by Julie Miller
And he’d been powerless to help her. His hands had been tied by the president himself. He’d had to put his faith in a man he didn’t know. He’d had to count on Vincent Romeo to find Whitney. Keep her safe. Bring her home.
When she climbed out the back of Patrick McMurty’s old station wagon, he’d swallowed her up in a hug, squeezed her tight. And he’d beat the snot out of anyone who repeated seeing a sheen of tears in his eyes.
Bruised and dirty, but chin held high, she’d been the one to tease him about caring. They were a family, she said. And Daniel believed her. An unlikely mix of men with a past, men with something to prove or something to hide—and a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve and her pain in her eyes.
Yeah, they were a family. His family. Not like Sheridan and Jessie, his ex-wife and his son, the family of his soul—the two people in the world who could make him whole again.
Whitney and the others—they were the family of his heart.
And Dimitri Chilton had made the mistake of messing with them. The president wasn’t giving the orders this time.
Now the game was his.
“You think Senator Weston is Chilton’s American contact?” He directed the question to Vincent, who sat across the desk from him.
With Whitney safely home, Daniel had grabbed a three-hour nap and taken the time to shave and clean up. He noted that Vincent had done the same. The big man looked surprisingly comfortable in the hot seat at the center of the room. Though he had no responsibility to the Department of Public Safety or the Confidential team, he had agreed to answer questions that would help them put Chilton and his band of terrorists on ice. More importantly, they could expose the Black Order’s American contact—if it was, indeed, Ross Weston.
“It’s a strong possibility. Circumstantial evidence more than anything. I couldn’t do a thorough reconnaissance with MacNair there.”
The big man had yet to call Whit by her first name. What was that all about? Romeo spoke of her the way an agent would refer to his partner. A bond of some sort had formed between them. Something only two people who had seen and survived hell together could understand.
Whit hadn’t said much about the rescue. Romeo even less. Even if they gave him details, Daniel still wouldn’t know all that had gone on between them. He mentally shook his head and moved on.
“Understood. You’ve given us a lot to think about. Gentlemen?” He opened up the floor to the others and settled in to watch his men work while he considered the big picture.
Whitney had been checked out by the doctor in Livingston. Then she’d gone upstairs to sleep and shower and fix her hair—or do whatever mysterious things a woman did to unwind.
Something was up with her, too. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but if he was a gambler, he’d wager it had something to do with the man they were interviewing right now.
Romeo had earned Daniel’s respect as a resourceful agent. But he still wasn’t sure he should trust the man. Whitney had been too quiet this morning. And the tension between Romeo and Whitney had been as thick as Dale’s sausage gravy.
What had happened to her up on Beartooth Mountain?
And what did Vincent Romeo have to do with it?
“What did you find out?” Frank Connolly leaned his hip on the edge of the desk and pulled Daniel’s attention back to the discussion at hand.
“Three men, two women inside the house besides Weston. Two of the men were armed. State-issue Sig-Sauers—9mm. The second female had to be a maid or cook. She wore a uniform. Chilton and two men outside.” For a man with little time, he’d been surprisingly thorough. “One of the outbuildings was locked. I didn’t have time to get in. The second was a standard barn.”
Frank glanced over his shoulder. “A presidential candidate would travel with bodyguards. That would explain the hardware inside.”
Daniel shook his head. “This whole setup stinks. Why wouldn’t they take out Chilton?”
Kyle Foster ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair and turned away from the bookshelf he hadn’t really been studying, after all. “You don’t think he’s trying to bring in Chilton himself, do you? Come off as some sort of hero right before the election?”
“Blackmail?” Court Brody, standing straight and tall beside the open door, added his speculation. “A politician has to have dirty laundry somewhere. And Chilton still needs to get out of the country.”
Vincent shook his head. “It looked like Weston was the one holding the cards to me.”
Daniel stood and circled the desk. “A presidential candidate making a deal with the devil himself. Would he really risk it?”
“MacNair says he has the ego for it.”
Daniel lowered his gaze to Vincent’s. The man’s unrevealing eyes would make him one hell of a poker player. He wondered how much of her association with the senator Whit had revealed to him. He wondered if he knew the whole story himself yet.
The tension in the room tightened a notch. Each man had survived a run-in with the Black Order. Each man had been betrayed by someone on the inside—a fellow citizen. He couldn’t blame a one of them for chomping at the opportunity to finish the job and take back a little of what had been stolen from them.
Vincent pushed himself to his feet, looking as if he, too, could feel the change in atmosphere. He struck Daniel as a smart man. A smart man should be on guard. “I can take you to the Weston place. But I’ve been ID’ed by at least one of the terrorists, so I can’t go in.”
“That’s all right,” said Daniel. “This isn’t your beat.”
“I want a piece of him, though. With his seat on the National Defense Committee, he has access to NSA reports. He has a redline to my superior. I was set up on this rescue. If Weston’s the man—”
“We don’t know that he’s the contact.”
Court moved in behind Vincent. “The FBI’s information on state militia groups funnels through the defense committee. I’d pay good money to find out who leaked my name to the Sons and Daughters of Montana.”
Kyle closed the circle. “The Black Order damn near killed my wife. If Weston’s responsible for that—”
Frank made their opinion unanimous. “We suspected the governor was guilty, why not a man running for an even higher office?”
“Whoa.” Daniel understood their need to take action. Their need to make someone pay for the bloody trail of heartache and death the Black Order left in its path. But it had to be the right man. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I need proof that this guy is Chilton’s inside man. I don’t want to go after Weston and find out he’s just another pawn in this game.”
Vincent shook his head. “There’s only one way to find out what the connection between Weston and the Black Order is.”
Daniel studied each man—each friend—standing in the circle. The look in their eyes was clear. “One of us needs to go in there.”
A forced cough from the doorway interrupted them. Whitney stood there, hands perched on hips, the determined set of her features making her appear somehow older and wiser than her twenty-six years. With the full attention of every man in the room, she announced. “It should be me.”
Chapter Seven
“You’re not seriously considering this idea, are you?”
Daniel closed the door and waved Vincent’s protest aside. “Let me hear her out.”
Whitney clutched her arms around her and inhaled deeply, bracing herself for this unexpected kink in her proposition to Daniel.
One very big, very tense, very unsmiling Vincent Romeo.
Thankfully, Daniel had cleared the other agents from the room. She had a chance of arguing her case with him. He might actually listen to the logic of her idea.
The others would tease her, treat it as some kind of joke. They might mean well, but they could be as overprotective as her real big brothers. Whitney wanted to play the game with the big boys. Pretty little Whitney was great to flirt and pal around with, but she belonged safely tucked away at the compound where she cou
ldn’t get herself—or anyone else—into trouble.
Vincent was no different.
Except for the brotherly part.
With his fingers splayed at the waist of his jeans, and his brawny shoulders stretched to imposing proportions beneath his black ribbed knit shirt, he created an intimidating opponent. Apparently he still saw her as a hostage—to a lack of common sense.
“This isn’t about you, Romeo.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulders and tipped her chin up to meet his challenge. “It’s a Montana Confidential matter, not NSA. You have no say in this.”
He leaned in closer. “I am responsible for your safety until I hand you over to your father.”
“Guard-dog time is over. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
Daniel sat on the front edge of his desk, coolly refereeing the charged battle of wills. “He has a point, Whit. Your family wouldn’t approve of what you’re proposing. It’s not in your original job description.”
Whitney marched over to the desk. “My family connections are going to serve me well for a change. Weston would like nothing better than to have my father’s endorsement for president. Dad’s word could guarantee him the votes in New England. He’s not going to turn away an opportunity to meet with me when an election’s at stake.”
“But you’re not just popping in for a visit.” Daniel had to play devil’s advocate. “If Weston is associated with the Black Order, he’ll know there are agents in the area looking for Chilton.”
“That’s the beauty of it.” She offered him her coyest smile and spread her arms wide to showcase her freckled face and trim figure. “Do I look like a secret agent?”
Daniel’s crooked mouth echoed her smile. “Government agent.”
Whitney giggled at the correction, selling herself to the hilt. “Whatever. As far as anyone knows, I’m just an heiress who got in trouble back East, and now I’m communing with the horses in Montana. All you tough guys running around here flashing your guns and kickin’ butt and saving the day—what do I know about any of that?”
Viselike fingers, steel sheathed in velvet, grabbed her wrist from behind and turned her, destroying the illusion she’d created. “You know enough to get yourself into major trouble.” Vincent’s grim warning matched the tight set of his jaw. “Spending a couple of days with me and working as Daniel’s assistant doesn’t mean you know how to work covert ops.”
Whitney fisted her hand and tried to pull away, but his grip held tight. That left her best weapon for retaliation. Her mouth. “Don’t feel guilty for not showing me the ropes, Romeo. I wasn’t on a training mission with you.”
His eyes flashed with some unspoken message. A warning. A plea. But she couldn’t decipher it fast enough. His eyes blanked. He released her and stalked to the far corner of the room. She should be glad he’d given up the fight. But something inside her made her want to follow him across the room and ask—no, demand—what pains from his past made him shut down like that. What scars made it easier for him to retreat into silence than to share them?
But it wasn’t her place to help him. And this wasn’t the time to satisfy her curiosity.
Instead, she turned her argument back to Daniel. “When Chilton was holding me at his cabin, there were two phone calls. Obviously he called my father. He gave a rehearsed speech about American greed and corruption, and demanded money and safe passage out of the country in exchange for my release.”
She’d spent a long night replaying what details she could remember from the call Chilton had received just prior to her first, ill-fated escape attempt. “I thought he was talking to someone else in the Black Order. But now I believe it was Ross Weston. He’d meet with him first—for a price—and give him the glory of returning me to my father. Think of the PR coup.”
Daniel whistled between his teeth. “Negotiating with terrorists? That’s quite an accusation. Can you prove it?”
“I’d like to try.” She moved a step closer and looked deep into his warm brown eyes, wanting him to understand the painful truth she did. “I know I’m just a pawn in all this. A name. Ross Weston wants a connection to my family. He made that clear time and again when I was working for him. He wanted his trophy wife and political backing all in one package deal. There are only ten days until the election and he’s six points behind in the polls. I can play right into his greed.”
Daniel reached out and took her hands in his, studying them for a moment before meeting her expectant gaze with his best fatherly grin. “You’ve thought this all through, haven’t you?”
She ignored the black eyes that were boring holes into her back from across the room. “I was on the computer this morning. I’ve already drawn up a strategy file.”
“How would you get in to Weston’s ranch?”
“I’d let Chilton kidnap me again.” She hesitated a moment at the muffled curse behind her. “I’m still a prized commodity. I’m not sure what the trade is he wants to make with Weston, but I could uncover that, too.” She turned her hands in Daniel’s so that she could give him a reassuring squeeze. “Throughout all this, you guys are there to back me up. I go in, make nice with the senator, get the evidence we need to prove he’s in collusion with the Black Order, then I’m out. You and your men come in and round up everyone, and our mission in Montana is done. Have I left anything out?”
Daniel stood and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “You’re a different woman from the one I met in August. Or maybe you’re just coming into your own. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“I’m serious about this, Daniel.”
“I know.” He released her and headed for the door.
Vincent held it open, though the jut of his shoulder blocked Daniel’s path. “Whitney is no agent. She has no field experience.”
“I have Ross Weston experience.”
Though her eyes had locked on Vincent, Daniel was the one to break the combative silence between them. He smiled over his shoulder at her. “I’ll give you my decision tomorrow morning.”
With a supportive wink, he turned and exited into the hallway. Feeling drained by the whole confrontation, Whitney sank to the desktop. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, trying to instill physical warmth into her emotional chill. When she heard the soft click, she assumed Vincent had followed Daniel out the door.
But no such luck.
A wall of black appeared in her line of vision an instant before Vincent’s large hands replaced her own. With his awkward combination of roughness and gentleness, he kneaded his fingers up and down her arms, giving her his abundant warmth.
“You make me crazy, MacNair.” His raspy baritone echoed off the books and pine paneling of Daniel’s office.
Whitney wrapped her fingers around his wrists to stop the seductive massage. She suspected it might be a ploy to get her to drop her guard, and she didn’t think she could resist succumbing to it. “Good crazy or bad crazy?”
“I don’t know yet.”
In a swift move that belied his size, Vincent switched places with her. He sat on the desk. He settled his hands at her waist and pulled her between his legs. His dark gaze melded with hers. He was putting himself at her level, she realized, making an effort to understand. “Why is this so important to you?”
His heat seeped into her, making her body drowsy with contentment and charged with awareness all at the same time. She balanced her hands on his shoulders and stepped back to put some distance between them.
“What are you doing, Romeo?” She decided to call him on this sudden show of tenderness. “I thought you’d be chasing down Daniel and arguing your side of the case right now.”
“I am arguing my side of the case.” His hands tightened their grip and he pulled her closer, hip to thigh, denim to denim, heat to heat. The blood thickened in her veins as his hands slipped lower. His long fingers cupped her bottom and he lifted her against him. He nuzzled the corner of her mouth, and Whitney found her lips turning, seeking h
is.
Her pulse raced at the triumphant pleasure of his mouth claiming hers. The sheer size, the mystery, the magic of Vincent surrounded her and pulled her into a spell that robbed her of focus. He stole the need from her and made it his own. Her breasts flattened against the thundering beat of his heart as he held her close. His hands roamed her back, her sides, her bottom, making her feel curvy and feminine and hot to the touch.
He worked even more magic when his fingers slipped up into her hair and he tilted her head back to run his bewitching tongue along her jaw. She felt the heat of him press against her in the most intimate of ways, creating a throbbing ache at the very heart of her. She dug in her fingers and held on to the corded strength of his neck and rubbed against him, wanting the feverish spell to be complete.
“Whit—”
The moan in his throat drew the pad of her thumb and the fascination of her lips to the spot. The bitter tang of alcohol from his aftershave lotion gave way to the salty taste of skin and the earthy flavor of Vincent himself. She slid one hand up to cup the well-formed shape of his head, loving the masculine friction of crisp, short hair against her palm.
She was falling. Fast. Succumbing to the unique sorcery of a man who spoke volumes with his hands and his body and his kisses. A man who said more with a look or a touch than others did with a slew of pretty words. A man whose gruff charm touched her heart, whose loneliness touched her soul.
The conscious admission of those unexpected feelings pierced Whitney’s clouded mind. “Vincent—” His name was little more than a ragged gasp for air. She needed to think. She needed to be stronger than temptation. Of the body.
Or the heart.
The hindrance of her thick turtleneck turned the path of his lips back to her face. He kissed the tip of her nose, her eyelids, the hollow of her cheek. He found the pulse beat of passion at her temple and smiled against it. “Is it such a bad thing that I want to keep you safe? It’s a habit I picked up recently.”
Tender words, spoken with such devotion. Which message did she listen to? The hum of the body that melded so perfectly with hers? The needy clasp of big hands that seemed to find enough curves on her slender frame to hold on to?