Shotgun Daddy

by Harper Allen

  She’d been on a roller coaster of emotions for the past twenty-four hours, Caro thought, her gaze trapped by the coldness in his. Since receiving the call from Jess’s kidnappers, she’d swung from fear to hope to despair, but what she was feeling right now wasn’t any of those.

  It was anger. And what made it worse was that it was mixed with a flicker of desire. She pushed his hand away.

  “No, you’re not,” she said, her voice as icy as she could make it. “Because you also said that when you looked at me you saw heat that could sear a brand onto a man. You might try to deny it, but I think you let yourself be branded by me that night…and I think deep down you’d give anything to feel that brand burning into you again.”

  Just for an instant she saw bleak self-knowledge shadow the antagonism in his gaze, and knew that her barb had struck home. Pride prompted her to sink it in a little deeper.

  “I won’t even have to say please, will I, Gabe,” she said coolly. “If the day ever comes that I want what you have to offer, I’ll just show up and all that self-control of yours will disappear like it did once before.”

  Even as the unforgivable words left her mouth she wanted to call it back, but it was too late. The shotgun still at his side, one-handedly Gabe pulled her to him, his face so close to hers that his words were spoken against her lips.

  “You just set the ground rules again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘please’ and mean it. One of these days you will.”

  Resisting the impulse to struggle free from his grasp, Caro met his eyes. “Is that a threat?”

  “A threat?” He brought his mouth down one last fraction of an inch to hers. “Hell, no.”

  His kiss was immediately deep. Shock and anger lent an immediate edge to her response. Her hands flew to his chest to push him away.

  Then slowly, her fingers curled into her palms, twin handfuls of Gabe’s shirt clutched tightly in them.

  For eighteen months she’d told herself she’d remembered it wrong, Caro thought light-headedly—that Gabriel Riggs’s kiss couldn’t have been like summer lightning racing through her, a shower of sparks sizzling along all her nerve endings at once. But she’d remembered it right. Except memory wasn’t a substitute for the real thing.

  And the real thing was impossible to resist.

  Abruptly Gabe lifted his mouth from hers. As if they’d been doused with a bucket of ice water, the sparks and the summer lightning were instantly extinguished.

  His eyes, so pale that for a moment they seemed lupine, blazed down at her expressionlessly. At the side of his neck a trip-hammer pulse gave the lie to his air of control.

  “Not a threat, a promise.” His smile held no humor at all. “And I’m going to be right there when you keep it, princess.”

  Chapter Three

  “Dammit, Caro, this Riggs character you’ve foisted on us has been hiding out in the desert for a year and a half. The man’s obviously unstable, to say the least.” Crawford Solutions’ vice president Steve Dixon’s balding head gleamed with sweat, despite the air-conditioning keeping the sticky heat of the Mexican evening outside at bay. “Right now, he’s upstairs going through Jess’s private papers and belongings instead of conferring with us. If that doesn’t point to his incompetence, I don’t know what does.”

  Dixon’s objection was a variation of the same ones he’d made upon her and Gabe’s arrival at Jess’s Lazy J Ranch a few hours ago, Caro thought in frustration, when she’d informed him that Gabe was now the negotiator in charge of the case. He’d kept them up during the brief flight across the border to the Crawford Solutions’ villa here in Mexico’s Chihuahua Province, and he was still trying to persuade her to change her mind. The only difference was that now he had an ally.

  With his cadre of paramilitary types milling around and a Recoveries International command post already established at the villa—in one corner of the room a technician was checking a bewildering array of wires and computer monitors hooked up to the telephone in preparation for the kidnappers’ expected phone call—it was obvious Larry Kanin didn’t intend to be replaced without a fight, as he now made clear.

  “Living like a hermit didn’t drive our boy Gabriel round the bend. Fouling up the last job he did for me before I fired him was what made him snap,” Kanin drawled. “Like I told you, Steve, the man crashed a party at my Aspen chalet. I had to get physical with him before he would leave.”

  The Caroline Moore who’d been Larry’s fiancée was a woman she didn’t even know anymore, Caro thought. How had she ever contemplated marrying him? Nothing about him seemed quite real, from the crisp wave in his dark brown hair to his air of concern over Jess’s abduction.

  At least I never slept with the man, she told herself thankfully. If I had, I don’t think I could stand being in the same room as him. I just wish I hadn’t had to make Gabe believe the relationship had gone that far.

  But then, she wished a lot of things when it came to Gabriel Riggs. Right at the top of that wish list was the futile desire that she’d come off a little better than she had in their confrontation earlier.

  There were two people in the world against whom the shields she’d kept up all her life were useless. One of them was Emily, right now safely in the care of Mrs. Percy, a local woman who’d baby-sat her since her birth and who had agreed to spend tonight at the Lazy J. At the thought of her small daughter, Caro instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, as if in them she could feel the weight and warmth of a tiny body.

  From the moment she’d first learned she had a new life growing inside her she’d willingly laid her heart bare to every piercing joy, every numbing fear, every emotion possible that came with the all-enveloping love she felt toward the baby she’d been blessed with. Emily was one of the two people who left her vulnerable, and that was as it should be between a mother and her child.

  But Gabe Riggs was the other person she couldn’t seem to shield herself against, and that wouldn’t do at all.

  She’d gone to him today determined not to let anything of what she’d felt for him in the past show in her face, her voice, her actions. But his coldness toward her had shattered all her protective barriers, and she’d struck out at him in the only way she knew how.

  She’d been the ice princess he remembered her to be. And then she’d melted at his kiss the way he’d known she would. Without even trying, he’d smashed through her every defence.

  Every defence except one, she thought shakily. She’d kept the facts of Emily’s parentage to herself. To make sure she continued keeping that secret safe, she would have to build her defences higher and stronger where Gabriel Riggs was concerned…even if that meant she had to be the rich bitch he’d known her as eighteen months ago.

  But her own deception didn’t mean she had to stand here and listen to Kanin’s untruths. She flicked a dismissive glance Larry’s way.

  “The way I heard it, the only thing you got physical with was a bowl of salmon mousse. Plus Jinx, of course,” she added. “But none of that matters. Jess gave me the power to make this kind of decision in his absence, and I’ve hired Gabe. It’s up to him to decide whether he uses whatever resources you might put at his disposal.”

  “Me, working under Riggs?” Kanin’s lips curled. “I don’t see why I should loan my equipment and people to the man who’s replacing me. Sorry, Steve, I have to draw the line somewhere.”

  “But see, Larry, this time everyone’s going to know about the line you drew. And if that line means the difference between Jess Crawford coming home alive or not, you won’t be able to sweep his death under the carpet the way you did Leo Roswell’s.”

  Despite herself, Caro felt quick heat race through her as Gabe entered the room, his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants, blue-black hair brushing the collar of his faded shirt. His careless attire and attitude were in marked contrast to Dixon’s business suit and sweating agitation and Kanin’s silk roll-neck sweater, tailored pants and indignant frown.

  With
only the barest of nods to acknowledge her presence, he went on, his gaze on Kanin.

  “My old pal Jess has a heftier bank account than Leo did, for one thing. For another, if anything happens to a billionaire software genius who’s got friends in high places, heads are going to roll—yours included, Larry, if it gets out that you withheld help you could have given.”

  In the face of a veiled threat like that, her ex-fiancé really hadn’t had much of a choice, Caro admitted a few minutes later. In fact, with his well-honed ability to grab credit, within moments Larry had seemingly persuaded himself that cooperation had been his idea.

  “The perp’s phone call is due to come in at around nineteen-hundred hours,” he said, jerking his head at the nearby Recoveries International technician.

  Gabe nodded at the man. “It’s been a while since we worked together, Jackson. How’ve you been, buddy?”

  “Not bad, Gabe.” The technician’s smile held genuine warmth. “I’m ready to roll here.”

  Gabe’s grin was swift. “Good man. Then, I’ll just use the next half hour to familiarize myself with the players involved. I might as well start with you, Dixon.”

  Steve looked affronted. “Unless you think I had something to do with this, why waste time grilling me?”

  “For the same reason I wanted to look around Jess’s study when I arrived,” Gabe told him. “It helps to get the whole picture of an abductee—”

  “I understand you knew Jess when the two of you were in some kind of reform school together,” Kanin interjected smoothly. “Not that I’ve ever done juvenile time myself, but wouldn’t that mean you already know him pretty well?”

  It was meant to be a pinprick, Caro realized. It was clear how Larry intended to work this—on the surface he would extend his company’s resources and cooperation, just in case he was ever called to account for his part in the matter, but whenever he could, he intended to erode what little confidence Dixon and anyone else had in Gabe’s capabilities.

  And from the tightening of Gabe’s jaw, he knew exactly what Kanin was trying to do.

  “I was a sixteen-year-old car-thief and Jess was a smart-ass seventeen-year-old, expelled from school for hacking into the computer system and boosting his friends’ grades. In the fifteen years since, we’ve both taken different paths. I need to know more about the man he is now.”

  As if he’d wasted all the time he intended to with Larry, he turned back to Dixon. “I understand you’ve been with Crawford Solutions since the start?”

  “Jess was working out of his garage when we met at a trade show in my hometown of Detroit,” the executive said impatiently. “When he asked me to join his team, I told him he had some moxy, expecting me to throw my lot in with his fly-by-night operation. He didn’t take offense—well, if you know Jess you know he never does,” he added with a reluctant grin.

  Gabe had called Jess one of the good guys, Caro thought as Dixon continued telling Gabe how Jess’s persuasiveness had convinced him to join Crawford Solutions. Beneath his corporate slickness, Steve Dixon’s liking for his partner was equally sincere. And she herself owed Jess more than she could ever repay, with all he had done for her after her father disowned her.

  She could barely remember the mother who’d died so long ago in a car accident. But she’d grown up taking her father’s indulgence for granted, had thought she could wrap him around her little finger. She hadn’t realized he’d seen her solely as an appendage of himself.

  It was funny, Caro reflected, giving only half her attention to Dixon’s explanation to Gabe about how the company worked, including the fact that besides she and Steve, a handful of other key employees had their living quarters on the Lazy J Ranch. Eighteen months ago, the shallow, insecure woman she’d been had scuttled back as fast as she could to the familiar security of her father’s status-conscious world because she hadn’t wanted to admit that her night with Gabe had changed her in any way. Within weeks she’d been cast out of William Moore’s world—and his life—herself.

  Jess had offered her much more than just a paycheck and a home. Being Jess, he’d become her friend, with no strings attached. He’d never asked who the father of her baby was, although she assumed he privately thought it was Larry, and when Emily was born he treated her like a cherished niece. Even when he’d asked Caro to marry him he made it plain that if her answer was no, she wasn’t to worry that it would cost her her job or his friendship.

  Except, her answer wasn’t going to be no, Caro thought. She’d come to that decision only hours ago, when she’d seen Gabriel Riggs again for the first time in a year and a half and had realized with numb certainty that she hadn’t gotten over him at all.

  I can’t ever let you know you have a daughter, she told him silently, her gaze taking in the slight frown on his hard features, the air of lazy alertness in his attitude as he put a question to Dixon and received an answer. So I’m never going to be able to let you know that your daughter’s mother has always wondered how things might have been if you hadn’t already disappeared from the face of the earth when she tried to phone you to tell you she was pregnant.

  Because wondering was foolish. Gabe had no desire to settle down, while Jess was more than willing to. Providing Emily with a father who would be there for her took precedence over all else, Caro reminded herself.

  “…aside from Andrew Scott, a kid I brought to Jess’s attention who for a while was his latest protegé, that’s everyone I can think of. But Scott left Crawford Solutions a week ago, so he’s not in the picture anymore. Any other questions, Riggs?”

  The edge in Steve Dixon’s voice wrenched Caro from her thoughts, and almost thankfully she thrust her own problems to the back of her mind.

  “Just one,” Gabe replied. “You said Jess paid his employees more than they could make anywhere else. What reason did his protegé give for leaving?”

  “Scott didn’t leave of his own volition, Jess fired him. He was a genius, but he was also a typical computer nerd—couldn’t get along with anyone, always had his back up over something.” Steve grimaced. “I think he and Jess—”

  Whatever else he’d been about to say was abruptly cut off by the ringing of the phone. Immediately Larry reacted, his voice sharp with tension.

  “Put it on speaker.” His command was directed to the technician.

  Gabe countered the order instantly. “Not yet, Jackson. Give it two more rings.” His manner was businesslike, but his voice betrayed a hint of warning as he went on. “My show, Larry, remember? Pick it up on the first ring and you’ve already handed the caller the advantage before a single word’s spoken. Second ring, he still knows you were sitting there waiting for him. By the end of the third ring he’s starting to get a little antsy.”

  The phone rang again.

  “You can bet this isn’t a cold call. He’ll be working from a script, whether it’s written down or not. Emotion’s going to make him want to deviate from his script, and if he does he’s more likely to make a slip.”

  “So what if he slips up?” Caro heard her own voice rise. “They’ve still got Jess. We’re still going to do what they say, aren’t we?”

  The phone rang a third time. Gabe nodded, his eyes meeting hers for the first time since he’d walked into the room.

  “Yeah, we’re going to do what they say. But the more we know about them and how they react, the better, especially if anything goes wrong during the handover.” He moved toward the phone. “And handovers never go exactly to plan, do they, Jackson.”

  “You got that right, Gabe,” Kanin’s man said tensely. “On your signal.”

  “Now.”

  Even as Gabe pressed the speaker button on the phone, Caro heard a tiny ping as the fourth ring began and was cut off. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jackson flick a switch on his equipment.

  “Dixon? You there?”

  At the kidnapper’s abrupt question, Jackson glanced at his monitors. Her heart pounding, Caro gave her full attention to Gabe.
>
  “Dixon’s not handling this. My name’s Riggs and I’m the hostage negotiator in charge. What do I call you?”

  There was a pause. Then the caller spoke again, his tone oddly metallic.

  “How about Leo, Riggs? Or does that name bring back bad memories?”

  Caro was close enough to see the muscle that jumped at the side of Gabe’s jaw as he answered. “You’ve made your point—you’ve heard of me but I don’t know anything about you. Fair enough. I’m ready and willing to deal under whatever name you choose, but first I want to know for sure that Crawford’s still alive. Put him on or I’m hanging up.”

  “No, dammit!” The shocked exclamation came from Dixon. Gabe nailed him with a glance and turned back to the phone.

  “Put Jess on, Leo. The lady who’s calling the shots has given me a free hand to deal the cards as I see fit, no matter what anyone else here might say. If I can’t satisfy myself that the man I’m negotiating for is alive, all bets are off.”

  “Gabe? Hell, old buddy, so Caro found you, did she?”

  The voice was weak and uneven, but unmistakably Jess’s, although the forced jauntiness in his tone was a pale facsimile of his normal good humor. Without warning Caro felt a sob catch in her throat.

  “She found me.” Gabe’s smile was strained. “Jess, this is procedure, okay? I need proof that it’s you. What was the name of that hammerheaded Appaloosa Del Hawkins had on the Double B when we were kids? The one with such a wicked temper none of us could ever ride it?”

  Jess’s laugh was shaky. “Chorizo,” he said promptly. “He’s still on the Double B. And dammit, you Navajo son of a gun, I happen to know that you rode the brute after Tye and Con and I gave up on him.”