Nine-Month Protector. Julie Miller

Despite the apartment’s fortresslike design, he wouldn’t want one of his own sisters to be so cut off from the rest of the world. He pounded. “Sarah!”

      The door slid open beneath his fist.

      “Coop? What are you doing here?”

      Dropping his hand to his side, he swept his gaze over all five feet and not much more of Sarah Cartwright.

      Ah, hell. The summery scents of peaches and mango drifted up to his nose, igniting a decidedly nonbrotherly awareness of the woman standing in the doorway. She wore a modest pair of pajamas, with one of those strappy knit tops, and plaid pants that were rolled up at the ankle.

      But it was the damp spots clinging to the tops of her small breasts and the flat of her stomach that made the whole package so unexpectedly sexy. She’d come straight from the shower, looking fresh-scrubbed and fragile and utterly feminine—from the damp, darkened strands of her towel-dried hair to the pink painted nails on her tiny bare feet.

      For a couple of heartbeats, Cooper forgot why he was standing at this door in the shadows before dawn. It was always like this for him, and it always took him a second to come up with the right teasing line to remind him that this was his partner’s sister he was lusting after.

      “Coop?” Sarah brushed past him, looking up and down the empty hallway before tilting those pretty green eyes all the way up to his following gaze. “I thought they’d send a uniformed officer.”

      That’s when the frown between the eyes registered, along with the antsy way she rubbed her palms and tapped her fingers together.

      Coop’s smile flatlined. “Why do you need a uniformed officer?” That same wariness that had itched beneath the surface of his skin on the way up returned in full force. He wrapped one big hand around both of hers, stilling her twisting fingers. “Sarah?”

      She startled with a gasp, as if his touch had interrupted some deep thought process. But instead of pulling away, she turned her hands inside his grasp and held on. “I’m glad you’re here. I could use a friendly face right about now.”

      Damn. Despite the warmth of a shower, her skin was generating nothing but chill.

      “C’mon.” With a gentle tug, he pulled her back into the apartment, slid the heavy door shut and locked it behind him. He nudged her toward the center of the open living space, then quickly moved past her to check the windows for signs of trouble. Maybe there’d been a break-in. But every window was solid, locked tight. The bedroom area, untouched. The kitchen area was equally clean. The bathroom was a mess of dirty clothes and damp towels, as though she’d stripped and showered and changed more than once.

      Ah, hell. A very bad feeling throbbed in the tight clench of his jaw. His nostrils flared as he forced himself to breathe deeply, to check his emotions and silence the bombardment of questions that begged to be asked.

      He turned back to Sarah, looking small and vulnerable where she stood in the middle of the room. She stared at a spot on the wooden floor, hugging herself, shivering.

      “Sarah?” Coop slowly approached her, demanding that those big green eyes meet his. “Why do you need a cop?”

      She didn’t disappoint. Smoothing a damp strand of hair off her face, she lifted her gaze. “To answer my 9-1-1 call.”

      “All right. Back up and start this conversation from the beginning.” Any pretense of standing in as big brother vanished with the tears that glistened in the fringe of her lashes. Something had happened. Something very bad. The wary detective in him was already on guard, already alert. But the man in him needed to touch her, needed to make whatever had gone wrong right. He reached out to brush aside the stubborn lock of hair that still stuck to her cheek. “What 9-1-1 call?”

      “I…” The instant his finger touched her, a huge sigh rattled through her from tip to toe. Instead of talking, she turned and walked into him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Hold me.”

      She aligned herself against him, cheek to chest, breast to stomach, thigh to thigh.

      A burst of heat radiated through him in every place they touched. Something tight and controlled inside him began to melt.

      Coop hesitated a moment before giving in to the heat and the need and winding his arms tightly around her. He rested his chin on the top of her head and wrapped his body around her, surrounding her in his strength and warmth. Seth was gonna kill him for this. But Sarah snuggled closer, and he couldn’t push her away. He heard the sniffles, felt the clutch of her fingers at the back of his waist. Moments later, the warmth of her tears dampened the front of his T-shirt and singed his skin. He was gonna kill someone if this innocent woman had been hurt. “Sarah, you never answered—”

      “Just hold me.” Her lips moved against his sensitized skin, and his body leaped with the need to respond in some elemental way.

      He rubbed circles up and down her spine, pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and rested his nose in the fragrant silk of her freshly washed hair.

      “I’ve gotcha.”

      The cop in him would have to wait.

      Chapter Two

      Three months later

      “What do you mean, we’ve got nothing on Theodore Wolfe? I thought Wolfe International was history.” Seth Cartwright’s question fueled an outburst of debates around the KCPD headquarters briefing room.

      “Their money-laundering setup here in K.C., yes. And we’ve put a serious dent in their drug profits by shutting down their Kansas City base. But we’ve still got some loose ends to tie up,” replied Captain John Kincaid in his typically cool, calm and collected tone. The grumbles subsided. He gripped the desktop podium and leaned forward to make sure every detective and uniformed officer in the room understood how serious he was. “Understand this. I intend to nail the big boss and give KCPD the credit for his arrest before they kick me upstairs to the deputy commissioner’s office.”

      Leaning back in his chair at the front table, Cooper Bellamy crossed his long legs at the ankle and sipped his coffee as another round of should-haves and what-ifs and let’s-do-its ensued. His own partner, Seth, turned to the long table behind them and questioned Kincaid’s second-eldest son, Sawyer, another young detective, to see if he had any insight into his father’s plans for the case.

      Coop seemed to take it all in with half an ear. His disinterest was deceptive, though. He was as frustrated as his partner to hear how progress had stalled on their investigation into Wolfe International’s illegal activities.

      Captain Kincaid, the man who’d recruited Coop and Seth from the Fourth precinct to work on his organized-crime task force, raised his hands and quieted the room with little more than a stern fatherly look. Coop sat up straight, remembering that same look from his own father. A gung-ho Marine until the day his job took his life, Clint Bellamy had high expectations from all five of his children, especially his oldest son, Coop. And though he’d managed to inject plenty of laughter into their lives when he’d been home, Clint’s rules for living had been drilled in hard and often.

      Respect for authority went without saying. And Captain Kincaid had earned it.

      Being there for the team—whether that meant backing up his partner or taking care of his mother and younger brothers and sisters—was another tenet in the Bellamy code.

      But the rule that had him sitting up and waiting for the captain to explain their next plan of action was that no matter what it required of a man, failure on a mission was not an option.

      Coop thumped his partner’s shoulder, urging him to ease up on the second-guessing. “Let’s hear what the big dog has to say.”

      The room quieted, and the captain recapped the task force’s accomplishments and remaining goals.

      Theodore Wolfe’s son, Teddy, Jr., had been killed in a shootout with Seth when Teddy had tried to murder the woman who had since become Seth’s