“Oh! Hello, Mr. Ames.” Her cheeks pinked with pleasure at seeing him. “Did you need something else?” She checked the big old-fashioned clock on the wall. “We’re closing up, but I can stay on for another quarter of an hour if you need anything.”
He’d been in that morning and she’d been charmingly helpful to him. Or, rather, to Nicholas Ames, stockbroker, retired from the Wall Street rat race after several years of very lucky investments paid off big, now looking to start his own investment firm. Son of Keith and Amanda Ames, investment banker and family lawyer, respectively, both tragically dead at a young age. Nicholas Ames was thirty-four years old, a Capricorn, divorced after a short-lived starter marriage in his twenties, collector of vintage wines, affable, harmless, all-round good guy.
Not a word of that was true. Not one word.
They were alone in the library, which pleased him and annoyed him at the same time. It pleased him because he’d have Charity Prewitt’s undivided attention. It annoyed him because…because.
Because through the huge library windows she looked like a lovely little lamb staked out for the predators. It had been dark for an hour up here in this frozen northern state. In the well-lit library, Charity Prewitt had been showcased against the darkness of the evening. One very pretty young woman all alone in an enclosed space. It screamed out to any passing scumbag—come and get me!
Nothing scumbags liked better than to eat up lovely young women. If there was one thing Nick knew with every fiber of his being, it was that the world was full of scumbags. He’d been fighting them all his life.
She was smiling up at him, much, much prettier than the photographs in the file he’d studied.
“No, thank you, Miss Prewitt,” he answered, keeping his deep, naturally rough voice gentle. “I don’t need to do any more research. You were very helpful this morning.”
Her head tilted, the soft dark-blond hair brushing her right shoulder. “Did you have a good day, then?”
“Yes, I did, a very good day. Thank you for asking. I saw three factories, a promising new Web design start-up, and an old-economy sawmill that has some very innovative ideas about using recycled wood chips. All in all, very satisfactory.”
Actually, it had been a shitty day, just one of many shitty days on this mission. A total waste of time spent in the surveillance van with two smelly men and jack shit to show for it except for one cryptic call to Worontzoff about a friend staying safe.
Nick smiled the satisfaction he didn’t feel. “So. It’s closing time now, isn’t it?”
She smiled back. “Why, yes. We close at six. But as I said, if you need something—”
“Well, to tell you the truth…” Nick looked down at his shoes shyly, as if working up the courage to ask. Man, he loved looking down at those shoes. They were three-hundred-dollar Italian imports, worlds away from his usual comfortable but battered combat boots that dated back to his army days.
Being Nicholas Ames, very successful businessman, was great because he got to dress the part and Uncle Sam had to foot the bill. He had an entire wardrobe to fit those magnificent shoes. Who knew if he’d get to keep any of it? Maybe the two Armanis that had been specially tailored for his broad shoulders.
And even better was dealing with this librarian, Charity Prewitt, one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. Small, curvy, classy with large eyes the color of the sea at dawn.
Nick looked up from contemplating his black shiny wingtips and smiled into her beautiful gray eyes. “Actually, I was hoping that I could invite you out to dinner to thank you for your help. If I hadn’t done this preliminary research here, with your able help, my day wouldn’t have been half as productive. Asking you out to dinner is the least I can do to show you my appreciation.”
She blinked. “Well…,” she began.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said hastily. “I’m a solid citizen—just ask my accountant and my physician. And I’m perfectly harmless.”
He wasn’t, of course, he was dangerous as hell. Ten years a Delta operator before joining the Unit. He’d spent the past decade in black ops, perfecting the art of killing people.
He was sure harmless to her, though.
Charity Prewitt had the most delicious skin he’d ever seen on a woman—pale ivory with a touch of rose underneath—so delicate it looked like it would bruise if he so much as breathed on it. That was skin meant for touching and stroking, not hurting.
“Ms. Prewitt?” She hadn’t answered his question about going out. She simply stood there, head tilted to one side, watching him as if he were some kind of problem to be sorted out, but she needed more information before she could solve it.
In a way, he liked that. She didn’t jump at the invitation, which was a welcome relief from his last date—well, last fuck. Five minutes after “hello” in a bar, she’d had his dick in her hand. At least she hadn’t been into pain like Consuelo. God.
Charity Prewitt was assessing him quietly and he let her do it, understanding that smooth words weren’t going to do the trick. Stillness would, so he stood still. Special Forces soldiers have the gift of stillness. The ones who don’t, die young and badly.
Nick was engaging in a little assessment himself. This morning he’d been bowled over by little Miss Charity Prewitt. Christ, with a name like that, with her job as chief librarian of the library of a one-traffic-light town, single at twenty-eight, he’d been expecting a dried-up prune.
The photographs of her in his file had been fuzzy, taken with a telescopic lens, and just showed the generics—hair and skin color, general size and shape. A perfectly normal woman. A little on the small side, but other than that, ordinary.
But up close and personal, Jesus, she’d turned out to be a knockout. A quiet knockout. You had to look twice for the full impact of large light-gray eyes, porcelain skin, shiny dark-blond hair and a curvy slender figure to make itself felt. Coupled with a natural elegance and a soft, attractive voice—well.
Nick was used to being undercover, but most of his jobs involved scumbags, not beautiful young women.
Actually, this one did, too—a major scumbag called Vassily Worontzoff everyone on earth but the operatives in the Unit revered for being a great writer. Even nominated for the friggin’ Nobel, though, as the Unit knew well but couldn’t yet prove, the sick fuck was the head of a huge international OC syndicate. Nick was intent on bringing him down.
So on this op he was dealing with scumbags, yeah, but the mission also involved romancing this pretty woman—and on Uncle Sam’s dime, to boot.
Didn’t get much better than that.
“All right,” Charity said suddenly. Whatever her doubts had been, apparently they were now cleared up. “What time do you want to pick me up?”
Yes! Nick felt a surge of energy that had nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the woman in front of him.
“Well…” Nick smiled, all affable, utterly safe, utterly reliable businessman, “I was wondering whether you wouldn’t mind going now. I found this fabulous Italian place near Rockville. It has a really nice bar area and I thought we might talk over a drink while waiting for our dinner.”
“Da Emilio’s,” Charity said. “It’s a very nice place and the food is excellent.” She looked down at herself, frowning. “But I’m not dressed for a dinner out. I should go home and change.”
She was wearing a light blue-gray sweater that exactly matched the color of her eyes and hugged round breasts and a narrow waist, a slim black skirt, shiny black stockings, and pretty ankle boots. Pearl necklace and pearl earrings. She was the classiest-looking dame he’d seen in a long while, even in her work clothes.
“You look—” Perfect. Sexy as hell. He bit his jaws closed on the words. Ireland, roughneck soldier that he was, could say something like that, but Ames, sophisticated businessman, sure as hell couldn’t. Even if it was God’s own truth. “Fine. You look just fine. You could go to dinner at the White House dressed like that.”
&n
bsp; It made her smile, which was what he wanted. Her smile was like a secret weapon. She sighed. “Okay. I’ll just need to lock up here.”
Locking up entailed pulling the library door closed and turning a key once in the lock.
Nick waited. Charity looked up at him, a tiny frown between her brows when she saw his scowl. “Is something wrong?”
“That’s it? That’s locking up? Turning the key once in the lock?”
She smiled gently. “This isn’t the big bad city, Mr. Ames.”
“My friends call me Nick.”
“Okay, Nick. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to walk around town. This isn’t New York or even Burlington. The library, in case you haven’t noticed, is full of books and not much else besides some scuffed tables. What would there be to steal? And anyway, I don’t remember the last time a crime was committed in Parker’s Ridge.”
The elation Nick felt at the thought of an evening with Charity Prewitt dissipated.
Parker’s Ridge housed one of the world’s most dangerous criminals. An evil man. A man directly responsible for hundreds of lives lost, for untold misery and suffering.
And he was Charity Prewitt’s best friend.
Two
A date. She, Charity Prewitt, was actually going out on a date! Charity hadn’t been out on a date in…God, she couldn’t even remember the last date she’d been on.
There were ten bachelors in Parker’s Ridge, not counting Vassily, of course, who was fifty-four years old and horribly scarred from his time in a Soviet prison camp. Each and every bachelor within a radius of forty miles had asked her out, repeatedly. Each and every bachelor was lacking in something important—teeth, a faculty, a job. Certainly all of them were lacking in a sense of humor.
And the surrounding towns weren’t too much better. Most of the bachelors there were bachelors for a good reason. And one date was more or less enough to figure out what that something was.
Charity might even have gone further afield, but ever since Mary Conway had gone on maternity leave and then quit when her child was a preemie with problems, Charity had been more or less on her own in the library. The retired chief librarian, old Mrs. Lambert, would come in for an emergency, but she was seventy-four and almost deaf. And the town council kept putting off budgeting for another librarian. So Charity was more or less it.
Plus, of course, Uncle Franklin and her ailing aunt Vera required her constant presence and help. Charity had a range of about forty miles and desirable bachelors—even only bachelors that weren’t repugnant—were not exactly thick on the ground in that radius.
So being asked out by Mr. Nicholas call-me-Nick Ames, who was the most handsome man she’d ever seen—and who clearly had all his own teeth, all his own limbs, and seemed to be independently wealthy—well, it was like Christmas a month early.
He’d come in that morning to do some research on the area, saying he was thinking of making some investments. Charity had been impressed by how much he knew about the area already, but she supposed that businessmen had to be well informed. He’d let discreetly slip that he’d retired early after some very good years with a brokerage firm and was looking to open an investment firm of his own.
He was so outrageously handsome. Charity kept sneaking glances at him while he wasn’t looking. Tall, with midnight black hair, deep-blue eyes surrounded by ridiculously long lashes, a straight narrow nose, and a firm mouth.
Hard body.
Wow.
In Charity’s experience, businessmen were soft and pale. All that time spent behind a desk, making money. Or losing it, depending. Nick Ames didn’t look like he had wasted much time losing money.
He had all the visible accoutrements of prosperous businessman-dom. The elegant blue suit—Armani was her guess—the glossy shoes, the expensive leather briefcase, the manicured nails, the flat, expensive watch.
But that was where the resemblance to a typical businessman stopped. Underneath the elegant suit was clearly a very strong, very fit body, with amazingly broad shoulders. So at odds with the amount of time he must spend analyzing data, clipping articles, and peering into his crystal ball—or whatever it was stockbrokers did.
It was a lovely evening. Very cold—but that was a given for November in Vermont. The snowstorm all the weather forecasters had been talking about was still holding off and the night sky was bright with brilliant cold stars. Charity loved these clear frozen nights, and it was a good thing, too, she often thought, since moving somewhere warm was out of the question. Even a long weekend in Aruba was out of the question. Certainly as long as Aunt Vera was so sick.
To her surprise, Mr. Ames—Nick—took her elbow, as if she could have problems navigating the broad, even sidewalk stretching out before her or needed guidance in the small town she’d grown up in. Still, it was really nice. Men rarely took one’s elbow anymore.
Uncle Franklin often took her arm when she accompanied him somewhere, but it was for balance. Nick Ames certainly didn’t need to hold her arm for balance.
Up close, he seemed even taller. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, even with heels. He seemed broader, too, the shoulders incredibly wide beneath the rich dark-blue overcoat with the hand stitches. Cashmere. Uncle Franklin had one just like it.
For a fraction of a second, Charity wondered what she was doing—going out for dinner with a man she didn’t know.
She’d surprised herself. He’d asked and she knew she should say no to dinner, perhaps yes to a drink in town, and then…her mouth opened and yes simply plopped out.
Of course, that he was handsome as sin and had a killer smile might have something to do with it.
Manners, too. He’d positioned himself on the outside, next to the curb. It had been years since she’d seen a man deliberately place himself between a woman and the street. The last man besides Uncle Franklin that she’d seen doing that had been her father, always instinctively courteous with her mother. That had been over fifteen years ago, when they were still alive.
She and Nick walked down the block and he turned her right, onto Sparrow Road, with a gentle nudge of his hand. Halfway down the block, he stopped right outside a big black luxurious car. A Lexus, she thought, though she wasn’t sure. The only thing she was sure of was that it probably cost the equivalent of a year’s salary of a librarian.
He walked her around to the passenger door, unlocking it electronically with the key fob, and helped her into the passenger seat as if she were the queen of Parker’s Ridge.
A second later he was in the driver’s seat and helping her pull the seat belt over and down. To her astonishment, once the latch clicked, he didn’t pull back but leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on her mouth.
Charity stared at him. “What—”
He’d already put the big car in gear. He looked over at her and grinned, teeth white in the darkness of the car, as he slowly pulled out of the parking space. “I figure we’re going to spend the entire evening wondering whether we’ll have a good-night kiss, so I thought I’d just cut right through that. We’ve already kissed, so we’re not going to obsess about it. It’s already done.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t going to obsess about a kiss.”
That was a lie. She’d been obsessing about it since she’d accepted the dinner invitation. If she was perfectly honest with herself, which she usually was, she’d been obsessing about kissing him since she’d laid eyes on him this morning.
He was right, though.
It had only been a chaste little kiss—a buss, it would have been called a century ago. But it had definitely broken the tension. They’d kissed. They could now have an easygoing dinner together.
Smart man, she thought. No wonder he’d become rich.
He drove sedately out of town. Too sedately, actually. To her surprise, he kept to the speed limit even outside the city limits. For some reason, some feather-brained bureaucrat somewhere had declared a speed limit of thirty-five miles an hour withi
n a ten-mile radius of town. No one in town was crazy enough to respect the speed limit, except Mr. Nick Ames. He was driving the powerful car as if he were carrying a carload of eggs over bumpy terrain.
He braked to a complete stop at the intersection between Somerset and Fifth, where on a clear day you could see into Canada. No one stopped at that intersection unless a car was coming, which you could see from miles out in every direction. Parker’s Ridgers simply slowed down a tad, but they never stopped.
Nick Ames stopped while the light was yellow and waited patiently for it to cycle through yellow, red, then green.
It was nice being in a car with a careful driver, but Charity found herself pressing her right foot to the floor, wishing he’d do it, too, silently urging him to go just a little bit faster. There was a thin line between safe driving and poky driving and he crossed it several times. Poky driving in Parker’s Ridge, where you had to work really hard to get into a fender bender, was overkill.
Getting to Da Emilio’s wasn’t easy. There were several turnoffs and very little signage. The locals got there easily enough, but it was hard for out-of-towners. Nick Ames didn’t seem to have any problems, though. He drove straight there.
The parking space outside the restaurant was nearly empty. It would fill up later, but for now the only patrons were those here for a pre-dinner drink. He drove into the first empty slot and killed the engine.
She smiled at him as he turned into the parking lot. “You have either a good sense of direction, an excellent memory, or both.”
He turned to her, big hand draped over the steering wheel. “Both, actually. I think they’re the same part of the brain. I also have a really good memory for faces. I don’t often get lost.” He looked down at her bare hands. “You might want to put your gloves back on, it’s really cold outside.”
“Yes, Mom,” Charity said with a roll of her eyes, but it was wasted. He’d already rounded the car and was opening her door, helping her out.
The Dangerous Boxed Set Page 2