Gabriel West Still the One

by Fiona Brand

  He didn't move, and she realized he'd meant exactly what he'd said. If she wanted the kiss, it was up to her to take it.

  She wound her arms around his neck and lifted up on her toes. Her breasts brushed his chest, sending a wave of heat through her. Her hips fitted against his, and the firm swell of his arousal made her belly clench.

  He had always been lean and muscled, but now he was altogether broader than he'd been before, his shoulders wider, his biceps thicker, and his skin darkly tanned, with a seasoned sheen that said he'd been spending a lot of time in the tropics.

  When they'd first been married, she'd read every bit of literature on the SAS and Special Forces she could find, in a bid to understand the man she'd married and the risks he was taking. The reading hadn't been reassuring—the statistics for relationships had been appalling—but it had been the graphically chronicled descriptions of past operations that had sent chills down her spine. When she'd finished her course of study, she'd had weeks of time alone to let the facts sink in. The next time West had come home, she'd seen him for the first time, the remoteness in his gaze, and she'd realized just how much of himself he kept from her. She'd wondered just which part of West had fallen in love with her—if he had fallen at all.

  Taking a deep breath, she touched her lips to his. She breathed in, and tasted him, and emotion flared inside her, and she knew in that moment that she hadn't freed herself from him at all. If she had, she wouldn't want to touch him, she wouldn't want to be anywhere near him.

  She'd had boyfriends before she'd married West. She knew what it was like when the relationship ended; she knew what it felt like to be indifferent; this wasn't it.

  Curiosity and an almost forgotten recklessness, and something deeper—something hurt and tender— unfurled inside her. She pressed her lips more firmly to his, opened his mouth and delved inside. The liquid hot touch of his tongue sent a shock of arousal through her so intense that for long moments she was lost in the kiss, blank and clinging to West's shoul-

  ders—her body pressed so intimately close that she could feel every hard, shift of muscle, the slam of his heart, the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

  West's leg moved between her thighs, his body eased up snug against hers, and she found herself turned and pinned against the counter, held there by heat and muscle, the press of his arousal, the taut stroke of his tongue.

  His mouth on hers was hot, moving in a drugging rhythm that made her press closer still, arch and rub against him. He groaned, and a shudder ran through her. No one kissed like West—no one had ever touched her the way he did.

  He lifted his mouth from hers, and bent to her neck. She felt the edge of his teeth on the tender skin beneath her ear, felt the rough drag of his stubble.

  Delicious rills of pleasure spilled through her, and fear and panic knotted her belly. They could make love, and the thought electrified her. She didn't want to pull away—she didn't want to stop. On some mysterious female level she needed this. In the five years he'd been gone, she hadn't felt desire, and she hadn't missed it. When West had left, her sexuality had died as abruptly as her marriage, but now she felt like a dreamer waking up, her numbed senses flaring to painful life once again. In emotional terms she'd come out of deep freeze and was now being subjected to the heat of a blast furnace.

  He lifted his head and his gaze locked with hers, narrowed and glittering. "If you don't want more, tell me to stop right now."

  Tyler blinked, for a wild moment she was tempted to lift her mouth to his again, slide her hands beneath his T-shirt and run her palms over the satiny skin of his back. The cool note of his voice registered.

  He was giving her the opportunity to stop. She might have lost her head, but he hadn't; he was still firmly in control.

  When West had left five years ago the lesson had been salutary. He was a loner. She had married him, but essentially she had never reached him—never held him. She doubted anyone could—then or now. The fact that he'd come back and seemed to want her again, didn't mean he had changed—it just meant she was repeating her mistake.

  She should never have kissed him. Five years of training herself not to want West had just crashed and burned, all in the space of a few minutes.

  Grimly, she pulled free. "That's it—experiment over."

  She didn't understand him, and she didn't know if she ever would. He'd moved into her building because he wanted her back. If it was anyone but West, that kind of commitment would have shouted loud and clear that he was in love, and yet, essentially, he didn't seem to have changed. If he was in love with her, it was on a level she didn't understand.

  She drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "I don't understand why you're here. Why you didn't divorce me. You should be married by now. You should be with someone."

  "You made no move to divorce me." He said flatly. "And if you don't care either way, then it shouldn't matter to you whether I'm married or single."

  "Well, I do care." He might keep his feelings under wraps, but damned if she would.

  West's gaze sharpened. "There hasn't been another woman."

  Tyler gripped the edge of the kitchen table and sat down. She stared at West in disbelief. "Are you trying to tell me you haven't had sex in five years?"

  His gaze locked with hers. "What about you?"

  "I haven't, either."

  Satisfaction glowed in West's eyes. "That's one less man I have to kill, then."

  As men went, West had always looked sexual. For lack of a better word, hot women swarmed around him like the proverbial bees around the honey pot. "Why didn't you?" she wondered aloud.

  "I'm not injured, if that's what you're worrying about," West almost smiled.

  Heat rose to her cheeks. From what she'd seen— and felt—he didn't have any problems in that area, and probably never would have. "Why?" she demanded loudly.

  Something close to temper flashed in his eyes. "Simple. I wanted you. If I couldn't have you, the hell I would sleep with anyone."

  Chapter 10

  She was sunk.

  West hadn't made love with anyone since he'd left her. He had remained celibate.

  How was any woman supposed to resist that?

  Tyler glanced at the digital clock on the bedside table. Exasperation and frustration welled. She felt like punching the pillow. If her fingers weren't still bruised and sore, she would have.

  It was five o'clock in the morning, and some time over the last thirty-six or so hours she had turned into a crazy woman.

  She wanted her husband.

  How dumb was that? Her marriage had been dead, with only the paperwork remaining to be seen to, and now all she could think about was what it would be like to slide back into bed with West.

  If she slept with him, they'd be stuck together, literally for better or worse, for another two years before she could obtain a dissolution.

  She stared at the slow, circling ceiling fan, and felt a strange, sneaky undercurrent that felt suspiciously like happiness bubbling up inside, filtering through the layers of fear and stress—the slow-burning rage at the attacks on her.

  She couldn't remember the last time she had actually felt happy. Since West had left, she'd worked single-mindedly to attain her masters degree, then her doctorate. At first she'd buried herself in study, filling every moment of her days and her nights with research documents and technical publications— finding comfort in the academic world—then she had simply worked, and the habit of working long hours had stuck.

  She glanced at the clock again. Any hope she'd had of getting to sleep any time soon was fast evaporating. She'd slept most of the previous day, and now she was wide awake, her mind running around in circles.

  The moments in the kitchen when she'd kissed him replayed through her mind, and desire flooded her in a hot, achy wave, so that she turned on her side, curled her knees up and hugged her arms around her breasts, but the comfort of the fetal position didn't help.

  If she was honest, she would admit tha
t she would have slept with him anyway—before he'd told her the celibacy bit. It had only been a matter of time; now he was irresistible.

  Pushing the covers back, she jackknifed out of bed, wincing when her head gave a warning throb. She waited out the ache, then moved more sedately as she pulled on her jeans, opened the bifold doors and stepped, barefoot, out onto the wet terrace. The sky had cleared and was tinged with a translucent gray in the east, and the early-morning air was soft and fresh after the rain. The wall rimming the perimeter was a deep line of shadow encircling the apartment complex, and the huge pohutukawa tree the attacker had climbed looked dark and mysterious, outlined as it was by the glow of the streetlamps.

  A chill skimmed her spine. The men who had mugged her last night, and the man who'd broken into her apartment tonight, had gone to a great deal of trouble for crimes that hadn't netted much in the way of commodities. The mugging had seemed reasonably straightforward, although decidedly eerie because they had preplanned enough to knock the power out, and they had neglected to snatch her handbag when they could easily have taken it. If she was completely pragmatic about tonight's break-in, the man who'd broken into her apartment had to have been a rapist, and possibly a murderer as well. Why else would he make such elaborate preparations? If he simply wanted to steal—with his skills—he could empty apartments during the day when the owners were away at work.

  There was only one answer that fitted. It was the same man and had been all along. He'd rung her up, followed her, then he'd taken his stalking a step further and had begun attacking her.

  Tyler gripped the edge of the railing. Why this was happening to her now, on top of the trauma of the jade theft, she couldn't fathom. Whoever was stalking her was frighteningly organized, and an expert at breaking and entering.

  He'd been wearing night-vision gear.

  A shudder swept her. He had observed every move she'd made, playing a cat-and-mouse game as she'd inched out of the bed and felt around in the dark for a missile to throw at him. When she'd flicked the light on, he'd already been slipping out of the window, and the glass she'd thrown had missed him by a mile. Somehow, the cold calculation of his actions was more frightening than the mugging had been.

  As reluctant as she was to let West any further into her life—as mystifying as he was to her—she was fiercely glad he was here. Despite the unsettling charisma, the potent sexuality, there was an unshakable calm to West that was at the very bedrock of who he was. When she was with him she was safe: it was that simple.

  West set the phone back on the receiver, shut down his laptop and sat back in his chair. Every instinct he had was telling him that some-

  thing fishy was going on. The attacks on Tyler were too close to the robbery of the jade.

  He'd left phone messages for Blade Lombard, Carter Rawlings and Ben McCabe—all three of whom he knew were in town. Blade, an Australian, was presently resident in New Zealand. Between changing diapers and breaking horses, he ran the Lombard Hotel and Casino. Carter, who was still on active service, was home on leave. Ben McCabe, another ex-SAS soldier, was now a security consultant in Auckland.

  Blade, Carter and Ben were three of the best friends he'd ever known—and he had damn few friends. They, along with Blade's older brother, Gray, and his cousin, Cullen Logan, had all served together in the SAS, fighting in every corner of the world.

  If West had family, this was it: the men he'd fought with. To call them friends didn't quite cover it. They were more like brothers than friends. When he'd first joined the SAS, he'd been as touchy and aloof as a wild animal—a misfit in the regimented world of the army, and more suited for the edgy world of Special Forces than anything else, but they'd simply ignored his keep-out signs and had worn him down with friendship.

  There was an old Native American method of breaking wild horses called walking them down. They had walked him down. He'd known what they were doing, and he'd been powerless to stop the process.

  After years of being more comfortable with isolation than company, they had bombarded him with cheerful camaraderie. He would sit at a table in the mess hall, and suddenly find himself surrounded. The banter had been nonstop, the jokes terrible. They had even touched him—when most soldiers took care not to touch him. He'd found himself "nudged awake in the mornings with a booted foot, prodded in the chest, and casually slapped on the shoulder.

  They had included him in their group until, finally, he was one of them.

  He sat back in his chair. Amusement tugged at his mouth. They had even taught him how to tell the bad jokes.

  West picked up the cats that had taken up residence on his lap and deposited them on one of the soft leather armchairs. He collected a spare pillow and blanket from the hall cupboard, and made himself comfortable on the couch. Within minutes both cats were climbing over him, investigating the best places to sleep. Tiger tucked herself into the curve of his shoulder, and the stripey male sprawled on his chest and settled down to purring. At least the cats found him irresistible.

  West eyed the stray, whose head was situated only inches from his chin. "You and me, huh?" ' If this didn't work out with Tyler, at least he'd have company.

  * * *

  Tyler woke to sunlight pouring through the glass doors, and two cats sleeping on the end of her bed. Her little fluff-ball, Tiger, was curled up with the stray.

  She reached out and stroked Tiger's silky fur. "So you decided to come and keep me company after all."

  Tiger and the stray both lifted their heads, stretched, jumped off the bed and ambled in the direction of the kitchen. Tyler smothered a yawn as she eased out of bed. She checked the clock as her feet landed on the cool smoothness of the hardwood floor.

  It was mid-morning. After lying awake for what had seemed like hours while the sun had risen, she must have drifted off to sleep, but the extra hours of rest had done her good. Her head felt clear, and close to normal, albeit still tender where she'd been hit, and the stiffness in her back and neck had completely disappeared. The only real evidence that she'd been hurt was the bruising on her knuckles,, which was now spectacular, but contrarily, most of the stiffness was gone, so that she could bend her ringers without pain. That meant she could use her computer.

  She walked through to the en suite and turned on the shower, running a mental list of everything she had to do that day as she undressed and stepped beneath the warm water and began lathering her hair— working carefully around her stitches.

  First of all, she needed to get some more clothes from her apartment, then see about having an independent alarm system installed. She no longer trusted the system that covered the apartment complex. It had been bypassed—easily—twice in two days.

  After that, she needed to go into Laine's.

  Just the thought of walking back into Laine's made her stomach tighten, the tangle of emotions wound through with a thread of anger. After days of being vulnerable and off balance, she had finally got some perspective on what had happened—and was still happening.

  First of all, the robbery of the jade was not her fault. West had said that Cornell believed her to be innocent. The relief of Cornell's support aside, the jade had been as secure as any other artifact in the vault. She didn't know what had gone wrong. All she knew was that the jade wasn't in her possession, someone had taken it, which meant the security system as a whole was at fault.

  Secondly, whoever it was who had taken it upon themselves to stalk and terrorize her wasn't going to succeed. In the light of day, she was more furious than afraid, and she was no longer alone.

  The press was an annoyance, but she'd never placed any credence in anything that was printed before, and didn't see why she should start now.

  Tyler stepped from the shower, dried herself, put on her bathrobe and walked back into the bedroom to change.

  The fact that she was a liability with Laine's remained. Business credibility was one problem she would have difficulty solving. She might still have to leave, but she would wait before mak
ing a decision. Laine's was more than a career and a business for her. If she left, it would widen the gulf between her and Richard and Harrison, and that was something she didn't want to happen; they were her family.

  Tyler went still inside, let out a breath and sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly unsteady. She blinked. A tear rolled down her cheek, then another.

  It was crazy, but in the middle of one of the worst times of her life she had found what she'd been searching for since she was eight—that magical, comfortable sense of belonging in a family. A family that was slowly drifting apart.

  When Louisa was alive, she'd been the hub, but since she'd died, other than the occasional dinner together, the only contact they had as a family was at Christmas and New Year. Maybe if there were children involved, they would have been more inclined to spend time together, but in this instance they were all single; there were no babies, no kids, to pull them all together.

  The problem was, they had no center. When Harrison wasn't working, he spent most of his time with his head buried in a book, and Richard wasn't much different—although his vice was computers.

  If anyone was going to pull them all together, it would have to be her. She would have to be the hub of her adoptive family. Long minutes passed while she absorbed the implication and the concept that Harrison and Richard needed her beyond her capacity to work for the business. It was a strange, heady feeling.

  Sunlight, hot on her back, broke her reverie, and reluctantly she got to her feet and began sorting through her suitcase for clothes. She needed to go into her office, if only to show her face and check on her messages—and she needed to go shopping and buy another laptop. She still had the disk with the information she was working on. She didn't know how useful the database she'd compiled was, but at this point she didn't know what else she could do to help. Cornell had tied up all the information within hours. He had the security tapes, and he had the vault log book, which was a simple manual register of everyone who accessed the vault during the day—a back-up system for the security cameras that worked around the clock, and the security personnel who were rostered on to administer access to the vault.