"You've already called the FBI?" Rusty shook his head. "Do you think there's any way they can trace the box, find out who sent it?"
"It's doubtful. I think we're dealing with a very intelligent person, one who's covering his tracks. I'd bet my life that our mystery man didn't leave any prints on the box or its contents. That's why I saw no reason not to take a look at everything before I called Johnson."
"Even intelligent people make mistakes," Addy said.
"That's what we're counting on." Nick pulled out a sheet of plain white paper from his pocket, handing it to Rusty. "Here's the note that was lying on top of the pictures and clippings."
Rusty released Addy, took the note and read it hastily. "M.A.C. doesn't have to bid on the NASP contract."
"Yes, we do," Addy said vehemently. "No matter who's behind this, Gerald or … or someone else, we can't let them get what they want. Not only will we lose millions, but it could cost hundreds of jobs."
"Your life is worth more than money or jobs," Rusty said.
"My life is safe." Addy turned to Nick, smiling. "Nick and I are leaving Huntsville before daybreak tomorrow, and we're not coming home until M.A.C. has won the NASP contract. Two more weeks and this will all be over."
"If only we knew for sure it was Carlton." Rusty clutched his hands in imitation of a stranglehold, crumpling the threatening letter. "I'd kill that bastard with my bare hands. I should have killed him years ago!"
"If Gerald is behind these threats, then the FBI will catch him." Addy hoped it was Gerald. She'd thought she was long over her hatred and bitterness, but she wasn't. Her ex-husband had put her through three years of agony and stripped her of her dignity as a woman. Death was too good for him!
"When I called Johnson to tell him about Addy's little package, he gave me some interesting information." Nick reached out, taking the badly crinkled letter from Rusty. "Information that possibly links the man who tried to kidnap Addy last Friday night to Gerald Carlton."
"What did Johnson tell you?" Rusty asked.
"The man who tried to kidnap me was named Linc Hites," Addy said. "He worked for a janitorial service that New Age Aerospace uses."
"Damn!" Rusty turned his attention to Nick. "Is there any evidence that Carlton and this Hites fellow actually knew each other?"
"None, but Johnson's keeping tabs on Carlton. If he's our man, then all we need is for him to make one little slip." Nick had gone over the list of suspects time and again. Unless the man behind the kidnap plot was someone unknown to the McConnells, then all the circumstantial evidence pointed to Gerald Carlton.
"Not much can be done without some hard evidence to back up our suspicions." Rusty slumped down on the sofa, his enormous body dwarfing the small couch. "All right. You and Addy go into hiding. When M.A.C. wins the NASP contract—" he smiled at Addy, and she smiled back "—you two come back to Huntsville. The threat will be over. He will have lost and we'll have won."
Nick wished things were that simple, and they just might be—if the person or persons behind the threats really did want to keep M.A.C. from acquiring the government job and this person or persons didn't seek revenge when things went sour. But what if they did seek revenge, or what if the contract bid was a smoke screen? It never paid to rule out any and all possibilities.
"Let's hope that's the scenario," Nick said. "We'll work under that assumption for the time being."
"Addy said you two were leaving in the morning." Rusty held out his hand and Addy accepted it, seating herself beside her father.
"Yeah. Before daylight." Nick picked up the infamous box. "I'll go wait for Ned Johnson and give you two some time alone."
"Thanks." Rusty put his arm around Addy. She rested against him, her head on his shoulder. "Oh, yeah, Nick, why don't I send some of Dundee's men with you? They could ride shotgun on your trip."
"Bad idea," Nick said. "An entourage will call attention to us. A man and woman traveling alone is commonplace. Trust me on this, Rusty."
Neither man said anything else, but they stared at each other for several silent moments, weighing each other, sizing up one another. Two strong men with the same singular purpose—protecting Addy from harm, no matter what the cost.
Nick turned, leaving the room. Addy had sensed the unspoken exchange between her father and her … her what? Her bodyguard. Her protector. Her defender.
"He told me he wasn't interested in getting married." Rusty leaned back so he could get a clear view of Addy's face.
"What?" Addy gasped, glaring at her father with startled green eyes.
"I asked him about his intentions," Rusty said with mock seriousness, without a hint of a smile.
"Oh, Lord, Daddy!"
"He said he intended staying a bachelor for another forty-three years."
Addy wondered what Nick had thought of her father's questioning. Had he resented Rusty's interference or had he simply found the notion that D.B. McConnell wanted him to marry Addy amusing? "He told me the same thing."
"The right woman could probably change his mind."
"You hadn't known the man twenty-four hours when you decided you wanted him for a son-in-law. How can you be so sure?" Addy pulled away, giving her father a questioning stare. "You liked Gerald when you first met him, too, remember?"
"Hell, don't remind me! That jerk had us both fooled. He was a charmer. Silver-tongued, smooth and—well, he was a man's man, or at least I thought he was."
"Nick Romero is all those things, too, you know."
"Nick's the genuine article. He's not pretending to be anything he isn't. And he's not pretending his interest in you, either. He knows that I'm aware of how much he wants you, and yet he told me honestly that he isn't interested in marriage."
"Are we both acting like fools again, Daddy, putting so much faith and trust in a man we hardly know, a man who came into our lives because of Dina?" Addy wanted to tell her father about Dina's real relationship with Nick, that the two had once been lovers, but she didn't want to add to the problems already plaguing him.
"You know about Nick and Dina, don't you?" Rusty's faded green eyes darkened, his gaze searching her face.
"She told you?"
"Nope. Dina didn't tell me anything, except how fond she's always been of Nick, but I read between the lines."
"Doesn't it bother you, knowing she slept with her husband's brother?" It certainly bothered Addy. Every time she thought about Nick and Dina, naked, hot and sweaty, in Nick's bed, she wanted to scratch out the other woman's eyes.
"Dina is very insecure. She thinks money is the answer to all of life's problems." Rusty took Addy's hand, patting it gently. "I know what Dina is, but I still want her. Hell, baby girl, I'm in love with the woman. Besides, I'm not lily-white pure myself. You know that."
"Then it doesn't bother you, knowing … knowing—"
"When Dina and I make love, I don't waste my energy thinking about who else she's been with." Rusty laughed, deepening the heavy lines around his eyes and mouth. "Damn, this is hardly a subject a man should be discussing with his daughter!"
"If I were your son, you'd discuss it with me, wouldn't you?"
Rusty laughed louder. "You've got me there!"
Addy joined his laughter. He hugged her to him again. "Daddy, I think I'm falling in love with Nick."
"I'm not surprised. There's a chemistry between you two. I felt it the night you met. Romero doesn't know it yet, but I'd bet my last million that he's falling for you, too."
"I—I've decided to have an affair with him." Addy didn't look directly at her father, uncertain of his reaction.
"Good idea! Try him out and see how he performs." Rusty held back the hardy chuckle straining his lungs.
"Daddy!"
The chuckle burst loose from Rusty, filling the room with his good humor, releasing the tension that hung in the air like a dark rain cloud. "Don't think about the other women he's been with, not even Dina. Those women are a part of his past. You, Addy McConnell, could damn w
ell be his future."
"I hope you're right, Daddy. I hope I have a future—" hastily she added "—with Nick."
* * *
He stood just outside the open door of Addy's bedroom, watching while she packed. She was very neat, every item folded and placed with precise care. On top of her slacks, blouses and sweaters lay her lingerie, skimpy little tidbits of silk and lace and sheer nylon in colors from the palest flesh tone to the most lush, vivid purple. He couldn't help but imagine what sort of frothy satin temptations she was wearing beneath her walking shorts and cotton pullover.
The antique grandfather clock in the hallway struck ten times. In less than seven hours he would take Addy away from her home, away from the familiar routine of her daily life. Only four people knew where they were going—the two of them, Sam Dundee and Elizabeth Mallory, the woman who owned the cottage where they'd stay for the next two weeks.
Nick wondered what would happen when they got to Sequana Falls, Georgia. How was he going to spend two weeks alone with a woman he desperately wanted, without seducing her into his bed? He'd never been in this predicament before, wanting a woman who needed more than temporary pleasure from him. Addy wanted him to prove himself to her, and the only way he could bed her and walk away without feelings of remorse and guilt was to give her what she wanted. Somehow, some way, he had to prove to Addy that she and she alone meant more to him than anything else on earth. Since he was fast coming to feel that way about her, he figured there had to be a way to prove it.
Addy's ex-husband had used her and abused her, emotionally if not physically. She was afraid to give herself to another man, unsure of his motives. Because of past experience, she'd come to the conclusion that men who showed an interest in her were after Rusty's money. Hell, he didn't give a hoot about her father's millions. If he'd wanted to marry for money, he could have done so more than once over the years. He bedded women who attracted him, women who turned him on. He had enough money to meet his needs. He neither wanted nor needed more. But he did want Addy McConnell, and he needed her, needed her in his arms, in his bed and in his life, as he had never needed another woman. Once he'd had her, it was going to take a lot of long, slow loving … a lot of hot, wild mating … to get enough of her to satisfy his craving.
"What are you doing lurking out there in the hall?" Addy closed the suitcase lid, zipped it, then set it on the floor beside her bed.
"I wasn't lurking." Nick stepped over the threshold and into her room, instantly feeling as if he'd entered a forbidden zone. "I was just watching you pack. Are you sure you got everything you need in one bag?"
"It's a big bag." She sat down on the edge of her pencil post mahogany bed. "Besides, you said to pack light."
"I've never needed more than one suitcase." He glanced at her, noticing how at ease she seemed alone in her room with him.
"You've been traveling most of your life, haven't you?" She crossed her legs at the ankles.
Nick couldn't take his eyes off her legs, her long, slim legs that beckoned for his touch. "I don't own a house or even rent an apartment. I didn't need one when I was in the Navy, and when I was between DEA assignments, I'd either visit my grandmother in El Paso, get a hotel room or stay with my buddies Nate Hodges in St. Augustine and Sam Dundee in Atlanta."
"You've never mentioned Nate Hodges before. How long have you been friends?"
"Since SEAL training in Coronado." Nick's dark eyes glazed over with memory. "We were both a couple of eighteen-year-old half-breeds running from lives we hated, hoping to find something worthwhile. What we found was a living hell in Nam."
Addy wanted to run to Nick, to throw her arms around him and hold him close. She could tell by the tone of his voice, more than the words he spoke, that he was so alone, that he'd been alone all his life—a man always on the outside looking in. She longed to bring him inside, into the warmth and caring in her heart, to show him that he never had to be alone again.
"Daddy was in Korea. He never talks about it. He has this old-fashioned notion that women should be protected from life's harsher realities." Her father had tried, unsuccessfully to protect her mother. Sometimes she wondered if Rusty and Madeline had shared more of the agonizing pain and ugly reality of what had happened to their son would her mother have grown stronger instead of weaker in the years following Donnie's murder.
"Women experience most of life's harsh realities," Nick said, leaning against the colonial blue wall near the door. "No matter how much a man wants to protect his women, sometimes he's powerless. I think that's how your father feels now."
"He trusts you to keep me safe." Addy stood up, walking over to face Nick directly. "And I trust you."
Damn, how he wanted to pull her into his arms, to taste her sweet mouth, to feel the sleek leanness of her body. "No need to set your alarm clock. I'll wake you at three-thirty, and we'll hit the road by four." He didn't dare stay near her a minute longer, with those bewitching green cat-eyes of hers casting a spell over him.
When he turned to leave, Addy caught his hand, lacing her fingers through his. "Sleep tight then."
Bringing her hand to his lips, he brushed a feathery kiss across her knuckles. He could feel himself tightening, his whole body preparing for a feast to which he hadn't been invited. "Two weeks, Red, and if we're lucky, this will all be over."
"If we're lucky—" she whispered, then released his hand and stood back, watching him walk out of her room and close the door behind him.
Nick felt like beating his cane against the wall or smashing his fist through a window. He hadn't been this horny in years, and in the past, all it would have taken to ease his pain was a willing woman. This time nothing would give him relief except emptying himself into Addy McConnell's receptive body.
* * *
The grandfather clock struck midnight. Nick flipped on the bedside lamp, hauled himself out of bed and slipped into his faded jeans, forcing the zipper up over his arousal. He couldn't sleep. Hell, he couldn't even get any rest. Addy was in the room next to him, probably wearing one of her silky nightgowns and sleeping like a baby. She'd told him that she wasn't any good at sex. He didn't believe it. That bastard ex-husband undoubtedly didn't know the first thing about arousing a woman as sensitive and untried as Addy. If only she'd give him half a chance, he'd prove to her what a sensuous creature she really was; he'd give her unbearable pleasure and teach her how good it could be between them.
Retrieving his cane from where he'd propped it against the nightstand, Nick made his way across the room and out into the hall. Addy's door stood open. They both kept their doors open at night so he could hear every sound. Just in case.
Moonlight poured in through the Federalist-style fan-lights above the double French doors that flanked each side of the fireplace in Addy's bedroom. The waxed pine floors glistened in the muted light, and the rich reds and blues in the scattered Oriental carpets gleamed like jewels.
Nick stepped inside. Addy lay in the middle of the big bed, shadows of the crocheted canopy drawing lines across her face. She had neatly folded back the white bedspread, laying it over the patchwork sampler quilt that graced the foot of her bed.
He didn't want to wake her, but he had to see her, to look at her. Despite the air-conditioned coolness in the house, Nick felt hot. Beads of perspiration dotted his upper lip and a trickle of sweat ran down his throat, getting lost in the mat of black hair that covered his upper chest.
Without warning, his foot banged into something in the semidarkness. He cursed the object, swearing softly under his breath. Looking down, he saw a brass pot filled with red geraniums near the window. If the damned pecking of his cane hadn't awakened Addy, then maybe his bumbling crash into the flower container hadn't, either.
"Nick?" She sat up in bed, throwing off the thin blue sheet that covered her.
"Sorry, Red. I didn't mean to awaken you. I—I thought I heard something," he lied. "I just wanted to check things out. Go back to sleep."
"I wasn't asleep."
She slid her legs over the edge of the bed, allowing her feet to touch the floor. "I'm so restless that I can't sleep."
He took a good look at her then and wished he hadn't. She wore a teal-blue satin chemise that barely touched the top of her thighs. He sucked in his breath, calling on all his willpower not to reach out and grab her. Her curly red hair hung loosely about her shoulders and halfway down her back. Tousled and unkempt, it looked as if some man had been running his fingers through it. Dear God, that was exactly what he wanted to do. But he wouldn't stop with her hair—he wouldn't stop touching her until he had covered every inch of her body and counted every little copper freckle.
"I should go and let you try to get some rest. We've got a long drive ahead of us tomorrow."
Addy picked up her teal-blue lace kimono that she'd tossed across the nightstand. Easing into it, she stood. "Don't go." She took a tentative step toward him. "Stay."
"Bad idea, Red." Nick turned from her, starting toward the door.
"Please, don't go, Nick. Stay and … talk to me." She moved closer, her hand hovering over his back, almost touching him.
Keeping his back to her, he drew in a deep breath. "If I stay, Red, I'm going to do a lot more than talk."
"Oh." She trusted Nick with her life. She had even admitted to her father that she was falling in love with the man. But was she ready for them to make love?
"It's going to happen sooner or later, but there's no need for us to confront it tonight. There'll be time enough when we're alone in an isolated cabin in the middle of the Georgia mountains." He moved forward, taking a step out into the hall.
Addy followed him, touching his back with the palm of her hand. She felt him stiffen. His naked back was sleek and damp and warm. Her hand burned from the physical contact of flesh against flesh. "Don't leave me, Nick. Stay. Stay and prove to me that—"
"Prove to you that I want you more than I've ever wanted another woman? Prove to you that you're all that matters to me?" He turned around slowly, knowing that once he faced her there would be no turning back, knowing exactly what he was going to do and how he was going to prove himself to her. He prayed that he had the willpower to be the man Addy needed tonight.
PALADIN'S WOMAN Page 14