Authors: Kat Jackson
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #African American, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Multicultural, #New Adult & College, #Multicultural & Interracial
Protect and Serve
Renowned author Kat Jackson arrives with her first full-length novel.
Chandra Williams
is a mocha-skinned detective with a job to do: Protect
Nathaniel Hale
, the most infuriatingly arrogant and hopelessly self-entitled billionaire playboy she could have ever imagined. It was supposed to be an easy ride… Just spend a few days shacked up in a cheap apartment until the bastard could testify. A real by-the-books assignment. Keep Mr. Hale’s head down and his heart beating.
Protecting him was work.
Serving
him was pleasure.
Falling in love was something else entirely.
This is a stand-alone novel with a HEA and NO cliffhanger.
Published by the Kat Jackson Publishing Group
Copyright
©
2014 by Kat Jackson
This book is a work of fiction, any names, places, and situations portrayed within are products of the author’s imagination.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my husband and my wonderful children for being so patient with me. You have no idea how lucky I am to have you all.
Thanks to Nora, my tireless editor who never fails to get the job done. Thanks to my cover artist Ethan and my incredible publicist Devlin Rice.
A special thanks to the too-many-to-list authors and friends who have given me advice and helped me along the way. I may never be able to fully repay your generosity, but I shall make every effort to do so.
And finally I want to thank you, dear reader. It is your graciousness that allows me the opportunity to press these words onto paper. I could never live my dreams without you.
The
last place on earth that I wanted to be was at Nathaniel Hale’s front door.
I sighed as I looked up at the obscene decadence looming before me. This was the mansion I’d come to loathe over the past few years, and one I’d ended up at more times than I cared to count. It was home to one of the most obnoxious playboys I’d ever met, a walking, talking, self-entitled stereotype who had made my life hell on more than one occasion.
When you had billions of dollars, you could do anything in the world. But in my book, it didn’t put you above the law.
I stared at the thick wooden door, rubbing the back of my neck as I recalled how many times I’d knocked on it before. Nathan wasn’t exactly a criminal, but he was
definitely
a nuisance. I’d responded to innumerable noise complaints, always the fault of the crazy parties he threw whenever the mood struck. I never knew what exactly he was celebrating, but it
almost
always involved half-naked women and rivers of booze.
And every time I showed up at his door, badge in hand and backup hovering behind me, he’d flash me a lopsided grin and tell me:
Loosen up a little, Officer Williams. Come on in and have a drink with me.
I guessed that line worked on most women. I also guessed that Nathan Hale had no idea what it was like to have a job to do. He didn’t strike me as the type who knew a whole lot about responsibility.
I closed my eyes and felt a hot trickle of summer sweat roll down the back of my neck. I was a detective now, goddammit. How had this man-child become my responsibility?
I knew the answer, of course. Nathan had unwittingly engaged in some business dealings with the Irish mob and was our only chance at cutting off the head of the snake, Peter Wallace. Wallace was a ruthless son of a bitch, even as far as the mob went. He had no problem trafficking young women and girls to all corners of the globe, and we had reason to believe he’d even moved a few shipments through our very own bay. When the Coast Guard tried to intercept one of the containers, they pushed it overboard and straight into the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t airtight. Sank like a stone, and took all those poor girls with it.
That was where Nathan Hale came in. His testimony would put Wallace behind bars for good this time. There was just one problem: Nathan Hale wasn’t so keen on testifying against a known killer. I’d been sent here to convince him to see the light.
How do you convince a self-important yuppie that there’s a bigger picture to think about? How do you make a man like that care about something other than himself?
I opened my eyes and pressed hard on the doorbell. Self-preservation—that was my angle. That was the way I’d convince Nathan to put himself on the line in order to save dozens, if not hundreds of people. Rich men felt very strongly about their belongings. If I could convince him that everything he held dear, including his own life, was at stake, surely he’d come around.
But as I jammed my thumb into the button a second time, I wondered if I was just fooling myself. After all, it wouldn’t be the first case I’d wasted my time on.
You can lead a horse to water…
I was just about to drift into that dark place where all my failures lived when I heard the sound of steel bolts unlatching from the other side of the massive double doors. I took a deep breath, composing myself before Nathan Hale opened the door, inflicting another one of his cocky grins on me.
“Officer Williams,” he said, his eyes scanning every curve of my body. He leaned on the doorframe. “Fancy seeing you here.”
I stared at him for a long moment, chewing on what I would say next. His gilt hair glistened in the blinding sunlight streaming through the old trees riddled with Spanish moss. It was that time of year when the heat became unbearable around here, when even ducking into the shade meant enduring matted hair and clingy, sweat-stained clothes. I had only been out of my car a few minutes, yet my skin was already prickling with the late summer swelter.
But the longer I looked at him, the more I wondered if it was really the sun making me hot. Objectively, the guy was gorgeous. His face was a masterpiece, as though he’d been chiseled from the finest marble by the most divinely-inspired sculptor there was. His burnt jade eyes were host to flecks of gold near their center, orbiting his pupils and glimmering every time he flashed one of those blinding white smiles.
His shoulders were broad and his chest was vast, hard, and unyielding beneath his surprisingly low-key t-shirt. It was loose near his stomach, the fabric pooling above his belt and jeans, but I was sure the parts of his body hidden beneath it were just as taut as the rest of him.
Nathan Hale would have been quite the catch if not for his mouth.
Then again, that kind of thing seemed standard for white boys with too much money on their hands. He’d never known a day of hard work in his life—I was pretty sure the title of CEO was just for show—which meant that he had no empathy for anyone who had to do their jobs to keep food on the table. He was a spoiled brat, and all the good looks in the world couldn’t make up for that.
He had no idea what it was like to be a cop. A black cop. A black
woman
cop. He had no idea what failing to convince him to testify would do to my career. It was no coincidence that I’d been chosen for this task; setting me up to fail meant that I’d be easier to write off in the future. I’d clawed my way into this detective position, but the Chief seemed determined to keep me from going any higher. Everything I’d earned hinged on Nathan seeing the light. It made me sick to my stomach to think that he might be holding the future of my career in his hands.
“It’s
detective,
” I said, pulling myself out of the doomsday spiral I’d sent myself into. “May I come in?”
Nathan shrugged. He opened the door wider, gesturing into the atrium. “I thought you’d never ask.”
I tried not to roll my eyes as I stepped past him and into his mansion. Sunlight glinted off the crystal chandelier above us, spraying fragments of light across the dark wood paneling of the walls. I caught a few Technicolor prisms dancing on Nathan’s fair skin as he closed and locked the door.
“Finally taking me up on my offer?” he said, his voice a thick, honeyed purr that, despite my best efforts to resist, made my skin ripple with goosebumps. “If I’d known, I would’ve prepared the good stuff.”
“I’m here on business, Mr. Hale,” I corrected him as gently as I could. There was no use ruining my chances by bruising his ego. “And I think you know exactly what kind.” I looked around, taking in the vastness of our surroundings. I didn’t like being out in the open like this, even within the relative safety of Nathan’s house.
“Is there someplace we can sit and talk?” I asked him.
Nathan nodded, sliding his hands into his pockets. His grin was gone, and the light in his eyes had faded like the setting sun giving way to twilight. He gestured up a set of wooden stairs run through with a strip of plush red carpet.
“I’ll show you to my office,” he said, though he let me mount the stairs first.
Nathan’s home was big, but it felt hollow. Every step I took on the hardwood floors echoed throughout each chamber like an errant round ricocheting in the dark. It was empty, cavernous, and though from the outside it was truly an enviable estate, traversing its innards like this made me shiver.
Most houses had some kind of life built right into them, the product of the people who lived there spilling their energy and warmth right into the walls. Hell, even in the worst cases, you could still feel something below the surface, some vibrating remnant of what the house had seen.
But Nathan’s mansion was barren, devoid of life. Despite all those parties I’d had to interrupt, there was not a single spark to be found. It was like I was walking through a corpse.
I turned over my shoulder to him, only to find his gaze glued firmly to the steady sway of my ass. I rolled my eyes. No wonder he’d let me go up first.
We reached the landing, and I felt him lay his hand every so lightly on the small of my back. A chill shot up my spine, then a rush of heat as he guided me toward a door at the end of the hall.
It’s not a big deal,
I told myself as Nathan’s fingers sent little electric arcs to play across the flesh beneath my blouse.
He’s probably used to women letting him touch them. And why not? He’s not exactly unattractive.
I almost snorted out loud. “Not unattractive” was putting it mildly, and though I had my problems with his personality, I couldn’t exactly blame his harem for throwing themselves at this man. Money and a pretty face could go a long way with just about anyone.
I waited as Nathan opened the door for me, ushering me into his private study. I raised my eyebrows as I looked around. I’d expected something cold and modern, sleek and heartless, but what I found was the only room in the whole house which seemed to have a pulse.
We were surrounded by bookshelves. They ran from floor to ceiling, each one brimming with the colorful spines of dozens of books. There were too many of them to count, their subjects so varied that this one room could have doubled as a public library.
I spotted some classics, like
Moby Dick
and
The Wizard of Oz,
and more contemporary titles, like
Gone Girl
and
The Life of Pi.
He had the full breadth of Asimov’s works near his desk, an executive-style Louis XVI reproduction that very nearly looked real, and on a small end table near a hulking stone fireplace, I saw a copy of Machiavelli’s
The Prince.
That hardly surprised me. It was practically required reading for opportunistic capitalists everywhere. What I
was
surprised by was how every book in Nathan’s tremendous collection seemed worn enough to have been read through at least once. I hadn’t pegged him for a reader. He didn’t seem like he had the patience.
I turned as he closed the doors behind us and crossed the room to the small seating area near to the fireplace. “Have a seat,
detective
. If you’re here for what I think you are, we might as well get comfortable.”
As he draped himself lazily across a tufted leather settee, I sunk into one of the high-backed armchairs across from him. I felt like royalty just sitting there, but Nathan didn’t seem to share my perception. He lounged like a bored lion, his muscular limbs dangling almost petulantly off the edges of his seat.
“You’re here about Peter Wallace, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I admitted. “His trial’s coming up soon, you know.”
“I’m aware,” he answered in a tone that was half a sigh, half a groan. “I watch the news. I hear the prosecution’s built a decent case this time around, too.”
“
Decent
isn’t going to cut it,” I interrupted, “and you know that. This is
Peter Wallace
we’re talking about—the same guy who’s weaseled his way out of prison a dozen times before. And he’ll do it again, unless someone could, say, provide testimony about the particulars of his business in our fair city.”
Despite the oppressive heat lurking just outside, I felt a distinct chill in the air. It was blowing in gusts from Nathan’s side of the room and got stronger with every mention of Peter Wallace’s name. I almost wanted him to turn on the fireplace just to drive it out.
“Sounds like you know a lot about this guy,” he said at last, though he was staring at his bookshelves and not at me. “If you do, then you know what he does to witnesses who agree to testify.”
I nodded solemnly. “I do. And I also know what he does to witnesses who don’t. There’s not a hell of a lot of difference.”
Nathan went quiet, his eyes finally meeting mine. I scooted to the edge of my chair, holding his gaze. “I expect we’ll keep this talk off the record for now?”
“I understand your concerns, Mr. Hale. Off the record, you’re right. Wallace is not a man to be trifled with. He’s got connections. He’s got ways of making everybody miserable. But that all stops if we put him behind bars, and I’m afraid the only way for us to do that is with your help.”