Standing In The Shadows. Shannon McKenna

      Connor leaned his hot face against the steering column. He couldn’t drive in this condition. He would kill himself.

      His heart was thudding, his ears roaring. He was on the verge of coming in his pants. If she’d leaned just one breath closer to him, she’d have felt his hard-on, pressing against his jeans like a club. Those amazing, liquid brown eyes that a guy could get lost in, Jesus. Her eyes on his face had felt like an embrace. He’d wanted to grab her and kiss her so bad, his muscles were cramping from the effort of holding back.

      Maybe she would have melted against him and kissed him back.

      Yeah, and pigs had wings and hell had a skating rink. The closer he stuck to harsh reality, the less liable he was to screw up.

      It was so ironic. Right before the huge fuck-up that had landed him in a coma and killed Jesse, he’d been working up the nerve to ask Erin Riggs out for dinner and a movie. Ever since she’d turned twenty-five. That had struck him as the magic number. She’d attained the status of fair game. He was nine years older than her, which wasn’t all that excessive, but when she was seventeen and he was twenty-six, he’d known damn well it would’ve been sleazy to hit on her. Once she hit her twenties, he’d been really tempted. She was so juicy and innocent—but Ed would’ve ripped his head off if Connor had gotten anywhere near his precious baby girl. There was that to consider.

      But the main reason he hadn’t made a move was because she’d been gone so much, on study-abroad programs and archeological digs; six months in France, nine months in Scotland, a year in Wales, etc. He’d had some casual girlfriends in the meantime, some of them nice women, but he’d always pulled back when they started talking about the future. He’d braced himself to hear about Erin getting engaged.

      Didn’t happen. She’d finished grad school, gotten her curator job, moved out of the group house with her college girlfriend and into her own apartment. Twenty-five years old, and amazingly, she didn’t have a boyfriend. It was time. All was fair in love and war, and all that crap. If Ed didn’t like it, he could shove it.

      But the shit had hit the fan before he ever got a chance to follow through. When he woke up from the coma and found out that he’d been betrayed, and Jesse murdered, he had no energy to spare for romance. He’d loved his partner like he loved his own brothers. He’d thrown everything into getting back on his feet so he could hunt down Lazar and Novak, flush out the traitor and avenge Jesse.

      All of which had culminated in hauling Ed Riggs into custody.

      Damn, he couldn’t help but think that putting a girl’s dad in prison for murder pretty much wrecked his chances of getting a date with her on a Saturday night. Particularly considering the shape he was in these days. He glanced into the rearview mirror, and winced.

      He’d always been lean, and he forced himself to work out hard to compensate for the bum leg. He’d built back all the muscle mass that he’d lost in the coma, but he had no fat left on him at all. He could see every individual muscle and tendon moving under his skin when he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. A goddamn walking anatomy poster. The burn scars didn’t help much, either. Neither did the limp.

      He wasn’t much of a prize. Working for his older brother, snapping pictures of unfaithful spouses. He had no future. He barely had a present. All he had was a past, and everything in it nixed his chances of getting into Erin Riggs’s bed.

      What an idiot. Lusting after an ivory tower princess behind a wall of goddamn thorns. He wanted so badly to claw his way into that tower, and find out what went on behind those big, serious eyes. He wanted to make her smile. She hadn’t smiled tonight. Not even once.

      With that bracing thought, he put the car in gear and headed toward his brother Davy’s lair, down on Lake Washington. Davy would be pissed at him for showing up three hours late, but he would just grumble and throw a steak on the grill. His stomach twitched with approval, one of the first signs of life he’d gotten from that quarter in a long while. Davy and Sean had taken up the practice of calling him at regular intervals and reminding him to eat. Annoying, but he guessed he was lucky that somebody cared. Otherwise he would be lost in space.

      His younger brother Sean’s Jeep was parked in the driveway. He was going to get lectured from both sides. They were talking on the back porch as he opened the door. Their voices suddenly ceased.

      Two pairs of green eyes almost identical to his own scrutinized him as he stepped out onto the deck.

      “You’re late,” Davy said. “We ate.”

      “Novak’s busted out,” Connor told them. “With two of his goons. One was that guy I roughed up last November. Georg Luksch.”

      They listened to the water lapping against the pebbles under the deck for a long moment.

      “You think he’s going to want to play with us?” Davy asked.

      Connor sank into a chair, bone tired. “It’s what he lives for.”

      Sean buried his face in his hands. “God. I’m swamped trying to get this business off the ground. I don’t have time to play with Novak.”

      “I’m less worried about us than I am about Erin,” Connor said.

      Davy and Sean’s gazes narrowed in on him, like a couple of laser beams. He bore it stoically.

      “What about Erin?” Davy’s deep voice was low and wary.

      Connor folded a scrap of paper he’d found on the table into an origami unicorn. One of his bored-out-of-his-mind-in-rehab activities that had evolved into a full-blown nervous habit. “He had Erin in his clutches once. I pulled her loose. He’s not going to forget that. Georg Luksch won’t forget it, either. She’s pretty, and young, and clueless. He goes for that. And he’s going to want to punish Riggs for failing him.”

      “Erin is not your problem,” Davy said. “You did your best for her. You didn’t get much thanks for it. The most you can do is warn her.”

      “I already did.”

      Davy and Sean exchanged meaningful glances.

      “You talked to her?” Sean demanded. “Tonight?”

      Connor braced himself. “I went to her place,” he admitted. “Followed her to her mom’s house. Gave her a ride home.”

      Sean winced. “Uh-oh. Here we go again.”

      Davy took a swig of beer, his hard, lean face impassive. “How’s she doing?” he asked.

      “Not well,” Connor said. “Like hell, actually. Since you asked.”

      “Look, Con,” Sean began. “Don’t bite my head off, but—”

      “How about you don’t even start?” Connor suggested.

      Sean barged on, undaunted. “I know you’ve been carrying a torch for that chick for years, but your testimony put her dad’s ass in jail. You cannot be her hero, dude. You’re just going to get hurt.”

      Sean’s words made him feel bleak and sad, not angry. “Thank you for sharing your opinion,” he said. He unfolded the unicorn, and scribbled Claude Mueller’s name, e-mail address, and the flight information that he’d memorized onto the paper. He pushed it across the table toward Davy. “Would you check these out for me?”

      Davy picked it up and examined it. “Who is this guy?”

      “This is the mysterious millionaire who has recently developed a passionate interest in Celtic artifacts. Erin’s flying down to Portland, to be met and driven to Silver Fork Resort, where she will proceed to authenticate a mess of priceless relics for him.”

      “And what is it exactly that bothers you about this?” Sean asked.

      “Neither she nor anybody she knows has ever actually seen the millionaire,” he said. “He’s always been too busy to meet with her since he started hiring her. Four months ago.”

      “Ah.”