by Lisa Childs
And she groaned when she looked up into the face of the man who’d caught her. Her boss…
He held her arm as if to steady her. She probably had nearly fallen out of the rocking chair in which she’d been asleep. Fortunately she’d put the baby back in his crib before she’d taken her nap, or she might have dropped him.
She wasn’t proving to be much of a bodyguard or a nanny at the moment. “I’m sorry, Cooper. I must have just nodded off. Until now I’ve been alert—”
“You’re dead on your feet,” he said. “You need to go home.”
“The nanny left and Webber wouldn’t agree to having a new one come in to the house.”
He grunted but nodded. “Probably a wise precaution.”
“But I could have vetted her.”
“People can get really good fake credentials,” he said. “Or even good, innocent people can be corrupted with enough money.”
Was that what had happened with the mother? The woman who was nowhere around but pumped breast milk for her baby? She didn’t know if that had really been breast milk. She had no proof—yet—to back up her suspicions. So she wouldn’t bring them up until she had some evidence that Webber was lying.
Instead she asked, “But would whoever is after the little guy have enough money to bribe someone to help?”
She doubted that a single mother would have that kind of money. But was the mother trying to get her son back or giving him up? Nikki had no idea what was going on, and her head began to pound with her confusion. Or lack of sleep…
Cooper shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just telling you that no one can be trusted.”
Somehow she didn’t think they were talking about nannies anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll stay awake now.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m here to relieve you.”
“You’re going to babysit?”
“I have a son,” he reminded her. “I know how to take care of a baby. But I was actually thinking of bringing in Candace to take over this assignment.”
Nikki’s breath hissed out. “You’re not talking about just tonight, are you? You want to take me off the job already?” Her eyes stung, and she blinked hard, refusing to give in to tears, even ones of frustration.
“All of the people on Logan’s team have more experience,” he said.
“So you’re throwing in the towel already?” Nikki goaded him.
“What?” Cooper asked.
“That’s what Logan will think when you ask for help on your very first job,” she pointed out. “He’ll think you can’t handle it.”
“He’ll know I’m not properly staffed yet,” Cooper said, totally undaunted. Of course he had a better relationship with Logan than she did. He had Logan’s respect. “I need more guys.”
Guys. Of course. She glared at him.
“Or women—if they’re qualified,” Cooper said.
“I’m qualified.” In addition to the shooting range scores and self-defense maneuvers she’d mastered, she’d proved it under fire—more than once.
“You’re exhausted,” Cooper said. “You need to go home.”
She glared harder.
“You need some rest.”
“Then you’ll let me come back?”
He hesitated.
That was her greatest fear—that if she left, he wouldn’t let her return.
She glanced over at the crib where the baby slept peacefully. She couldn’t leave Blue and risk not getting to see him again. But then—when Webber found an adoptive family for his child—the baby would be gone. And Nikki would never be able see him again. How had she gotten attached—especially so quickly—to a child? That was so not like her. Maybe Cooper had cause for his concern.
“Have I given you any reason to doubt I can handle this assignment?” she asked.
He gestured to a corner of the nursery where a small camera lens poked through the crown molding.
Heat rushed to her face. “I take it you’ve watched some of the footage?”
His face reddening a little, too, he nodded.
“Why?” she asked, anger pushing her embarrassment aside. “Nothing’s happened. Why did you feel the need to check up on me?”
“It’s the first job for my agency,” he said. “I wanted to make sure everything was going well.”
“So you watched footage from all the other surveillance cameras?”
His face reddened more.
“So you trust the others, just not me?”
“Lars is the one I apparently shouldn’t have trusted,” he said.
Nikki wasn’t sure she disagreed but for some reason she felt compelled to defend him. “Because he has kissed me a few times?” She snorted. “You’re overreacting.”
“A few times?” Now Cooper’s face paled.
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop acting like I’m some helpless little girl who can’t take care of herself. I’m a woman. I date.” She couldn’t remember when she’d gone out last. So much had been happening with her family for the past couple of years that she hadn’t had time to think about herself—about her wants or needs. But thanks to Lars she was suddenly very aware she had denied those needs for too long.
“You’re dating Lars?” Cooper asked.
She wasn’t sure what the hell they were doing. But she couldn’t imagine them doing something as mundane as going out to dinner and a movie. They would both be bored senseless. Then again she couldn’t imagine being bored with Lars ever, not with the way he made her heart race, her pulse pound…
“That’s not any of your business,” she said.
“It is if you both want to keep working for me,” Cooper said.
She gasped at the ultimatum. “Really? Not even Logan forbade his employees to date or Candace and Garek wouldn’t be married and expecting their first baby.”
Cooper’s eyes widened with surprise. “Candace is pregnant? She didn’t say anything when I called her.”
“It’s new,” Nikki said. “Mom just told her she is.”
A laugh sputtered out of Cooper. “Of course Mom did.”
“You doubt her?”
“No,” he said. And any trace of amusement vanished as his expression became grim again. “I understand her better now…”
Nikki tensed. “What are you saying? You got it, too?” It was bad enough that Nick was that intuitive. But Cooper, as well?
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just have this really bad feeling. That’s why I watched that surveillance footage.”
“Of just me?”
He nodded, and his handsome face was grim, his jaw rigidly clenched.
She tensed. “Your really bad feeling is about me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have this feeling that something bad’s going to happen to you.”
She shivered, but then she forced a laugh, albeit an uneasy one. “You are worse than Logan about sheltering me,” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Neither do I.”
“You don’t care,” Cooper said. “You’re fearless, Nikki.”
“Says the Marine.”
“I was afraid,” Cooper said. “That fear is what kept me alive. You don’t have any fear.”
Which just proved again how little her brothers knew her. She was afraid—afraid of falling for someone and being betrayed and hurt like their mother had been. But like Cooper, that fear was keeping her safe. She was in no danger of falling for anyone, let alone Lars.
She wasn’t the hopeless romantic her mother was. She would never mistake attraction and desire for love. Even if she had sex with Lars, she wouldn’t fall for him. Maybe if she had sex with him, she would be less distracted than she was now.
“You know what,” she said. “I’ll take you up on that offer for a break.”
Cooper looked uneasy. Maybe in addition to his premonitions, he could read minds, too. Maybe he knew what she was going to do: look up Lars Ecklu
nd and scratch the itch he’d started.
Then she would be able to focus again on the case. She’d be able to find out who was after Blue and protect him—with her life if necessary.
*
“Who the hell are you?” Lars yelled. The blanket covered his head yet, and the fabric was too thick to let any light filter through it. He couldn’t see anything.
“What do you want?”
Footsteps scraped across concrete. More than one set. But then it would have taken more than one man to lift and carry him as easily as he’d been lifted and carried. Now the hands—at least two sets—dropped away, and he fell onto the hard surface.
His breath whooshed out on a grunt of discomfort. It wasn’t really pain, not compared to what he’d gone through before. While they had put the blanket around him, they hadn’t done anything to hurt him. Yet.
“Who are you?”
Was this what had happened to Emilia? Had the same people who’d taken her now taken him?
But why? What did they want? He didn’t have the baby, although he had every intention of taking custody of his nephew. Was that why he’d been abducted—because they’d figured out his intentions?
They weren’t going to stop him. Nobody could.
He struggled to free his arms, and the blanket finally loosened around him. Fists swinging, he flung off the wool fabric and confronted his kidnappers. He blinked, unable to believe his eyes.
Manny and Cole stood in front of him in what must have been some dark warehouse. It was all metal walls and roof and concrete floor. It was mostly dark, so he didn’t immediately notice that another man stood in the shadows—until Dane stepped into the tiny circle of light from the bare bulb swinging overhead.
Shocked, Lars could only murmur, “What the hell…?”
“What the hell—exactly,” Manny said. “What the hell are you up to?”
He glanced at Dane whose blank expression gave away nothing of his thoughts. If only Lars could be as stoic.
Because Manny and Cole must have gotten suspicious of how he’d been acting. He knew Dane wouldn’t have betrayed his confidence.
He shrugged off their suspicions. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Manny cursed at him then added, “Don’t lie to us! We’ve been through too much together to keep any secrets.”
“What makes you think I’m keeping any secrets?” Lars asked. And he glanced at Dane again. He had to be certain that his best friend hadn’t talked, because if he had, it may not have been just Manny and Cole with whom he’d shared Lars’s secret.
Cole caught that glance between them and jerked Dane around with a hand on his shoulder. “You said you didn’t know what the hell was going on!”
“You lied to us!” Manny exclaimed.
Dane shook his head. “I said I couldn’t tell you…”
Cole cursed.
“You just assumed I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know,” Dane continued.
“Playing semantic games with us?” Cole snorted in disgust. “What the hell happened to us? We had no secrets between us in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
Or the other places they’d been that no one could ever know about…
Lars knew everything there was to know about these guys. And above all, he knew that he could trust them. “I intended to bring you in on this.”
Because he had no choice.
Dane nodded. “That’s why I went along with their plan to abduct you.”
Lars glared at him.
And Dane laughed. “And because I thought it was damn funny, too.”
Lars glared harder at him.
“You used to love parties,” Dane reminded him. “So when they suggested a blanket party…”
“You were all in,” Lars said. “You could have just told them.”
“It’s not my story to tell,” Dane said. “And you would have been pissed if I had.”
A horrible thought occurred to Lars and he glanced around the warehouse, looking for anyone else who might have been lurking in the shadows. “Did you guys bring Cooper into this?”
“No,” Dane said.
“We thought about it,” Manny said. “But then decided he has bigger issues right now.”
“But you didn’t throw a blanket party for him.”
Cole chuckled. “He’s not keeping any secrets. He’s just stressed about starting his own business and taking on his first job. That’s why he—and we—need you to be at full capacity. We depend on each other. We can’t depend on someone we don’t trust.”
Lars flinched. It was true, though. Trust was huge in a unit—and, more important, in a friendship. But before he divulged too much, he had to get a promise from them—the same one he’d made Dane grant.
“Coop is stressed and under enormous pressure,” he agreed. “So we can’t bring him into this.”
Manny groaned. “I don’t want to keep any secrets, especially not from our new boss.” Manny wasn’t known for his ability to stay mum about anything—except their missions.
“It has nothing to do with him being our boss. Coop’s our friend,” Cole said. “That’s why we shouldn’t keep any secrets from him. We can trust him, too.”
Lars sighed. “I know. But he has too much to lose if this all goes south.”
Manny’s big body tensed. “What goes south? What the hell’s going on?”
“I’m planning to kidnap my nephew.”
Cole gasped.
“And I need your help,” he continued.
“That little baby at Webber’s—he’s your sister’s kid?” Manny asked, the gears almost visibly turning behind his dark eyes. “What happened to her?”
“She’s dead.”
Manny and Cole both reached out to him, each grabbing one of his shoulders. “I’m sorry, man,” Cole said. “I know she’s all the family you had.”
Cole had a lot of family himself, but he claimed to not want anything to do with them. Now Lars wondered if that was truly how he felt.
“She’s not all the family. She left a son.”
“You really intend to kidnap him?” Manny asked.
“I have to get him out of that place,” Lars said.
Dane shuddered and nodded in agreement. “It’s creepy. And so’s the lawyer. Even his own guards don’t trust him.”
“He has all those guards of his own yet,” Manny said. “That’s how we were able to slip away tonight to grab you. There are so many of them we won’t even be missed. So how are we going to get around them?”
“Same way we got around far more armed men on our other missions,” Lars said. “We’ll work together.”
The two men hesitated. And he couldn’t blame them. “I know what I’m asking,” he said. “You’re risking your lives and your freedom to help me.”
Manny snorted. “It’s bad when the worst that can happen isn’t even getting killed.” He was probably thinking about jail. He wouldn’t want to wind up in prison; a lot of his family was already there.
“You don’t have to help me,” Lars said. “Just don’t rat me out to Cooper. Or he’ll pull me off this assignment before I get a chance to even try for my nephew.”
“Cooper is the least of your problems,” Dane said.
Lars’s phone began to vibrate. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen, which was a text that said: This is Nikki Payne. Call me. His pulse quickened, more adrenaline surging through him now than it had when he’d been abducted.
Dane was close enough that he read the screen, too. “She’s your biggest problem,” his friend warned him. “I’m not sure how you’re going to get around her.”
“I have some ideas.”
If he could distract her…
“You just lost your sister,” Cole said. “Make sure that Cooper doesn’t lose his.”
“So you’re not going to help me?” His heart grew heavy. He had been counting on them. Without them, he didn’t know if he and the baby would get out of that estate ali
ve.
*
Sleep eluded Penny. She lay stiffly in the arms of her fiancé, trying not to keep him awake, as well.
But he was too attuned to her. Her tension was in his body, too. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her breath slipped out in a sigh that whispered across his bare chest.
“You can’t be worried about the wedding,” he said. “We have the very best wedding planner, my love.”
She tried to smile like she knew he wanted her to, but she was too worried. “I’m not worried about our wedding.”
“The marriage, then?”
She’d often remarked how the young couples coming through her chapel needed to focus more on that than the ceremony. The marriage was far more important than the wedding. The wedding was one day. The marriage was supposed to last a lifetime.
She knew that would be the case with her and Woodrow. It wasn’t their lifetime she was worried about—it was Nikki’s. “I think my daughter is in danger again.”
A sigh escaped his lips now. And he asked, “Why?”
“Because she’s working as a real bodyguard now.”
“I know. I was asking why you would worry about her. That girl has proven over and over again that she can take care of herself,” Woodrow said with a father’s pride in the young woman who would soon be his stepdaughter.
“I’m not sure that’s true this time,” Penny said. Because it wasn’t just Nikki’s life that was in danger but her heart, as well.
One of Cooper’s friends meant more to her than she was willing to admit—even to herself. Nikki was so convinced that she would never fall in love that she wouldn’t be aware she had until it was too late.
Woodrow stroked his fingers over her bare shoulder, and as always, her skin tingled with his touch. “You don’t have the connection with Nikki that you have with your other kids,” he reminded her.
Or that she had with him.
Her daughter had always been more of an enigma to Penny than anyone else. While they looked so much alike, appearance was really all they had in common.
“So don’t get worried about something you don’t know will happen,” he advised her. “Nikki will be fine.”
Penny wanted to take his advice; she wanted to believe him. But it was just too hard. Maybe she had finally developed that connection with Nikki that they had lacked—because she had no doubt her daughter was in danger.