And Able

D
 
id death before dishonor cover the maid of honor sneaking out of the wedding reception?

If it did, Claire Sharp’s honor was in danger of extermination and she was ready to pull the trigger. She simply could not stand another minute of the torture, not another second.

Josette would understand…she hoped.

Claire slunk stealthily into the hall outside the reception room of the classy downtown Portland hotel. There were people out here, too, but only hotel staff…no one from the wedding party. No one to see and notice
 
her
.

She exhaled a sigh of relief as she cleared the room.

“Did you need something, Miss Sharp?”

She almost choked on her own breath. She could not believe it. Not out here…

“Miss Sharp?”

Tensing, she turned to find a black-clad waiter smiling at her inquiringly.

Whose idea had it been to introduce the wedding party to the hotel staff? Probably Wolf’s. He was good at organizing things and had actually done a lot to help Claire’s best friend and former roommate, Josette, plan her wedding. Ex-mercenaries were a strange breed.

Claire forced a smile for the waiter. “Um…no, just the…the…” Inspiration struck. “The restroom. I need the ladies’ room.”

He pointed to a deserted-looking—
Thank you, God
—red-carpeted hallway behind her. “Just that way, Miss Sharp.”

“Thank you.” And she scurried off as fast as she could, considering she was wearing the stiletto heels of death.

Would it be considered rude for the maid of honor to change into jeans and tennies at the wedding reception? She’d never been to one before, much less played a participating role. But she was almost certain that protocol dictated she keep her glad rags on.
 
Darn it
.

She just felt so exposed. The full skirt of the strapless, royal blue silk dress stopped four inches above her knees, and the back of the bodice, held together with thin velvet lacing tied in a very girlie bow right in the center of her back, dipped almost to her tailbone.

Josette had insisted it was perfectly respectable, but Claire was not used to going without a bra, and her breasts weren’t exactly tiny. She felt like they jiggled every time she moved, and as the maid of honor, she ended up moving a lot. She’d worried it was going to be like this, but when Josette had asked her to wear both the dress and heels to be in the wedding, Claire had been unable to say no.

Josette was not only her
 
best
 
friend, but other than the elderly residents at the nursing home where she worked, Josette was pretty much her
 
only
 
friend. At least, that counted.

Josette had just married a man she loved and who adored her to distraction. Nitro thought she was everything a woman should be, which explained how Claire’s friend could hook up with such a predator type. Both Josette and Nitro were former mercenaries, but he was a lot more dangerous, to Claire’s way of thinking. The man oozed silent menace, but then so did his two closest friends, Wolf and Hotwire.

Wolf, at least, was domesticated. He had married Lise the winter before and they were expecting their first baby. Claire often marveled at how well the often vague and very imaginative author of kick-butt women’s fiction got along with the ultra practical Wolf.

Hotwire was still single and making it very clear to anyone who cared to listen that he intended to stay that way.

No matter how attracted she was to him, Claire had no intention of trying to change his mind. However, something she’d said or done must have convinced him otherwise, because he had taken pains to let her know his stand on commitment.

He probably felt the need because of the way she stared at him like a love struck teenager whenever he was around. She couldn’t seem to help herself, but it was so embarrassing…not to mention
 
unexpected
. She didn’t do love struck, starstruck, or any other kind of struck.

Okay, sure, Hotwire had a body that rivaled Michelangelo’s David and a southern charm that had the other female guests looking ready to swoon. He was also an inveterate flirt, and his honeyed Georgia drawl made her feel like she would melt in a puddle right at his feet.

Which was darn embarrassing, even if no one else knew about it.

But the worst deal was that underneath all that devastating charm, he was every bit as dangerous and aggressive as Nitro. The kind of man a woman knew could keep her safe and who actively made the world a better place. For Claire, that was a lethal combination. She could probably file that reaction under protector-type-struck, which was only marginally better than love struck.

He was so lethal, he made her feel downright lusty, and that took more doing than the whole protector-type-struck thing. A world-weary twenty-eight years old, she’d been around the block and back again and she did not do lust. It was a total waste of energy as far as she was concerned.

But darned if when Hotwire got within ten feet of her, she didn’t go and get all shivery. The parts of her body she hadn’t exposed to anyone except her doctor for longer than she wanted to keep track of
tingled
, for goodness’ sake.

Standing around in a dress that made her feel half naked did not help.

She hovered uncertainly outside the bathroom. Did she have the nerve to go out to her car and get her regular clothes to change into? More importantly, would it upset Josette very much to have her maid of honor turn back into a computer geek with no style sense?

“Sugar, you look ready to bolt.” The familiar Georgia accent went through her like a bolt of lightning.

Claire whirled around, her heart beating an irregular rata-tat-tat in her chest.

“I was thinking about changing my clothes,” she admitted. “I’m not used to dressing up and don’t really enjoy it.”

Hotwire’s blue gaze went over her like seeking hands,
 
really talented seeking hands
. “That’d be a real shame, Claire. You look beautiful.”

She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Yeah, right.”

Even on her best day, having had a stylist do her hair, a makeup artist do her makeup, and wearing the designer dress Josette had bought her, Claire knew she wasn’t
 
beautiful
. Passable, sure—any woman could be passable—but beautiful was not something she’d ever aspired to. Nor was it something she was ever likely to achieve.

Unlike her mother, who had been broken on the inside but very beautiful on the outside, Claire had average looks and an average figure that was maybe a tad too curvy in places. Her hair was the color of cooked carrots, and what she knew about styling it wouldn’t fill up the back of a cereal box. She was nothing like the women that flocked around Hotwire wherever he went.

And she really didn’t mind. Beauty wasn’t exactly a blessing for most women cursed with it. Look at her mom…look at half the actresses in Hollywood, for heaven’s sake. Most of them had lives that would make your average family psychologist cringe.

Giving her a quizzical look, Hotwire reached out and adjusted the chain on her locket.

An heirloom that had been passed down for five generations in her family, it was the only thing Claire had left of the good times before her dad’s death. She’d almost lost the necklace when the house she shared with Josette was burglarized, but Hotwire had gotten it back for her.

“Why’d you laugh?” he asked, his voice making her insides do that shivering thing again.

“No reason.”

He traced the chain of her necklace until his fingertip rested over the locket, but he might as well have been touching her directly. The feeling was just as electric. “Come on, sugar, tell me why you laughed.”

“Because it was funny,” she croaked out, her normal insouciance apparently on vacation in the Bahamas at the moment.

“I didn’t intend it to be.”

She tried to affect a casual shrug, but ended up brushing her breasts against his forearm. Her, “Sorry,” came out sounding suspiciously like a moan.

He didn’t look in the least affected by their nearness. His to-die-for good looks were not marred by tension, sexual or otherwise. In fact, he seemed perfectly relaxed, though he wasn’t smiling. He was a magnificent, golden lion at rest, the potential for powerful action there, but momentarily dormant.

“I’m not used to women dismissing my compliments,” he said with a frown.

She couldn’t tell if he was really angry with her or teasing. “Um…I’m
 
really
 
sorry.”

He shook his head. “An apology won’t cut it. You’ve besmirched my sense of honor. We take that seriously where I come from.”

She laughed, still not sure from his unreadable expression and downright dangerous aura whether he was serious or not. “What do you expect me to say?”

“Nothing.” Then he just stood there, silent and taking up more space than even his over-six-foot frame should occupy.

His hands rested against her neck, one thumb now brushing back and forth across her rapidly beating pulse. She began to wonder if her assessment of him as lion
 
at rest
 
was accurate. She realized he was coiled to spring at any moment, and like truly mesmerized prey, she didn’t think she could lift a finger to stop him.

The heat of the locket warmed by his hand burned against her bare skin. “Thank you,” she blurted out.

One brow rose. “For the compliment?”

She shook her head and then realized that might have been a mistake when his blue eyes narrowed.

“Then why?”

“For finding my locket and returning it to me. I know it’s just a necklace, but it means a lot to me.” It was her talisman, serving to remind her she did not have to follow in her mother’s footsteps, that she had women in her lineage she could be proud of.

“Josie said it was your grandmother’s.”

“Yes, and her grandmother’s before that.”

“You must have loved her a lot.”

“I did. She died when I was eight and I’ll never forget her. She was a formidable woman.” Unlike the daughter she’d given birth to.

“Who is Norene?”

“She was my mom.”

“She’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t like talking about that part of her life. There was too much pain wrapped up in the memories, and pain meant a vulnerability she’d long ago rejected. “Josette said you finished installing the security system in the house.”

“Right.”

She tried to step back, away from him, but he moved with her, his hands continuing to caress her throat with subtle movements. It was all she could do to keep focused on their conversation. “I don’t understand why she wants one now that she’s not going to be living there.”

“You live there, and a woman alone needs a good security system.”

If he knew some of the places she’d lived in her life, he would realize the safety of a locked door in a decent neighborhood was a luxury she didn’t take for granted. “Josette lived alone before I moved in.”

“She was a merc.”

“I’m not exactly helpless.”

“Honey, if those terrorists we took down have friends, you’d be worse than helpless around them.”

“What’s worse than helpless?”

“Dead.”

“Oh.” She tried taking a deep breath to calm down, but all she inhaled was his scent and she had to bite back a moan of pleasure at the unexpected intimacy of it. What was it about this guy? He was just so darn male—even the way he smelled excited her previously happily dormant feminine sexual instincts. “There’s no reason to believe anyone connected with them would have a grudge against me.”

“Josie was part of the team that brought the bad guys to justice. People like that do not forgive and forget.”

“But I’m not Josette.”

“It’s not like she took out an ad saying she was getting married and taking off on a month-long honeymoon. You are the one living in her house.”

She thought the worry was far-fetched but didn’t say so. She knew Josette had to agree because she would not have allowed Claire to continue living in the house if she believed doing so would put her at risk. The security system had been Nitro and Hotwire’s idea, although Josette had gone along with it easily enough.

Claire didn’t mention that to Hotwire, either. “I’m sure any security system you devised is more than adequate.”

“No security system is fail-safe, even ones as complicated as what Wolf and Nitro have installed around their homes.” He went on to describe the measures he and Wolf had implemented. “Oh, and I bought you a can of mace for every room of the house.”

“For every room of the house?”

“I like to be thorough…
in every way
.”

The message that went through her had nothing to do with his intentional meaning, she was sure. But she could imagine him being thorough as all get-out, and her fantasies
 
were not
 
about alarm systems. So long as they stayed fantasies, it was okay.

“I see.”

“A self-defense weapon won’t do you any good if it’s in the bedroom while you’re accosted in the kitchen.”