by Fiona Brand
Roma blinked, hardly believing she'd heard right. The bluntness of McCabe's comment flicked her on the raw. "That's why all this fuss is for nothing," she said curtly, irritated at being left out of the discussion as if she had no part in it, and stung by McCabe's clinical assessment of the so-called attempt on her life. Stung by the memory of that single rifle shot. Anyone would think Lewis didn't count, despite being the one with a bullet hole in his shoulder. "If the shooter was that professional and had wanted to put a bullet through me, why did he miss?"
McCabe's gaze fastened on hers. "Your boyfriend was hit."
Roma gritted her teeth. "Lewis isn't my boyfriend, he's a friend. There was also a large crowd. Maybe the gunman was after someone else. Maybe, as you say, it was a random shooting and he didn't care who he hit."
"Anything's possible."
McCabe's voice was low, with an intriguing roughness that made her tighten up inside; then it registered that he was soothing her, as if she needed to be babied out of her fears.
He switched his attention back to Gray, once again dismissing her. "Calibre?"
"Five point five six."
"Sniper rifle," he said softly.
Gray glanced at Roma. She knew what he was thinking. He didn't like discussing the details of the shooting in front of her, but she wasn't going to take the hint and walk away while they discussed the unpleasant facts. Besides, she'd made it her business to find out every last detail of the investigation. In point of fact, she knew more than anyone—she had been there.
McCabe eased the photographs and the report back into the envelope. "Any fingerprints?"
"Clean." Once again Gray glanced at her as if she was made of delicate porcelain and shouldn't hear gritty details.
Roma folded her arms across her chest and almost rolled her eyes with exasperation.
"The room was sanitised before he left. Random target practice or not, he was a pro."
McCabe grunted and tapped the envelope against his thigh. "You need a lift into town?"
Gray shook his head. "I'm catching a flight out, I've got a lunchtime meeting in Sydney. The family suite at the hotel is free, so that's where you'll be staying. Roma has her itinerary, and you've got my cell phone number if you need to get hold of me."
They shook hands; then Gray hugged Roma. "I know you think this is a lot of fuss about nothing, but if there's even the suggestion of trouble, I want you back home and safe."
"You worry too much."
A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Where you're concerned, sometimes I don't think I worry enough."
Roma watched Gray stride away, fighting the urge to call him back and cancel this whole trip. She didn't get to see much of Gray or Blade these days, and the gap in years had always precluded real intimacy, so this sudden urge to cling was definitely out of character. But now that her brother had gone there was just her and—
"Is this all your luggage?"
Roma stiffened at the grimness of McCabe's tone. One of those big calloused hands was wrapped around the handle of her suitcase. She fought the urge to snatch the case off him and wondered how he would react to the tussle. Gray would have let her have her way … eventually. She didn't think McCabe would. He hadn't openly revealed his dislike, but she could feel it rolling off him in waves.
"If I had any more luggage," she stated coolly, "I'd be carrying it."
He eyed her sharply then nodded. "When you're ready … Ms. Lombard."
She noticed he used the impersonal address of Ms. instead of the old-fashioned but infinitely more feminine Miss.
She measured the impersonal regard of his dark blue eyes as she fell into step beside him. If there had been heat there before, it was well and truly gone. McCabe's expression was chilly, bordering on rudeness. If this was his usual manner with paying customers, she would hate to see his client list. She would bet that no one ever hired him twice. The Lombard payroll usually commanded a high level of competency, skill and politeness. She had no doubt McCabe fulfilled the first two items on that list—Gray wouldn't have hired him otherwise—but he looked as though he didn't give a damn about the third.
For the first time she registered the orange stain on his shoulder. Like the casual clothes, the stain made McCabe less machine-like and distant, more human, and it reminded her that he had a daughter and a life she knew nothing about. "Is that ice cream?" she asked, curiosity and an impish desire to put a crack in his cool reserve getting the better of her.
His gaze settled on her. "Orange chocolate chip."
Nope, Roma thought, suppressing a sigh, not a glimmer of humour.
Shifting her suitcase to his left hand, he half turned, doing a quick sweep of the Arrivals area and the people using the entrance. As he did so, his T-shirt lifted slightly and settled against a bulge in the small of his back. A handgun. And it wasn't little—a nine millimetre would probably fit snugly into his big, capable hand.
Roma controlled the spurt of apprehension caused by just seeing the gun. She wasn't usually so jumpy, but there was no getting past the fact that Lewis's shooting had shaken her. "I wouldn't have picked you for a chocolate chip man."
Chocolate chip sounded like fun.
His narrowed gaze swung back to hers. This close, she could see the crystalline purity of his eyes, the soft, glossy texture of his hair, the stubble darkening his jaw. She could smell the clean scent of his skin, as if he wasn't long from the shower. The details were curiously intimate, and her stomach tightened on another shot of pure sexual awareness.
"I like chocolate just as much as the next guy," he said evenly, "even though it gives me one hell of a headache."
As they strolled toward the car park, Roma decided McCabe hadn't been talking about food. She didn't know what chocolate had to do with anything, but she'd been right in her first assessment: he didn't like her. He would protect her, but only because he was paid to do so. Somehow that burned, which was ridiculous, because she shouldn't care whether he liked her or not, and she didn't want to see McCabe as anything other than a paid professional.
But with that first eye contact McCabe had made her see him as a man, and that scared her. Men got hurt. No matter how irritable or bad-tempered, they bled and died. She didn't want to think of McCabe bleeding the way Lewis had. Dying the way her brother Jake had.
A throb of grief hit her as she stepped from beneath the shelter of the terminal into the full glare of the sun. Blindly, Roma groped in her holdall, found her sunglasses and pushed them onto the bridge of her nose, glad for an excuse to hide the tears.
Every now and then something triggered a remnant of the intense grief, the helpless rage, she'd felt when her brother was killed. In the first weeks after Jake had died, she'd suffered recurring nightmares. She would wake, rigid with shock and distress, pillow wet with tears, then lie there, replaying the dream, trying to neutralise it by changing it, by saving Jake.
In her mind she'd saved him a hundred times, a thousand times. She'd known karate, judo; she'd been an expert shot. In her heart she'd grieved because she'd never had a chance to save him, or, like her brothers, to at least bring his killer to justice.
Lewis's shooting had brought it all back, the grief, the fear, the anger. So far she'd managed to keep her feelings firmly under wraps, shocked by the sudden eruption of violence outside the cinema and panicked by her loss of control on the sidewalk. Maybe that had been a mistake. She should have allowed herself to cry, taken the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed so she could at least have gotten some sleep.
McCabe wouldn't appreciate having a weeping female on his hands.
Offering her a shoulder to cry on was probably right up there with shopping and cross-dressing.
* * *
Chapter 5
« ^ »
Ben loaded Roma's suitcase into the back of his truck. The case was another detail about Roma Lombard that didn't fit. It was leather and expensive, but it was battered. He had expected her to have a full set of
Louis Vuitton, at the very least.
She didn't wait for him to open her door or to assist her into the passenger seat, for which he was thankful. He didn't want to lay one finger on his client's soft, sleek hide if he could help it. Occasionally, in the line of duty, he would have to, but he would keep those instances to a minimum. Body-guarding required a certain distance, a sharp awareness of surroundings and clear tactical thinking, and he couldn't guarantee any of those things if he let himself get too close to Roma Lombard.
He was good at what he did; that was why he'd chosen security and VIP protection as a career option after leaving the SAS. But he also knew his own nature. He had a healthy libido and an appreciation of beautiful women. If they became intimate—and given his awareness of her as a woman, he had to anticipate that problem—he would instantly replace himself, because he would have compromised his effectiveness.
He tossed the envelope Gray had given him on the back seat of the extended cab truck, removed the Glock from the small of his back and stowed it, then swung behind the wheel and slid dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose. He opened his window to dissipate some of the heat that had built up inside. Despite the early hour, the temperature was climbing steadily. Already his T-shirt was sticking to his back, and a fine sheen of sweat dampened his skin. He was still aroused, which made sitting uncomfortable, but he kept his expression neutral. There was no point in getting wound up when he couldn't do a thing about it.
Roma was silent as he negotiated the crammed car park, her head turned away from him as she looked out the passenger window.
Ben frowned as he nosed into traffic. He'd been hard on her. He hadn't bothered to hide his dislike of a situation that had been sprung on him at the last minute. Normally he was scrupulously fair with clients, no matter what the circumstances were or who they were. Normally he was friendly.
But nothing about this situation even approached normal. The second he'd laid eyes on Roma Lombard, he'd been knocked off balance.
A welcome breeze began circulating through the overheated cab, and he caught the faint drift of a light, feminine perfume. The throb in his groin deepened into a persistent ache that told him he hadn't had sex in too long and that it was past time he took care of that particular need. He'd been too busy caring for his daughter, Bunny, and setting up his new business to look after that part of his life, but that was going to have to change. He knew from experience that ignoring his sex drive only made his state of arousal more intense. Sometimes, when he'd been on a military assignment for a prolonged period, he'd become almost savage with lust. He'd never lost control, but when he found a willing bed partner he would stay on her the entire night, keeping her beneath him and having her until the hungry ache finally left him.
A bed partner was what he needed now, a woman who could provide him with regular, hard-driving sex when he needed it and who didn't ask for anything more. Maybe it was a cold way to approach obtaining something as intimate as making love, but Ben had long since replaced romanticism with practicality. For him it was a simple physical equation, minus the hearts and flowers. When he was younger, he'd been wild, his judgement lousy. He'd let sex cloud his thinking, and the mistake had changed his life permanently. He couldn't afford to make another mistake now; he had Bunny's needs to consider. If he took a woman to bed, he was careful to lay down the ground rules first.
If, and when, he wanted a relationship of a permanent kind, it would be of his choosing. And this time he would choose his future wife with the contents of his head and not his pants.
He stopped for a set of lights. With the cessation of movement, the cooling breeze died and the cab instantly warmed. Roma leaned forward, the movement drawing his eye so that he watched as she reached into her holdall, extracted a bottle of water and took a swallow, before recapping and replacing the bottle. Her hands were slim, the nails short but nicely shaped, her movements graceful and completely feminine. Despite the heat and the heavier clothes she'd worn for the early-morning flight, she looked as cool as a cucumber and so composed it was hard to believe she'd saved a man's life on a bloodied sidewalk two nights ago.
The lights changed. Ben shifted gear, accelerating smoothly.
If he decided he wanted Roma Lombard, he thought calmly, then he would have her, but it was either strictly business, or bed. He couldn't protect her if he couldn't keep his mind out of her pants.
Roma avoided looking at McCabe as he drove.
Instead, she rested her head against the seat and watched the industrial areas and the housing estates flash by, letting the hum of the engine and the monotony of the view dull die throbbing in her head. Her lids drooped, the drag of sleep almost taking her under. Her eyes popped wide. She lifted her head off the headrest and forced herself to sit straighter and take an interest in the view. The thought of falling asleep in the presence of McCabe was subtly alarming; she was already vulnerable enough.
After a few minutes she noticed they were headed south into suburbia, rather than into the centre of town. Curiously she noted the signs. Gradually the houses thinned out into expensive rural lifestyle blocks, interspersed by tracts of pasture. The country was getting wilder by the second, and she wondered with a flicker of amusement if McCabe had consigned the whole idea of guarding her to the too-hard basket and was planning to knock her off and dump her body.
Eventually they turned down a gravel drive flanked by leafy jacaranda trees. There was open country on either side, where horses grazed contentedly, and in the distance, Roma caught tantalising glimpses of what must be the Waitemata Harbour.
They pulled up at a large cedar-and-brick home, which was comfortably nestled into mature gardens. A broad sweep of lawn was dominated by a large, gnarled oak. A simple rope swing hung from the oak, and a bright pink bike lay nearby, abandoned at a drunken angle next to a sandpit.
"Won't be a minute," McCabe said, placing his sunglasses on the dash and climbing out of the truck.
The front door was flung open as he walked across the lawn. A small tornado of a girl erupted from the house, yelling, "Daddy, Daddy!"
She ran full-tilt at McCabe and wrapped herself around his legs.
McCabe's back muscles flexed and bunched, shifting smoothly beneath the damp cling of his T-shirt as he swung his daughter up into his arms. He twirled her around in a circle before wrapping her close. The little girl planted a kiss on his nose, and he grinned, white teeth flashing against his stubbled jaw as he returned the favour. She giggled and tugged at his hair.
Roma watched, still punchy with tiredness, but transfixed by the change in McCabe. She'd had him pegged as tough and rude and objectionable, but right now he looked like the poster boy for fatherhood.
The little girl demanded to be let down, commandeered his hand and tugged him over to die bike, then stood, hands on hips, as McCabe went down on his haunches to put the chain back on, his movements fluid and unhurried. He looked relaxed and content, completely at home in his role as a parent. A sharp little ache started in her chest as she watched McCabe and his child together. The happy scene, the way he was with his daughter, contrasted sharply with his abrasive manner with her—intensifying the cold sense of alienation she felt in his presence, so that she sniffed, the blues hitting her full force.
She loved family, and she was already missing hers, despite their fussing; and she loved children.
She'd even trained to work with children in professional child care, but six months ago she'd quietly given up her career after a newspaper had printed a story about her family's vulnerability to terrorism. All it had taken was a couple of crank calls to her place of work and she'd been asked to leave. Roma could even understand and sympathise with her employer. If she were a parent, she wouldn't want her child to be cared for by a woman who periodically needed an armed escort, either.
She'd considered opening her own business, but not for long. The fact had been brought home to her that she was a potential threat to anyone who got close to her, and children were e
specially vulnerable. When she'd planned her career and begun training, she hadn't imagined that the situation with Harper would continue for so many years or that, as a family, they would continue to remain so vulnerable. Somehow, through it all, a part of her had held stubbornly to the idea of a fairytale ending—the elusive ideal of a normal life.
An older woman, casually dressed in jeans and an oversize shirt, strolled out of the house. Ben wiped his hands on the grass, straightened and walked toward her. The little girl didn't follow him; instead she stared at Roma with the unabashed curiosity of childhood and wandered over, following an invisible zigzag path in the grass, hands shoved into her pockets.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi yourself." Roma climbed out of the truck and crouched down to the little girl's level, relieved as the breeze tugged at her shirt and cooled her skin. McCabe's daughter was maybe five or six years old, with dark hair cut into a shining bob, and eyes the same intense blue as her dad's. She was wearing a T-shirt, overalls and sneakers, and still had an adorable baby softness to her cheeks. "My name's Roma, what's yours?"
McCabe's daughter looked back at her daddy, then at the truck, as if assessing whether or not she should answer. "Bunny."
She advanced a step and picked up a strand of Roma's hair, watched it blow from her fingers. "I'd like my hair that long," she announced. "Grandma says I can't grow it yet. It's too fine."
"Your hair's pretty like it is."
Bunny nodded. Her eyes dropped to Roma's boots. She gave her own grubby sneakers a disparaging glance. "I'd like boots like that, too. But I s'pose I'll have to wait. Grandma doesn't know what little girls wear these days."
Roma glanced at the woman McCabe was talking to. She was tall, with imperious features and dark hair that had greyed in elegant streaks. The relationship, even if Bunny hadn't pointed it out, was obvious. Not only did McCabe have a daughter, he had a mother.
McCabe finished his conversation and strode back toward them. Roma straightened, watching as Bunny skipped toward her father and demanded to be picked up. McCabe obliged, hardly breaking his stride.