Challenging Gabriel (Knight Security 2) (9 page)

Angel chuckled tiredly at his teasing as she shook her head. It was impossible not to feel as if she knew this man, when he was so much like Gabriel. “I think not.”

“Lissa is going to be so disappointed— My wife.” He spoke with pride and love. “She’s consumed with curiosity about you, can’t wait to meet you.”

“Well, she’ll be waiting awhile longer,” Gabriel announced briskly as he strode into the kitchen.

His hair was still damp from the shower, and he was once again dressed in one of those expensively tailored business suits he wore to the office. If it wasn’t for the fact Gabriel was a little pale and there were deeper lines etched beside his eyes and mouth, Angel would never have known of his continued overindulgence in the whisky after she went to bed.

“Angel and I are going to the bank to collect the memory sticks this morning, so that we can get to work on the minutiae of Sinclair’s business dealings. We need to get them unraveled as soon as possible. I’m flying the two of us to Majorca this afternoon.”

Angel’s eyes widened. “You can fly a plane?”

“Contrary to popular belief, Gabriel isn’t a superhero, so he needs to use a plane to get from A to B, just like us lesser mortals.” Ash mocked his older brother rather than Angel.

“Ha bloody ha,” Gabriel said unappreciatively before his gaze swept over Angel in her denims and T-shirt. “You’ll need to dress more formally than that if you’re going to appear as Mrs. Sinclair at the bank this morning.”

She barely suppressed a shudder as she thought of all those years she had lived in ignorance of exactly what sort of monster her husband was. How naïve she had been not to question some of those telephone calls Clive took privately in his study late into the night. The number of bodyguards that followed them everywhere they went.

She had thought they were just the demands and trappings of a very wealthy man, the phone calls to and from the worldwide stock markets and businesses who were working when they were asleep. Now she realized those calls must have been from Clive’s less than respectable business partners, and the bodyguards were no doubt to protect him from all the enemies he must have made during those illegal dealings.

She stood abruptly. “I shouldn’t have involved any of you in this. It’s too dangerous. I-I can’t be responsible for anyone else being hurt or…or killed.”

Gabriel flicked a glance in his brother’s direction. “Care to give us some privacy, Ash?”

“No problem.” Asher rose to his feet. “I’m your third bodyguard for today, so I’ll be in your study looking for your porn magazines until it’s time to leave.”

“Good luck with that,” Gabriel scoffed.

His brother sighed his disappointment. “I’m guessing you don’t keep them in there after all.”

“I don’t keep them anywhere. Now bugger off and give Angel and me some time to talk. Alone,” he added pointedly.

“Yes, sir.” Ash gave him a mock salute before leaving.

“Is he always like that?”

Gabriel still had a slight smile on his lips when he turned back to Angel. “Irreverent and crude?” He nodded in answer to his own question. “Ask his wife, Lissa, sometime about the night the two of them met. She threw a glass of champagne in his face for talking to her so graphically,” he supplied at Angel’s questioning look.

Her brows rose. “But she married him anyway?”

“Over a year later, so he had to work for it.”

Angel avoided meeting his gaze. “I meant what I said, Gabriel. I shouldn’t have involved you or your family in this. I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to any of you.”

Gabriel could see by the dark circles under those luminous gray eyes and the pallor of her face that she had probably spent the rest of the night thinking rather than sleeping. Much as he had spent the rest of the night drinking. Not for the same reasons, though. Angel was worried about everyone but herself. Gabriel had spent the same hours fighting the demon on his shoulder urging him to go to her bedroom and make love to her.

None of that agonizing showed in his relaxed demeanor as he leaned back against one of the kitchen units. “So what are you going to do? Give Sinclair the evidence you have and meekly go back to being his wife as if none of this had ever happened? How long do you think you would survive?” he added harshly as her guilty blush answered that question. “A week, a month, before he decides it’s too much of a risk to allow wife number three to continue living, knowing what you do about him? To cut his losses and arrange for you to have a convenient accident? And what about Daniel, Angel? If you think I’m leaving my son with that bastard a moment longer than absolutely necessary, then you don’t know me at all.”

Angel
didn’t
know this cool stranger in his dark tailored suits, his silk shirts and ties, and his handmade black Italian leather shoes. A man of wealth and style, so unlike the warrior and renegade she had known eight years ago, or the demanding savage who had almost made love to her last night.

“They’re all one and the same man, Angel,” he admitted as he seemed to guess her thoughts. “Businessman. Soldier. Lover. All of them capable of killing if they have to.”

She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. “And have you…had to…often?”

“Enough.” His tone warned her against questioning him further on the subject. “Go and get changed, Angel. The sooner we get that information to our tech guy, the sooner he’ll have the answers we need to proceed.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“Exactly how Ethan suggested I should.”

Angel thought back to their previous conversation regarding his brother’s comments, her eyes widening as she recalled Ethan’s. “You can’t just telephone Clive and ask him to return Daniel!”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because—because—” The reasons were so numerous, Angel didn’t know where to start.

Gabriel shrugged. “Sinclair has something I want, and once we’ve been to the bank I’ll have something he wants. As far as I’m concerned, that means we have equal bargaining chips.”

“Not once he realizes you’re Daniel’s father!” Angel felt panicked at the mere idea of Gabriel attempting to negotiate with Clive. Not that she thought for a moment Gabriel would emerge the loser but because she now knew Clive didn’t play by any rules but his own. Twisted, disgusting rules that could result in Gabriel ending up dead. Her heart clenched just thinking of that possibility.

His eyes glowed deeply green. “The similarity is that obvious?”

“Oh yes.” Clive had never asked her for the name of Daniel’s real father, and Angel had never offered it, but he would only have to look at Gabriel to know exactly what his relationship was to Daniel. “The two brothers of yours I’ve seen would also be recognizable as being related to Daniel.”

“So would Ethan.” Gabriel shrugged. “I’d rather do it myself, but Jonas has already offered to do any face-to-face negotiating.”

She shot him a worried glance. “I doubt your sister would like Jonas being so deeply involved.”

“Lily knew exactly who and what she was marrying when she fell in love with Jonas. He’s part Apache Indian, and he has the stealth to go with it, and he likes what he does,” Gabriel explained at Angel’s questioning look. “Besides, I’ve already spoken to Lily. She’s fine with it.”

No doubt that one-for-all-and-all-for-one attitude of the Knight family. “You didn’t spend all your night drinking whisky…”

“Obviously not. Besides”—a smile curved his lips—“Lily was up feeding Amelia anyway.” His smile faded. “Go and change, Angel. It’s the last time I’m going to ask before I throw you over my shoulder again and carry you to your bedroom,” he warned in a hard tone as she still didn’t move. “I can’t guarantee, once we get there, that dressing you will be the first thing on my mind. Unless that’s what you want?” He eyed her mockingly.

“In your dreams,” Angel challenged as she turned to leave, bright wings of color in her cheeks at the thought of what
would
be the first thing on his mind.

His eyes narrowed. “I would have to sleep to dream, and that’s something I’m not going to do until we have Daniel back where he belongs.”

Angel could tell that he meant every word.

Making her wonder, and not for the first time, exactly what sort of soldier Gabriel had been.

And still was at the heart of him?

Chapter 5

“Why do I feel as if everyone is watching us?” Angel spoke to Gabriel out of the side of her mouth as the two were shown into the private room where she was going to open her safe deposit box.

“Watching you,” he corrected. “Probably because they are. You’re easily the most beautiful and sexy woman they’ll be seeing in their stodgy bank today.”

She felt the color warm her cheeks. Not because Gabriel had complimented the way she looked in a fitted navy knee-length dress and matching shoes and handbag, her hair washed and blow-dried in its wispy style, but because she had never thought about herself in that way. As Clive’s wife she had always been the perfect corporate wife, the well-dressed hostess, the gracious female partner on Clive’s arm socially. Nor did she feel particularly beautiful
or
sexy today.

Besides, she was pretty sure that every pair of female eyes in the building was fixated on Gabriel. He really was impressively handsome at six feet five inches tall and dressed in his tailored suit and silk shirt and tie.

She shook her head, silky wisps of hair caressing her bare throat. “I hate what’s in there.” She nodded at the unlocked box she hadn’t actually opened yet.

“You hate what those contents represent, which is why you have to concentrate on what they will give you in return.”

“Daniel and Lena.”

“Yes.”

She straightened her shoulders and approached the safe deposit box before lifting the lid, half expecting Clive’s sins to burst out, as in the story of Pandora’s box. Instead, it contained only the small, innocuous padded envelope in which she had placed the four memory sticks.

“Word of advice if you ever have to do something like this again,” Gabriel said as he watched her put the padded envelope into her shoulder bag. “It’s an amateur’s mistake to put all your bargaining chips in the same location. I’ll be separating them as soon as we join up with my brothers.”

Angel flushed at the rebuke. At the time, she had just wanted the evidence out of her possession, felt tainted just knowing what was on there. Except she hadn’t, not completely, until Gabriel had told her the truth last night. It still made her feel ill to contemplate how many deaths Clive’s illegal arms dealing was responsible for.

“What now?” she prompted nervously as they made their way back to the doors exiting the bank. Even Gabriel’s reassuring hand on her arm and the presence of Asher and the other two bodyguards weren’t enough to take away that hunted feeling she’d had ever since they left Gabriel’s apartment earlier.

“Now we give one copy to my tech guy and the others to each of my three brothers—it’s better if you and I don’t have a copy on us,” he explained as she glanced at him. “We have no idea yet what—Fuck!”

“Gabriel?” Angel gasped. His fingers tightened about her arm before he pushed her roughly to the ground and threw his heavy body over her, rolling them both behind the protection of a parked car. “What—”

“Someone just shot at us.” Gabriel snarled the warning in Angel’s ear.

“Are you sure?” Angel was having trouble breathing beneath his heavy weight, and they were attracting a considerable amount of attention where they were. Considerable? People were openly gawking at their strange behavior.

“Of course I’m— Where the fuck are Asher and my men?” Gabriel’s narrowed gaze searched the crowded sidewalk as the pedestrians gave them a wide berth.

He had barely registered the whistling sound of a bullet before reacting instinctively, throwing Angel to the floor and protecting her with his own body. Which meant he was probably squashing her. Well, he couldn’t help that. He wasn’t moving until he knew a second bullet wasn’t coming their way.

“The bullet was fired from the top of a building across the street.” A breathless Ash arrived and crouched down beside them. “Ian has gone to investigate, but the shooter will probably be long gone by the time he gets up there.”

“Let’s get Angel out of here for now.” Gabriel’s heart was still beating in double time from the near miss they’d just had.

Ash nodded. “Zander is bringing the car round now.”

Angel looked at them both. “Shouldn’t we call the police—”

“We’re getting you out of here now,” Gabriel told her firmly. “I’ll deal with any fallout from the police later.”

“But—”

“Now is not the time to be a concerned citizen, Angel,” he snapped. “Now get in the damn car,” he barked as she was surrounded by the two Knight brothers before being bundled into the back of a black SUV. Gabriel climbed in beside the driver, leaving Ash standing on the pavement as the vehicle sped off into traffic.

Someone had actually
shot
at them? At her? In the street, in broad daylight?

Unbelievable.

Like something out of one of those thrillers her father used to so enjoy reading.

She hadn’t been aware of the shot at all, with the noise of the traffic and people milling around them. Not that she doubted Gabriel for a moment. He had far more experience with this sort of thing than she did, and if he said someone had shot at them, then she believed him. Besides, Ash agreed with him. As did Zander, the man driving the SUV.