Love Under Fire

by Frances Housden

  From the moment Harry had spoken of a letter addressed to her, she’d been conscious of Rowan hovering next to her elbow. Not touching, but close enough that his presence became part of everything she did.

  After a day spent in the bush, she wasn’t certain how her deodorant was hanging in, but Rowan’s spicy tang with its additional sharpness wasn’t unpleasant as it might have been in a stranger. There was something very intimate in having his scent in her head. An awareness of him as a man.

  Her man.

  Her step faltered on the last thought.

  When they reached her office, he took the knife and the envelope from her and said, “Here, let me do it.”

  For once, she gave them up without a murmur.

  After he slit it open, he tipped the fold of paper onto her desk. The marks where the paste had dimpled the back of the note were visible at a glance. “Want me to open it?”

  She simply nodded and said, “Gloves in the top drawer.” Certain of the threat it would contain, her mouth grew dry. During her years on the force, she’d prided herself on dealing justly with those she arrested. But in all that time she’d never received a personal threat. One aimed at her alone.

  Following Rowan’s example she rolled latex gloves onto her hands. Finished, she heard his indrawn breath as his gaze skimmed quickly across the page. She could put it off no longer and held out her hand, steeling herself to read the worst.

  SKELTON’S WHORE—YOUR NUMBER IS UP

  DON’T BUTT YOUR NOSE INTO OUR BUSINESS

  BE FRIGHTENED—VERY FRIGHTENED—WE KNOW

  NO MERCY

  The paper dropped to the floor as her gaze flew to Rowan. His features had tightened, throwing his cheekbones into sharp prominence. His eyes glittered angrily in the stillness of his face as his nostrils flared with each breath he took.

  “It’s not true….” Revulsion robbed her of breath. “Rocky and me…no way! I couldn’t—”

  “I never thought you could…did.” Rowan came closer and his big hands cupped her face and tilted it until they stood eye to eye. “No one who knows you could believe the implication.” Next moment, he held her in a bear hug, his arms pressing her against him till it hurt to breathe, but it was a good pain.

  Rowan loosened his grip. His voice was gruff as if he’d hurt his throat. “It’s shock tactics. They want you to back away from the case. If anyone’s running scared it’s them. Someone must have tipped them off.”

  He held her out from him. She felt bereft at the loss of his warmth. His body.

  Rowan’s lips twisted slightly but he pulled her head into his shoulder before she could work out which emotion was showing. “I don’t like this, Jo.” His hand slid over the back of her hair. “It’s been a helluva day. Come back to the boat with me, I don’t want you to be alone tonight.”

  “I’ve got Moira.”

  “And what is a ditzy little woman, half your size going to do if they come after you?”

  She pushed her hands against his chest, feeling the steady life-confirming beat of his heart and felt safe. Stronger. With a half laugh, she meant to reassure Rowan she felt better, more herself. And she did. The shock had worn off. Soon she would just feel mad. Good and mad!

  “I told you, I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. No more hero stuff.”

  “You said partners and that’s what you’ll get. You need backup, Jo, and I’m it.”

  Chapter 10

  S o, this was how the other half lived. Heavens, this cabin was as large as the room she rented from Moira and twice as luxurious. Jo hung the clothes from her duffel inside the fitted locker, admiring the way the designer had put every inch of space to good use. The task barely took her three minutes and as she straightened the last sleeve, she wondered if such pitifully few clothes had ever graced its interior before.

  “You can use this stateroom, the head’s…bathroom, is over there,” Rowan had said, then dumped her bag on the floor and left her to get on with unpacking.

  Sitting down on the side of the bed, she smoothed one hand across the silky quilted fabric of the fitted coverlet. The subtle autumn hues tied in with the two shades of timber that had been used on the cabinetry and the dull apricot suede finish lining the walls and ceiling. The same decor she’d seen in Rowan’s stateroom that first day, except he had a larger bed and its cover was a creamy peach brocade.

  She had her own queen-size bed and private ensuite. It was perfect. Two huge square pillows rested against the headboard. She punched one; it was soft as marshmallow. She picked up the other one and leaned it on top of the pillow on her side and gave it a punch as well. Her fist sunk deep into the center as they gave under the pressure. So, what had she expected? That he would put her in his own cabin? Is that why she felt dissatisfied in the middle of all this luxury? What more could a girl ask for than a queen-size just for one person? Perfect.

  Perfectly lonely.

  In the nether regions of her brain hovered the whiff of an idea that her time would soon run out. That, if she didn’t do something about her feelings soon, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

  “Nonsense!” she chided herself. Since there was no one to disagree, she picked up her bag and grabbed a small squashed box of tissues too ratty to go with her luxurious quarters from the bottom. “In you go,” she said opening the top drawer of the nightstand, thrusting them out of sight.

  A gleam of silver at the back of the drawer caught her eye. Condoms. Fool, for all her imagining she hadn’t even considered adding them to her list when she’d shopped. And with the way she was feeling anything could happen. At least she hoped it would.

  Reaching in she picked up a handful of foil packets and tossed them in the air so they landed on the bed. Someone had been well prepared. What did the advertisement on TV say? The life you save could be your own.

  It was time to go up to the saloon and see what she could do to nudge events in the right direction.

  Rowan breathed in the aroma of steak broiling under the grill as he tore lettuce apart for a salad to eat with the baked potatoes he’d shoved in the microwave. He could look after himself, even if he didn’t go in for anything fancy. Jo would soon see he wasn’t in search of a wife simply to look after him.

  Wife?

  Whoa! One shot in the dark and his subconscious had taken a leap into the unknown. Time to rein it in.

  He threw a handful of spring onions, sweet peppers and avocado into the mix. Sliced tomatoes followed as he sensed Jo come up behind him. Her fingers lightly snagged his belt as her head dodged round his shoulder, watching him cook. “Whatever it is, it smells delicious.”

  “That tantalizing aroma is broiled steak. Supper’s almost ready. You take a seat and I’ll pour some wine.”

  Rowan pulled a bottle out of the rack and held it up for Jo to read the label. Kereru Hill Shiraz.

  “I couldn’t resist. Look at the date, Max’s first vintage. We can give him our opinion next time we all meet up.”

  Damn, what was he doing talking as if they’d be doing it together? The corkscrew, cork still attached, clattered onto the counter like an exclamation mark to his thoughts. He poured two glasses of ruby wine, sniffed the bouquet, then took a sip. Max had done a good job. He’d taken a chance and it had worked.

  Maybe it was time for him to do the same.

  Jo looked serious as he passed her a glass. A tiny V-shaped frown bridged her dark eyebrows as if she had an unpleasant task to perform. “Drink up. This is good for whatever ails you.”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “You’ve never looked bad to me, you’re a beautiful woman. Easy on the eyes. I’ve always thought so.” What more could a man want apart from constancy and fidelity.

  She let out a gasp and almost spilled some wine. A small red trickle escaped the corner of her mouth followed by an explosion of need bursting inside him. It was all he could do not to seize the nape of her neck in his grasp and clean up her lips with his tongue.

&
nbsp; Down boy, down, he warned his raging libido.

  A velvety softness gleamed in her eyes, yet her smile seemed reluctant, uncertain. “I can count the number of times I’ve heard that on one finger. Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment. Simply a statement of fact.” He swirled the wine around his glass and let the bouquet drift upwards, rich, fruity, like black currants.

  “It was a first for me. Personally, I can’t see it. Mostly when I look in the mirror it’s what’s going on inside I see, and the rest of the junk takes a back seat.”

  “Sounds too philosophical. But you haven’t told me, why the frown?” He touched her between the eyebrows, then smoothed a finger over both shiny dark wings to erase the small worry lines. “What’s going on inside your head tonight?”

  “That I always thought I would see hate in your eyes when we met up again. You have reason to hate me. Good reason.”

  He made a movement with his fingers, which flicked off such a suggestion as preposterous. “And now? Look in my eyes and tell me what you see now.”

  The danger he’d always known awaited him loomed large. His heart pounded like a jackhammer against his breastbone as if it might break out and show her his agony, past and present.

  Jo stared at him. He tried not to blink, holding her gaze, hardly daring to breathe.

  “I see warmth and friendship, an attraction that’s reciprocated, but no hatred.” Attraction. Love it seemed, wasn’t on either of their agendas, but he could go with them both feeling attraction. It would be enough. It would have to be.

  “And I see a man I don’t have to fear. A man who cares for me, who could never stand aside and watch me die.”

  “Even when you’ve ordered him to do exactly that?”

  Her brown velvet eyes softened. “Even then.” The words rolled slowly from lips that looked fuller, redder, lush and inviting.

  The smell of broiled T-bone teased his nose. Damn! “Time to eat. Our supper’s ready.” For an instant he’d been tempted to let it burn and follow where the conversation and his instincts led. To disaster, maybe, but at least he’d die a happy man, having trod the highs as well as the lows instead of the straight and narrow road he’d taken lately.

  So, how would Mata Hari handle the situation?

  Half an hour had passed since she’d come down to her stateroom, saying, “I think I’ll go have my shower and get ready for bed. We have an early start in the morning.”

  Maybe she’d been giving out the wrong signals. Come-hither looks weren’t part of her repertoire, and playing the vamp at her height had always struck her as ridiculous. Besides, there were so few men tall enough for her to look up at and bat her eyelashes.

  Rowan had merely responded to her announcement with a nod. The recessed downlight overhead had cast shadows across his eyes and mouth. The lack of light made the first look brooding, the other grim, and in the end her own smile had withered from lack of nourishment.

  Seduction was a game she’d never played before. Max hadn’t given her the chance, and any rules—if she’d ever known them—were long forgotten. She licked her lips and pouted at her reflection in the small mirror. She tried, “Rowan,” purring.

  No, she decided with a shake of her head that sent her hair spinning. She couldn’t do this. It smacked too much of pretense for a woman who had made honesty her creed.

  Warm inside and out, from the wine, then the shower, her perfumed skin appeared to glow. It looked soft enough to the eye, to the touch. She lifted her breasts and held their fullness in her hands, imagining how they would look to Rowan.

  What if all her years on the force had taken their toll, and the only softness left was on the outside? She’d spent so long proving she was as good as the next cop. Better than most. As good as her father had been, no matter what the records said.

  What if she’d lost the ability to call up the softer, womanly emotions inside her? Love, compassion. When had she last opened her heart and shed a tear? Except for Rowan.

  Perhaps there was hope for her yet.

  With that thought ringing in her head, she slipped into her best underwear, wrapping a black satin robe over its red, lacy sensuality.

  “Just tell Rowan the truth,” she muttered over and over. He could only reject her, and she’d dealt with that before.

  Her hand trembled as she held her robe tight. Her insides jangled with a mixture of anticipation and doubt. Satisfied the bra she wore underneath was hidden, she took a deep breath and grabbed a fistful of condoms from the top drawer of the nightstand, slipping them into the deep side pocket of her robe.

  Maybe if his brain would shut up, he could get some sleep. Rowan should have guessed this would happen the moment he’d agreed to Jo’s request that they use the Fancy to come up on the tree-girded circle from the seaward side.

  Hell, what a cop-out. If she hadn’t suggested it, he might have. No, it was the threat of Jo, sleeping a few feet away with only a wall separating them that jangled his chain. What was it about him, Rowan McQuaid Stanhope, about his personality that all his troubles came in twos?

  This time of year had always been difficult for him. A few more days and it would be the anniversary of his parents’ death. It was the not knowing that he couldn’t get past.

  Had his father killed both his mother and himself on that fateful boat trip on the Fancy I?

  His father had been such a good sailor, to have anchored in the main shipping lane just wasn’t the act of a sane man. But what if the reconciliation hadn’t taken, if his mother had hurt his father again? Rowan still carried the memory of the first time his mother had left….

  He’d never seen his father cry before, and it had shaken him to the core. Damn! He couldn’t lie in bed reliving that time over and over. He’d a good mind…

  No, he couldn’t do that either. Couldn’t go to Jo and use her as a palliative to relieve the scars of hurts that still throbbed after all these years.

  Rowan’s feet hit the floor the moment he threw the bedcovers aside. The buttoned and belted feel of his jeans was an easy find in the dark and familiarity with the task soon had him covered in denim from ankle to waist.

  Gathering her courage round her, Jo opened the door, remembering that afternoon and the way Rowan had held her.

  Wanted her.

  It hadn’t been the result of a spell, simply a man and a woman wanting each other. “Hold that thought,” she whispered under her breath.

  He needed fresh air to clear his head of ancient memories and latent desires that could only lead to tragedy. When it came to love he was too much his father’s son.

  He crossed the cabin on bare feet in the dark and stepped into the companionway.

  A soft click alerted him of another’s presence in the darkness. Every hair on his body prickled with an icy chill of awareness. A superstitious man might have pondered if the ghost of his longings had come to life. Instead a sigh of inevitability left his chest in the wake of soft hands pressing dead center, against his sternum.

  At his temples, the sound of his heart pounding was enough to drown the mix of irregular breathing, but not Jo’s cry. “Oops, I didn’t see you in the dark.”

  His hands reached out as if to steady them both, and encountered silk-covered skin. In an instant, he was hard. Painfully hard. He forced his apology past a larynx wrapped in rusty barbed wire. “My fault. I should have put the light on. Can I get you something, is there anything you want?”

  “You. I want you.” Her whisper swirled into the thick blackness enveloping them.

  The world stopped and sent him hurtling into space. He sucked in a breath and held it as if it was the last he’d ever take. “I want you.” The words he thought he’d never hear, rang in his ears. Their meaning more decipherable, more explicit as his head stopped spinning. This could be his last, best chance. And his gut feeling told him if he didn’t grab it, he’d never get another.

  “Are you sure?” It was laughable. Even now his innate caution didn’t
let him down. Not for himself, but for Jo. He stepped into the danger knowing it was there. Knowing what could happen. But she didn’t have a clue where it could lead. Couldn’t see the future as he had from the moment he knew she existed.

  “I’m sure. Very sure.” She stepped closer and immediately became more confident of her welcome. Her insides clenched, spasming, the moment his hard male flesh pressed into her belly.

  She curved her arms around his neck, unerringly finding the way to his mouth and let their breath mingle as she said, “And I can tell you want me.”

  Rowan didn’t answer. He let his lips do it for him. They slanted across her mouth as she gasped and swallowed the dark-coffee flavor of his breath. The brush of his moustache, against her lips, neck and ears, then back to her mouth, all added to the exhilaration. The fast, furious warring of their tongues warned her not to expect a leisurely coupling.

  One stem of her pearl-studded earrings pressed sharply into the tender skin behind her ear as his tongue ran a swathe of wet warmth round its circumference. She was too far under his thrall to feel the pain. It was the attention he gave the shell of her ear that nearly killed her. Her knees melted, removing their support. All she could do was fork her fingers into his hair and hang on for dear life.

  Desperation drew static from the air and played like stars behind her eyelids, but she had no way of knowing if the emotion was his or hers until he stepped through the dark well of the cabin door and half carried her inside.

  With his breath still warming her skin, Rowan said, “No guarantees, Jo. There’s nothing here to bewitch or bedevil our minds but each other. If you come to me, you have to want what I have to give.”

  He felt an echo of her shuddering sigh in his own as she murmured, “That’s all I want. Every little, last thing you have to give.”

  With the soft weight of her propelling him, he found the bed more from luck than judgment. He had a growling ache in his groin which wouldn’t cease until he’d pulled her under him and found alleviation inside her body.