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Marrying Mccabe
Fiona Brand
None of Roma Lombard's high-society friends knew anything about the mystery man who was suddenly everywhere the wealthy heiress went.And that was exactly the way she wanted it - because her new "lover” was really her bodyguard, there to protect her from the killers who were stalking her….Ben McCabe said they had to keep up this deadly charade - by pretending to be married! The trouble was, the more time she spent with her devastatingly handsome protector - day after fear-wracked day, night after passion-filled night - the more she ached to make this "marriage” the real thing….
He was the kind of man who could make a woman go weak in the knees—about two seconds before she went soft in the head.
He wasn’t pretty-boy handsome, but he was intensely male. His jaw was stubbled, there were dark shadows beneath his eyes and a silvery scar sliced across one cheekbone.
The stranger’s head came up then, as if he’d suddenly registered her concentrated attention from across the room. His gaze in that first moment was frankly, sharply male, making her instantly aware of how male he was. And how female she was.
Roma’s stomach lurched as his gaze locked on her again. Now she could see that his eyes were a pure, intense dark blue, wolf-cold and uncompromising. The jolting awareness escalated.
So this was Ben McCabe—her new bodyguard.…
Dear Reader,
There’s so much great reading in store for you this month that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with bestselling author and reader favorite Fiona Brand. She’s back with another of her irresistible Alpha heroes in Marrying McCabe. There’s something about those Aussie men that a reader just can’t resist—and heroine Roma Lombard is in the same boat when she meets Ben McCabe. He’s got trouble—and passion—written all over him.
Our FIRSTBORN SONS continuity continues with Born To Protect, by Virginia Kantra. Follow ex-Navy SEAL Jack Dalton to Montana, where his princess (and I mean that literally) awaits. A new book by Ingrid Weaver is always a treat, so save some reading time for Fugitive Hearts, a perfect mix of suspense and romance. Round out the month with new novels by Linda Castillo, who offers A Hero To Hold (and trust me, you’ll definitely want to hold this guy!); Barbara Ankrum, who proves the truth of her title, This Perfect Stranger; and Vickie Taylor, with The Renegade Steals a Lady (and also, I promise, your heart).
And if that weren’t enough excitement for one month, don’t forget to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest. Details are in every book.
Enjoy!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Fiona Brand
Marrying McCabe
To Leslie Wainger
FIONA BRAND
has always wanted to write. After working eight years for the New Zealand Forest Service as a clerk, she decided she could spend at least that much time trying to get a romance novel published. Luckily, it only took five years, not eight. Fiona lives in a subtropical fishing and diving paradise called the Bay of Islands with her husband and two children.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Chapter 1
The shot snapped through the humid Sydney night air, slicing through the cheerful hum of conversation as a steady stream of people exited the cinema complex. The flat one-two echo syncopated with the flash and burn of neon, a sharp counterpoint to the gentle nostalgia of rhythm and blues, the rich scent of coffee, the cloying vanilla of doughnuts and the edgier undernote of car exhaust and city grime.
Roma Lombard was jerked backward. The movement was violently at odds with the instant freeze-frame of humanity as the crowd, high on the latest romantic comedy, became eerily still, reacting as one creature with instincts that were ancient—primitive—at odds with the sleek, sophisticated cars lining the street, the expensive glitter of shop windows.
Her arms flailed as she fought to regain her balance. Her elbow glanced off the warm solidity of muscle; then a heavy shove sent her backward in an awkward sprawl, loose hair flinging in a dark veil across her face. The back of her head connected with concrete, detonating a burst of hot light behind her eyes.
For a dazed moment she lay stunned, held in thrall by the dazzling shift of colour, the shock of the fall; then something heavy slammed into her chest, punching all the breath from her lungs.
For long seconds she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel beyond the pain spiking her head, the stifling panic of being blinded by her own hair and the heavy weight pinning her—Lewis’s weight, she realised.
He moaned. The sound was oddly soft, distressing, sending fear and adrenaline kicking through her veins. The sharp crack had been a rifle shot, and Lewis wasn’t moving. Roma knew she hadn’t been hit. Confusion and bruises aside, she’d simply been knocked off balance, but Lewis…Lewis was hurt.
A fierce sense of disbelief gripped her as she dragged her hair from her face, her mouth, logged the sting of grazes on her elbows, the blur of movement as the street cleared, followed by a spreading silence, as if the whole city was holding its breath.
Her isolation registered, and all the small hairs at her nape lifted on a cold ripple of awareness as she struggled to push against Lewis’s weight. She didn’t know how badly he was hurt, but suddenly even that consideration was secondary. They were stranded on the empty sidewalk, spot-lighted by the glare of cinema lights, an easy bull’s-eye for even an amateur gunman. She had to get them both off the street.
She shoved at Lewis. The throb in her head kicked savagely, and she broke out in a clammy sweat. The heat she’d loved just seconds ago now closed around her like a vice. Time crawled—oddly suspended—she could feel the weight of every second as if it were her last, hammering in time with the thud of her heart, equated each beat with another shot from the rifle.
She wrenched upward, stomach muscles straining as she braced herself for more leverage, thankful her arms and shoulders were strong, her body tight and toned from regular exercise and the occasional workout with weights. Lewis wasn’t a heavy man, but he was tall—a gangly computer nerd rather than a muscled athlete. It didn’t matter; Roma wasn’t much over five foot five, so shifting him was like pushing against a mountain.
Gritting her teeth, she shoved again, twisting as she did so. Fear gave her the extra strength she needed to move Lewis’s bulk enough that she could shimmy free and roll him onto his back.
He moaned again and stirred. His eyes flickered, half opened. ��Roma?’’
His voice was croaky, a thread of his normal light baritone. His eyes were unfocused, his breathing fast, face pale and shiny with sweat as he clutched at his shoulder and winced. Blood leaked from between his fingers, the spreading patch dark against his ridiculously cheerful Hawaiian shirt.
��Don’t move.’’ Roma wrenched Lewis’s hand away and forgot about diving for cover, forgot there was a gunman. Her mind spun into overdrive as she shoved the heel of her palm against his shoulder, planted her other hand on top of the first, and leaned into the wound, using her weight to apply pressure. She’d done first aid courses—she knew the theory—but she’d never seen a gunshot wound before, and the violent reality of it was paralysing. She had to force her sluggish brain to think past the frightening blankness, to remember.
She began talking, her voice hollow, jerky, rising over Lewis’s high-pitched moan as he tried to curl into a foetal ball, almost dislodging her hold as she explained what she was doing, that he had to be still, that she would get help.
Help.
Her head jerked up, gaze swinging wildly as she searched for assistance. She saw with a renewed sense of shock that she and Lewis were alone except for a couple crouched behind a nearby car. There were people huddled in the cinema complex; she could see faces peering out from behind movie posters. A man made eye contact with her and pointed at his cell phone as he talked rapidly into it.
Roma felt like closing her eyes against a raw punch of disbelief. She was shaking with reaction and the aftershock of adrenaline, her arms and shoulders aching from the strain of her position, yet just minutes ago she’d been relaxed and happy, enjoying the upbeat atmosphere of the movie crowd, the balmy evening and Lewis’s terrible jokes. She could still hear music, smell coffee and doughnuts. The city, the street, the night, were the same, yet in a split second everything else had changed. The protection of the crowd had melted away, leaving her kneeling, solitary and exposed, over Lewis.
Blood continued to well. In desperation, Roma wrenched off her shirt—not caring that she had only a bra on underneath—wadded the soft, white cotton into a pressure pad and jammed it over the wound, fisting it down tight.
The ambient air temperature was warm, she should have been fanning herself against the heat, but she didn’t feel warm now. A slight breeze flipped hair across her face, slid over her almost-naked back, roughening her damp skin with the chill of invisible fingers. She noted that Lewis was no longer conscious, and fear formed an icy knot inside her.
Roma knew guns, knew how to handle them, break them down, clean and reassemble them. She knew how it felt to fire a gun, to ache in her arms and shoulders and wrists from spending long hours at shooting ranges. She knew more about guns than she had ever wanted to know, but she’d shied away from learning anything more than she had to about the damage they could do. The wound in Lewis’s shoulder didn’t look big, but that was no cause for celebration. Small-calibre rounds didn’t make huge entry wounds, but they had a tendency to travel in the body, ricocheting off bone and causing immense soft tissue damage.
Her heart squeezed tight in her chest as she crouched over Lewis with all the fierceness of a lioness protecting her only cub. ��Don’t die,’’ she commanded, her voice still husky, hollow.
His eyelids flickered, and she decided he’d heard her. He wouldn’t die. She wouldn’t allow it.
Lewis was her friend.
She could count the friends she had on one hand, and she cherished each and every one of them; they were as precious as family to her. She wasn’t going to lose Lewis.
Briefly she closed her eyes against the hot sting of tears and sent up a prayer. He needed an ambulance—fast.
The distant wail of a siren jerked her head up. She craned around, dark gaze homing in on the direction of the siren, as if she could make help come faster with the sheer force of her will.
The street was completely empty of movement now, and unnaturally hushed. Traffic must have been cordoned off. Across the road, darkened apartments loomed over the bright facade of shop-fronts. Roma had barely, if ever, noticed those apartments, but in the aftermath of the shooting, they took on a faceless, menacing aspect. She’d consciously blocked the thought that the shot could have originated from any one of those blank windows. She’d been running on adrenaline, reacting rather than thinking, but now cold logic and a growing awareness of being watched, began to register.
She froze, head still craned at a painful angle, gaze still fixed in the direction of the siren. She’d felt that same creeping sensation before, the tension in the pit of her stomach, the abrupt sharpening of her senses, but she’d always dismissed it as paranoia.
The warm breeze swirled, turned chill against the taut curve of her throat, the naked arch of her back, so that she tensed against the convulsive need to shiver. The skin along her spine tightened with an almost painful sensitivity, twitched, as if a gun was now trained on the centre of her back, the gunman’s finger stroking the trigger.
In that moment she felt her semi-nakedness, the sheer vulnerability of pale, exposed skin, the softness and fragility of flesh and bone.
A shudder rocked her and she had to fight the wild urge to fling herself flat on the pavement, belly-crawl behind a car and hide.
She hated the shattering sense of vulnerability, the cowardly impulse to save herself and leave Lewis bleeding on the sidewalk. She was a Lombard—for her, the threat of violence was no novelty—but she had never before felt directly threatened, never before felt so utterly powerless.
Images and impressions tumbled through her mind as the nightmare visions of a past that had haunted her since she was fifteen flooded back, swamping her.
Nine years ago Roma’s eldest brother, Jake, and his fiancée had been kidnapped and shot by a terrorist group headed by a man named Egan Harper.
The shock of their deaths had hit her hard. She hadn’t been able to turn off her imagination or erase the brutal details from her mind. She’d swung wildly between impotent rage and an icy fear of the same thing happening again to another member of her family.
She’d had counselling. It had helped, but no one had been able to give her back the older brother she loved, or the fragile illusion of safety. Harper had shattered a basic innocence in them all that day.
In the years that followed, her family’s vulnerability had been reinforced when Harper had continued to stalk them and had attempted to kill another of her brothers, Gray, and the woman he’d married, Sam. They had all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Harper had been the one to die in that last encounter.
Through it all, Roma had worked to achieve a level of happiness and peace, unwilling to let Harper take anything more from her than he already had. She’d done a number of things to take control of her life, including keeping fit, and taking martial arts and gun classes, but the fact remained that safety was only an illusion. Harper was dead, but he wasn’t alone out there.
Roma didn’t see herself as paranoid. She was a realist. The entire Lombard family was a target, not only because of their wealth and high media profile, but because a branch of the family business was tied up with the development of hi-tech arms and communication equipment for the military.
For them, it wasn’t a matter of if trouble would strike, it was a matter of when.
Lewis stirred, his eyes flickering. Roma stared numbly at the grey pallor of his face, and rage built steadily inside her at what had been done to Lewis—bright, inoffensive, fun-loving Lewis, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Roma had the odd, fragmented thought that if she’d stayed at home, read a book or watched TV, instead of going out looking for bright lights and fun, tired of her own company, Lewis wouldn’t be bleeding on the sidewalk now. No one would have gotten hurt.
The wail of the siren grew louder, then stopped, the abrupt silence punctuated by the shallow rasp of Lewis’s breathing, the rapid thud of her heart shoving blood through her veins in short, shuddering bursts. For an oddly distorted period of time Roma was unable to breathe, as if a giant fist had closed around her lungs, squeezing them tight, shutting them down, so that her vision narrowed and dimmed, and sensation faded, as if she were no longer completely connected with her physical body.
So this was what it was like to go into shock.
She could have done with never finding out.
Chapter 2
Two days later.
Ben McCabe strode across the car park of Auckland’s international airport. A gust of warm wind broadsided him as he stepped up on the kerb, forcing his already gritty eyes to narrow against the sting of dust whirling off the pavement. The acres of glass fronting the main terminal tossed his reflection back at him: crumpled T-shirt, jeans that were ripped at one knee, stubbled jaw and tired eyes.
There was a stain on his shoulder.
A disgusted groan scraped from Ben’s throat as he passed through the doors and headed for the Arrivals lounge. The stain was small—little more than a narrow streak—but, on a white T-shirt, orange was definitely orange.
So much for looking like a hotshot security consultant, but he’d been too tired, in too much of a hurry—and too ticked off with the way Gray was calling in this favour with close to zero notice—to care what he’d looked like. He’d been pulled in from a camping trip with his daughter, and after driving half the night, he’d simply dropped Bunny at his mother’s place, gone home, showered and crashed. When the alarm had rung, he’d gotten dressed in the dark. He’d hardly noticed what he’d shoved his arms and legs into.
Gray was one of the best friends he’d ever had, but in Ben’s opinion, spending the next week playing bodyguard to his kid sister while she sashayed around all of Auckland’s best society parties was more in the line of a pain in the ass than actual work.
By anyone’s standards, Roma Lombard was rich and spoiled. She was the pampered only daughter of the wealthy Lombard hotelier family. Baby Roma hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in her mouth; it had been diamond-encrusted platinum.
Ben wasn’t impressed. He’d seen rich and spoiled, and he didn’t like it. He should know. Once he’d been dumb enough to marry it, and his ex-wife, Nicola, had given him a crash course in hell he was in no mood to repeat.
A flash of dark humour momentarily lightened his mood. Not that he would be marrying Roma Lombard, just riding herd on her for the next couple of weeks. But in some ways personal bodyguarding was more intimate than being married. There was no walking out, no slamming doors—they would be stuck together, for better or worse, until he delivered her back to her doting big brother.
The information board confirmed that the red-eye flight from Sydney to Auckland had landed just minutes ago, along with a number of other flights. Ben scanned the steady stream of passengers pushing luggage trolleys. It was summer—school holidays—and the place was crazy with people flying in for a slice of Pacific paradise.
Ben couldn’t get excited, not when he’d had to cancel his camping trip with his daughter and it looked as though he would be spending the next week with a spoiled brat.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him that dinner last night had been sketchy and he hadn’t had time for breakfast. On top of everything else that was about to go wrong with today, he was hungry. Cursing beneath his breath, he began to pace.
Roma strolled with her brother, Gray, toward the luggage carousel, her mood going from bad to worse. She had a headache. She never had headaches. ��I don’t need twenty-four-hour protection,’’ she said flatly. ��I can’t help Evan fund-raise with a bodyguard vetoing me at every turn.’’
��You’re getting protection. It’ll be discreet.’’
Discreet? Roma reined in her disbelief. After the scare just two days ago, her family had rallied around her like a bunch of hens around their only chick. As much as she loved them all, she’d had enough of all the concentrated attention and concern.
She knew she had to accept a certain level of security, but she hadn’t bargained on a bodyguard. Unfortunately, her only alternative was to catch the next flight home, and there were two very good reasons why she wasn’t going to do that. The first one was walking beside her. Any more of Gray’s security precautions and she would go crazy. The second reason was that she’d given Evan diVaggio her promise to help months ago, and she wasn’t backing out on him at the last minute.
Normally she didn’t go near high-profile social events, because she hated the media attention, but Evan’s crusade to fund a children’s cancer ward was a special case. He was a long-time friend of the family, and she’d shared in his grief when his small nephew had died of an inoperable brain tumour. ��Evan’s not going to be happy.’’
Massive understatement.
Evan was artistic and temperamental; a successful fashion designer with his own exclusive house. He was a lot of fun—when he got his own way.
��The hell with Evan. Your safety’s more important than his damn fashion show.’’
Gray gripped her elbow, guiding her through the thickening knots of people waiting to collect their bags. Roma did a slow, silent count to three, then disengaged Gray’s hold with a practised twist of her arm. Her brothers had always treated her like a piece of delicate bone china, despite the fact that she’d been a tomboy ever since she was old enough to lace up a pair of sneakers and tag along after them. She’d never quite figured out their logic. They remembered she was female—usually at inconvenient times—but they seemed to forget that she had camped out with them, that she could outshoot the lot of them at pool, and that she had the meanest pitching arm in Lombard history. ��My safety hasn’t been directly threatened. And I gave Evan my promise months ago. I’m not letting some suit prevent me from meeting my commitments.’’
The set of Gray’s jaw didn’t alter. He’d been as upset as anyone about the loss of Evan’s nephew, but she knew that, for Gray, his own family’s safety was paramount. ��We’ve already had this argument, honey. You’re getting protection.’’ His mouth quirked, the first sign of humour she’d seen in him for days. ��I promise I haven’t got you a G-man this time. Come on, let’s find your bag. I don’t want to miss my flight out.’’
Roma’s eyes narrowed, her suspicions aroused by his comment. ��Is he old?’’
��Does it matter?’’
��How old?’’
��Old enough.’’
Roma drew a measured breath. The last bodyguard she’d had had been forty going on eighty. He’d been so dour and humourless that, by the time his employment had come to an end, she’d decided the only person who had ever been in any danger had been him—from her.
If she had to practically live with someone, she wanted to have some control over who that person was. She knew, though, that Gray hadn’t had time to let her pick and choose. When she’d refused to back out of the trip, he’d had to make arrangements in a hurry.
Gray’s mouth kicked up at one corner. ��Don’t try it with this guy.’’
��Try what?’’ she muttered, knowing exactly what he meant. She’d been an unruly teenager and hell-on-wheels to watch—a reaction against the years her family had endured tight security. At times the pressure had been intolerable, and she’d lashed out against it in ways her family hadn’t always appreciated. Despite the fact that she hadn’t pulled a practical joke in years, that reputation for trouble had stuck.
��Don’t try whatever plan is hatching in that serpentine mind of yours.’’
��I’m twenty-four, hardly a baby. And this is New Zealand, not some back alley in Beirut.’’
��You’re a Lombard. For some people, that’s enough.’’ He gave her an irritated glance. ��And what would you know about back alleys in Beirut?’’
Roma’s mouth curled lazily, delight filling her that she’d actually put a nick in Gray’s rock-solid control. She adored Gray, but sometimes he was too serious, too controlling. To Roma’s way of thinking, her teasing was necessary; he needed someone to poke fun at him and temper all that omnipotent efficiency. Of course, he now had his wife, Sam, to fulfil that role. Since Gray had married and become a father, he had loosened up considerably. ��Wouldn’t you like to know?’’ she murmured.
Gray gave her an exasperated look that was all big brother. ��Hell,’’ he muttered. ��That’s precisely why you need a minder.’’
A familiar case appeared on the conveyor belt. Roma cut in front of Gray and snagged it before he could, blandly ignoring his irritation. He liked to be in charge, but she didn’t exactly like being pushed aside, either. The result was occasionally an undignified tussle, but not without humour. It was a family thing.
Gray’s mouth twitched. To pay her back, he gripped her elbow again as he urged her toward customs.
��I’m not an old lady,’’ she grumbled.
��No,’’ he agreed. ��You’re a smartass.’’
Minutes later, they approached the Arrivals lounge, and, humour and squabbling aside, Roma was glad for Gray’s solid presence beside her, even if he’d sneakily taken charge of the trolley while she’d dug in her holdall for her passport.
It was busy in the terminal, filled with noise and people, a baby crying, laughter. The acoustics amplified the sounds so that they built like a slow breaking wave. Tension gripped her as they took the final turn into the large open area. She put the tension down to a temporary paranoia that had developed since Lewis’s shooting—a knee-jerk reaction that sneaked up on her every time she was in a public place, which lately, between hospital visits and airport terminals, seemed to be most of the time.
She pulled in a deep breath, then another, willing the ridiculous, wimpy feeling of exposure to disappear, but her heart was still pounding as she searched the busy lounge, trying to pick the bodyguard out of the shifting mass of people. With the neat, dark suits they invariably wore, the military-short haircuts, cold, watchful eyes, and the discreet bulge of shoulder-holstered weapons, they might as well have been in uniform.
No one fitted the description. Roma’s knees actually went wobbly with relief. The magnitude of her relief was in itself alarming. Over the years she’d become aware that, for her, the severely suited bodyguards had become the symbol of her family’s vulnerability, but she’d never reacted so violently to the thought of having an armed escort before.
But then, you’ve never been shot at before.
Instantly she rejected the thought. The shooting appeared to be a random one, the fact that Lewis had been shot while he was with her pure coincidence. If she’d been the target, the shooter had had plenty of time to take aim and fire while she’d knelt over Lewis waiting for the ambulance, but there hadn’t been a second shot. She’d been surrounded by armed policemen and helped into the cover of a service lane where an ambulance was parked. A shirt had been magically produced and draped around her, enveloping her from neck to knee. Minutes later Lewis had been loaded into the back of the ambulance on a stretcher, and they had both been taken to the nearest hospital.
The police hadn’t found any trace of the gunman, or any reason for Lewis to be shot. The investigation was still ongoing, but with no suspect, motive, or weapon, there wasn’t much hope that the perpetrator would ever be caught, let alone his reason for shooting into a crowd ever discovered.
Roma’s gaze settled on a big, rough-looking guy who somehow managed to dominate the swirling sea of people. Maybe because he was tall, six-foot-two at least, and dark, with the kind of big, sleek build that would always catch the feminine eye. He looked like a man who would be at home in any era, just as capable of defending his loved ones with a club or a sword as with his bare fists.
In tight, faded jeans and a T-shirt that looked as if it had survived a refugee parcel, no way did this guy look like a bodyguard.
A wave of longing swept her, not for the man specifically, but for what he represented—an ordinary life with ordinary goals such as family and children, and deciding whether to have chicken or steak for dinner, of being able to have an ordinary nine-to-five job, live in a house without sophisticated security on every window and door, and go where she wanted, when she felt like it. Of being able to love those closest to her without fear they would be hurt or taken from her.
Unexpected tears burned her eyes. She blinked, pushing back the attack of the blues with a wave of grumpiness. So, okay, she was a mess—her life was a mess. Her head felt odd and floaty, because she had barely slept since the shooting. The headache that had no right to exist was getting worse. She was hungry. If anyone walked past her with food, she would probably attack them. And her brother was siccing a bodyguard on her.
Someone was going to pay for this.
��I don’t want whatever suit you’ve picked out for me,’’ she stated as Gray continued to forge a path across the lounge in the general direction of the tall, rough guy. ��I want him.’’
Gray spared her a glance. His black gaze gleamed with amusement. ��Want me to get him for you?’’
Roma went still inside. That was not the answer she was expecting. Neither of her brothers was in the habit of ��getting’’ men for her; they were more inclined to get rid of them. If they had their way, she would die a virgin. They were what she euphemistically termed overprotective.
She could count the boyfriends she’d had on two hands, the ones who’d been brave enough to come home with her on one. If they weren’t intimidated by her family’s sheer wealth or the stringent security, her brothers usually managed to scare them off. There was nothing sophisticated about Gray and Blade’s methods. Cold eye contact was always good for starters. A few pointed questions usually followed, and when neither of those strategies worked, her brothers resorted to blunt warnings that bordered on rudeness. Occasionally, if they happened to be out by the pool, there was a show of raw muscle—caveman tactics all the way.
Roma watched with growing suspicion as the tall stranger turned with an abrupt impatience that denoted someone who didn’t want to be where he was and hated being kept waiting, and she saw his face clearly for the first time. Her stomach sank. Suddenly the stranger didn’t look reassuring at all. He looked familiar.
He was tanned and muscular, black-haired, olive-skinned, all clean angles and blades, with a square jaw and deep-set eyes beneath straight brows. Not pretty-boy handsome, but with the kind of strong good looks that, coupled with his size and build, would make most women go weak at the knees about two seconds before they went soft in the head.
His jaw was darkly stubbled, as if he hadn’t been near a razor for a couple of days, and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes as if he, too, hadn’t had a lot of sleep lately. But the one detail that fixed her attention was the scar that sliced across one cheekbone. Whoever had sewn the wound closed hadn’t made a good job of it, and the scar tissue skimming his tanned skin made him look more than just casually dangerous. She’d seen that scar before in photos, and woven more than a few fantasies about that hard masculine face.
Ben McCabe. One of Gray and Blade’s Special Air Service cronies—possibly the only SAS agent she hadn’t yet met in the flesh.
His head came up as if he’d suddenly registered her concentrated attention. His eyes were dark, slitted with irritation, and something more. His gaze in that first moment was frankly, sharply male. It was the lightning perusal of a man who knew women intimately, not lingering so that she became uncomfortable, but making her instantly aware of how male he was. And how female she was.
The abrupt awareness of her own sex startled Roma. Her family’s wealth and status usually provided a shield against this kind of overt attention, and she seldom went out on dates. She was completely unprepared for the flood of heat that swept her. The barrage of sensation was as overwhelming as it was intrusive, and she fought back the only way she knew how, by desperately trying to blank out all emotion.
A group of teenagers in sports uniforms cut across their path, momentarily blocking the man from view.
Roma’s stomach lurched when the stranger’s gaze locked on her again. Now that she was closer, she could see that his eyes were a pure, intense dark blue, wolf-cold and uncompromising. The jolting awareness escalated, and with it came a solid dose of irritation.
��I’ve changed my mind,’’ she muttered to Gray. ��I don’t want him. You win, I’ll take the suit.’’
��Honey,’’ Gray said, with a dry humour that made her want to strangle him, ��McCabe is the suit.’’
Chapter 3
Ben fought back disbelief as he watched Gray approach, his hunger and frustration forgotten. The woman with Gray was his sister, but Roma Lombard wasn’t what he’d expected.
He’d heard a lot about her—had even seen photographs of her. God only knew, her face was hard to miss when it was splashed across one of those glossy magazines his ex-wife used to read. But the glossy pictures he’d barely glanced at had nothing to do with the woman walking toward him now.
She wasn’t tall enough to be a model; next to her brother, she was decidedly petite, even dainty. She wasn’t wearing make-up or nail polish that he could see, no designer sunglasses or expensive designer clothes. Ben decided she didn’t need any of those things. In a soft black shirt, faded jeans and black boots, she was pure fantasy material. Her silky dark hair hung in a straight, careless fall around her shoulders; her features were neat and even, her mouth soft. The only part of her that fulfilled anything like the image Ben had formed were the exotic eyes that continued to stare dazedly back at him. They were midnight-dark, shadowed by lashes, as distant and aloof as a cat’s, and just as layered with mystery and secrets.
The blankness of her expression, the aura of sphinxlike remoteness, only served to intensify the mystery of her eyes, and Ben’s jaw tightened against his response to that unconscious challenge. He was growing hard, his loins warming with a slow, heavy ache.
He suppressed a whole string of curses as he accepted Gray’s handshake. Gray was a friend, more than a friend. And the woman Ben had been checking out was Gray’s sister.
Out of bounds, way out of bounds. Even if she hadn’t been his client.
Gray made the introductions. Grimly, Ben noted the brevity and firmness of Roma’s handshake, as if she didn’t want to touch him but wasn’t about to flinch from it, the cool, minimal eye contact she allowed. Most people gave something of themselves away with their initial body language; Roma Lombard was notable by her very stillness.
Her controlled reserve only intrigued him more. Ben was good at reading people—better than good—but Roma Lombard was an enigma. He considered the fact that the unexpected sexual attraction was messing up his perception, then discounted it. He was aroused, but he’d long ago learned to separate his intellect from his physical needs.
Her gaze connected with his, held just a little too long before she looked away again, a faint blush warming her cheekbones.
Damn, Ben thought mildly as Gray caught him up to date with news about mutual friends and Gray’s brother, Blade, who’d just become a father. Either Roma disliked him intensely or she was as attracted as he was. Ben was betting on the second possibility.
He needed to hit something, preferably his head, against a wall, a block of stone, something that would hurt. Anything to take his mind off the fact that he was too interested in Ms. Lombard, and that most of his interest centred around backing her up against the nearest wall and seeing if she tasted as good as she looked.
Not that he would have to go looking for bruises. If Gray or Blade ever found out he’d fallen in instant lust with their sister, all the years of shared camaraderie in the SAS wouldn’t count for a thing.
His lashes drooped as he talked with Gray, shielding his intense interest in the woman he’d been hired to protect.
He could see why photographers went wild over her, why men dropped like flies. She wasn’t flashy or charismatic; on the contrary, she was curiously understated, as if she kept even her own femininity under wraps.
Sweet hell, who was he trying to kid? She probably had that air of mystery perfected. Any man who ever looked at the lady would want her. No wonder Gray was tearing his hair out trying to keep her protected. Ben had been taken in by the aloof act, but he had to remember that she’d checked him out just as thoroughly as he’d done her.
She glanced at him again, and he discovered her eyes weren’t black, as he’d first thought; they were a rich, velvety chocolate, bare shades lighter than the dark sable of her hair.
Ben almost groaned out loud. He loved chocolate. And he would have his work cut out swatting men off left, right and centre—and that would be when she wasn’t sneaking them in the back door.
Some of the stories Gray and Blade used to tell about their cute little sister began to register. Roma was athletic and loved to run, and she hadn’t con-fined her running to the sports field. She had run away as a teenager. She had also run rings around her bodyguards, destroying more than one reputation. Apparently she’d driven any number of security personnel crazy—one by keeping him out so late at nightclubs he’d barely been able to function during the day. Another had quit after a solid week of shopping. It had sounded funny at the time. Sitting in the jungle on extended patrol, soaking wet, eating reconstituted food, and wondering if someone was drawing a bead on his spine, Ben had grabbed at the humour and laughed at the antics of Baby Roma just as hard as Gray and Blade and the rest of the guys.
They’d even made up newspaper headlines: Bodyguard Found Dead In Mall: Autopsy Reveals Death By Shopping.
Ben wasn’t laughing now. Roma Lombard might look like every man’s fantasy, but she was trouble in capital letters.
His eyes narrowed. He’d be damned if he would let her run all over him.
At Gray’s suggestion, they moved to a quieter part of the lounge. Ben accepted the envelope Gray extracted from his briefcase and automatically began examining the contents, but he was still having difficulty concentrating. His mind was firmly fixed on the one complication he could not afford—a sexual attraction to his client.
If he didn’t owe Gray any number of favours, he would have dumped Ms. Lombard’s sweet little ass on someone else’s lap.
Chapter 4
Roma could still feel the heat of McCabe’s touch. His palm had been warm, calloused, and so rough it had sent a hot shock of sensation up her arm.
Wearily, she assessed the situation. McCabe was her bodyguard, and she couldn’t do a thing about it.
He was mouth-wateringly gorgeous, even better than his photos, and she wanted him.
Yep, just as she thought, her life had just officially gone to hell.
She’d heard McCabe’s name mentioned often, although the actual personal information she knew about him was small. She knew he was a good friend of both Gray and Blade, and had been in the SAS with her brothers. He’d been married and was recently divorced, and he was now a single dad with custody of his child.
His blue gaze connected with hers again, and she decided she had one other piece of information. He didn’t like her.
Good, she thought tartly, squashing her bewilderment and a ridiculous pang of hurt. She didn’t want to be on intimate terms with McCabe. He was exactly the kind of male she didn’t need in her life: dominant, overconfident, a real lady-killer.
Roma frowned when she identified a thread of excitement still twining through the long list of negatives she was building against McCabe, but she didn’t question why she had to build a case against being attracted to him. He’d looked at her and she’d been turned on. The sudden attack of lust alarmed her, because she’d never lost control like that before.
His deep voice mingled with Gray’s as he methodically flipped through printed material and a sheaf of enlarged black-and-white photos. The edgy, simmering impatience had disappeared and he now radiated the cool competency of a man who was used to danger and knew just what to do with it.
Faded jeans and T-shirt aside, McCabe looked like exactly what she knew him to be: a highly trained professional, an ex-SAS assault and anti-terrorist specialist who, from the conversation, was now in business as a security consultant.
He began firing questions at Gray. Finally he looked up from the material in his hands. ��Either it was a random shooting or the shot was wide. Did you pinpoint a trajectory?’’
��We did better than that.’’ Gray pulled one of the photos from the stack. ��We found the shooter’s nest. Second floor, third window from the right, just above the flower shop. The lady who leases the shop said there were several empty rooms with back stairs access.’’
��Good position,’’ McCabe commented. ��He shouldn’t have missed.’’
Roma blinked, hardly believing she’d heard right. The bluntness of McCabe’s comment flicked her on the raw. ��That’s why all this fuss is for nothing,’’ she said curtly, irritated at being left out of the discussion as if she had no part in it, and stung by McCabe’s clinical assessment of the so-called attempt on her life. Stung by the memory of that single rifle shot. Anyone would think Lewis didn’t count, despite being the one with a bullet hole in his shoulder. ��If the shooter was that professional and had wanted to put a bullet through me, why did he miss?’’
McCabe’s gaze fastened on hers. ��Your boyfriend was hit.’’
Roma gritted her teeth. ��Lewis isn’t my boyfriend, he’s a friend. There was also a large crowd. Maybe the gunman was after someone else. Maybe, as you say, it was a random shooting and he didn’t care who he hit.’’
��Anything’s possible.’’
McCabe’s voice was low, with an intriguing roughness that made her tighten up inside; then it registered that he was soothing her, as if she needed to be babied out of her fears.
He switched his attention back to Gray, once again dismissing her. ��Calibre?’’
��Five point five six.’’
��Sniper rifle,’’ he said softly.
Gray glanced at Roma. She knew what he was thinking. He didn’t like discussing the details of the shooting in front of her, but she wasn’t going to take the hint and walk away while they discussed the unpleasant facts. Besides, she’d made it her business to find out every last detail of the investigation. In point of fact, she knew more than anyone—she had been there.
McCabe eased the photographs and the report back into the envelope. ��Any fingerprints?’’
��Clean.’’ Once again Gray glanced at her as if she was made of delicate porcelain and shouldn’t hear gritty details.
Roma folded her arms across her chest and almost rolled her eyes with exasperation.
��The room was sanitised before he left. Random target practice or not, he was a pro.’’
McCabe grunted and tapped the envelope against his thigh. ��You need a lift into town?’’
Gray shook his head. ��I’m catching a flight out, I’ve got a lunchtime meeting in Sydney. The family suite at the hotel is free, so that’s where you’ll be staying. Roma has her itinerary, and you’ve got my cell phone number if you need to get hold of me.’’
They shook hands; then Gray hugged Roma. ��I know you think this is a lot of fuss about nothing, but if there’s even the suggestion of trouble, I want you back home and safe.’’
��You worry too much.’’
A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ��Where you’re concerned, sometimes I don’t think I worry enough.’’
Roma watched Gray stride away, fighting the urge to call him back and cancel this whole trip. She didn’t get to see much of Gray or Blade these days, and the gap in years had always precluded real intimacy, so this sudden urge to cling was definitely out of character. But now that her brother had gone there was just her and—
��Is this all your luggage?’’
Roma stiffened at the grimness of McCabe’s tone. One of those big calloused hands was wrapped around the handle of her suitcase. She fought the urge to snatch the case off him and wondered how he would react to the tussle. Gray would have let her have her way…eventually. She didn’t think McCabe would. He hadn’t openly revealed his dislike, but she could feel it rolling off him in waves.
��If I had any more luggage,’’ she stated coolly, ��I’d be carrying it.’’
He eyed her sharply then nodded. ��When you’re ready…Ms. Lombard.’’
She noticed he used the impersonal address of Ms. instead of the old-fashioned but infinitely more feminine Miss.
She measured the impersonal regard of his dark blue eyes as she fell into step beside him. If there had been heat there before, it was well and truly gone. McCabe’s expression was chilly, bordering on rudeness. If this was his usual manner with paying customers, she would hate to see his client list. She would bet that no one ever hired him twice. The Lombard payroll usually commanded a high level of competency, skill and politeness. She had no doubt McCabe fulfilled the first two items on that list— Gray wouldn’t have hired him otherwise—but he looked as though he didn’t give a damn about the third.
For the first time she registered the orange stain on his shoulder. Like the casual clothes, the stain made McCabe less machine-like and distant, more human, and it reminded her that he had a daughter and a life she knew nothing about. ��Is that ice cream?’’ she asked, curiosity and an impish desire to put a crack in his cool reserve getting the better of her.
His gaze settled on her. ��Orange chocolate chip.’’
Nope, Roma thought, suppressing a sigh, not a glimmer of humour.
Shifting her suitcase to his left hand, he half turned, doing a quick sweep of the Arrivals area and the people using the entrance. As he did so, his T-shirt lifted slightly and settled against a bulge in the small of his back. A handgun. And it wasn’t little—a nine millimetre would probably fit snugly into his big, capable hand.
Roma controlled the spurt of apprehension caused by just seeing the gun. She wasn’t usually so jumpy, but there was no getting past the fact that Lewis’s shooting had shaken her. ��I wouldn’t have picked you for a chocolate chip man.’’
Chocolate chip sounded like fun.
His narrowed gaze swung back to hers. This close, she could see the crystalline purity of his eyes, the soft, glossy texture of his hair, the stubble darkening his jaw. She could smell the clean scent of his skin, as if he wasn’t long from the shower. The details were curiously intimate, and her stomach tightened on another shot of pure sexual awareness.
��I like chocolate just as much as the next guy,’’ he said evenly, ��even though it gives me one hell of a headache.’’
As they strolled toward the car park, Roma decided McCabe hadn’t been talking about food. She didn’t know what chocolate had to do with anything, but she’d been right in her first assessment: he didn’t like her. He would protect her, but only because he was paid to do so. Somehow that burned, which was ridiculous, because she shouldn’t care whether he liked her or not, and she didn’t want to see McCabe as anything other than a paid professional.
But with that first eye contact McCabe had made her see him as a man, and that scared her. Men got hurt. No matter how irritable or bad-tempered, they bled and died. She didn’t want to think of McCabe bleeding the way Lewis had. Dying the way her brother Jake had.
A throb of grief hit her as she stepped from beneath the shelter of the terminal into the full glare of the sun. Blindly, Roma groped in her holdall, found her sunglasses and pushed them onto the bridge of her nose, glad for an excuse to hide the tears.
Every now and then something triggered a remnant of the intense grief, the helpless rage, she’d felt when her brother was killed. In the first weeks after Jake had died, she’d suffered recurring nightmares. She would wake, rigid with shock and distress, pillow wet with tears, then lie there, replaying the dream, trying to neutralise it by changing it, by saving Jake.
In her mind she’d saved him a hundred times, a thousand times. She’d known karate, judo; she’d been an expert shot. In her heart she’d grieved because she’d never had a chance to save him, or, like her brothers, to at least bring his killer to justice.
Lewis’s shooting had brought it all back, the grief, the fear, the anger. So far she’d managed to keep her feelings firmly under wraps, shocked by the sudden eruption of violence outside the cinema and panicked by her loss of control on the sidewalk. Maybe that had been a mistake. She should have allowed herself to cry, taken the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed so she could at least have gotten some sleep. McCabe wouldn’t appreciate having a weeping female on his hands.
Offering her a shoulder to cry on was probably right up there with shopping and cross-dressing.
Chapter 5
Ben loaded Roma’s suitcase into the back of his truck. The case was another detail about Roma Lombard that didn’t fit. It was leather and expensive, but it was battered. He had expected her to have a full set of Louis Vuitton, at the very least.
She didn’t wait for him to open her door or to assist her into the passenger seat, for which he was thankful. He didn’t want to lay one finger on his client’s soft, sleek hide if he could help it. Occasionally, in the line of duty, he would have to, but he would keep those instances to a minimum. Bodyguarding required a certain distance, a sharp awareness of surroundings and clear tactical thinking, and he couldn’t guarantee any of those things if he let himself get too close to Roma Lombard.
He was good at what he did; that was why he’d chosen security and VIP protection as a career option after leaving the SAS. But he also knew his own nature. He had a healthy libido and an appreciation of beautiful women. If they became intimate—and given his awareness of her as a woman, he had to anticipate that problem—he would instantly replace himself, because he would have compromised his effectiveness.
He tossed the envelope Gray had given him on the back seat of the extended cab truck, removed the Glock from the small of his back and stowed it, then swung behind the wheel and slid dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose. He opened his window to dissipate some of the heat that had built up inside. Despite the early hour, the temperature was climbing steadily. Already his T-shirt was sticking to his back, and a fine sheen of sweat dampened his skin. He was still aroused, which made sitting uncomfortable, but he kept his expression neutral. There was no point in getting wound up when he couldn’t do a thing about it.
Roma was silent as he negotiated the crammed car park, her head turned away from him as she looked out the passenger window.
Ben frowned as he nosed into traffic. He’d been hard on her. He hadn’t bothered to hide his dislike of a situation that had been sprung on him at the last minute. Normally he was scrupulously fair with clients, no matter what the circumstances were or who they were. Normally he was friendly.
But nothing about this situation even approached normal. The second he’d laid eyes on Roma Lombard, he’d been knocked off balance.
A welcome breeze began circulating through the overheated cab, and he caught the faint drift of a light, feminine perfume. The throb in his groin deepened into a persistent ache that told him he hadn’t had sex in too long and that it was past time he took care of that particular need. He’d been too busy caring for his daughter, Bunny, and setting up his new business to look after that part of his life, but that was going to have to change. He knew from experience that ignoring his sex drive only made his state of arousal more intense. Sometimes, when he’d been on a military assignment for a prolonged period, he’d become almost savage with lust. He’d never lost control, but when he found a willing bed partner he would stay on her the entire night, keeping her beneath him and having her until the hungry ache finally left him.
A bed partner was what he needed now, a woman who could provide him with regular, hard-driving sex when he needed it and who didn’t ask for anything more. Maybe it was a cold way to approach obtaining something as intimate as making love, but Ben had long since replaced romanticism with practicality. For him it was a simple physical equation, minus the hearts and flowers. When he was younger, he’d been wild, his judgement lousy. He’d let sex cloud his thinking, and the mistake had changed his life permanently. He couldn’t afford to make another mistake now; he had Bunny’s needs to consider. If he took a woman to bed, he was careful to lay down the ground rules first.
If, and when, he wanted a relationship of a permanent kind, it would be of his choosing. And this time he would choose his future wife with the contents of his head and not his pants.
He stopped for a set of lights. With the cessation of movement, the cooling breeze died and the cab instantly warmed. Roma leaned forward, the movement drawing his eye so that he watched as she reached into her holdall, extracted a bottle of water and took a swallow, before recapping and replacing the bottle. Her hands were slim, the nails short but nicely shaped, her movements graceful and completely feminine. Despite the heat and the heavier clothes she’d worn for the early-morning flight, she looked as cool as a cucumber and so composed it was hard to believe she’d saved a man’s life on a bloodied sidewalk two nights ago.
The lights changed. Ben shifted gear, accelerating smoothly.
If he decided he wanted Roma Lombard, he thought calmly, then he would have her, but it was either strictly business, or bed. He couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t keep his mind out of her pants.
Roma avoided looking at McCabe as he drove. Instead, she rested her head against the seat and watched the industrial areas and the housing estates flash by, letting the hum of the engine and the monotony of the view dull the throbbing in her head. Her lids drooped, the drag of sleep almost taking her under. Her eyes popped wide. She lifted her head off the headrest and forced herself to sit straighter and take an interest in the view. The thought of falling asleep in the presence of McCabe was subtly alarming; she was already vulnerable enough.
After a few minutes she noticed they were headed south into suburbia, rather than into the centre of town. Curiously she noted the signs. Gradually the houses thinned out into expensive rural lifestyle blocks, interspersed by tracts of pasture. The country was getting wilder by the second, and she wondered with a flicker of amusement if McCabe had consigned the whole idea of guarding her to the too-hard basket and was planning to knock her off and dump her body.
Eventually they turned down a gravel drive flanked by leafy jacaranda trees. There was open country on either side, where horses grazed contentedly, and in the distance, Roma caught tantalising glimpses of what must be the Waitemata Harbour.
They pulled up at a large cedar-and-brick home, which was comfortably nestled into mature gardens. A broad sweep of lawn was dominated by a large, gnarled oak. A simple rope swing hung from the oak, and a bright pink bike lay nearby, abandoned at a drunken angle next to a sandpit.
��Won’t be a minute,’’ McCabe said, placing his sunglasses on the dash and climbing out of the truck.
The front door was flung open as he walked across the lawn. A small tornado of a girl erupted from the house, yelling, ��Daddy, Daddy!’’
She ran full-tilt at McCabe and wrapped herself around his legs.
McCabe’s back muscles flexed and bunched, shifting smoothly beneath the damp cling of his T-shirt as he swung his daughter up into his arms. He twirled her around in a circle before wrapping her close. The little girl planted a kiss on his nose, and he grinned, white teeth flashing against his stubbled jaw as he returned the favour. She giggled and tugged at his hair.
Roma watched, still punchy with tiredness, but transfixed by the change in McCabe. She’d had him pegged as tough and rude and objectionable, but right now he looked like the poster boy for fatherhood.
The little girl demanded to be let down, commandeered his hand and tugged him over to the bike, then stood, hands on hips, as McCabe went down on his haunches to put the chain back on, his movements fluid and unhurried. He looked relaxed and content, completely at home in his role as a parent. A sharp little ache started in her chest as she watched McCabe and his child together. The happy scene, the way he was with his daughter, contrasted sharply with his abrasive manner with her—intensifying the cold sense of alienation she felt in his presence, so that she sniffed, the blues hitting her full force.
She loved family, and she was already missing hers, despite their fussing; and she loved children.
She’d even trained to work with children in professional child care, but six months ago she’d quietly given up her career after a newspaper had printed a story about her family’s vulnerability to terrorism. All it had taken was a couple of crank calls to her place of work and she’d been asked to leave. Roma could even understand and sympathise with her employer. If she were a parent, she wouldn’t want her child to be cared for by a woman who periodically needed an armed escort, either.
She’d considered opening her own business, but not for long. The fact had been brought home to her that she was a potential threat to anyone who got close to her, and children were especially vulnerable. When she’d planned her career and begun training, she hadn’t imagined that the situation with Harper would continue for so many years or that, as a family, they would continue to remain so vulnerable. Somehow, through it all, a part of her had held stubbornly to the idea of a fairytale ending—the elusive ideal of a normal life.
An older woman, casually dressed in jeans and an oversize shirt, strolled out of the house. Ben wiped his hands on the grass, straightened and walked toward her. The little girl didn’t follow him; instead she stared at Roma with the unabashed curiosity of childhood and wandered over, following an invisible zigzag path in the grass, hands shoved into her pockets.
��Hi,’’ she said.
��Hi yourself.’’ Roma climbed out of the truck and crouched down to the little girl’s level, relieved as the breeze tugged at her shirt and cooled her skin. McCabe’s daughter was maybe five or six years old, with dark hair cut into a shining bob, and eyes the same intense blue as her dad’s. She was wearing a T-shirt, overalls and sneakers, and still had an adorable baby softness to her cheeks. ��My name’s Roma, what’s yours?’’
McCabe’s daughter looked back at her daddy, then at the truck, as if assessing whether or not she should answer. ��Bunny.’’
She advanced a step and picked up a strand of Roma’s hair, watched it blow from her fingers. ��I’d like my hair that long,’’ she announced. ��Grandma says I can’t grow it yet. It’s too fine.’’
��Your hair’s pretty like it is.’’
Bunny nodded. Her eyes dropped to Roma’s boots. She gave her own grubby sneakers a disparaging glance. ��I’d like boots like that, too. But I s’pose I’ll have to wait. Grandma doesn’t know what little girls wear these days.’’
Roma glanced at the woman McCabe was talking to. She was tall, with imperious features and dark hair that had greyed in elegant streaks. The relationship, even if Bunny hadn’t pointed it out, was obvious. Not only did McCabe have a daughter, he had a mother.
McCabe finished his conversation and strode back toward them. Roma straightened, watching as Bunny skipped toward her father and demanded to be picked up. McCabe obliged, hardly breaking his stride.
Bunny wrapped her arms around McCabe’s neck, cuddling close as she regarded Roma with the clinically assessing eyes of childhood. ��She’s pretty. I want her to stay.’’
��We both have to go, honey,’’ McCabe said gently as he took a small suitcase from the back seat. ��I have to work.’’
Bunny’s jaw set. ��I don’t want you to go.’’
McCabe shot Roma an enigmatic look. ��We’ve talked about my work lots of times, honey. You know I have to stay away. Grandma will look after you until I can come back, then I’ll take you to the beach. We’ll go camping again.’’
A small set of hands framed McCabe’s hard face. ��Promise?’’
��Yeah,’’ McCabe said softly. ��Promise.’’
She sighed heavily. ��Okay. We got a deal.’’
McCabe hugged her, then set her on her feet before going down on his haunches. ��Look after Grandma for me?’’
Bunny heaved another sigh. ��I s’pose.’’
��And don’t forget to ring, otherwise I might sleep in and be late for work.’’
She checked the tiny watch strapped to her wrist. ��Okay. Seven ’clock. On the dot.’’
McCabe’s mother, who had approached at an unhurried pace, came to a halt beside her son. McCabe made quick introductions before handing Elsa McCabe the suitcase, which was evidently packed with Bunny’s things.
Minutes later they were heading back into suburbia.
Roma glanced at the orange stain on his T-shirt, and decided to give conversation one more try. Anything was better than McCabe’s prickly silence. ��That’s where the ice cream came from?’’
He glanced at her, his gaze remote behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. ��Yeah. Bunny loves ice cream.’’
��Is that her real name?’’
For a moment Roma thought he wasn’t going to answer at all. His manner was definitely cool, withdrawn.
��Her real name’s Eveline, a mouthful for a toddler. I called her honey, and she insisted that was her name, but she couldn’t say the �h.’ Bunny came out instead.’’
The cool politeness of McCabe’s reply effectively slammed the door on any more questions about his daughter. His attitude said loud and clear that she was trespassing.
Chapter 6
Ben removed his sunglasses as he turned into the underground car park of the Lombard Hotel. The huge luxury hotel and casino complex occupied a piece of prime real estate in downtown Auckland, just spitting distance from the bustling waterfront.
He killed the engine, leaned back in his seat and considered his passenger. She was slumped against the door, her head canted at an uncomfortable angle, hair tousled, her mouth even softer in sleep. For the first time he noticed the shadows beneath her eyes. She looked exhausted.
He should have offered her his shoulder. If it had been any other woman, he would have. He was naturally protective, and he liked looking after women. He loved their soft skin and silky hair, the graceful things they did with their hands, all the differences that made them female. The problem was, Roma Lombard was too tempting. If she’d slept on his shoulder, he would have been too aware of her.
He was going to have to wake her, and he didn’t want to; she needed to sleep. An unexpected wave of tenderness took him by surprise, and he drew back from it, instantly wary. He’d already gotten way too close to his client; he wasn’t about to step any closer if he could help it. Especially not after he’d turned around and seen Bunny holding a strand of her hair and looking at her as if she were a fairy princess out of one of her books. They’d looked like mother and daughter, and warning bells had gone off inside him.
He never brought women home to Bunny, because she’d made it clear she wanted a mother and Ben didn’t want her fixating on a woman who might never fill the job. She’d had enough instability in her life; he would be damned if he’d introduce any more. When he’d finally gotten full custody just months ago, he’d vowed to do all he could to make up for the upheaval of the marriage split and give her a settled childhood.
He called Roma’s name. When she didn’t respond, he reached out and shook her lightly. She stirred but didn’t waken. Reluctantly, he gripped her shoulder again, noting the sleek firmness of muscle beneath his hand, and shook a bit harder.
Roma came out of sleep fast, the abrupt transition from a deep, fathomless slumber to alarmed wakefulness making her heart pound and her breath catch in her throat. For a raw moment she was trapped in a disorienting limbo, caught between dream and reality, the darkness of her surroundings making fear rise in her throat, until she recognised the dim, bunker-like surrounds of the hotel’s underground car park.
��You okay?’’
McCabe’s dark, clipped voice brought her head up with a jerk. Pain shafted up her neck and made the tender spot where she’d hit her head on the sidewalk outside the cinema throb. She blinked and rubbed at her eyes, gradually coming to grips with the embarrassing knowledge that she had fallen asleep while McCabe had been driving and had probably been asleep for a good half hour in his presence. She massaged her neck, tested the kink there with a turn of her head, then reluctantly glanced at the big grim man sitting beside her. ��Fine. Just a little…startled.’’
McCabe regarded her for a moment longer, giving her the impression that he was going to say something more; then he climbed out of the truck and walked around to the rear to get her case.
They picked up the keys from reception and took the lift up to the Lombard family suite. McCabe dropped her bag just inside the door, did a quick tour of the rooms, then came back into the main lounge area.
Roma had already done her own tour of the room she wanted—one of the big airy double rooms with bifold doors that opened out onto a sun-dappled terrace. It was the room she always had when she could grab it. Of course, that depended on how many of her family were in residence. Sometimes the place was a zoo and she’d had to fight for a single bed in the smallest room.
McCabe strolled into the lounge and motioned to one of the comfortable leather couches grouped around a coffee table. ��I know you probably want to take a nap, but before you do that, we need to talk.’’
Roma’s stomach tightened at the curtness of McCabe’s tone, and the fact that she had to share the suite with a man who was little more than a stranger for the next few days hit her forcibly. She had only ever been in this situation with a bodyguard a couple of times, and she couldn’t be comfortable with the necessity. Usually there was family around to act as a buffer against the reality of around-the-clock protection.
She sat down on one of the big, soft hide couches that dominated the lounge and mentally braced herself for McCabe’s list of rules. Gray had said the security would be discreet, but that meant to outside observers only—it had nothing to do with the impact the protection would have on her own life.
McCabe perched on the arm of the couch directly opposite. ��I want to know your version of what happened with the shooting.’’
For a moment Roma’s mind went blank, and she wondered if she’d heard right. This wasn’t the discussion she had expected.
��I gave my version to the police. All the relevant facts are in the report Gray gave you.’’
��I know the facts,’’ he said calmly. ��What I want from you are the things you might not have told the police.’’ His gaze fastened on hers, dark and still, giving the impression of utter coldness. ��Were you scared when it happened?’’
��What do you think?’’ she demanded quietly. ��Lewis was hurt, and there was the possibility of a second shot. I was so scared all I wanted to do was run.’’
��But you didn’t. You stayed and gave your friend first aid.’’
��He was bleeding. If I’d left him, he would have died.’’
He crossed his arms over his chest, his expression neutral, cop-cool. ��Did you think the shooting was random?’’
��There’s no proof it was anything else.’’
He was silent for a moment. ��You were scared when I woke you in the Jeep. Would you mind telling me why?’’
Resentment stirred. Not only did McCabe look like a cop, he was questioning her like one. ��I woke up in an unfamiliar place. I was…off balance.’’
��If you have information about the shooting that I should know,’’ he said softly, ��you’d better tell me. I can’t do my job effectively unless I know all the facts.’’
The sluggish aftermath of her nap and the odd sense of disconnection that went with it evaporated on a hot rush of anger. McCabe thought she was withholding information. Lying. More…he was interrogating her as if she were a suspect in the shooting, not a victim. ��I don’t know anything about the shooting other than that the person I was with got hurt,’’ she snapped. ��Everything there is to know is included in the report in that envelope.’’
Keeping her expression carefully blank, Roma stood up and collected her case, strode toward her room and dumped the case just inside the door. Too angry to leave the conversation hanging, she spun on her heel and almost ran into McCabe’s chest. She stared at the sleek gold skin of his throat and the pulse that jumped there, trying to steady the hard pounding of her heart. ��What made you think I might know anything more?’’
��You were scared when you woke up. And you’re evasive now. I need to know why. I have staff who’ll be involved in your protection programme. Their safety’s important. I have to check out all the angles.’’
All the angles. She took a deep breath, every nerve in her body jangling at his closeness. He was blocking the doorway now, one hand resting on the jamb, muscled bicep gleaming in the sunny glow of the room.
Hurt and resentment warred with common sense. Common sense won out. He was doing his job, asking the questions he had to ask. But if he’d been nicer about it, explained what he was doing, there wouldn’t have been a problem. She would have been happy to discuss the shooting with him. ��I panicked while I was giving Lewis first aid,’’ she said flatly. ��I’m not proud of it, but for a few seconds I did think I was being watched. I did think I was a target.’’ She met his gaze squarely. ��I didn’t put that in the police report for a good reason. It was paranoia, pure and simple.’’
��I’m sorry if I offended you, but you were so jumpy I had to find out if you felt directly threatened.’’ He shrugged. ��Gray doesn’t think there’s a threat, but given your family’s past history, he’s not taking any chances. I’m not taking any chances, either.’’ His voice had dropped, the low, rough register making her tighten up inside. ��If at any point you feel that someone is after you, then tell me. It’ll make a difference to the way I protect you.’’
Roma eyed him warily. He’d used that same dark, honeyed tone at the airport. It was probably the one he used for escaped mental patients. Or for seducing women. Warmth spread through her at the thought of being seduced by McCabe. ��What if it turns out to be my overactive imagination?’’
��It wouldn’t matter. As long as the protection makes you feel safe.’’
The concern in McCabe’s voice startled her, and she wondered if he was actually on the verge of offering her comfort. His face was half in shadow, half out of it, wide mouth distractingly soft, set as it was against the square line of his jaw. His scent filled her nostrils, musky and hot in the warm room.
He was aroused.
The shock of the discovery sent a spasm of heat through her stomach, tightening her nipples in a rush, so that they pushed achingly hard against the soft cotton of her bra. For a long moment, time seemed to stop, become suspended, along with her breathing, while she struggled with that knowledge.
Awareness flashed in those cold wolf’s eyes, shivered down her spine. He held her gaze, seemingly unconcerned that she knew he was aroused.
One part of her wanted to back up a step, confused. After all, they’d been fighting on and off ever since they’d met. But another part of her was irresistibly drawn, attracted and curious. She wondered what it would be like to step up to McCabe and rub herself against him, bury her face in the curve of his neck and taste his skin, wind her fingers in his hair, then reach up and press her mouth against his.
A little shudder ran through her. Dangerous, she decided.
Her brothers had been wild when they’d been single, and they’d run with a wild bunch. Apart from his brief marriage, McCabe had always been in there.
��Did you tell Gray how you felt about the shooting?’’
For a moment Roma had trouble grasping that, despite his sexual arousal, McCabe had coldly switched to bodyguard mode and wanted to talk about the shooting again.
��He knew I was scared.’’
Ben studied Roma’s expression, the defensive way she clasped her arms across her chest to hide the jut of her nipples. Her breasts were round and full against her slim figure. The contrast of feminine lushness with sleek, firm muscle made his mouth water. He wanted to reach out now and cup her breasts, weigh them in his palms, rub his thumbs over her tight little nipples, then have them in his mouth. The mere thought of having her naked breasts in his hands, then sucking her nipples until she moaned, made him achingly hard.
Not that anything like that was about to happen. He was already walking a knife’s edge with his client, and when she heard what he was about to say, it was more likely she would slug him than allow him to touch her in any way.
��There’s just one more thing,’’ he said softly. ��You can’t have that room.’’
Her eyes narrowed. McCabe watched her closely, reluctantly fascinated by every nuance of expression. He knew Roma’s brothers as well as if they were his own family. Gray and Blade were both big, male, muscled—capable of pounding most other men into the dirt without breaking a sweat. Not that they brawled; they didn’t need to. Gray and Blade had always fought with intellect and technical skill as much as with the physical power of their bodies; they were warriors in every sense of the word.
Idly, he wondered how Roma would fight. Dirty, he decided—suppressing a grin. He could see her temper now, simmering just below the surface. Her skin had taken on a luminous glow, and her eyes flashed, dark and slumbrously exotic, as if she would go for the kill in a deceptively lazy feminine way that would flummox most men. They wouldn’t know she’d sunk the knife in until hours later, maybe days.
Then again, maybe not…
Suddenly he could see the resemblance to her brothers in her cheekbones, the strength in the line of her jaw, that fierce Lombard pride.
His lids lowered. No, Roma Lombard wouldn’t bother with manipulation or veiled insults, or even that female version of brawling, a sissy slap. An unholy excitement pulsed through him. She would just out and out slug him.
She didn’t bother to hide her incredulity. ��Did you just say,’’ she said slowly, ��that I can’t have this room?’’
��You heard right.’’
��Which room can I have?’’ she enquired with icy politeness.
He felt like saying ��Mine’’ but pulled back from that precipice. ��You can have the one through the adjoining bathroom. It’s more secure. This bedroom’s wide open in terms of access, with the terrace doors, and the doors leading into the bathroom and living area.’’
For long seconds she didn’t move, didn’t respond in any way, but instead of exploding as he expected her to, her expression smoothed out, becoming as controlled and remote as it had been at the airport. ��All right.’’
She met his gaze coolly, although her cheeks were flushed, then astounded him by running her gaze down over his chest, his belly, stopping at his groin. He felt as though she’d just run her hand over him.
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