Shotgun Daddy. Harper Allen

stopped.

      Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip. Her mouth bloomed dark pink. It looked like a single rose petal floating on cream.

      “I don’t care,” she said with low fierceness. “Don’t you understand? I want to see where you’ve been on me.”

      Heat slammed through Gabe. He pressed his outspread hand over her breast, let his thumb slip under the chaste lace of her no-longer white bra, dragged the flimsy fabric downward.

      “I shouldn’t be doing this, princess,” he said unsteadily.

      As if of its own volition, his right hand slid past her hips to cup the curves of that tight, white-clad rump. He lifted her to him, one-handedly held her against him, felt the shock that ran through her as she was forced to wrap her legs around his waist to steady herself. With his other hand he pulled a clip from the coil at the nape of her neck, and as her hair fell free he spread his fingers against the back of her head. He kept them there and kissed her.

      It was like falling into a world of snow, like being buried in snow, like burning in snow. The smell of white and the taste of white—white flowers and white heat—flamed across his soul.

      She’d wanted his mark on her. He wanted hers on him, he thought, raw desire spilling through him.

      And a few minutes later as he sank to his knees on the snowy fur, Caro Moore’s arms and legs entwined around him and her mouth under his, Gabriel Riggs surrendered himself to the cold flames and the burning ice and the woman who needed him for only one night….

      Chapter Two

      Even with the SUV’s air-conditioning as high as it could go and the sleeveless dress she was wearing no more than a breath of silk against her skin, Caro felt as if she was burning up. If what Jess Crawford had told her before he’d left for Mexico a few days ago was right and he’d finally run his old friend to earth here in an isolated corner of New Mexico’s Chihuahua Desert, in a short while she’d be seeing Gabriel Riggs again.

      It had been eighteen months since the night she’d spent with him. She was almost certain he would take one look at her and tell her to go to hell.

      He’d be well within his rights if he did, she told herself. Even if you can’t remember the exact words you threw at him when you and he parted ways in Aspen the next morning, you know they were—

      Abruptly she cut off the comforting lie before she could take it further. The truth was, she remembered everything—the words, the cutting tone in which she’d delivered them, and the desperate pride that had prompted her unforgivable outburst.

      She’d awoken in his arms that morning a year and a half ago, unable at first to identify the unfamiliar emotion filling her. Only after she’d looked at a still-sleeping Gabe beside her had she been able to put a name to what she was feeling.

      Total contentment. Total happiness. And the ridiculous but undeniable conviction that no matter how it had come about, she’d somehow found the one man in the world she would ever want.

      She didn’t know how long she lay there watching him sleep. She only knew that as she did she found herself wanting to slide her fingers through the tangle of blue-black hair obscuring his closed eyes, wanting to trace the assorted scars on his tough hide and ask him how he’d gotten each one. When she realized what she was thinking, doubt flickered skittishly through her. She tried to tell herself that her world and his were too different, that he was nothing more than hired muscle, that what had passed between them had been merely physical—a rash one-night fling she already regretted.

      It didn’t work. And with a flash of devastating self-knowledge she understood that the woman she’d been twenty-four hours ago—a woman to whom shallow reasons like those would have mattered—was gone for good.

      “You look appalled, princess.”

      Still trying to assimilate the shattering revelation she’d had, she didn’t realize he’d opened his eyes and was looking at her until he spoke. Before she could reply, he slid his arm out from under her and got to his feet.

      “Don’t be. This never happened, remember?” Raking his hair back, he gave her a tight smile. “This never happened, I won’t call you, and you don’t have to worry about running into me again. That’s the upside of sleeping with a loner, honey. Men like me don’t stick around long enough to become a problem.”

      For a moment she refused to believe that the words were coming from the same man who’d whispered her name all night, who’d held her gaze with his as the two of them had urged each other to ecstasy only hours earlier. He shrugged, and the gesture pierced Caro more than his comments had.

      “Men like you?” Her voice came out in a croak, but he didn’t seem to notice.

      “Yeah, princess, men like me. You know—rough-and-ready types who don’t know what fork to use at those white-tie dinners you have, who would be told to use the back entrance if they showed up at your rich daddy’s Albuquerque mansion, who take on the dirty jobs your social circle doesn’t want to admit exist…like dealing with kidnappers. You had me pegged from the minute I told you we were going to spend the night here together, and that look I saw in your eyes a few minutes ago made it pretty obvious you woke up with second thoughts about what we did last night.” His tone took on an edge. “You were having second thoughts, am I right?”

      “Second thoughts? Heavens, no.”

      She was amazed to hear the amused astonishment in her tone—amazed and grateful. Because everything depended on pulling off the act she wanted him to buy, Caro told herself—her self-esteem, her ability to get past this moment without falling apart, her pride.

      “Last night satisfied my curiosity, Gabe. You said it yourself—I see men like you doing work around my father’s estate, or as hired security at a function. My girlfriends and I’ve always thought it might be thrilling in a naughty way to spend a night with that type of man.” She forced a laugh. “You were a fantasy come true, and it was even kind of fun having to persuade you, but you’re right—the ground rules still stand. It would be embarrassing for both of us if you showed up on my doorstep in the mistaken belief that this had been anything more than it was.”

      She tipped her head to one side. “This never happened, you won’t call me, and I don’t have to worry about running into you again. Promise?”

      “Sure,” he said tonelessly. “But the next time you get curious, honey, consider calling an agency who sends the kind of man you’re looking for out on house calls. That way you won’t have to worry about any misunderstandings at all.”

      The drive to Aspen had been conducted in near-total silence, Caro remembered now. Gabe had dropped her off in front of a five-star hotel, she’d checked into a suite, and after drawing herself a bath so hot that billows of perfumed steam rose from the tub, she’d immersed herself in a vain attempt to melt the core of ice that seemed to have formed inside her.

      The ice hadn’t melted—not then, and not upon her return to Albuquerque, where she’d informed her father that she’d broken off her engagement to a man he’d seen as an eminently suitable prospective husband for her. It hadn’t melted over the following weeks during the rounds of parties she’d forced herself to attend. And then one day she’d frowned at the calendar, made a quick calculation, and had felt the first hairline fissure appear in the numbness she’d begun to think had become a permanent part of her.

      A few days later she’d shakily dialed the number she’d obtained for Gabe. He was going to be a father. She was carrying his child. Surely opening the conversation with a bombshell like that would catch him off guard enough that he would listen to the rest of what she had to tell him—that he’d misinterpreted the dismay he’d seen on her face when he’d awoken that morning, that a lifetime of being Caroline Moore, daughter of a man who’d taught her from childhood that emotions were to be concealed, had caused her to clutch at her pride instead of revealing her true feelings.

      “I would have poured it all out to him