Название | Beauty And The Bodyguard |
---|---|
Автор произведения | Lisa Childs |
Жанр | Короткие любовные романы |
Серия | Mills & Boon Romantic Suspense |
Издательство | Короткие любовные романы |
Год выпуска | 0 |
isbn | 9781474040327 |
“Of course not,” she said. “I didn’t want to disrupt Megan’s wedding. I would have turned on the signal jammer if she decided to go through with the ceremony.”
“But you were hoping that she would decide not to.”
“I don’t want her to make a mistake she’ll regret the rest of her life.”
“Have you?” he wondered.
“Have I what?”
“Made any mistakes you still regret?” He didn’t expect her to answer him since she never talked about herself.
But instead of changing the subject as she always had whenever he’d asked her something personal, she stared up at him, her usually warm brown eyes cool and guarded. And she replied, “Not yet.”
Was he a mistake she was considering making? He wanted to ask, but he couldn’t risk making a mistake of his own. Not now…
Not with his daughter and other innocent bystanders—and Penny—in danger. He had to act and quickly before more guests arrived at the church. There had only been a few early arrivals, besides those armed people. Unfortunately, they’d been aunts and uncles and cousins of his late wife, unarmed civilians who wouldn’t be able to help him protect the others.
If only some of his agents or Penny’s sons had arrived already…
“Where do you keep your signal jammer?” he asked.
“Nobody’s been in my office,” she said.
“Where do you keep it?” he persisted. God, the woman was stubborn. It was good that he’d decided not to ask her out—despite all the times he’d thought about it since meeting her. He’d picked up his phone a million times to call her. But something had held him back.
Fear. He was not good husband material. His late wife had told him that often enough. He had been consumed with his career, had spent so much time away. Of course that had ended when she’d gotten sick. His job was still just as important to him, though.
Like Penny’s job was to her…
She pulled a charm from the bracelet on her wrist—a tiny key—and slid it into a lock on a drawer built into the wall perpendicular to her desk. Instead of the drawer opening, the wall slid forward revealing a space behind it large enough for a glass case full of guns and the signal jammer. The industrial-style box jammer was closed and inactive.
“What the hell?” he murmured, in awe of the hiding place and the equipment and guns she’d stowed inside it.
“This church has a lot of history,” she said.
He suspected not all of it had been good. She’d been married there. He wasn’t sure if that had been a good or bad union.
“There are other hiding places,” she said. “And a secret passageway that leads to the little courtyard out back.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You can leave that way.” But were there other armed gunmen outside? Would they see her if she escaped that way?
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving.”
“We need backup,” he reminded her. “And since you’re not the one jamming the signals, someone else is.” Someone who’d planned to cut off communication to the church.
She turned back toward her desk and opened a bottom drawer. “I have a landline, too,” she told him.
He was surprised. Smartphones were more useful, especially for businesses.
She had an old-school kind, the console with the cord attaching the receiver to it. No wonder she put it in a drawer, so it didn’t take up too much of the surface of her whitewashed oak desk. When she put the receiver to her ear, her brow furrowed. “There’s no dial tone.”
That didn’t surprise him. If the gunmen had gone to the trouble of jamming the cell signals, they would have made certain to cut the landline, too. And they probably had reinforcements stationed outside. He couldn’t send her out alone to the courtyard.
He needed reinforcements of his own.
Penny’s eyes widened—looking even bigger and darker—as her face paled. And the woman who usually had all the answers asked, “What are we going to do?”
Something shifted in Woodrow’s chest, squeezing his heart. He reached for her—intending to offer her only comfort from the fear gripping her. But her lips parted on a soft gasp, and he had the sudden urge to taste them.
To taste her…
Before he could lower his head to hers, the doorknob rattled. Someone had found them. Would he have time to draw his weapon and protect them?
Frustration knotted Gage’s stomach muscles. The damn little buttons were driving him crazy. His fingers were too big to grasp them, let alone push them through the little loops wrapped tightly around them. The edge of the glass or crystal was sharp, scraping his fingertips. He glanced at the scissors she’d set on the vanity table.
“I should cut it off,” he said.
“You should,” she eagerly agreed.
But he liked Nikki’s plan to change places with the bride. Hell, maybe he just liked it because Megan would no longer be the bride. He shouldn’t care that she was going to marry another man. While he’d once considered asking her to marry him, he never would again. She’d said she hadn’t loved the man he’d been. She certainly wouldn’t love the one he had become. “We can’t.”
He’d been at it for long moments and had only undone one button. They were spaced so closely together that even with the couple that Nikki had undone, only a little more than an inch of Megan’s skin was visible through the slight opening.
Megan was never comfortable showing much skin. She always dressed in layers. Skirts with tights beneath and tall boots. Blouses buttoned to her throat with sweaters over them. She dressed like the librarian she was. For some reason Gage had found that super sexy. Just like he’d always taken his time unwrapping presents, to draw out the anticipation and excitement, he’d taken his time getting Megan out of her clothes.
He’d toyed with the zippers on her boots before lowering them and pulling them off her curvy calves. He’d taken his time with the buttons on her cardigan sweaters and on her blouses beneath them. Even with the layers, she’d never had as many buttons as this, though.
And at least then his efforts had been rewarded. He’d been able to stroke and taste all that honey-colored skin he’d exposed. He’d been able to elicit soft moans and cries from her as she’d pressed her hot, naked body against his.
Remembering the sensations—the heat, the tension, the pleasure—had a groan slipping from his throat.
“Use the scissors,” she told him.
But his frustration wasn’t with the buttons. It was with the fact that even if he managed to undo all those buttons, he wouldn’t be able to kiss and touch the skin he exposed. She wasn’t his anymore.
She’d never really been his, because she’d never trusted him. She’d never trusted what they’d had. Or she wouldn’t have accused of him using her.
“I can’t…” he said.
She tilted her head and peered over her shoulder at him. “Can’t cut it off?”
He couldn’t keep thinking about what they’d had, what they’d done to each other. How he hadn’t ever been able to get enough of her.
Heat