tight, and his heart turned over.
He’d thought compassion had been burned out of him long ago. It seemed he was wrong. He had no idea what had turned this beautiful, warm woman against her own nature, what had made her shrink from a mere touch, let alone the passion she’d displayed only moments ago. But someone, sometime, had damaged her. It would have been a man. Quinn felt his hands tighten into fists, and it took an effort to relax them.
“I kissed you back,” he admitted. “It won’t happen again. Can you accept that?”
Her gaze searched his face. Slowly the arms she’d wrapped around herself became less rigid, and she nodded, her eyes never leaving his. “I can accept that. I think you’re a man of your word, McGuire.”
There were a few different answers he could have given to that, but Quinn didn’t get the chance. Even as he began to get to his feet, holding out his hand for her to take or not, as she chose, he heard a perfunctory knock and the door behind him burst open.
“Mother of God—what’s been happening in here?” The outburst came from a short man with thinning red hair and astonished blue eyes. The green vest he wore strained over a paunch that probably owed much of its existence to the beer on tap in the bar. Quinn had seen him once or twice during the evening, and had guessed he was the owner of the place.
“I come in here to check that the lights have come on all right, and what do I find but a complete disaster area!” the man sputtered. He looked with appalled confusion around the flooded room, frowning in bewilderment at the lipsticked message on the mirror. “I Know Who You Are? Okay, I’ll bite—who the hell are you?”
The man’s tirade stopped as Quinn rose to his full height. Jane, to his surprise, had taken his hand and had risen with him. She stood beside him, almost, but not quite, touching him, the enormous T-shirt she was wearing making her seem more insubstantial than she was. She was tougher than she looked, he thought abruptly—just like another woman he’d once known.
I surrender, Sister, he thought in wry defeat. It was a losing battle I was fighting from the first, wasn’t it? Very carefully, he put a protective arm around Jane’s sodden shoulders.
“What the hell does it look like?” he growled. “I’m the lady’s bodyguard, of course.”
Chapter Four
“What did you think having a bodyguard meant, for God’s sake? Of course I’m staying overnight—from now on I don’t let you out of my sight, lady.”
“That’s out of the question.” Without looking at the furious man beside her on the porch, Jane opened her purse and took out her keys. “And could you please keep your voice down? Most of the tenants here don’t keep late hours, and I’d prefer them not to hear me arguing on the front steps with a man at this time of night.”
He took the keys from her hand. “Why are you so determined to fight me every step of the way? Didn’t I go along with you back at the bar when you said you didn’t want the police involved, even though it took all the damn charm I had to convince the owner that he didn’t want the publicity?”
“Charm? You blackmailed the man.”
“Yeah, well, that’s my version of charm. No one ever dangled me by my heels over the parapet of Blarney Castle, just so I could kiss a bloody stone. Which key fits this door?”
The house was a converted Victorian, and like the big Irishman towering over her, it had no charm at all. They were standing right beneath the one light that illuminated the front entrance, and with a sinking heart Jane saw a curtain twitch at a ground-floor window.
Quinn was still bare-chested. Even the taxi driver who’d brought them here had stared so the vinegary old lady who’d rented her room to her would certainly have something to talk about if she saw them here.
“It’s the brass one,” she whispered angrily. “You can come in and wait while I change out of your T-shirt, but that’s all.”
“We’ll see about that.” The porch light picked up the glints of pewter in his hair and carved grim shadows around his mouth. He started to insert the key in the lock and then scowled, turning the knob. The door opened. “Top-notch security you’ve got here,” he said briefly, shooting her a glance.
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Harper Allen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: RENEGADE HEARTSIf he hadn′t received a letter from a dead woman who′d once saved his life, Quinn McGuire wouldn′t have agreed to help a frightened Jane Doe to honor his unpaid debt. As her twenty-four-hour protector, this burned-out soldier for hire would go to the wall to save «Jane» from a madman who claimed she′d committed a heinous crime. When their joint investigation uncovered her past, Quinn thought convincing Jane she was innocent of cold-blooded murder would be his greatest challenge–but he was wrong! Finding the courage to love Jane was…