Shotgun Daddy. Harper Allen

as the unforgivable words left her mouth she wanted to call it back, but it was too late. The shotgun still at his side, one-handedly Gabe pulled her to him, his face so close to hers that his words were spoken against her lips.

      “You just set the ground rules again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘please’ and mean it. One of these days you will.”

      Resisting the impulse to struggle free from his grasp, Caro met his eyes. “Is that a threat?”

      “A threat?” He brought his mouth down one last fraction of an inch to hers. “Hell, no.”

      His kiss was immediately deep. Shock and anger lent an immediate edge to her response. Her hands flew to his chest to push him away.

      Then slowly, her fingers curled into her palms, twin handfuls of Gabe’s shirt clutched tightly in them.

      For eighteen months she’d told herself she’d remembered it wrong, Caro thought light-headedly—that Gabriel Riggs’s kiss couldn’t have been like summer lightning racing through her, a shower of sparks sizzling along all her nerve endings at once. But she’d remembered it right. Except memory wasn’t a substitute for the real thing.

      And the real thing was impossible to resist.

      Abruptly Gabe lifted his mouth from hers. As if they’d been doused with a bucket of ice water, the sparks and the summer lightning were instantly extinguished.

      His eyes, so pale that for a moment they seemed lupine, blazed down at her expressionlessly. At the side of his neck a trip-hammer pulse gave the lie to his air of control.

      “Not a threat, a promise.” His smile held no humor at all. “And I’m going to be right there when you keep it, princess.”

      Chapter Three

      “Dammit, Caro, this Riggs character you’ve foisted on us has been hiding out in the desert for a year and a half. The man’s obviously unstable, to say the least.” Crawford Solutions’ vice president Steve Dixon’s balding head gleamed with sweat, despite the air-conditioning keeping the sticky heat of the Mexican evening outside at bay. “Right now, he’s upstairs going through Jess’s private papers and belongings instead of conferring with us. If that doesn’t point to his incompetence, I don’t know what does.”

      Dixon’s objection was a variation of the same ones he’d made upon her and Gabe’s arrival at Jess’s Lazy J Ranch a few hours ago, Caro thought in frustration, when she’d informed him that Gabe was now the negotiator in charge of the case. He’d kept them up during the brief flight across the border to the Crawford Solutions’ villa here in Mexico’s Chihuahua Province, and he was still trying to persuade her to change her mind. The only difference was that now he had an ally.

      With his cadre of paramilitary types milling around and a Recoveries International command post already established at the villa—in one corner of the room a technician was checking a bewildering array of wires and computer monitors hooked up to the telephone in preparation for the kidnappers’ expected phone call—it was obvious Larry Kanin didn’t intend to be replaced without a fight, as he now made clear.

      “Living like a hermit didn’t drive our boy Gabriel round the bend. Fouling up the last job he did for me before I fired him was what made him snap,” Kanin drawled. “Like I told you, Steve, the man crashed a party at my Aspen chalet. I had to get physical with him before he would leave.”

      The Caroline Moore who’d been Larry’s fiancée was a woman she didn’t even know anymore, Caro thought. How had she ever contemplated marrying him? Nothing about him seemed quite real, from the crisp wave in his dark brown hair to his air of concern over Jess’s abduction.

      At least I never slept with the man, she told herself thankfully. If I had, I don’t think I could stand being in the same room as him. I just wish I hadn’t had to make Gabe believe the relationship had gone that far.

      But then, she wished a lot of things when it came to Gabriel Riggs. Right at the top of that wish list was the futile desire that she’d come off a little better than she had in their confrontation earlier.

      There were two people in the world against whom the shields she’d kept up all her life were useless. One of them was Emily, right now safely in the care of Mrs. Percy, a local woman who’d baby-sat her since her birth and who had agreed to spend tonight at the Lazy J. At the thought of her small daughter, Caro instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, as if in them she could feel the weight and warmth of a tiny body.

      From the moment she’d first learned she had a new life growing inside her she’d willingly laid her heart bare to every piercing joy, every numbing fear, every emotion possible that came with the all-enveloping love she felt toward the baby she’d been blessed with. Emily was one of the two people who left her vulnerable, and that was as it should be between a mother and her child.

      But Gabe Riggs was the other person she couldn’t seem to shield herself against, and that wouldn’t do at all.

      She’d gone to him today determined not to let anything of what she’d felt for him in the past show in her face, her voice, her actions. But his coldness toward her had shattered all her protective barriers, and she’d struck out at him in the only way she knew how.

      She’d been the ice princess he remembered her to be. And then she’d melted at his kiss the way he’d known she would. Without even trying, he’d smashed through her every defence.

      Every defence except one, she thought shakily. She’d kept the facts of Emily’s parentage to herself. To make sure she continued keeping that secret safe, she would have to build her defences higher and stronger where Gabriel Riggs was concerned…even if that meant she had to be the rich bitch he’d known her as eighteen months ago.

      But her own deception didn’t mean she had to stand here and listen to Kanin’s untruths. She flicked a dismissive glance Larry’s way.

      “The way I heard it, the only thing you got physical with was a bowl of salmon mousse. Plus Jinx, of course,” she added. “But none of that matters. Jess gave me the power to make this kind of decision in his absence, and I’ve hired Gabe. It’s up to him to decide whether he uses whatever resources you might put at his disposal.”

      “Me, working under Riggs?” Kanin’s lips curled. “I don’t see why I should loan my equipment and people to the man who’s replacing me. Sorry, Steve, I have to draw the line somewhere.”

      “But see, Larry, this time everyone’s going to know about the line you drew. And if that line means the difference between Jess Crawford coming home alive or not, you won’t be able to sweep his death under the carpet the way you did Leo Roswell’s.”

      Despite herself, Caro felt quick heat race through her as Gabe entered the room, his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants, blue-black hair brushing the collar of his faded shirt. His careless attire and attitude were in marked contrast to Dixon’s business suit and sweating agitation and Kanin’s silk roll-neck sweater, tailored pants and indignant frown.

      With only the barest of nods to acknowledge her presence, he went on, his gaze on Kanin.

      “My old pal Jess has a heftier bank account than Leo did, for one thing. For another, if anything happens to a billionaire software genius who’s got friends in high places, heads are going to roll—yours included, Larry, if it gets out that you withheld help you could have given.”

      In the face of a veiled threat like that, her ex-fiancé really hadn’t had much of a choice, Caro admitted a few minutes later. In fact, with his well-honed ability to grab credit, within moments Larry had seemingly persuaded himself that cooperation had been his idea.

      “The perp’s phone call is due to come in at around nineteen-hundred hours,” he said, jerking his head at the nearby Recoveries International technician.

      Gabe nodded at the man. “It’s been a while since we worked together, Jackson. How’ve you been, buddy?”

      “Not