Читать книгу Ready - Lucy Monroe - Страница 7

Lise smothered a yawn as Joshua led her into their hotel room. Exhaustion was catching up with her and pretty soon she’d need toothpicks to prop her eyes open.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a jaw-stretching yawn took her by surprise. “I’m just so tired all of a sudden.”

Joshua dropped his bag on the bed nearest the door and shrugged out of his coat. “When was the last time you slept a whole night?”

She crossed the room and plopped down on the end of the other bed, her legs so tired they didn’t want to hold her up anymore. “The night before the last Seahawks game.”

His dark eyes glinted with curiosity. “What happened?”

She told him about the incident on the street after the game, reliving the fear and frustration of that night while she took off her own coat and tossed it onto a nearby chair.

“You could have been killed.”

“I don’t think he meant to really harm me at all.” She’d thought about it a lot. “Traffic moves pretty slowly after a game. I think he just wants me to know what kind of power he has over my life.”

The word Joshua said was one she didn’t even use in her writing. “Did you go to the police?”

“Yes.” For all the good it had done her.

Joshua went to the window and slid an expandable bar into place so that it could not be opened; he then shut both the privacy curtain and the drapes. Each movement made her feel a little bit safer, a little more protected.

“What did they say?”

“The sergeant who took my statement didn’t believe that I was pushed, but he filed a report anyway. I insisted.”

“Why didn’t he believe you?”

He’d thought she was an ignorant country bumpkin who could not tell the difference between being shoved in the back and jostled by the crowd. It still made her angry. “There were no witnesses to corroborate my story. No one else saw Nemesis push me, even though there was a huge crowd around me.”

Joshua opened the door and put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside before turning back to face her. “Probably because of the crowd.”

She nodded, trying to swallow another yawn and not succeeding. She’d been scared for so long, the relative safety of being with Joshua had released her body from the constant adrenaline rush of fear. The inertia of total exhaustion was taking over.

He dug something out of his bag and put it on the door under the privacy lock. “Has Nemesis been in your Seattle apartment?”

“Not that I know of, but he left a red rose on the seat of my car. It was locked in the parking garage at the time.”

“Did you report the incident?”

“Yes, but it was the same story as before. I didn’t have proof and wasn’t taken seriously.” The same sergeant had taken the report, and the fact that the doors had been locked had convinced him she was some kind of kook. “I think the police sergeant and the sheriff back in Canyon Rock are related.”

Her attempt at humor fell flat. Joshua’s handsome face didn’t even crack in a smile. “So, you cancelled your trip to Texas and decided to deal with this on your own again?”

He sounded less than impressed by the possibility, but she nodded. “I didn’t have a lot of choice. I’m not putting my family at risk, no matter what.”

“You’d rather face your stalker with a fireplace poker.” The derision in his voice irritated her.

“Not really, but it’s what I had on hand.”

He measured her with his eyes. “You’re pretty damn independent.”

She supposed she was. The one person she knew would not let her down was herself.

“You need my help.”

The blunt statement took the breath out of her, but she wasn’t about to deny the truth of it. She’d passed that point about when he’d disarmed her and gotten her in a headlock before she could even scream. If he had been Nemesis, she could be dead, or hurting badly right now.

Joshua watched the play of emotions across Lise’s face. Denial wasn’t one of them.

“You’re right,” she said. “The authorities won’t take me seriously and I’m afraid Nemesis will have to do something pretty awful before they do, but what can you do?”

“I can keep you safe, for a start.”

There was no mistake about the expression burning golden in her tired hazel eyes. It was relief. “Thank you.”

“I plan to nail the bastard, too.”

“Do you think you can?”

He wasn’t offended by her expression of doubt. “Maybe not alone, but I’ve got a couple of buddies who will help. Hotwire’s a computer expert and Nitro’s great with explosives, but he’s got other talents just as useful.”

“Interesting names—are they mercenaries too?”

“We were in the Rangers together.” Evading direct an swers had become a way of life for him ten years ago. “When did Bella tell you what I do?”

Had Lise run from his profession as much as she’d run from the primitively passionate man he’d become with her?

“She didn’t.”

“Then how did you know?”

That vague look settled over her, the one he identified as her writer look. “It’s the way you move, the way you are hyper-aware of everything and everyone around you. It’s just like the other mercenaries I’ve met. Special Forces soldiers are that way, too, but there are subtle differences.”

“You’ve met other mercenaries?”

“Sure.”

“Right.”

She frowned at his disbelief. “I interview a lot of people for my books. I like hands-on research. It’s how Jake and Bella met, or didn’t they tell you?”

His sister had said something about it, but attending a few fashion shows was not in the same league as getting into personal contact with the men who peopled the shadowy world he lived in. “What did you do, contact Soldier of Fortune magazine for a reference?”

“Not the first time. I’d learned about a mercenary from a retired Navy SEAL I knew. The man he hooked me up with wasn’t hero material at all. He was cold, and so calculating. You could just tell he’d kill his own grandmother for the right amount of money.”

“Who was it?”

She said a name.

His heart about stopped in his chest at the prospect of her spending five minutes alone with such a predator, much less the length of an interview. “Are you crazy? You don’t chat over coffee with men like him.”

“Yes, well, I figured that out. The next man I interviewed was the one who worked for one of those companies advertised in Soldier of Fortune magazine. He was a total phony.”

He was getting a pretty intimate picture of the type of research she did to write her books and he didn’t like it. He’d read most of them since meeting her the year before. If she talked to the types of characters she wrote about, the list of stalker suspects would be as long as his mother’s grocery list the week before Christmas.

“So you went looking for another merc to talk to?”

“Yes. He was retired and I liked him.”

When she named the man, Joshua had to bite down on the urge to curse. It was the same man who had drawn him into the gray world of being a soldier for hire. He had ideals, even if the average civilian wouldn’t understand them. Combat had retired four years ago, turning his business over to Joshua. That’s when he’d taken Hotwire and Nitro on, the two men in the world he trusted.

“You live damn dangerously for an introverted writer who shies away from mingling in crowds.”

Soft pink tinged her cheeks. “I’m not that shy.”

“Apparently.”

“I know you didn’t ask for pay, but I will. Pay you, I mean.”

He stood up, rejection pounding through his veins. “I don’t want your money.”

“You’re a mercenary. This is what you do.” She licked her lips nervously and his gut tightened for reasons that had nothing to do with their discussion.

“I’ve done a lot of things I wouldn’t want to put in a memoir, but no way am I taking money from you to help you.”

“That’s a ridiculous attitude, and I would feel better keeping this on a professional basis.”

“Tough.”

Her eyes widened, highlighting their reddened condition. “There’s no reason for you to refuse to let me pay you.”

She spoiled the severity of her tone with another yawn.

The woman was seriously ready for bed.

Too bad it wouldn’t be one she’d willingly share with him.

“There are a couple of reasons,” he ground out, forcing his mind away from a path it had no business traveling down, especially since she’d just become a job.

“Name them.”

“One, you can’t afford me. Two, you’re family.”

“I’m not your family.”

“Close enough.” What he didn’t say was that if she’d had no connection to him at all, he’d want to help her.

Lise Barton got to him in a way no other woman had since he was a naïve new recruit to the Army Rangers.

Joshua heard the water stop on the other side of the privacy wall while he listened to Bella’s latest cute baby story about Genevieve with half an ear.

Lise came into the main room, her hair wet from her shower and looking more alert than she had earlier, not to mention too damn appealing.

That was going to be a problem.

She sat down on her bed and started brushing her hair out. Damp, it looked more brown than blond, hiding the gold highlights that rippled through it when it was dry.

“Isn’t that just the sweetest thing?” Bella’s voice reached him even as he watched Lise’s movements with entirely too much interest.

Her pajamas were a pair of men’s boxers and a well-worn t-shirt that molded her delicious curves when she reached up to run the brush through her hair. She wasn’t big-breasted, but she wasn’t small, either. She was perfect, her firm breasts jiggling just enough to make him crazy with every swipe of the brush on her hair.

He wanted to curse as his body reacted with pain-filled intensity to the sight. It had been too damn long…

He forced himself to answer his sister with a mild, “Yeah.”

“So you’ll be here in time for dinner and you’ve talked Lise into coming with you?” His sister sounded like she was having a hard time believing that.

“Yes, Bella. We will both be there.”

Lise’s eyes snapped up at that, their gold-and-green depths asking him a question.

“I told Lise babies are more resilient than she thinks,” Bella said in his ear, “Genevieve is not going to end up with pneumonia because she’s exposed to a little old cold.”

“You’re starting to sound like a Texan,” he teased his sister, while wondering how much of a fuss Lise would put up about his travel plans to Texas.

He hoped none at all when she heard his arrangements.

Bella laughed. “You know what they say about us transplants—we end up more Texan than the natives.”

He chuckled at his sister’s exaggerated drawl before saying good-bye and hanging up.

Stretching his legs out in front of him, he crossed them at the ankle and waited for Lise to say something.

She didn’t disappoint him. “You told Bella we’d be there for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we will be.”

Eyes narrowed, she drummed her fingers on the bedspread. “Has anyone ever told you that talking to you is like talking to a fence post on the shy side?”

“No, I can’t say they have.”

She huffed, shaking her head, and then smiled, making his pants feel a size too small in the crotch. “I guess I should have asked how rather than why.”

He liked the measure of sass she’d managed to recapture since arriving at the hotel. “Hotwire is flying my plane into Arlington Municipal tonight. We’ll meet him at the airport at o-six-hundred tomorrow. Then, I’ll fly us to the airstrip on your brother’s ranch and Nemesis will be none the wiser.”

“You have your own plane?”

“Yes, a small Learjet.” He’d wanted something fast, that could fly above thirty thousand feet, avoiding most weather-based turbulence, and a plane that did not need refueling for a cross-continental trip. “It comes in handy in my line of work.”

“But you were flying commercial…”

“I was out of the country.”

She tucked her rapidly drying hair behind one ear, exposing the feminine column of her neck and a shell pink ear he could remember tasting. Once. Definitely a memory better left on the junk heap.

“On a job?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?” He raised his brows and a blush spread across her cheeks. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked that. Sometimes I don’t think.”

He remembered how frequently she had asked probing questions before. He’d deflected most of them, leery of her pursuit of personal information.

“Must be because you’re a writer.”

She shrugged, the blush intensifying. “Maybe. My father always said I asked too many questions and all the wrong ones. I don’t mean to offend people.”

From what he’d learned of her father from Jake, Joshua thought the man had been a pretty useless parent.

Which for no accountable reason made him want to answer her question. “It was an extraction, and your question didn’t offend me, but I don’t normally discuss my jobs with anyone.”

“Not even your friends, Hotwire and Nitro?”

“Not unless they’re on the job with me.”

Which was an answer to her earlier question if his buddies were mercs, too.

She looked like she wanted to ask something else, but was literally biting her tongue to hold the words in.

“Spit it out. I told you, your questions don’t offend me. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”

She smiled again and this time it warmed his insides. He liked seeing her relax with him.

“What kind of extraction, a person or a thing?” she asked.

“A little boy.”

Her gaze glazed over with that vague look. “You saved him, didn’t you?”

“I returned him to his family for a very high fee.” She would do better not to romanticize him. “Do you have any problem with flying out tomorrow?”

“No, and thank you for making it possible. I miss my family. I haven’t seen the baby in two months. I bet she’s grown so much I’ll hardly recognize her.”

The wistfulness in her voice stirred something inside of him. “They miss you, too. Tell me something.”

She picked up the brush and put it on the nightstand before climbing under the covers. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell Jake?”

“About being stalked?”

“Yes.”

“He’d insist on helping, try to get me to move to the ranch or something, and he’d worry.”

“If you lived on the ranch, no civilian would be able to follow you around without Jake, Bella, or one of the hands noticing.”

“Civilian?”

“Nonmilitary.”

“You aren’t military.”

She had a strong tendency to get lost on conversational tangents. “I’m a soldier, just a private one.”

“It’s not right that Jake should have to pay for my problems.”

It took him a second to follow the conversation back to the question she was answering. “How would having you there be making your brother pay a price?”

“I told you, he’d worry.”

“He’s not a little old woman with a bad heart, Lise. He’s a man.” A strong one, whom Joshua respected. “He can handle a little concern on his sister’s behalf.”

“He spent my whole growing-up years worrying over me, trying to make life better for me. He deserves his own happiness now.” Her tone said she wouldn’t budge on that belief. “Besides, as much as they’d all watch out for me, they’d be at risk as well.”

And she’d made it clear that really worried her.

“From now on I’ll be with you. You’ll be safe and so will the people around you.”

“Thank you, but what about your job?” She bit her lip, looking worried again. “It could take weeks, months even, to catch the creep messing with my life. Some stalkers remain unidentified for years.”

“This one won’t.”

“You’re not short on confidence, are you?” She didn’t sound bothered by the fact.

“Why should I be? Believe it or not, honey, this kind of thing is child’s play compared to some of my assignments. Our perp is already too escalated not to get caught. He’s not watching you from afar—the night he shoved you into traffic proves it.”

“You’re right.” She fluffed her pillows. “He took a pretty big gamble that night. He’ll make other mistakes.”

“And I’ll be there to catch his sorry ass.”

“As much as I want to see Jake, Bella, and the baby, I wish we were starting the investigation now.”

He liked the enthusiasm and hope lacing her voice. It was a big improvement over the hysterically frightened woman he’d taken out of her apartment.

“We are. Hotwire and Nitro are going to sweep the place for bugs while we’re in Texas.”

She snuggled into her pillow, planting impossible images into his head he’d do best to ignore.

“I’ll find a way to pay you back for helping me, Joshua.”

He could think of one right now, but figured he’d get slapped for suggesting it.

He already had one over-the-top incident to apologize for; he didn’t need another.

Lise could not breathe.

Nemesis was there, right behind her. Impenetrable darkness surrounded them, but she could hear him breathing, feel his malevolent presence. Terror paralyzed her limbs and she could not run, froze her throat and she could not scream.

“Lise, I told you that you would never be free of me.” The digitized voice tormented her with its certainty, with its inhuman inflection.

“No,” she moaned, forcing the word out.

“You will never get away.”

She shook her head, her mouth opening in agonized denial, and this time she managed to shout. “No!”

“I will always find you.” The words beat at her as relentlessly as Nemesis himself. “No one can protect you from me. No one wants to. Joshua will leave you. They will all leave.”

She covered her ears with her hands and cried, “No,” over and over again.

“Lise, wake up, honey.” A different voice. Tender, caring, human.

She turned toward it and a single shaft of light penetrated the darkness, illuminating a tanned masculine hand. “Come on, honey…”

She reached out for the hand, but she couldn’t touch it, no matter how hard she tried. She whimpered in frustration as connection remained just out of reach.

Then suddenly her hand was engulfed in the strong, warm fingers. He started pulling her toward the light, toward safety, toward…

“Joshua?” She hovered between consciousness and her nightmare.

“It’s me. Are you awake?”

Her eyes opened to the shadowy darkness of the room, so different from the dense blackness in her dream. The sensation of Joshua holding her hand woke her completely.

“Are you okay, Lise?”

“Yes,” she croaked out past a dry throat. “It was just a dream.”

“More like a nightmare.”

“Yes.”

He got up and tried to pull his hand away, but she could not let go. She wasn’t a clinger, and since the end of her marriage two years ago, she’d done her best to avoid any semblance of relying on a man, even Jake. But she did not want to be left alone with the aftermath of her dream.

He stopped tugging on his hand and turned it over to squeeze her fingers instead. “You sound hoarse. I’m going to get you a drink.”

She didn’t want water, she wanted comfort. His presence. However, she let him gently disengage their fingers. He was only gone a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime as she lay in the bed, trembling from the mental remnants of her nightmare.

“Sit up so you can drink this.”

She pushed herself up, surprised at how difficult it was. Her arms felt like they’d turned to Jell-O. He reached out with one hand and helped her, then sat down beside her on the bed, keeping the arm around her.

She put a trembling hand out for the glass of water. “Thank you.”

He helped her drink it, their fingers brushing together as they both held the glass tipped to her lips. He coaxed her to drink almost the entire glass before he set it on the nightstand between the beds.

Her head rested against his chest. He was wearing a t-shirt, but the heat of his body radiated through it. “Were you dreaming about him?”

Joshua had not turned on any lights and the darkness felt intimate, not frightening like the pitch black in her dream.

But intimacy was another kind of scary, and she forced herself to push out of the comforting strength of his arms. “Yes.”

“You said before that you had nightmares. Do you have them every night?”

“No.” Just most nights.

“Lise, you aren’t alone anymore.” He stood up. “I’m not going to let him hurt you or anyone you care about.”

She desperately wanted to believe him, but to rely on another person so completely was scarier than being stalked. No matter how good he was at his job, he was still a man and men could betray you. Even good men.

Joshua’s hand halted midair above Lise’s shoulder. She looked like a fairy all curled up under the covers, her porcelain features relaxed completely in sleep. She hadn’t had another nightmare last night and he’d been glad. If he’d been forced to get out of bed again, he would have crawled into hers.

He wanted her.

And the feeling would not go away

He’d spent months trying to forget the taste of her lips, the feel of her resilient flesh under his fingers.

He had not succeeded despite the fact that she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in pursuing a sexual relationship with him. He’d been sure his wild sexual reaction to her had been the result of not enough downtime after a mission, but he’d been with her less than twenty-four hours and he was back to where he’d been the night of his niece’s christening.

So horny he could barely walk straight.

Only this time he had a job to do and sex and work did not mix. Not ever.