Shotgun Daddy

by Harper Allen

  “Didn’t you hear what I just—”

  The rest of her sentence was lost in a gasp as he lifted her from the car seat and deposited her unceremoniously into one of the snowdrifts beside the vehicle. He looked down at her.

  “Let’s get things straight, princess. You’re a rich bitch. I’m some version of hired muscle. You obviously think that means I can’t wait to have my crude way with you, but at the risk of shattering your illusions, I’m not interested.” He forced an evenness into his tone. “I’ll help you up.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she retorted, her heeled boots choosing that moment to slip on a patch of ice.

  He reached down and hauled her to her feet—too roughly, he realized as he became momentarily unbalanced.

  Only the fact that his vehicle was behind him saved them both from losing their footing. Furious blue eyes met his from a distance of only a few inches as Caro slammed against him.

  “You’re the one with the illusions, Mr. Riggs—” Her lips, pale pink and way too close, bit off the words. “Am I supposed to believe this wasn’t planned, either? Let go of me.”

  “My pleasure.” He released his grip on her, hoping that nothing of what was going through his mind showed in his face.

  The breathlessness he’d felt when he’d first seen her was back worse than ever, he thought hollowly, and it didn’t matter that she was too rich, too arrogant and too damn spoiled. Just for an instant he imagined how she’d look beneath him, that pale hair spread out on the snow, those pale lips parted—

  He turned away quickly, his fists clenched at his sides. “Wait here. This shouldn’t take long.”

  Whoever the lodge’s owners were, they were like Kanin; their security system had all the bells and whistles. But one snip through a wire made it useless. It was the same with the dead bolt on their front door. Gabe jimmied it open and walked back to the car, but by the time he’d locked the vehicle, he saw her slim figure, her back ramrod straight under the fur coat she’d slipped into again, entering the house.

  He leaned against the four-by-four and dragged his hand across his mouth.

  What the hell was the matter with him? Caro Moore was no different from any of the wealthy socialites with whom he’d come into contact in his job. She expected to snap her fingers and have someone jump. She’d never worked for a living, had never had to worry about the rent, had never ventured out of her shallow little circle of similarly wealthy friends and acquaintances.

  She didn’t live in his world. He had no desire to live in hers. How hard could it be not to let the woman get to him?

  Hard enough, he admitted grimly as he entered the house and saw her standing in front of an empty fireplace. She gave no indication that she was aware of his presence, and he squelched the flicker of irritation that rose in him.

  “There’s a woodpile at the side of the house,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could muster. “I’d better bring some in to keep us going if we lose the electricity.”

  She didn’t turn around. “The phone doesn’t work. You did something to it when you sabotaged the security, didn’t you.”

  He’d tried, dammit, Gabe thought, not even bothering to count to ten this time. He’d cut her all the slack he had available, but now he’d come to the end of the line.

  With two strides he closed the space between them. He spun her around to face him, and saw surprise replace some of the icy hauteur in her gaze.

  “How’d you guess, honey?” he said through clenched teeth. “Yeah, it’s all part of my big bad plan—the weather, the phones, finding this place and breaking in. So how about it? You and me, the snow princess and the hired hand—wanna get it on? Hey, I’m not your fiancé, but that’s probably a plus right now, as far as you’re concerned.”

  He saw a small white-gloved hand blurring toward his face. He caught her wrist just as her palm kissed his cheek.

  “No, sweetheart,” he said, his smile crooked. “I don’t play rough with women, and I don’t let them play rough with me. Let’s both stop with the games, okay?”

  He lowered her hand without releasing her wrist, regret already setting in. “I shouldn’t have yanked your chain like I did just now. We’re stuck with each other for the night, so why don’t we call a truce? I’m willing if you are.”

  Her gaze locked on his, as if she were determining whether she could trust him. Those silky dark lashes didn’t have mascara on them, he noted. In fact, she wasn’t wearing any kind of makeup that he could see. Her skin was naturally creamy. Her lips were naturally a pale pink shade. Her eyes were naturally a deep, heartbreaking blue that could make a man’s mouth go dry and his knees buckle beneath—

  “You really stopped because the road was getting too dangerous?” Her uncertain question broke through his musings.

  “Yeah, princess, I did. On a job a few years ago I was forced to ride shotgun on a Jeep carrying a load of dynamite through the jungle, and believe me, I felt safer then than I did tonight trying to avoid those patches of black ice.” He felt tension seep out of her. “So are we good here?”

  Her eyes still on his, she gave the tiniest of nods. He relaxed his hold on her wrist.

  The next moment he rocked back on his heels as her palm connected solidly with his cheek.

  “Are we good here? After you made that crack about how I must feel toward the man I was going to marry?” Her glare was blue fire. “This evening I walked in on Larry while he and another woman were indulging in a variation of ‘getting it on,’ as you’d probably put it. When he realized he’d been caught, he told me that if I’d ever shown any interest in performing that particular act on him, he wouldn’t have had to cheat on me. Do you have any idea how humiliating tonight was for me? Do you think I like knowing that when I get back to Albuquerque, everyone’s going to be whispering about what Larry’s prude of a fiancée does and doesn’t do in the bedroom?”

  Pain flashed behind her eyes. She blinked it away. “So, no, we’re not good here. I’d sooner spend the night in the car than another minute with you.”

  She began to push past him. Instinctively Gabe put out a hand to stop her, nudging the fur coat from her shoulders as he did. He grasped her lightly, his fingers spread wide on the soft whiteness of her sweater.

  “You’re right, I was way out of line.” Her lips tightened at his words, but he saw past the dismissive gesture to the tightly wound tension she’d hidden so well.

  Or perhaps Caro Moore hadn’t had to hide it that well, he told himself slowly. Maybe he’d been so preoccupied with his failure to save a hostage that he hadn’t wanted to notice the woman behind the icy facade.

  Sure, she had attitude. She had it in spades. But pampered princess or not, she hadn’t deserved to learn the way she had what a jerk Kanin was.

  “If anyone’s bunking in the car tonight, I am,” he said. “I owe you that, at least, and I’m used to sleeping rough.”

  He let his hands slide from her shoulders. Even as he did he saw the twin smears of black grease they left against the pristine white of her cashmere sweater. Caro’s eyes widened in appalled disbelief as she saw them, too.

  Sweet move, Riggs, Gabe thought, his heart sinking. Suddenly he felt he was everything she believed him to be—coarse, crude, and better suited to being in a mechanic’s bay working on her car than standing here trying to talk to her—or hell, touch her. He began to apologize, knew there was nothing she wanted to hear from him, and shrugged in defeat.

  “You realize that won’t come out,” she said in a tight voice. She didn’t take her gaze off the fingerprints running from her shoulders to just above the curve of her breasts. “You realize that’s probably gone right through the fabric.”

  “The alarm box was humidity-proofed with packing grease.” Without meaning to, he followed her gaze. “I must have gotten it on my hands when I was disconnecting the wires.”

  He stepped away from her rigid figure, wondering if it was his imagination or if he’d suddenly become bigge
r, bulkier, more awkward. He still couldn’t seem to avert his eyes from the agitated rise and fall of her breasts.

  “I’d better get the hell out of here before I completely mess you up,” he muttered, taking another slow step away.

  With an effort he began to drag his gaze from her. Caro slipped a gloved finger under the neckline of the sweater and pulled it slightly away from her body. She let the soft wool fall back into place and looked up at him.

  “I’ll probably need some kind of abrasive soap to clean it off my skin.”

  Her voice was still tight, but now there seemed to be a breathiness to it, he thought in confusion. Or maybe he was projecting, he told himself. Yeah. That had to be it.

  “Pumice,” he said thickly. “When I’ve been working on an engine I have to scrub my nails with pumice. But that’s probably too rough.”

  “If rough works, I’ll try it.” He hadn’t imagined the breathiness. Her eyes were wide and locked on his. “I can’t go around like this, can I? I have to scrub it away somehow.”

  She wasn’t talking about cleaning abrasives anymore, he realized with sudden certainty. He shook his head and tried to take another step backward. The small heels of her boots clicked against the floor as she took three steps forward and stopped in front of him.

  “After tomorrow I don’t imagine I’ll ever see you again.” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Slowly she brought a fingertip to his chest and traced the rim of one of his shirt buttons, her attention seemingly focused on the small action. “You’ll drop me off in Aspen in the morning and it’ll be like tonight never happened.”

  Gabe swallowed. “That’s not how it would be, princess,” he said, too hoarsely. “I don’t think you’re the type that can tell herself it didn’t happen. I think you’d remember everything, whether you wanted to or not.”

  He turned away. “You’d better get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He’d never known his father, but he knew his mother had been Navajo. Stoicism. Big Dineh quality, he told himself, mentally using the Navajo term rather than the Anglo one. Hell, maybe I’ll be thankful later, but right now I can’t believe I’m walking away from her.

  But he didn’t have a choice—not if he wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror tomorrow.

  She wanted to prove something to herself, though she didn’t have to. Kanin had seen a vulnerability beneath that cool exterior and had aimed his jab right at the place where it would hurt the most. The bastard had made her feel it was her fault he’d gone to another woman for the sexual favor he’d wanted performed on him. Tomorrow Caro Moore would be able to see her ex-fiancé’s accusation for what it was—a cheap shot from a man who didn’t deserve her. But tonight, she was in pain and she wanted to scrub away the humiliation as harshly as possible.

  And she was going to use you to do it, buddy, the small voice in Gabe’s head said firmly. You don’t wanna play stud for a spoiled little socialite, right?

  The hell he didn’t. But he wasn’t going to. And that was final.

  He’d almost made it to the door when her voice stopped him.

  “I don’t look like I’m all ice, but I must be. That has to be why you’re turning me down—because you can tell just by looking at me that it wouldn’t be any good for you. Is that what you see, Gabe? Am I so obviously frozen?”

  He turned around, and knew as soon as he had that he’d made a mistake. She’d pulled off the white sweater. Under it she was wearing a lacy white bra—of course, Gabe thought dizzily—and she’d been right, some of the lace was smudged. More dark prints stood out against the creamy swell of her breasts.

  He wasn’t aware that he’d moved, but somehow he was right in front of her. “Maybe a little frozen,” he rasped. “I kind of like that, though.”

  “Then, how can you walk away?” The pain in her voice was almost his undoing. “It must be me. Larry was right.”

  “He was wrong.” He forced himself to keep his hands at his sides. “If you really want to know what I see when I look at you, I’ll tell you. I see that lush mouth and I wonder what it would be like to have it on me; I see that pale hair and think of it falling across your face while you call out my name. I see heat that could sear a brand onto a man. But I won’t take advantage of how you feel tonight, Caro. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did.”

  “And I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if you don’t,” she whispered.

  His hands were shaking, dammit. He raised his left one from his side, the heavy silver and turquoise cuff glinting coldly against the tan of his arm. He brought his palm to within a hairbreadth of that pale, smudged skin—and 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 h
e 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.