by Wick,Christa
Kane
Christa Wick
Contents
About Kane
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Copyright
About Kane
Daniella Marquardt is a woman with big curves and even bigger problems. Her dead sister left behind a baby, and even if the man sitting in jail isn’t the baby daddy, he’s trying to get custody for his own sinister purposes.
Ready to flee the state, Daniella makes one last stop at a secretive company to find the man who tried to save her sister while delivering the baby.
She isn’t there for help, she just wants to thank him. For all she knows, Trent Kane probably works in accounting—or maybe the tech department.
Never in a million years would she suspect he’s the big, bad Chief Operating Officer of a private military company with unlimited resources. When she does meet him, she doubts a man with such a hard heart and cold demeanor would be interested in saving her niece a second time.
For Trent Kane, he figures the curvy beauty is there to sue him and wants her out of his office. When he discovers the threat to Daniella’s niece, he won’t let the woman refuse his help.
But even though a part of him wants Daniella, he’s determined to keep her at arm’s length. He doesn’t do relationships. He doesn’t even do second dates.
As far as he is concerned, love is for the weak.
This title includes characters introduced in Undeniably His. While reading His is not necessary to understand this story, it is recommended, especially for readers who crave a billionaire who can deliver a toe curling spanking.
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Prologue
Incoming!” Sergeant Trent Kane warned with a barking cough. His arms jerked up, shielding his head at the first rumbling drone of another mortar shell.
He was in Baghdad’s Green Zone, trapped in a piece of shit office building repurposed as temporary housing for Americans traveling on government business. With its central location within the Zone, the building was supposed to be safe.
The Iraqi insurgents hadn’t received the memo and the first three shells had quickly turned the structure into a pile of collapsing rubble, more chunks of wall and ceiling falling with each round fired.
Kane’s balls shriveled in anticipation when the droning tone turned to a clear whistle. The shell hit a second later, throwing his body against a broken chair, splinters as thick as fingers stabbing at his clothes and flesh.
A woman’s scream pierced the dust-filled air.
Dropping his arms, he looked to his left to see Collin Stark, his team leader, recovering from the blast. Stark lurched forward as the woman screamed again, his blood caked hands lifting one of the broken pieces of wall crushing Reed Henley and his wife, Katherine.
Fingers numb, Kane resumed clearing the rubble, an unvoiced thanks offered up that the last shell hadn’t added to the sharp blocks of debris covering the pregnant woman.
After the first shell hit, it had been Reed covering Katherine, his bigger, more resilient body shielding her torso and head. Then the ceiling had collapsed and the screams had started as rubble pressed on Reed’s body, pushing him down onto his wife.
Another of Katherine’s screams tore through Kane like shrapnel from a mortar shell. Finishing up his second tour in Iraq, he had experienced combat situations that would shake anyone all the way down to their core. But combat happened too fast to process in the moment. There was no time to be afraid, to smell the fear of everyone around you.
This—this was different. Different in a way that might haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Got a leg!” Stark yelled.
Kane scrambled over, relief flooding through him that the limb, clearly belonging to Katherine, was still attached.
But there was blood, a lot of blood. Some of it dried, some of it fresh.
She screamed and more blood flowed.
Five and half months pregnant, the woman was going into labor as the building crushed down on her and Reed. There was no doctor, not even a first aid kit. No assistance would arrive anytime soon. The shelling had to stop first.
All he could do to help was to keep digging.
Kane jerked awake in his Raleigh office. A glance at his Rolex indicated it was a quarter to nine. He stretched and cracked fingers cramped with the memory of the recurring dream, of the endless blocks of debris that he tried over and over to clear in time to make a difference, his sleeping mind locked in one of Psyche’s impossible tasks with no divine intervention offering a resolution.
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, the smell of Katherine Henley’s blood mixed with the chemical residue of the mortar shells still clinging to his nose a decade later.
Picking up his cell phone, he tapped the screen and opened a secure messaging app, quickly thumbing a text then hitting send.
Gray’s Hotel, one hour. Make her sporty.
Chapter One
A hot August sun beat down on Daniella Marquardt as she slowly climbed the thirty-five steps from the sidewalk to the front doors of Stark International’s new world headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sweat gathered between her breasts and thighs. One hand clutched occasionally at the handrail that ran up the center of the granite steps as small, recurring waves of dizziness threatened to send her toppling all the way down to the circular drive.
It wasn’t the heat or the voluptuous size of her sweaty breasts and thighs that made her wobbly. She hadn’t been looking after herself the last few days, not since she had arrived home to find a very unpleasant letter from an even more unpleasant man taped to her front door. Since yesterday, she couldn’t even go home and had plan to leave the state.
Even if leaving meant she was breaking the law.
Before she fled North Carolina, she was making a last ditch attempt at observing social graces—tracking down the man who had saved her niece’s life. She was pretty sure he worked in the massive granite building that looked like a cross between a courthouse and a prison with its fancy stone blocks and too few windows and doors.
The company was the only address or witness contact information listed on the police report for her sister’s death. Calling the company didn’t get Daniella any response. If Trent Kane was an employee, the front desk apparently didn’t care whether he received his messages. She had checked LinkedIn and any number of sites, but she couldn’t find anything out about Stark International or Kane. She could have dug deeper, but she was only trying to thank the man.
This sweltering Friday afternoon would be her last attempt. She had more important things to focus her dwindling energy on.
Her purse snagging on something at the end of the handrail, Daniella jerked to a halt. She pulled a legal-size manila envelope out of the bag and gave an ineffectual tug, angling her head to see where the strap had caught. As she stared at the puzzle, twisting the purse, something soft and warm slid along the edge of her wrist, the brief contact short circuiting her brain for a second. Her brain switched back on when a strong, masculine hand entered her field of vision to unhook the strap from where a bolt protruded at the end pole.
; “Thank you.”
Smiling, she lifted her gaze but the man didn’t stop, didn’t so much as look back as she voiced her appreciation.
He just kept walking.
The smile evaporated into a scowl as Daniella stared at his back. Looking at the expensive, tailored suit that draped his body, she figured she should probably consider herself lucky that the man had helped at all.
It wasn’t just the way the cut and fabric screamed “money.” The body it housed was tall, athletic, with broad shoulders and a powerful upper torso that tucked in as it reached the waist. His walk oozed an irritating confidence that reminded her of the most egotistical of the star athletes from her high school days a decade ago.
With a sharp snort, she continued toward the black glass doors the man had disappeared through, her steps restricted by the knee-length pencil skirt she wore. The day had started with her wearing sensible dress slacks, the material and a coordinating blouse much lighter in weight than what she perspired in as she pushed the door inward.
The earlier outfit had died a sudden death when she pulled Christine out of the car seat at the sitter’s and was rewarded with fifteen pounds of vomit from a twelve-pound baby. Daniella made a quick change into the only other businesslike outfit she had with her—a heavy dress jacket with a too tight skirt hugging curves that had gotten curvier since she had purchased the ensemble.
Scowl deepening, she stepped into the air conditioned interior and almost turned around and walked straight out.
What kind of business had an x-ray machine and metal detector in its lobby?
No wonder her web searches had come up empty!
She looked around for some kind of reception desk, but a velvet rope on each side of the glass doors herded her toward a female guard in charge of the machines. Beyond the ropes, there were only two other people in the lobby, the male who had unhooked her purse and an older man with whom he was engaged in earnest, whispered conversation.
At the exact moment her attention landed on the men, her rude rescuer looked over. His gaze locked on hers for an uncomfortable moment before turning away in complete disinterest.
Forget about men, she admonished with a sigh as she approached the woman at the metal detector. For the next eighteen years, her life was devoted to Christine, her two-month old niece.
Placing her purse on the conveyor belt, she waited for the machine to start. When it didn’t, she looked at the woman.
“What is your business at Stark International?” the guard asked with a tone that bordered on the kind actors used in movies when they were a cop with a suspect in the interrogation room.
“I…” her hands smoothed nervously at her skirt. Telling the woman she was here to talk to Colonel Mustard about a lead pipe he’d left in her conservatory was probably a terrible idea.
Leaving her car and taking the first step up the stairs was probably a terrible idea. It was an imposing building, with an imposing lobby and imposing staff. She didn’t have an appointment and didn’t know if the man she was searching for even existed. The police officer’s handwriting in the report hadn’t been the cleanest.
The guard’s hand moved toward her utility belt. With a glance, Daniella saw the woman’s fingers curl around a canister that she guessed was mace or pepper spray.
“I need to speak with Mr. Trent Kane,” Daniella blurted, her cheeks immediately warming from her panicked outburst.
“You’re not on the list,” the guard stated.
Daniella quirked an eyebrow. What list? There was no clipboard nearby, no computer or anything else that might display a visitor’s list. Did the woman memorize it before each shift?
“If you’re not—”
Whatever the guard was going to add was cut off by a buzzing elsewhere along her utility belt. Her hand shifted from the canister to what looked like a beeper to the right of her buckle. She angled the device, staring impassively at its display for a few seconds before her mouth flattened into a stern line.
She slapped at a button on the X-ray machine and the belt began to carry Daniella’s purse past the rubbery curtain. Daniella moved toward the metal detector.
“Envelope,” the woman grunted.
“Oh…it’s only…” she trailed off, reading the guard’s expression.
The woman really wanted to use that pepper spray!
Letting the guard take the envelope, Daniella passed through the metal detector and waited patiently at the other end of the X-ray machine for her purse and envelope to emerge. Seeing the guard approach with a wand that looked identical to what was used at airports, Daniella allowed a faint gasp to escape over how much security was in place at Stark International.
With a brisk, detached professionalism, the guard moved the wand near the perimeter of Daniella’s body—above her shoulders, along her arms, over the curves and dips of her torso then all the way down to her knees where the skirt ended.
Putting away the wand, she extended her hand.
“You’ll need to leave your cell phone with me.”
Daniella offered the woman a blank stare for a few seconds before asking, “I can’t go up if I don’t?”
The guard’s brows knitted into one uncompromising line that could have used a pair of tweezers and a little plucking.
“Exactly.”
Shoulders sagging, Daniella reached into the purse, but hesitated.
“What if I have an emergency call?” Despite all the precautions she had taken yesterday, such a call wasn’t out of the question.
Cold silence stared her in the face.
The company was daunting. If she had showed up at a pickle factory and received this treatment, she would have deemed keeping her phone more important than her unannounced business with Mr. Kane. But maybe all this cloak and dagger behavior meant that Kane was the kind of man who could help her—again.
Still wishing on shooting stars, Daniella.
Right, she thought, dejectedly removing the phone and handing it over. She wouldn’t get her hopes up. The man probably worked in accounting.
The guard put the cell in a drawer then pulled out a visitor’s card with a clip attached, swiped the card’s stripe through a device at the end of the X-ray machine then swiveled the device in Daniella’s direction.
“Press your right thumb against the screen and hold until the green light appears.”
Turning to comply, Daniella heard the elevator doors open. Holding her thumb to the scanner, she glanced over her shoulder, expecting that the doors were opening for one or both of the men. The two males had already slipped away. Instead, a fifty-something female emerged from the elevator with a polite smile on her face and a digital tablet in her hand.
“Miss Marquardt, if you’ll come with me.”
Daniella took one step forward then froze.
She hadn’t said her name, had she?
Certain she hadn’t, Daniella looked at the scanner.
“Oh, no,” the older woman laughed pleasantly, taking the visitor’s card and clipping it to Daniella’s lapel. “Thumb prints take at least several minutes to process with all the permission protocols we have to navigate. Facial recognition is so much faster.”
“I’m Lindsey,” the woman said, stepping back and sweeping her hand toward the elevator doors. “Mr. Kane’s secretary. I do expect a wait before he’ll be able to see you.”
“A wait?” Daniella frowned, her displeasure directed inward. Not getting to see the man should have occurred to her, but the last two months had her running on empty.
Especially the last two days.
“Will it be long?” she asked clutching the manila envelope to her chest. “I’m on my way to the county jail.”
Chapter Two
Standing in the operations room, Trent Kane studied the camera feed for his office six doors down. His attention focused on the woman sitting in one of his visitor chairs, her hands nervously twisting around a legal-sized manila envelope.
“The papers don’t have to be
handed to you in order for you to be served,” Teddy Gallant, chief legal counsel for the company, advised. “You already admitted you’re here by letting her past the lobby.”
“She said she was going to jail,” Kane mused, stroking lightly at the precisely trimmed beard bordering his strong jaw line.
“Actually, she said ‘to the county jail,’” Teddy corrected. “Semantically, that is quite different and something you would usually catch. Are you sure you don’t know her?”
Kane cut a sharp glance in the attorney’s direction. He was certain he had never seen the woman before encountering her outside the building. Beyond her being the only other person on the steps, he had noticed the nervous dance of her fingers along the handrail and the way she paused for a second every few steps, the vulnerable roll of her shoulders when she stopped stirring something protective inside him.
To his surprise and continued confusion, he had slowed down so as not to overtake her on the steps. Hanging back, he had watched the mesmerizing tick tock pendulum of her plump bottom, his cock slowly responding. That unexpected physical response was the source of his consternation. The woman sitting in his visitor chair was nothing like the paid submissives he used once then discarded. Those females were lean, some anemically so, others athletic. One had been an aspiring cage fighter, and he’d been tempted for a few minutes to bring her back a second time for the sake of novelty.
In contrast, Daniella Marquardt had an hourglass figure with a couple of hours added on. Yet the way her clothes hugged at her body filled him with a sudden curiosity as to what she looked like naked. That was before she had said his name in the lobby while he was talking to Gallant.
Hearing his identity burst past startled lips as plump as Daniella’s bottom, Kane’s ebbing erection had returned with an immediate vigor.
What the hell was that all about?