For Her Protection

by Lauren Giordano

  “I can’t imagine you’d have anything that would fit me.” Not with that body. She was built like a dream. He stood and stretched his legs, dispelling his fantasy and draining the last of his juice before he tossed the cup in the trash can.

  “I’ve got a few of Ian’s old shirts. They might work.” Jilly picked up a plastic key ring and shook it as Sarah cooed.

  His interest perked up another notch. “Who’s Ian?”

  She sighed and he noticed that she seemed to want to look everywhere except at him, instead choosing to scan the playground for the boys. “Oh, that’s a long story. He’s an old friend.”

  Luke sat gingerly on the end of the picnic table and forced himself to drop it. This girl was none of his business. He didn’t want to know anything about her or the kids. Only what he needed to keep them alive. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter how many damn boyfriends she’d had. It didn’t matter one freakin’ bit.

  After tonight, Jillian would spend a day or so in Charlotte for debriefing. Then they’d head north to resume life in what was probably a quaint little New Hampshire town. And he’d never see any of them again. The days they’d spent with him would fade in their memories until it became just another funny story of Jilly’s adventures.

  But just because they were safe for the moment, didn’t mean he could afford to let down his guard. He needed to stay focused. Nothing about this op had been routine. Even Murphy had been reluctant to start the final reports on the failed mission. Something wasn’t right. He just didn’t know what. But his gut still strummed on red alert, telling him to keep them out of sight. He’d never ignored his gut before. He sure as hell wasn’t about to start now.

  Annoyed with himself, he readjusted his position on the end of the table. Despite the gauze padding and the glow-in-the-dark Band-Aids, his butt was still pretty sore. What he really needed was underwear. When James had discovered in the men’s room that Luke wasn’t wearing any briefs, he’d wanted to rid himself of his Spider-Man underpants. And Samuel would’ve followed right along. A trio of men going commando. Now wouldn’t Her Ladyship have appreciated that?

  She glanced over just in time to see him wince. “What is it? Is your wound hurting? I knew you should’ve let me clean it.”

  “What is it with this fascination for my butt? You took one look at it and now that’s all you can think about,” he said, forgetting that he was trying to maintain a professional distance. Something about that British accent made him want to prod her. So cool on the outside…so prim and proper. But just under the surface—lava, baby.

  She pressed her lips together and frowned. “Yes…well, as fascinating as I found your backside, it simply didn’t stop traffic for me—if you know what I mean.” She finally turned to stare at him. “I realize it’s probably not possible, but if you could be serious for a single moment…”

  “Sure. Try me.”

  “I’m trying to determine whether or not you’re in pain. I have more of those pills.”

  “The chick stuff?” He shook his head. “You know, all of a sudden, my cramps are much better.” Her Ladyship had a damn fine temper, he noted. He couldn’t tell whether she wanted to laugh or haul off and smack him.

  “Is your injury hurting worse?”

  “Oh, that.” He waved away her concern. “Nah, it’s fine. Just a little sore, that’s all. It’s draining okay and I cleaned it with the stuff you gave me. Stop worrying about it.”

  “It sounds like you’ve had some experience. Have you been shot before?”

  He limped over to the blanket and gingerly sat down, and before he realized it, he’d reached out a finger and was tickling Sarah’s belly. “Only a few times.”

  Her eyes were incredulous. “Only a few? Good Lord. What does your wife think about your line of work?”

  He smiled at the now chortling Sarah. “Not very much. She, uh, left me four years ago.”

  Jilly tsked under her breath. “I’m sorry about that. Were you married long? You don’t look very old.”

  “Six years. We met in college.” He glanced up, reading the sympathy in her eyes. She really was way too soft.

  “And how long have you been doing this drug thing—chasing dangerous criminals?”

  “This thing I’ve been doing is called drug enforcement and I’ve been doing it for ten years, since I graduated from college.” He knelt down on the blanket and made a face at Sarah and was rewarded with a smile.

  “Well, you must be pretty good at it,” she answered as she tucked a strand of hair back into her ponytail. “Or I guess you would’ve gotten yourself killed by now.”

  Luke did a double take and then realized she wasn’t being sarcastic, only direct. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. What about you?” he challenged. “Ever been married?”

  She made a face as though she’d just sipped bitter lemonade and wanted to spit it out. “No, thank goodness. I almost did, though. What a mistake that would’ve been.” She shook her head ruefully. “How’s that for absurd? I’m twenty-seven years old and I still have trouble saying no. My mum nearly had me talked into marrying the man she wanted. In her eyes, he was bloody perfect.”

  He smiled over her disgruntled expression. It wasn’t hard to believe at all. Jillian struck him as the kind of girl who leaped first and then thought about looking when it was too late. “So, what stopped you?”

  The gray-blue eyes grew very wide, almost startled. “Why, the children, of course. I mean, I was going to break it off anyway. We were so completely different,” she added absently. “But then I got the call about my sister.”

  Her voice catching, he watched her eyes grow suspiciously misty. Warning bells jangled in his gut. Somehow he’d managed to push the wrong conversational button. She rubbed her arms, as though she’d suddenly realized she was cold.

  “She…passed away two weeks ago,” she said, her voice starting to break. “I only learned of it, um, a week ago, Tuesday.”

  Ten days ago. And she’d already been here a week. Luke rocked back on his heels, stunned by the enormity of what she’d been through, surprised by the courage it must have taken to hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world to tend to her sister’s children. He watched as she took a deep breath and forced back the tears that threatened to spill over. Watched in amazement when she regained control almost instantly.

  Jillian hadn’t just learned that trick on the transatlantic flight. He recognized a control freak when he saw one—he’d had the misfortune of living with one—and realized that his initial impression of her was probably wrong. Despite her flighty exterior, Mary Poppins was very tightly wrapped.

  “How come you’re here alone? Isn’t there anyone who could help you?”

  “My mum—she’s…busy with things back home.” Jilly averted her eyes and he knew instinctively that it was with shame. His thoughts drifted to his own family. For the most part, the Gianettis were a traditional Italian-American family, but due to the sheer volume of them, there was definitely a strong dysfunctional element. Yet he couldn’t help wondering what the hell had gone down in the white-picket-fence Moseby house. Judging by the way her eyes were swimming, this was definitely the wrong time to ask.

  “So what happened with the guy? The one your mother picked out for you.”

  “Oh, Ian didn’t want— He thought three chil—” Jilly clamped her mouth shut and suddenly stood, her movements jerky. “We broke up.”

  This was getting interesting. He settled himself more comfortably on the blanket. So Ian was an ex-fiancé…not simply the old friend she’d claimed.

  “Uh, could you watch Sarah for a minute? I really should fetch the boys back over here.”

  “Sure. Tell ’em they’ve got five more minutes.” He watched her walk away while his brain automatically began processing what he’d just learned. His mind filtered everything as though it were a giant puzzle, the unfortunate byproduct of too many years as an operative. He couldn’t shut it off, so he’d learned to use
it to his benefit. Once a puzzle piece fell into place, everything else became sharper, more focused.

  For some strange reason, Jilly’s mother hadn’t thought her dead daughter worth the effort of an overseas trip. Nor, apparently, her three grandchildren. And loverboy Ian didn’t want to be saddled with someone else’s kids. Luke was willing to bet they’d both applied pressure on Jilly, tried to convince her to stay home. And she’d still chosen to go it alone. With that piece of information, he added “stubborn” to the mental column marked Jillian.

  He checked his cell phone for the millionth time, grateful the damn thing was finally working. His fingers itched to call his partner. He wondered if Murphy had come up with any new information to fill in some of the holes in the investigation. Anything that would take the edge off his jumpy stomach.

  According to Murphy, the junkie grapevine was abuzz with news. Notorious for both good information and bad, the top story today was about Billy T. Lathrop. Word on the street had him on the run with a price on his head, a damn high price, now that he thought about it, and that he was as good as dead.

  Sarah chose that moment to grin up at him, cooing as she reached for his finger. The tiny little tug on his finger caused an even stronger tug in his chest, in the vicinity where his heart had once resided. He would’ve sworn on a stack of bibles that Sarah was looking straight into his eyes when she smiled. He jerked back in reaction.

  The sooner he got back to the streets, the better. He’d dealt his hand in life. And he meant to play it out until the end. The faces on his cards were pushers and pimps, not angelic children, not beautiful women who would need him too much.

  Dammit to hell! He didn’t want to be interested—in any of them.

  But there were still too many unanswered questions. Like why Sloan had seemed to know the bust was coming? Or, where the hell the backup team had been when the building had blown to smithereens? As he replayed the takedown in his mind, he fingered the slug in his shirt pocket, a growing sense of uneasiness trickling through his brain.

  Who the hell had shot him?

  Chapter 4

  “Are you boys nearly ready? Luke says we’re leaving in five minutes.”

  Jillian strode over to the swingset and flopped down in the empty swing near Samuel. Dear Lord, she must be crazy. Why had she prattled on about her life to Luke? His questions were deceptively simple and before she knew it, she was talking too much. It was painful enough to realize—to finally admit—that her mum didn’t give a damn about Annie. That Rosemary Moseby had considered her eldest daughter dead years earlier when she’d had the cheek to leave them all behind for the wilds of America.

  “She must’ve written me off now, as well,” she muttered to herself as she pushed off the ground and pumped her legs. James hopped on the other swing and immediately followed suit while Samuel followed their progress with his eyes.

  Her mother had all but demanded that she remain in England…that heading to America would be to her peril. That Jillian would be “on her own.” That Rosemary would not come traipsing across the ocean to look for her.

  “Thank God for that.” Jillian smiled sadly and shook her head, letting the breeze catch her hair as the swing climbed higher. It was about time. Anyone would’ve thought that she was still a child. The parental noose had only cinched tighter after Annie’d made her escape all those years ago. Jilly had been thirteen…but thanks to Annie’s stunt, she’d been relegated to the status of an eight-year-old—and a juvenile delinquent one at that, kept on a tight leash and under constant surveillance.

  “Jilly, look at me!”

  She shook off the memory as she turned toward James. Her eyes widened in shock when she realized how high he was climbing. “James, slow down,” she cried.

  Lord, he was so high, he was going to flip off the bloody swing. Jilly immediately quit pumping her legs, trying to slow down enough to jump off. The wind whistled in her ears as her hair blew in her face.

  “I’m higher than you are. I’m higher than you are.”

  “Honey, stop. You’re going to fall.” She was too afraid to wait any longer. Without thinking, she threw herself from the swing, surprised at how long she was airborne before she crashed to the ground in a heap. She ignored the wrenching pain in her shoulder and staggered to her feet, not bothering to brush off the mulch. When she hobbled back toward his swing, she noticed for the first time that Samuel was staring at her, his mouth dropped open.

  “What in the sweet hell did you think you were doing?”

  Luke jogged over to her side with Sarah perched in his arm like a sack of groceries. The baby was laughing and waving her arms in the air. He’d clearly run across the park, yet he wasn’t the least bit out of breath. She hadn’t run anywhere and she was gasping for air as though someone had held her head under water.

  “Are you blind? Look at James. He’s going to fly off that thing and break a leg.” She shaded her eyes to watch James as he slowed down before calmly jumping from the swing. He landed in one piece on the ground in front of them.

  “The only one at risk for a broken leg was you,” Luke answered. “And from the look of your swan dive, you’re lucky it wasn’t your neck. Don’t you know you’re supposed to slow down before you jump off a swing?”

  “I bloody well know how to swing, dammit.” She swung on Luke, prepared to project all of her fear for James onto him. “Didn’t you see him?”

  James snickered and winked at Samuel. “Gee, Luke, we shoulda had Jilly in on our bet. She just said da—”

  “I know what I said, young man. That’s about enough out of you.” She wheeled around to face him. “In the future, I would appreciate it if you could try not to scare the life out of me.”

  James scowled at her angry words. “Well, if you’re scared by something that stupid then I’ll never be able to do any—”

  Luke moved so quickly that she never even saw the motion. He stepped behind James and clapped his free hand over the little boy’s mouth.

  “He’s very sorry. He won’t do it again.” Luke tilted James’s head up to look at him. “Right?”

  Even from where she stood, she could see James grinning behind his large hand. And when Luke nodded James’s head up and down for him, she heard him laugh with glee. The little bugger wasn’t the least bit upset. In fact, he was rather enjoying the fireworks. Sarah was all but hurtling herself into Luke, trying to get him to jostle her as he had when they’d run.

  Releasing James’s mouth, he strode across the mulch to where Samuel sat mesmerized on the swing and lifted him into his free arm.

  “Come on, little guy. Time to hit the trail.” Much to Samuel’s delight, Luke swung him in a wide circle before setting him on his feet again. He watched them scramble across the grass before turning back to face her.

  She rolled her eyes heavenward. He’d been with the kids for twenty-four hours and he’d won them over completely. She’d been with them for a week and she still felt utterly inadequate.

  “You okay? You’re limping.” His expression was carefully neutral, but she knew he wanted to laugh. The man was bloody impossible.

  “I’m perfectly well, thank you.” She hobbled toward him, edging closer, not stopping until she could see the beautiful flecks of gold that ringed his curious eyes. She froze when he leaned over and plucked a twig from her hair.

  “You sure? You sorta went ass over teakettle off that swing.” His smile indicated that he knew he was annoying her. And he didn’t give a damn.

  Well, two could play at this game. She wet her lips with her tongue and saw that his gaze followed the action. Then she reached up and threaded her fingers into his long, golden hair and tugged his head down to hers. She leaned in closer still and watched his eyes widen in surprise, heard the subtle acceleration to his breathing.

  “Jillian, what are you…the kids…”

  She kept her face expressionless, even when she felt his lean body go rigid with stunned anticipation. Then she deliberately br
ushed against him, lifting on her toes so her mouth was a whisper away from his ear.

  “That ‘ass over teakettle’ remark just earned you another bar of soap, Agent Gianetti.” She released him and took a step back before turning on her heel and marching away.

  “Is this really necessary? I think I can probably get away with the shirt I’m wearing.”

  Jillian sensed Luke’s impatience as she dug through the suitcases in the trunk.

  “I’ll just turn it inside out,” he suggested hopefully.

  “You can’t wear a shirt inside-out. It’ll look peculiar.” She heard his sigh of exasperation. “Who the hell is going to notice?”

  Her muffled voice surfaced from the depths of the trunk. “I know I’ve got one here, somewhere.” She wrestled the faded gray shirt from the bag and zipped the case closed. She turned to find him scrutinizing her, clearly biting back the comment he wished to make. “Here. Try this on.”

  Giving up, he yanked the shirt he’d been wearing over his head. Balling it up, he threw it on top of the luggage before accepting the one she held. “So…if you dumped Ian, why do you still have his shirts?”

  Why indeed? Nothing she’d ever given him had been good enough. If it hadn’t been custom-tailored on Savile Row, Lord Ian wasn’t interested. She should have returned the damned shirts and donated the money to charity—the Fund for the Hopelessly Priggish. Instead she’d persisted, buying him clothes that became increasingly outrageous, knowing all the while that he would continue to refuse them, but also secretly hoping he would be appalled with her, as well. And it had worked like a charm. Ian’s complaints had been predictable. How could she act so commonly? How could she turn her back on her breeding?

  “They’re not his shirts,” she corrected. “They’re mine. They were gifts I selected that weren’t quite posh enough.” She raised defiant eyes to meet his gaze. “But I liked them, so I kept them. Is there a problem?”

  Luke’s eyebrows raised in question. “Nope. No, ma’am. No problem whatsoever.”