by Unknown
“Yes. Yes.” Smiling through her tears, she threw herself into his arms.
They closed around her. “God. I can’t believe I almost let you go,” Dominic said in a raspy whisper.
And then he lowered his head and kissed her, and all was right in her world.
Epilogue
Denver, Colorado
Three weeks later
T he massive arches of Denver’s First Church Cathedral soared high above Lilah’s head.
A sea of white flowers—lilies, sweet peas, hyacinths and roses—cascaded from the ends of the seemingly endless line of pews that stretched to the altar, where more white blooms were massed along the sides of the broad, shallow steps. Their sweet fragrance drifted on the early evening air, aided by the banks of snowy candles sharing those same steps, their flickering, golden light glowing in contrast to the vast church’s shadowed interior.
“Nervous, darling?” Gran inquired, leaning slightly against her as they stood, arms entwined, just outside the inner entrance to the church proper, waiting at the top of the aisle for their cue to enter.
“No.” Lilah’s gaze was all for Dominic, who stood what seemed like half a mile away, staring back at her, flanked by his phalanx of tall, black-haired, Armani-clad brothers. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to be Dominic’s wife.”
“Oh, good grief, Delilah.” Gran’s tone made clear her opinion of that. “You’ve only been back from San Timoteo a few weeks. And given that your Mr. Steele insisted you move straight in with him, it’s not as if the two of you have waited for much of anything that I can see.”
“Yes, Gran.” Lilah’s serene smile didn’t falter. She rather liked having Dominic referred to as her Mr. Steele, she decided.
As for the other…Well, except for admitting to a previous acquaintance, the two of them had agreed that the rest of their past wasn’t any of Abigail’s business. They knew the truth and that was what mattered.
“You must admit, there aren’t many people who could have put something like this together in less than a month,” Gran went on with an autocratic sniff.
“There certainly aren’t.” Lilah squeezed her hand. “You’ve been wonderful.” There was no reason to reveal that Abigail cared far more than she did about the big church, the ocean of flowers, the crowd of people straining to get a glimpse of her. As Lilah had warned Dominic she would, her grandmother had pounced at the chance to plan their wedding, and Lilah, who finally no longer doubted that beneath her crusty exterior her grandmother loved her, had wanted her only relative to have her fun.
“Yes. I have been wonderful,” Abigail agreed. She paused, then said as if she’d read her granddaughter’s mind, “And so have you. You do realize that I’m proud of you, don’t you, Delilah?”
“Yes, Gran.”
“And that I’ve only ever wanted what’s best for you.”
“Yes.”
“Are you positive this is the right man for you?”
“Absolutely.” She smiled at Dominic, who was starting to look just the least bit impatient.
“Then you really do have my blessing. As long as—good heavens!” Abigail stiffened, staring at the big man who’d just emerged through the side door next to the altar and was joining the impressive line of assembled Steeles.
He was wearing the same severely simple, expensively cut suit as the others, one that had been ordered to his specific measurements. But somehow he still managed to look as if he ought to be decked out in camouflage gear and face paint while armed to the teeth. “Who on earth is that?” Gran demanded. “And what is he doing…here? In my wedding?”
“That’s another one of Dominic’s brothers,” Lilah replied, completely understanding the older woman’s reaction. “I met him last night.” Although “met” was definitely too tame a word to describe her first encounter with John Taggart Steele.
She’d been standing in Dominic’s darkened kitchen, enjoying a cup of tea while clad in nothing except her underwear and one of his T-shirts, when she’d glanced over to find a stranger standing a mere six feet away, silently scrutinizing her.
Once she’d decided she wasn’t going to scream or faint—reasoning that if the stranger was a threat Dominic would have already been there instead of lingering in the shower—she’d realized who he was, since there was a strong family resemblance and he’d been the only brother to miss the rehearsal dinner earlier that night.
She’d been assured by every one of the tall, dark, ridiculously attractive men who claimed Dominic as a relative that though their second-oldest brother was currently immersed in a tricky fugitive recovery case—she wondered if she’d ever get accustomed to hearing real people talk that way—he would turn up.
And he had. Setting her cup down on the counter, she’d pulled herself together, did her best to pretend she was fully clothed and offered him her hand. “I’m Lilah. You must be Taggart.”
He’d looked at her with that hard hard face, so much like Dominic’s and yet so totally different. He was a little bigger, a little broader and a lot less…civilized-looking…than his younger brother, with the most shuttered eyes she’d ever seen.
And then the straight, sober line of his mouth had relaxed a fraction and a glint of approval had warmed the cool green depths of his eyes, and everything had changed.
“Dom said you’d remind me of a fairy-tale princess, pretty but brave,” he said in a quiet, deliberate voice. “He was right. Welcome to the family, little sister.” Reaching out, he’d taken her hand as if it was made of the finest crystal and given it a gentle squeeze.
“If he gives you any trouble—” well, actually, Taggart hadn’t used the word trouble, but she wasn’t so far gone to even think that other word while she was standing in a cathedral next to her grandmother “—let me know. I’ll knock some sense into him.” With that astonishing declaration, he’d relinquished her hand and melted back into the darkness as noiselessly as he’d arrived, leaving Lilah wondering if she’d imagined him.
When she told Dom about it, he’d just shook his head, murmured darkly about ex-Army Rangers who ought to know better than to break into other men’s houses, scaring their women, and taken her back to bed to soothe her nerves.
Not that her nerves had needed soothing. At least, not at first….
“Good heaven’s,” Gran repeated, still staring at the newcomer with a scowl. “I must say, he doesn’t look completely civilized. But then, none of them do.”
If only she knew, Lilah thought, fighting a smile. But then, as she’d learned during her wild San Timotean adventure, sometimes civilization—and civility—were highly overrated.
“I must admit, however—” Gran gave an unexpected sigh that made Lilah turn to look at her “—I might be tempted to take one of them on if I were fifty years younger.”
“Gran!” She bit back a startled gurgle of laughter.
“You really must learn to loosen up, darling,” the old lady said with a sudden twinkle in her eyes. “It’s about time you realize that if I didn’t appreciate fine-looking men, I certainly never would have married five times.”
Lilah just stared at her, saved from having to reply by the onset of the processional signaling that it was finally time to commence the Wedding March.
“All right, now. Chin up, spine straight. It’s time to go.”
Lilah didn’t need urging. With a steadying grip on her grandmother’s arm, she started eagerly down the aisle toward her love, her life, her man.
Dom watched her come, feeling his heart squeeze in his chest at the radiant look on her face. She seemed to float toward him in her billowing satin-and-lace gown, the picture of perfection with her pale hair and flawless skin.
And then she was there, and he was reaching for her hand and drinking in the delicious fragrance of her skin. Not giving a damn if he scandalized the whole of Denver society, he leaned in and pressed a lingering kiss to the porcelain softness of her cheek. “Okay?” he asked quietly.
She looked
at him, all the love she felt for him blazing without reservation in her summer-sky eyes. “Perfect,” she whispered. “What about you? Any second thoughts?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Trust me, princess. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
And drawing her close, he walked with her to the altar, knowing she was about to make him the happiest man alive.
Tempt Me
By Caroline Cross
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
One
J ohn Taggart Steele stood motionless in the shifting shadows that edged the towering stand of evergreens.
Snowflakes swirled in the icy air around him, swept from the treetops high overhead by a capricious wind. Narrowing his eyes against the October sun, he raised his binoculars to zero in on the tidy A-frame cabin in the clearing five hundred yards away, only to jerk the glasses away as his cell phone vibrated. Ripping it from the clip on his belt, he glanced at the screen and saw the call was from Steele Security’s Denver office. He hit the receive button and slapped the instrument to his ear. “What?”
“Looks like it’s her, all right.” As calm as a summer day, his brother Gabe’s voice held neither reproach at the brusque greeting nor satisfaction as he delivered the long-awaited confirmation.
Taggart said nothing, merely waited.
“The truck was recently registered to a woman calling herself Susan Moore. The previous owner is a Laramie grad student who says he sold the vehicle three weeks ago to a cocktail waitress at the bar he frequents. He described Bowen to a T, said she was ‘a real sweet little thing.’ She paid cash for the vehicle and confided she was headed south to see her ailing grandpa.”
“Laramie, huh?”
Gabe seemed to know exactly what Taggart was thinking. “Yeah. When she left Flagstaff, she bolted toward Denver, not away. Totally unexpected, completely illogical.” There was a pause, then he added thoughtfully, “It was a damn good strategy.”
Good strategy wasn’t quite how Taggart would describe it—not when he’d been chasing the elusive Ms. Genevieve Bowen for close to three months. Still, he shoved away the rude comment that sprang to mind, along with his uncharacteristic impatience. Emotion didn’t have a place in the job he did as a partner in Steele Security, the business he and his brothers ran out of their home base in Denver, Colorado. The kind of work they did—hostage and fugitive recovery, personal protection, threat management, industrial security—required clear but creative thinking, situational analysis, high-stakes decision making.
Taggart regarded being cool and impartial an absolute necessity. It ought to be chiseled in stone, if you asked him—his brother Dominic’s recent marriage to a wealthy debutante he’d rescued from the clutches of a ruthless Caribbean dictator notwithstanding.
He shifted his gaze from the cabin to the ancient Ford pickup parked at the far end of it. Just because the vehicle’s recent history fit with his quarry’s MO—blend in, deal in cash, vanish after dropping false hints about your destination—that didn’t automatically mean it was Bowen. There was still a chance she’d again eluded him—and gained the gratitude and ensuing silence of yet another needy young woman matching her general description—by giving away the truck the way she had three previous vehicles.
Only Taggart didn’t think so. And not merely because his instincts were clamoring that his luck had finally turned. Because this time, damned if he hadn’t seen her himself, bold as brass, driving out of the Morton’s Grocery parking lot on the outskirts of Kalispell.
The cabin door swung open. “I’ve got movement,” he told Gabe. “I’ll catch you later.” Not waiting for a reply, he disconnected and shifted the binoculars into place as a woman stepped out onto the porch that skirted the cabin.
With icy calm, he let his gaze climb her length, starting at her fleece-topped boots and moving up her slim, blue-jeaned legs, past a serviceable green parka until he arrived, at long last, at her face.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It was her, all right. After the dozen weeks he’d spent on her trail, interviewing her friends and showing her picture around, her features were as familiar to him as his own. There was the full mouth, the straight little nose, the big dark eyes and the slightly squared chin. Her glossy brown hair, which she’d once worn in a thick braid that reached to her waist, was now cropped short and, after a number of cut-and-color transformations, back to its original color.
He frowned as something nagged at him, and then his face smoothed out as he realized he was simply surprised by how small she was. Even though his information on her included the fact that she was only five foot three, for some reason he’d expected her to appear taller.
Nevertheless, it was her—Ms. Genevieve Bowen, Silver, Colorado, bookstore owner and literacy booster, teen mentor, animal lover, occasional emergency foster mother. A woman so well-known for her random acts of kindness that her friends fondly referred to her as their own little Pollyanna.
Polly-pain-in-the-butt was more like it, Taggart thought, recalling the absolute futility of the past three months. Given Ms. Bowen’s glorified Girl Scout reputation, and the fact that your average model citizen didn’t know jack about being on the lam, he’d assumed he’d be able to track her down without breaking a sweat.
Wrong. First to his surprise and then to his exasperation—and his brothers’ not-so-subtle amusement—little Genevieve had made none of the usual beginner’s mistakes. Hell, she hadn’t made any mistakes. Instead, she’d simply vanished, turning a job that should have been a week-long romp into a test of Taggart’s cunning and perseverance.
It was just too damn bad for her that he was very, very good at his job.
That, being a methodical son of a bitch, he’d decided after losing her trail yet again to revisit all the places he’d initially pegged as being potential bolt holes for her, including her late great-uncle’s northern Montana cabin where she and her brother—who was currently being held without bail on charges of capital murder—had spent several long-ago summers.
And that, in an unpredictable turn of luck, he’d just happened to pull into that grocery store lot at the same time she’d been pulling out. Otherwise, he not only would have missed her, he’d have once again struck the cabin off his list for now and most likely spent another few weeks fruitlessly trying to locate her.
Instead, he’d called in the pickup’s plates to Gabe and followed her back here, managing to remain undetected only because he’d been pretty damn sure where they were going. Once again, what had been good for him had been bad for her.
But then, Genevieve hadn’t exactly had a banner year, what with her brother’s arrest for killing James Dunn, his client’s only son; her own unwanted role as the prosecution’s key witness and her dumb-ass decision to flee rather than testify.
Because now she was his. With a distinct surge of possessiveness, he watched as she reached the truck, keeping the binoculars trained on her vivid face as she retrieved a bag of groceries and trekked back the way she’d come.
Suddenly, just as she reached the stairs that led up to the cabin’s railed porch, she stopped. Swiveling her head, she looked straight at him.
Taggart knew damn well she couldn’t see him. Still, he felt her gaze like a lover’s touch. Rooted in place, he forgot to breathe, stunned as his skin prickled and he felt the oddest tug of recognition….
It seemed like an eternity before she looked away, gave the rest of the clearing a careful once-over, then squared her shoulders and went quickly up the trio of steps. Pausing under the wide overhang that
sheltered the door, she abruptly glanced one last time directly at the spot where he stood before she disappeared inside.
Annoyed, he blew out his pent-up breath, asking himself what the hell had just happened. Just who did she think she was? Some sort of psychic? His long-lost soul mate?
Yeah, right. It’d be a cold day in hell when he started believing in that kind of delusional mumbo jumbo.
Jaw clenched, he stowed the binoculars and surged into motion. Carefully hugging the shadow of the trees, he began to work his way toward the back of the cabin, his powerful body making short shrift of the thigh-high snowdrifts.
Enough cat and mouse. It was time to take her down.
Genevieve set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. Chilled despite the warmth of her parka, she rubbed her arms and did her best to dispel her lingering sense of unease.
Try as she might to downplay it, she’d had the most uncomfortable sensation of being watched while she was outside. It had been sharp, overwhelming, eerie—as palpable as an actual touch. Alarm had flickered along her spine; gooseflesh had erupted on her arms and prickled the nape of her neck.
She’d felt a powerful urge to run.
That’s what you get for staying up late last night reading Stephen King. Keep it up, and the next thing you know, you’ll start to think the trees are alive. Or that a mutant squirrel is coming to get you….
A wry little smile tugged briefly at the corners of her mouth. Okay. So maybe she was a wee bit jumpy. It wasn’t really surprising, not when her stop in town to get supplies had filled her with such conflicting feelings.
Typical of her current existence, she’d been scared to death that someone might recognize her while also wishing fervently that she might see a familiar face. Which was not only illogical and contradictory, but also highly improbable since the last time she’d been in the area for more than a night she’d been barely fifteen, nearly half the age she was now.