His Christmas Assignment. Lisa Childs

could decide if she wanted to come back. Ever.

      “You don’t know,” he surmised.

      “Anywhere you’re not,” she replied.

      He clasped a hand to his heart. “Oh, that hurts—like a knife through the heart.” Despite his playful tone, there was something in his gray gaze—something almost like real pain and regret. Did he actually care that she wanted to get away from him?

      “Do you have a heart?” she wondered.

      “Yes,” he replied. “So much so that I convinced Logan you’re a better man for this job than I am.”

      “Man?” Now she knew what he meant about the knife through the heart; a sharp pang in her chest felt as if he’d driven his blade deep.

      “Yeah, that assignment you wanted—it’s all yours,” he magnanimously offered.

      She shook her head. “I quit.”

      “Because you wanted that assignment,” he said.

      “No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t wanted that assignment; playing bodyguard to some reality star turned B-movie actress held no appeal for her.

      His gray eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “You just didn’t want me to have it?”

      “No, I didn’t.”

      “Why not?” he asked. “What would I steal or who would I kill if I took this assignment?”

      He had definitely overheard her argument with their boss. Her face heated with embarrassment—not over what he’d heard as much as having to explain why she hadn’t wanted him guarding a woman who rarely wore clothes on camera, or according to the tabloids, off camera either. She wasn’t certain she understood why herself.

      She wasn’t certain about anything anymore.

      She shrugged. “It’s a high-profile assignment—one that will raise the awareness of Payne Protection to the national level.”

      “Last year—all the attempts on Cooper’s and Logan’s and Parker’s lives—raised the awareness of Payne Protection,” he pointed out. “That’s why an LA actress wants to employ one of our bodyguards. We’re the best.”

      She wanted to argue the “we,” but Logan had been right earlier. He and Parker probably wouldn’t have survived if not for Garek’s help.

      “That assignment doesn’t require the best,” she said—since she suspected the entire need for a bodyguard was just the actress desperately trying to get some more minutes of fame.

      “Then why didn’t you want me to take it?” he asked.

      She shrugged. She wasn’t about to admit it had bothered her a lot to think of him with a scantily clad reality star. “It doesn’t matter now.”

      “It mattered enough to you,” he said, his voice deepening with confusion and concern, “that you quit the job you loved.”

      “Loved is right,” she agreed. “Past tense. I don’t love it anymore.” But that was a lie; she knew it even as she said it. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her job anymore. It was that she was afraid she might fall in love with something—with somebody—else.

      “Is that my fault?” he asked. “Or Logan’s?”

      That was why she couldn’t risk falling again—because she had already made enough of a fool of herself over love before. “If this had anything to do with Logan, I would have quit when he married your sister.”

      “Maybe you were just waiting around for them to fail,” he said. “It’s not like anyone really thought they’d last.” He chuckled. “Least of all me.”

      “They have a child together,” she said.

      “Little Penny,” he murmured, his grin widening with obvious love for his two-month-old niece.

      Candace’s breath caught in her lungs. Garek was so damn handsome it wasn’t fair. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You need to leave.”

      He glanced around as if just realizing where they were. “I’ve been wanting to get into your bedroom for a year now...” He stepped closer to the bed and ran his fingertips across the sheets. “Silk...”

      She flinched with anger and embarrassment and lashed out, “Of course you’d be surprised a man like me would have silk sheets.”

      “Man?” he repeated, his brow furrowing with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

      “You just said I was the best man for the job—”

      “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

      “Why not?” she asked. “Everybody else thinks of me as just one of the guys.”

      He shook his head. “I have never thought of you that way.” He stepped closer now and jerked her into his arms so quickly that she didn’t have time to react. If she’d had time, she would have stopped him—she would have hurt him. Instead she just slammed up tightly against his chest, so that she felt his every breath, his every heartbeat...

      “And I have thought of you,” he said with an intensity in his gray gaze that had her heart racing with excitement, “every moment since I’ve met you...”

      He lowered his mouth to hers but when their lips were just a breath apart, he paused and murmured. “And I have thought of doing this...of kissing you...”

      And then he did—he kissed her with that intensity she’d seen in his eyes. He kissed her with such passion that she had no doubt he didn’t think of her as one of the guys. He thought of her the way she’d been thinking of him.

      And she realized something else—it was too late to escape.

      * * *

      It was too late. No matter how hard he tried, Garek was unable to escape his old life. It just kept dragging him back in...

      Back into a life lived on the edge, back into a life of danger...

      Maybe it was a good thing that Candace had taken off the way she had, because at least he wasn’t dragging her in with him. He didn’t even know where she had gone—just that she’d finished packing her suitcases sometime that night and she’d left.

      Her leaving had hurt more than the fist that slammed hard into his stomach. He coughed and doubled over in pain, but strong arms held him up so the fist could strike him again. Harder.

      A curse slipped through his lips along with a slight trickle of blood. He didn’t have any internal injuries; he’d just bitten his tongue. Purposely. He’d been beaten harder than this before; hell, his brother had beaten him harder than this before. Of course that had been years ago when they’d been just kids. But he groaned as if he were in agony. The truth was the old man didn’t pack the wallop he had once had. But as the godfather of River City, Michigan, Viktor Chekov commanded respect and fear.

      And with good reason. The guy was a killer. And maybe it could finally be proven...

      With a jerk of his silver-haired head, Viktor called off his goons so that they released Garek. He dropped to the ground with a groan and complained, “What the hell kind of greeting was that...?”

      “How do you expect me to greet you?” Viktor asked. “You just walked away—”

      “I didn’t just walk away,” Garek said. “I was taken off in handcuffs to prison.”

      A muscle twitched in Viktor’s slightly sagging cheek. “That wasn’t because of the work you did for me.”

      “No, it wasn’t,” Garek agreed. “But I might have avoided jail time if I’d given up what I did for you, or if I’d set you up...” Like he was setting him up now...

      Viktor