“Hi,” Janet called. “Are you okay?”
Roxann turned her head to the left and her mouth moved. Probably asking permission to answer. She turned back to Janet. “I’m okay. Tell Michael I love him and I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. We’re working on getting you out.”
Someone reached from behind the wall, grasped Roxann’s arm and yanked her from the door before slamming it.
Just that fast, a woman she’d grown to admire, to respect for her demanding career and her ability to lead a staff composed of mostly men, a woman Janet dreamed of growing into, had been snatched from sight. Completely unfair.
All Roxann had done was marry a powerful man. That, combined with working her ass off to succeed in her own high-profile position, made her a target. Add in her pregnancy and the harsh reality of this horrid event and—man-oh-man—it fired a spitting, seething anger that charred Janet from deep inside.
Was this what dedication to the job resulted in? Janet had spent immeasurable time worrying, thinking, worrying more about her career and what people thought of her. How they viewed her. In the end, would it really matter? At this moment, did it matter to Roxann?
Who knew?
Afraid to turn her back to the door, Janet walked backward. What a sight.
Tac vest.
Helmet.
Walking backward.
“You’re almost there,” Gavin said in her ear. “Doing great. Just don’t trip,” he cracked.
If she wasn’t shivering from fear and that fierce, scorching anger she’d blast him.
“We’re ten steps behind you,” Monk said via the radio.
God, she loved that guy. Leave it to him to find a way to make her feel protected while avoiding making her a cry-baby.
And then she was there, stepping behind the SUV between Monk and Billy.
Mission accomplished. Roxann was, for the most part, okay. And no one was dead.
Gavin jumped out of Vic’s SUV and opened the back door for Janet. Cool air wrapped around her and she swiped at the sweat on her neck. Whether that sweat came from fear, anger or heat—maybe all—she couldn’t be certain. Gavin stood, the open car door at his back, watching her as she swung her helmet off, tossed it on the seat and went to work on the vest. Despite her appreciation of its function, she absolutely hated that thing. The idea of wearing something that stopped bullets freaked her out. Seeing Roxann a prisoner freaked her out. The whole damned situation freaked her out.
“I’ve got Mike on speaker,” Vic said and, not wanting to waste time, Gavin jumped into the backseat with Janet.
His knee bumped hers and he grabbed her leg. “Sorry.”
Janet stared straight ahead. Didn’t feel a thing. That little buzz was adrenaline. That was all.
“Did you see Rox?” Michael asked.
Good. Concentrate on Michael and his pregnant wife. “She looks good. Tired, obviously, but, you know your wife, she’s a powerhouse. I think I want to be her when I grow up.”
Silence drifted through the phone line. “Did you talk to her?”
“I did. She said she was fine and to tell you that she loved you and she was sorry.”
Again, he stayed silent. Janet didn’t like that. This man was their leader, their safe-haven when the atrocities they faced overwhelmed her, and she didn’t want him in pain. Not for one second.
Fill that quiet.
“Michael, for what she’s going though, she looked amazing. I think, as crazy as this will sound, they must be treating her okay.”
Aside from the fact that they have her chained to a bed. He didn’t need that 411 though.
“What’s next?” Michael wanted to know.
“Head-shrinker, I’ll take you and Janet back to the barn. I’m gonna rotate teams here and take alpha team out to our farm. I’ll leave Monk, Billy and Bobby V. with you. Monk will take command while I’m gone.”
Vic taking the team to Taylor Security’s training center would not be good news for Gavin. Having worked around these guys, Janet understood how hard they trained and practiced and practiced more for takedowns.
“We’re not there yet,” Gavin said.
Vic drove to the barn, but didn’t bother parking. “Understood, but I want them sharp if something comes up. Mike, what have you got on the HT?”
“He has a nine-year-old son with a former girlfriend. They were college sweethearts, but broke up when the kid was ten months. His coworkers say he’s a loner. Eats lunch at his desk. Rarely joins them unless it’s a company function. Sometimes not even then.”
Gavin jotted notes on his pocket notepad as Michael spoke. As a certified geek herself, Janet made an educated guess that Joe Smith, with his love of reading and playing on the computer, had probably been a bullied kid who found solace on his own.
“Got it,” Gavin said. “Anything about who’s raising the boy?”
“Shared custody. It seems loose. The neighbor said the boy is around a lot. Then she clammed up. She didn’t believe I was his distant cousin.”
“Nice,” Vic said.
Gavin finished his notes. “Thanks. I can work with this.”
“Vic,” Michael said. “I’ll meet you at the farm.”
Once again, Janet marveled at the strength it must have taken for Michael with his abundant protective instincts, to stay away from the place of his wife’s imprisonment. Realistically, the husband of a hostage, no matter how controlled, brought emotional chaos to an already toxic situation. Michael understood that.
Gavin pushed the car door open. “We’ll keep you updated. Vic, tell the guys they did good. Not that they need to hear it from me, but they should know.”
Janet jumped from the Tahoe—where exactly was her stepladder? So damned short. She felt like a five-year-old.
Dammit.
Gavin grabbed the tac vest from her. “The thing weighs more than you do.”
She laughed at that. At least something made her laugh.
He pulled the barn door open and she stopped, stared inside a minute. Call her selfish, but she didn’t want to go back in there. As if not going in would make the situation disappear.
Gavin leaned into the barn door and crossed his arms. “It’s understandable. To be unnerved.”
Oh, oh, oh, unbelievable how well this man could read people.
“I’m fine.”
He nodded.
“What?”
Now a shrug. “Nothing. You seem upset. I wanted you to know it’s okay to give in to the stress. Some of the toughest guys I know would be terrified to do what you just did.”
Total God. That’s what he was. So much for her quest not to turn stupid. Ignoring him, she walked into the barn. He followed and closed the door behind them. Odd. With this heat, any additional air in the musty old barn would be a blessing. He dropped the vest on the large folding table and she held her hands out. “What now?”
“We wait. Let them get their bellies full and then I go at them again. Food tends to relax people. You did great, by the way.”
She smiled at him and yes, maybe she was staring. She couldn’t help it. After all that fear and the crazy adrenaline it unleashed, something inside her blew open.
Sexy.
Galore.
Wow. This raging need must be what the guys felt after seeing action. Talk about a meltdown. And the thing she wanted—right now—was to be free of the accumulated searing heat and sadness and anger. She stepped forward.
“It did freak me out. Seeing Roxann like that. As women go, she’s my hero. She’s everything I’ve never been. Tall, beautiful, savvy, successful. She won a gold medal in the Olympics and now she’s a pregnant hostage. For all of her strength, she’s as vulnerable as a woman can be. It’s not fair.”
His gaze still on her, Gavin stepped closer. “You’re right.”
“And I’ve spent all this time worrying about my career and what people think of me. Trying to prove I’m not the geeky, awkward girl hiding behind a comp
uter because I don’t understand people. I mean, what am I doing? I’m not a teenager. When I looked at Roxann, I realized none of it should matter. For all her success, she might not walk away from this. I don’t want to waste my life worrying about dumb…dumb…shit when it could all end at any time. I’ve spent years trying to be the unslut.”
He shook his head like he didn’t understand. Join the club, big guy.
“The unslut?”
“It’s the reverse of slut. I don’t sleep with the operators. Some women in this company do. I mean, yeah, from a woman’s point of view, I can see why, but I’ve worked too hard to destroy my career by not keeping my legs closed.” She met his gaze. “Until now.”
Yeesh. So confused. What am I doing? Nothing like making oneself look truly pathetic. She waved it off. “Ignore me. Emotional vomit.”
Smart girl gone stupid. Somehow it always involved Gavin.
“Slow down and give yourself a break. All those things you said about Roxann? Some women would say that about you. You work with guys two and three times your size and you’re not intimidated. Every guy on Vic’s team knows not to screw with you. They understand your value and that your skills will and have saved their lives. Those women in the business office? They’re jealous. You earned your job with your skills, not because you got on your back. They don’t understand that.”
He knew about the witch twins. She opened her mouth. Nothing. Nada. Not one coherent sentence.
He huffed. “Yeah. I know about them. They’re vile women who thrive on gossip and you don’t need them. They know it and that’s why they hate you. It has nothing to do with you being a geek, and everything to do with you not kissing their asses.”
Total head-shrinker. She didn’t care. Stupid, stupid girl. She stepped to him, got close enough to feel the heat of his body. “I’m all screwed up.”
He leaned back. Only a little. “I respectfully agree with you.”
Inching forward, she tugged on his shirt. “But I’m done thinking.”
He held up his hands. “What are we talking about here?”
Finally, an easy question. “Sex. If you ask me, we’ve been thinking too much. Maybe we just need to get it over with. Get it out of our systems.”
He laughed. “You think that’s what we need?”
She flipped the button on her pants. “Yep.”
The button got his attention and he stared at it a second before looking back at her. “What if we don’t get it out of our systems? What then?”
“Then we keep going until we do.”
“That seems logical to you?”
“Not one bit. But it’s what I want. It’s what you want. I feel it and until we expend it, we’ll be driven crazy. And if I have to sit here thinking about it while our hostage takers eat, well, that’s way too much thinking time. Way. Too. Much. As I just said, I don’t want to waste any more time thinking.”
She didn’t see any point in denying it, but Gavin? His olive skin had gone white and she’d been around him enough to know his brain had one heck of a violent hockey game going.
Minimize.
Something he’d taught her about negotiating. “Gavin, this is not life or death. I’m talking about easing tension. We’re in this crappy situation, I just nearly peed myself in fear and I need to be held. You’re the one I want to hold me.”
Seemed pretty straightforward to her so she reached for her zipper and bit by bit, with Gavin’s eyes on her hand making that slow descent, she unzipped her pants.
* * *
Gavin nearly bawled. What the hell was he doing? Actually, he wasn’t the one doing it. He stood letting her do it. Totally sandbagged. As much as the upstanding guy inside him wanted to convince her, and himself, they were coworkers and shouldn’t do this, he couldn’t get the words out. Not even a syllable.
Struck mute by an erection, that’s what he was.
After a pain-in-the-ass day of arguing with the knuckle-dragger and dealing with the emotional barrage of Roxann being snatched, maybe he did need a tension buster.
Why not? For the past three weeks he’d thought about nothing but making love to her.
He hadn’t counted on it being in a dusty old barn, but maybe this was the way it should be. They’d been confined all day, trying to reunite a loving couple and dealing with the emotional crap that came with it. Now they were alone with nothing to do but kill time.
Let’s kill time.
Decision made. He stepped to her, eased his arms around her and held his breath. At that first bit of contact he hesitated, tried to calm his rioting brain and take it all in because, yes, they were going to do this and he was going to let it happen.
Maybe it would be more than a quick lay. Maybe he’d get lucky and this crazy hunger he’d been trying to bury for three weeks would change his life in a way he’d never anticipated. A good way, a promising way he wanted to explore. Yep, he needed to capture and catalogue the crazy gut-squeeze that came with his hand molding so perfectly over her hip, and the way her tiny body curved into his larger one, the way his body flashed hot then cold when she touched him. With her, all the extremes descended on him at once.
He bent low to kiss her. Jeez, she was a little bit of a woman, but that didn’t stop her from angling her mouth over his, her tongue darting in and out in a blazing assault. The little bit of a woman had a monster-sized libido.
Jackpot, brother.
Within seconds, she stepped back, tore her shirt over her head and tossed it. The bra went next and he found himself staring at the perfect proportions of her small, amazingly torturous breasts.
Whatever you do, don’t break her. That’s what he worried about? Breaking her? How about risking your job, Mr. Sexual Harasser?
Her pants went next and she hopped around on one foot kicking out of them, making him grin while he tore his shirt over his head. Horndog that he was, the sexual harasser wasn’t just going for it, he was damned near willing to beg.
She paddled her hands. “We should make it fast, right?”
“Afraid the knuckle-dragger will walk in on us?”
“Oh, my God! That would be hilarious in the most disgusting way imaginable. His eyes would bleed.”
“Maybe we’ll take our time.”
The snorting sound she made should not have been attractive, in any way, but—hell’s sake—everything about her made him smile. This tiny woman with the giant heart and funny quirks made him want nothing more than to be with her night and day. He could spend every available minute enjoying her. That’s how easy being around her could be.
“Gavin, quit staring and strip. Tick-tock. I really don’t want my boss seeing me naked.” She threw her hands out, her face scrunched. “Ew! That would be bad. I’d be my own reality show. Smart girl gone ultra-stupid.”
And now he flat-out laughed. “Are you always this talkative when you’re about to get laid?”
“If my boss is about to walk in? I’d imagine so. Get those pants off.”
Gavin did as he was told and kicked out of his pants.
“Yay,” she said, making him laugh again when she wiggled her fingers at him. “Come to Mama, sweetheart.”
“Seriously, you have to stop with that. It’s creeping me out how turned on I am by it.”
And then she jumped him. Literally. Jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him in a full-out assault that had nothing to do with patience and everything to do with lust.
Any chance he had of backing out dissolved into a puddle of his own need—hell, he was a guy—and he carried her to the cot while shoving her underwear over her butt. Damn he liked how she felt against him. All that warm, soft skin. He tossed the crappy cot mattress to the floor and set her down while she wiggled out of her underwear and he dug a condom from his wallet.
“Yay!” she said again, hooking her hand around his neck and dragging him on top of her. “We can go slow next time.”
Next time. “Yay!” he mimicked.
> Chapter Four
When Gavin pushed into her, a giant, engulfing tornado looped around her, sucking her into its vortex. After all the lectures she’d inflicted upon herself. Here they were, going at it like farm animals. In a barn. How appropriate.
She wouldn’t fool herself into thinking they were making love. Maybe this crazy heat between them would only be sex in the purest, hottest, neediest form, but that was okay.
Sometimes, like right now, it was just fine.
At least she thought so. And then he slowly slid out of her and she opened her eyes, smiling up at him smiling down at her. “Are you teasing me?”
“I hope so.”
She clamped her hands on his butt. “I’m small but I’m mighty.”
Then he kissed her, all soft and warm and slow and her brain melted. A quick flash of what used to be a smart girl who had done the one thing she swore she would not do.
But, oh, oh, oh, she hadn’t counted on wanting Gavin Sheppard and dreaming of him the way she had since that amazing first kiss.
And she began to tremble from the force of all that emotion bombarding her, making her want more and more and more.
She wanted this always. With him.
Stop thinking.
Yes. She had to. All this coming undone, thinking about the ways her career could end and yet, at the moment, it would all be worth it. It felt that good. Never before had it felt that good.
He touched her face, just a light slide of three fingers over her cheek and something cracked—an insane snapping inside her head—and she pulled him tighter into her.
So good.
The pace quickened and that crazy snapping whipped through her body. More.
In a rush of grunts and murmurs they dove over the edge together, Janet clinging to him, almost afraid to open her eyes. It might, in fact, all be a dream. Or, depending on how she looked at it, a nightmare, because after this, she would no doubt be chasing him around the office.
With her pants down.
She cracked up. So stupid, Janet. Funny, but stupid.
Editor's Choice Volume I - Slow summer Kisses, Kilts & kraken, Negotiating point Page 17