by Lisa Childs
“It’s not like any of us have diaper-changing experience,” Lars pointed out. But he would have to learn to take care of his nephew.
Cooper snorted now. “You probably have more than Nikki. None of my brothers or I have been able to convince her to babysit.”
“But this isn’t actual babysitting,” Lars said. And he spoke to Nikki now, meeting her gaze across the conference room table. “Someone else can change the diapers. I’m sure Webber has a nanny.” They hadn’t seen one in the nursery, but he couldn’t imagine the lawyer getting his hands dirty. He was the type to hire other people to do that.
Had Emilia died in childbirth like he’d claimed? Or had he had someone kill her?
Emilia wouldn’t have willingly given up her child. Lars knew that. Even though she had set up the meeting with the adoption lawyer, she wouldn’t have gone through with it.
“True,” Cooper said again. “That’s why we need a real bodyguard in the nursery.”
Nikki sucked in a breath now, and her face flushed with embarrassment and pain. Her brother might as well have slapped her.
Lars glared at his boss. How could he be so insensitive?
Nikki obviously considered herself a real bodyguard. She wanted the chance to prove herself. Lars intended for her to get that chance even though he was setting her up for failure. He ignored the twinge of guilt he felt. He had to for Emilia’s son.
“You want one of us big guys lumbering around the nursery?” Lars asked. “Taking the kid to the park? We’re going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Exactly,” Cooper said. “Your presence will dissuade anyone from trying anything. That’s how we keep the kid safe.”
Nikki shook her head. “A real bodyguard knows that the best way to eliminate a threat is to identify it,” she said. “You’ll never know who’s after the kid unless you give him a chance to try for him.”
“You want to use the baby as bait to flush out the kidnappers?” Cooper asked.
“He’ll be safe the whole time,” Nikki said. “I’ll keep him safe.”
“Who will keep you safe?” Cooper asked.
“I will,” Lars quickly interjected. But it was a lie. He was the one who would hurt her most of all.
Chapter 5
Cooper’s heart pounded hard and fast, and sweat slicked his skin. He was going to die…
Of pleasure…
His beautiful wife rested her head on his chest, her brow damp, too. Her heart pounded as frantically as his before returning slowly to a normal rhythm.
Despite the physical release of making love with his gorgeous bride, tension gripped Cooper yet. He couldn’t relax, not when he had such an enormous decision to make.
“Wow,” Tanya murmured, and her lips skimmed across his chest. “That was amazing.”
“It always is.” No matter how many times they made love, it was a powerful experience. He’d never known the pleasure—the love—he had with Tanya.
“So why don’t you look happier?” she asked, and her fingertips skimmed along the ridge of his jaw, which he was tightly clenching. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something’s bothering you,” she said.
But he couldn’t pinpoint it. Was it Webber? Or his own team that was bothering him? The meeting hadn’t gone at all well today.
He told Tanya about it, like he told her everything. He loved this time with her—after the baby was in bed, after they’d made love, when they just lay in the dark, holding each other and talking.
Tanya chuckled. “I don’t believe it…”
“What?”
“That Nikki wants to be a nanny.” The entire family was well aware of Nikki’s aversion to babies. She’d rather detonate a bomb than change a diaper.
“Nikki wants to be a bodyguard,” he said. “She wants to flush out kidnappers.” She intended to use herself as bait every bit as much as the baby.
“You don’t know that there really are any kidnappers,” Tanya reminded him.
“No,” he agreed. “But I couldn’t imagine what else they might be after in that house.” The cold, stark mansion reminded him of the one where his wife had grown up and where she’d nearly lost her life not too long ago. Despite the sweat on his skin, he shivered.
“I didn’t even know that Myron had a child,” Tanya said. “I’m sure there aren’t too many other people aware of it, either. Of course as an adoption lawyer, he will have babies in his house from time to time but his own…?”
“He claims the kid is his.”
“You don’t believe him?”
Cooper shook his head. “Not a word that comes out of his mouth.”
Tanya sighed. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have told him you were too busy to take on a new client when he asked me about Payne Protection—”
He pressed a finger across her silky lips. “I had no other clients.”
“But your first client shouldn’t be someone you can’t trust,” she said and then sighed. “And nobody really trusts Myron Webber.”
“Because he’s a lawyer?”
“Because he’s Myron Webber,” she replied. “There’s something just a little…”
“Slimy?” Cooper asked.
She chuckled. “I was going to say off about him. But slimy works, too.”
“Has he had any formal complaints about him?” Cooper asked. “Anyone who might want revenge on him?”
She shivered and snuggled closer to his chest. He wrapped his arm around her bare shoulders, holding her tightly. His heart swelled with love for her. “He’s handled a few adoptions where the birth mothers have changed their minds. They claimed that he coerced them into signing papers they really hadn’t intended to sign.”
Cooper gasped. “That sounds worse than slimy. It sounds criminal.”
Tanya’s breath whispered across his skin as she sighed again. “It happens,” she said. “The mothers have second thoughts.”
“So they get their babies back?”
“Not if it’s gone past the waiting period,” she said. “And even if it hasn’t, a lot of the girls are not able to prove themselves fit to be a parent.”
Cooper expelled a breath now as realization dawned. “So one of those girls might feel compelled to take back what he stole from them—a baby.”
“He hasn’t stolen their babies,” Tanya said. “They came to him. They signed the papers. What about the mother of this baby?”
“She’s dead.” A ghost couldn’t steal a child. But another mother could. Nikki was right—damn her—they needed to identify the threat in order to protect that baby.
While Myron wasn’t innocent, that tiny infant was. Maybe it was because Cooper had a family of his own that he felt so protective of that child—because keeping his own child safe gave him nightmares. He would do anything for him and for Tanya. And now he would do anything for that infant living on Webber’s estate.
Cooper intended to find and eliminate the threat against him, even if that meant putting his sister in danger. Nikki swore she could handle it; maybe it was time he let her prove it.
*
Floorboards groaned beneath heavy footfalls. Nikki tensed. She had thought she was alone in the building, that everyone else had left after the meeting Cooper had called. She glanced up from her computer. She’d closed her door, but the light that had shone beneath it was gone. Either someone had shut off the light or was blocking it.
Her doorknob rattled as it began to turn. Her hand shaking slightly, she reached for her holster and drew out her gun. As the door creaked open, she pulled her Glock and pointed the barrel at the entrance.
The shadow—the enormous shadow—looming in her doorway, lifted his arms once his shoulders cleared the jamb. “It’s me,” Lars said. “Don’t shoot.”
“It’s you,” Nikki murmured with surprise. The man she usually wound up inadvertently pulling her gun on was her brother Nick. Of course, he didn’t believe it was all that inadvertent.
Maybe it hadn’t been in the beginning. But it was now. Nick had become her favorite brother. He was also her best shot at getting field work. He needed to start his own franchise of Payne Protection and soon. Logan wouldn’t be able to use the not-enough-experience excuse with Nick. As a former Marine and FBI agent, he had more life experience than Logan.
Of course he was still an FBI agent. He’d given his notice, but he hadn’t quite given up his job yet cleaning up corruption in the River City Police Department. He was still running River City PD until his replacement could be found.
Nikki sighed. So her actual best shot at getting field work anytime soon was here—thanks to this man.
“What does that mean?” Lars asked. “That you want to shoot me?”
She slid her gun back in the holster. “No…”
“You don’t sound so certain.”
“Don’t kiss me again,” she said.
He chuckled. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Her stomach clenched with a twinge of disappointment. Not that she’d really wanted him to kiss her again. But it would have been nice if he’d wanted to.
Had that kiss not affected him like it had her? Probably not. He was a flirt. He’d undoubtedly kissed a lot of women—so many that he probably didn’t even remember kissing her.
That kiss—and he—had been on her mind entirely too much since it had happened. And that wasn’t like her. She wasn’t easily distracted.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
He shrugged those impossibly broad shoulders. “I was checking in to see if Cooper has made a decision yet.”
“He went home a long time ago,” she said.
“Why haven’t you?” he asked.
Because, unlike her brothers, she had nobody to go home to. But that was a good thing and it kept her focused.
“I’m working,” she said.
“So Cooper did agree to you being the bodyguard nanny?”
“Not yet.” But he had to. Right? It was the only way for them to flush out the would-be kidnappers.
“You’re welcome, by the way.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why should I be thanking you?” For not kissing her again? She wasn’t exactly grateful about that, although she should have been.
“For recommending you for bodyguard duty.”
She would appreciate that if she was confident of his motivation. But she’d learned to trust no one. “I was going to suggest the same thing myself.”
It had been her plan.
“But Cooper doesn’t hear you,” Lars said.
And she flinched at the direct hit.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s true.”
She sighed. “Yes, it is. He’s not the only brother who doesn’t hear me.”
There was no way Logan would ever give her a franchise of her own, no matter how much life experience she managed to rack up.
“It’s not that they don’t care,” Lars said. “They love you and want to—” his deep voice cracked, and he cleared his throat before continuing “—protect you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “I know the spiel. I’ve heard the spiel over and over again. They fail to understand that I can take care of myself. I don’t need anyone to protect me.”
“It’s not just a spiel,” Lars said. “They mean it. They love you. And they want to protect you. They just don’t understand that’s not always—” his voice cracked again “—possible.”
He looked raw again, exposed, like he had in the nursery, like he was in pain. She asked him now what she’d wanted to ask him then, “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing…”
Because she believed in being open and honest, she was blunt. “You look like someone died.”
“A lot of people died,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes and tried to read his face, but it had gone blank, like he was trying to hide something. Pain?
“In Iraq?” she asked.
Cooper never talked about what he’d seen during his deployments. And Gage Huxton—another bodyguard and Marine—had been through hell. She could only imagine the horrors of war.
But then an image flashed through her mind—of the gun battle in the chapel. Of the young man bleeding out in the aisle, staining the white runner crimson. Of the woman staring up at her with such hatred, the woman she’d killed… No, Nikki hadn’t been to war, but she’d survived a battle or two.
But Lars had undoubtedly seen more battles than she had. He didn’t have to imagine war. He’d been there. He nodded. “Yeah…”
“I’m sorry,” she said, standing up to come around her desk. “You haven’t been back very long. Do you need to talk to someone?”
His lips curved up at the corners in a very slight grin. “You?”
“No.” She laughed. “Remember. My brothers protect me. I’ve been through very little.” In comparison to war, assaults and hostage situations and shoot-outs were very little. So she said nothing more.
He leaned down, lowering his face toward hers. She drew in a breath, bracing herself for a kiss. But he just stared into her eyes as if trying to read her mind. “Why don’t I believe you?” he murmured.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to hide.” She suspected that he could not say the same.
“Maybe I made a mistake,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have recommended you for the bodyguard position.”
She sucked in another breath, her lungs swelling with all the air. He glanced down at her breasts pushing against the material of her thin black sweater.
“Your brothers are right to protect you,” he said.
From men like him? Yes. But not from doing the job she wanted to do. “They should damn well know by now that I can take care of myself.”
He sighed, and he was so close that his warm breath whispered across her face. “I sure hope that you can.”
She shivered. “You think I will be in danger if Cooper gives me this assignment?”
*
She stared up at him, waiting for his reply. But he wasn’t certain how to answer her.
Then she laughed—maybe at herself—and said, “I’m sorry I asked that. Of course you don’t have any way of knowing if I’m going to be in danger or not. It’s not like you’re one of the kidnappers.”
Not yet. But he would be. He would get his nephew back. It would just be easier to do if Coop agreed to his plan. But would he? Would he put his sister in any danger?
“And you’re not like my mom and my brother Nick,” she continued.
“What are they like?” he wondered. Coop had talked about his mom before—a lot—during boot camp and past deployments. But he’d never mentioned Nick.
“Mom and Nick—they have this freaky way of just knowing things,” she said, and she shivered again despite the sweater she wore.
The material was thin, though. He could catch glimpses of what looked like a red bra beneath the black knit fabric. He would have expected she would wear black underwear under black. But then Nikki Payne was unlikely to do what anyone expected of her.
Should he have suggested her for the nanny position?
He’d done it because he thought he could overpower her and take the baby from her. But she might prove too great a distraction for him to do what he needed to do.
For Emilia…
He owed it to his sister to take care of her son like he’d promised he would take care of her.
“I wish I had that ability,” he said. “To just know things.”
Then he would have known that Emilia would be in trouble before he’d left her. He would have been able to protect her.
“Even they don’t know everything, though,” she murmured. “They have been surprised.”
“Life’s full of surprises,” Lars agreed, like walking into that nursery and finding his sister’s baby—the one part of her left in this world.
What had Myron done with her body? Would it ever be found?
Lars had checked in with the hospitals and morgues in River City, but no Jane Doe matching her description had turned up. And if she’d been identified, the death notification would have been made to him. He was her next of kin. But he wasn’t the last Ecklund. Now there was her son.
“Yes…” Nikki murmured, and her gaze slipped to his mouth, skimming across his lips like hers had earlier that day.
He needed to kiss her again. But he didn’t trust that she wouldn’t pull that gun. And he didn’t trust himself to leave it at just a kiss. She affected him too much.
“You’re a surprise,” she said.
“I am?”
“Yeah, after you mistook me for the receptionist, I figured you were just as sexist as the majority of my brothers.”
He chuckled but felt compelled to defend the male Paynes. “I told you, they just love and want to protect you.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Because I…” His voice cracked again with the emotion that was still too fresh, too raw, to contain. “I had a sister.”
“Had?” Her voice cracked as she repeated the word.
“She’s gone,” he said. And he’d never even had the chance to say goodbye. His eyes burned, and he squeezed them shut. So he never noticed her moving closer until her slender arms slid around him.
He was big—so much bigger than she was—but she held him. She was strong for him, offering the comfort he hadn’t been willing to take from his friend. He hadn’t wanted to buckle in front of Dane. When they’d only had each other to rely on in the war zones they’d been in, they had learned to always act tough. But he couldn’t summon the energy now to act. He could only feel—his pain—and her.
While her breasts, pressing against him, were soft, the rest of her was harder than he’d expected. Her slender arms were strong, holding him tightly. It had been a long time since anyone had held him.
His arms automatically wound around her, too, and he drew her closer. But she was so small that he couldn’t see her face. It was buried against his chest, her breath penetrating the thin material of his T-shirt. He wanted to see her beautiful face, so he lifted her.
But then seeing her wasn’t enough. He had to taste her. So he lowered his head to hers. And like he took the comfort she offered, he took her mouth. He kissed her hungrily—with all the emotions pummeling him. He kissed her until his own knees weakened and nearly buckled beneath their combined weight.