Ready (3 page)

The word Joshua said was one she didn’t even use in her writing. “Did you go to the police?”

“Yes.” For all the good it had done her.

Joshua went to the window and slid an expandable bar into place so that it could not be opened; he then shut both the privacy curtain and the drapes. Each movement made her feel a little bit safer, a little more protected.

“What did they say?”

“The sergeant who took my statement didn’t believe that I was pushed, but he filed a report anyway. I insisted.”

“Why didn’t he believe you?”

He’d thought she was an ignorant country bumpkin who could not tell the difference between being shoved in the back and jostled by the crowd. It still made her angry. “There were no witnesses to corroborate my story. No one else saw Nemesis push me, even though there was a huge crowd around me.”

Joshua opened the door and put the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the outside before turning back to face her. “Probably
because
of the crowd.”

She nodded, trying to swallow another yawn and not succeeding. She’d been scared for so long, the relative safety of being with Joshua had released her body from the constant adrenaline rush of fear. The inertia of total exhaustion was taking over.

He dug something out of his bag and put it on the door under the privacy lock. “Has Nemesis been in your Seattle apartment?”

“Not that I know of, but he left a red rose on the seat of my car. It was locked in the parking garage at the time.”

“Did you report the incident?”

“Yes, but it was the same story as before. I didn’t have proof and wasn’t taken seriously.” The same sergeant had taken the report, and the fact that the doors had been locked had convinced him she was some kind of kook. “I think the police sergeant and the sheriff back in Canyon Rock are related.”

Her attempt at humor fell flat. Joshua’s handsome face didn’t even crack in a smile. “So, you cancelled your trip to Texas and decided to deal with this on your own again?”

He sounded less than impressed by the possibility, but she nodded. “I didn’t have a lot of choice. I’m not putting my family at risk, no matter what.”

“You’d rather face your stalker with a fireplace poker.” The derision in his voice irritated her.

“Not really, but it’s what I had on hand.”

He measured her with his eyes. “You’re pretty damn independent.”

She supposed she was. The one person she knew would not let her down was herself.

“You need my help.”

The blunt statement took the breath out of her, but she wasn’t about to deny the truth of it. She’d passed that point about when he’d disarmed her and gotten her in a headlock before she could even scream. If he had been Nemesis, she could be dead, or hurting badly right now.

Joshua watched the play of emotions across Lise’s face. Denial wasn’t one of them.

“You’re right,” she said. “The authorities won’t take me seriously and I’m afraid Nemesis will have to do something pretty awful before they do, but what can
you
do?”

“I can keep you safe, for a start.”

There was no mistake about the expression burning golden in her tired hazel eyes. It was relief. “Thank you.”

“I plan to nail the bastard, too.”

“Do you think you can?”

He wasn’t offended by her expression of doubt. “Maybe not alone, but I’ve got a couple of buddies who will help. Hotwire’s a computer expert and Nitro’s great with explosives, but he’s got other talents just as useful.”

“Interesting names—are they mercenaries too?”

“We were in the Rangers together.” Evading direct an swers had become a way of life for him ten years ago. “When did Bella tell you what I do?”

Had Lise run from his profession as much as she’d run from the primitively passionate man he’d become with her?

“She didn’t.”

“Then how did you know?”

That vague look settled over her, the one he identified as her
writer look
. “It’s the way you move, the way you are hyper-aware of everything and everyone around you. It’s just like the other mercenaries I’ve met. Special Forces soldiers are that way, too, but there are subtle differences.”

“You’ve met other mercenaries?”

“Sure.”

“Right.”

She frowned at his disbelief. “I interview a lot of people for my books. I like hands-on research. It’s how Jake and Bella met, or didn’t they tell you?”

His sister had said something about it, but attending a few fashion shows was not in the same league as getting into personal contact with the men who peopled the shadowy world he lived in. “What did you do, contact
Soldier of Fortune
magazine for a reference?”

“Not the first time. I’d learned about a mercenary from a retired Navy SEAL I knew. The man he hooked me up with wasn’t hero material at all. He was cold, and so calculating. You could just tell he’d kill his own grandmother for the right amount of money.”

“Who was it?”

She said a name.

His heart about stopped in his chest at the prospect of her spending five minutes alone with such a predator, much less the length of an interview. “Are you crazy? You don’t chat over coffee with men like him.”

“Yes, well, I figured that out. The next man I interviewed was the one who worked for one of those companies advertised in
Soldier of Fortune
magazine. He was a total phony.”

He was getting a pretty intimate picture of the type of research she did to write her books and he didn’t like it. He’d read most of them since meeting her the year before. If she talked to the types of characters she wrote about, the list of stalker suspects would be as long as his mother’s grocery list the week before Christmas.

“So you went looking for another merc to talk to?”

“Yes. He was retired and I liked him.”

When she named the man, Joshua had to bite down on the urge to curse. It was the same man who had drawn him into the gray world of being a soldier for hire. He had ideals, even if the average civilian wouldn’t understand them. Combat had retired four years ago, turning his business over to Joshua. That’s when he’d taken Hotwire and Nitro on, the two men in the world he trusted.

“You live damn dangerously for an introverted writer who shies away from mingling in crowds.”

Soft pink tinged her cheeks. “I’m not that shy.”

“Apparently.”

“I know you didn’t ask for pay, but I will. Pay you, I mean.”

He stood up, rejection pounding through his veins. “I don’t want your money.”

“You’re a mercenary. This is what you do.” She licked her lips nervously and his gut tightened for reasons that had nothing to do with their discussion.

“I’ve done a lot of things I wouldn’t want to put in a memoir, but no way am I taking money from you to help you.”

“That’s a ridiculous attitude, and I would feel better keeping this on a professional basis.”

“Tough.”

Her eyes widened, highlighting their reddened condition. “There’s no reason for you to refuse to let me pay you.”

She spoiled the severity of her tone with another yawn.

The woman was seriously ready for bed.

Too bad it wouldn’t be one she’d willingly share with him.

“There are a couple of reasons,” he ground out, forcing his mind away from a path it had no business traveling down, especially since she’d just become a job.

“Name them.”

“One, you can’t afford me. Two, you’re family.”

“I’m not your family.”

“Close enough.” What he didn’t say was that if she’d had no connection to him at all, he’d want to help her.

Lise Barton got to him in a way no other woman had since he was a naïve new recruit to the Army Rangers.

Joshua heard the water stop on the other side of the privacy wall while he listened to Bella’s latest
cute baby
story about Genevieve with half an ear.

Lise came into the main room, her hair wet from her shower and looking more alert than she had earlier, not to mention too damn appealing.

That was going to be a problem.

She sat down on her bed and started brushing her hair out. Damp, it looked more brown than blond, hiding the gold highlights that rippled through it when it was dry.

“Isn’t that just the sweetest thing?” Bella’s voice reached him even as he watched Lise’s movements with entirely too much interest.

Her pajamas were a pair of men’s boxers and a well-worn t-shirt that molded her delicious curves when she reached up to run the brush through her hair. She wasn’t big-breasted, but she wasn’t small, either. She was perfect, her firm breasts jiggling just enough to make him crazy with every swipe of the brush on her hair.

He wanted to curse as his body reacted with pain-filled intensity to the sight. It had been too damn long…

He forced himself to answer his sister with a mild, “Yeah.”

“So you’ll be here in time for dinner and you’ve talked Lise into coming with you?” His sister sounded like she was having a hard time believing that.

“Yes, Bella.
We will both be there
.”

Lise’s eyes snapped up at that, their gold-and-green depths asking him a question.

“I told Lise babies are more resilient than she thinks,” Bella said in his ear, “Genevieve is not going to end up with pneumonia because she’s exposed to a little old cold.”

“You’re starting to sound like a Texan,” he teased his sister, while wondering how much of a fuss Lise would put up about his travel plans to Texas.

He hoped none at all when she heard his arrangements.

Bella laughed. “You know what they say about us transplants—we end up more Texan than the natives.”

He chuckled at his sister’s exaggerated drawl before saying good-bye and hanging up.

Stretching his legs out in front of him, he crossed them at the ankle and waited for Lise to say something.

She didn’t disappoint him. “You told Bella we’d be there for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we will be.”

Eyes narrowed, she drummed her fingers on the bedspread. “Has anyone ever told you that talking to you is like talking to a fence post on the shy side?”

“No, I can’t say they have.”

She huffed, shaking her head, and then smiled, making his pants feel a size too small in the crotch. “I guess I should have asked
how
rather than
why
.”

He liked the measure of sass she’d managed to recapture since arriving at the hotel. “Hotwire is flying my plane into Arlington Municipal tonight. We’ll meet him at the airport at o-six-hundred tomorrow. Then, I’ll fly us to the airstrip on your brother’s ranch and Nemesis will be none the wiser.”

“You have your own plane?”

“Yes, a small Learjet.” He’d wanted something fast, that could fly above thirty thousand feet, avoiding most weather-based turbulence, and a plane that did not need refueling for a cross-continental trip. “It comes in handy in my line of work.”

“But you were flying commercial…”

“I was out of the country.”

She tucked her rapidly drying hair behind one ear, exposing the feminine column of her neck and a shell pink ear he could remember tasting. Once. Definitely a memory better left on the junk heap.

“On a job?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?” He raised his brows and a blush spread across her cheeks. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked that. Sometimes I don’t think.”

He remembered how frequently she had asked probing questions before. He’d deflected most of them, leery of her pursuit of personal information.

“Must be because you’re a writer.”

She shrugged, the blush intensifying. “Maybe. My father always said I asked too many questions and all the wrong ones. I don’t mean to offend people.”

From what he’d learned of her father from Jake, Joshua thought the man had been a pretty useless parent.

Which for no accountable reason made him want to answer her question. “It was an extraction, and your question didn’t offend me, but I don’t normally discuss my jobs with anyone.”

“Not even your friends, Hotwire and Nitro?”

“Not unless they’re on the job with me.”

Which was an answer to her earlier question if his buddies were mercs, too.

She looked like she wanted to ask something else, but was literally biting her tongue to hold the words in.

“Spit it out. I told you, your questions don’t offend me. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”

She smiled again and this time it warmed his insides. He liked seeing her relax with him.

“What kind of extraction, a person or a thing?” she asked.

“A little boy.”

Her gaze glazed over with that vague look. “You saved him, didn’t you?”

“I returned him to his family for a very high fee.” She would do better not to romanticize him. “Do you have any problem with flying out tomorrow?”

“No, and thank you for making it possible. I miss my family. I haven’t seen the baby in two months. I bet she’s grown so much I’ll hardly recognize her.”

The wistfulness in her voice stirred something inside of him. “They miss you, too. Tell me something.”

She picked up the brush and put it on the nightstand before climbing under the covers. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell Jake?”

“About being stalked?”

“Yes.”

“He’d insist on helping, try to get me to move to the ranch or something, and he’d worry.”

“If you lived on the ranch, no civilian would be able to follow you around without Jake, Bella, or one of the hands noticing.”

“Civilian?”

“Nonmilitary.”

“You aren’t military.”

She had a strong tendency to get lost on conversational tangents. “I’m a soldier, just a private one.”

“It’s not right that Jake should have to pay for my problems.”

It took him a second to follow the conversation back to the question she was answering. “How would having you there be making your brother pay a price?”

“I told you,
he’d worry
.”

“He’s not a little old woman with a bad heart, Lise. He’s a man.” A strong one, whom Joshua respected. “He can handle a little concern on his sister’s behalf.”