by J. K. Coi
“I assume we can’t do anything about it for the time being?”
She shook her head. “Not until I get a hit on this guy’s identity, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have something before the end of the day.”
He should be grateful, but he found himself unreasonably hoping that didn’t happen, at least not until after the charity gala. He had a feeling April was going to disappear from his life as soon as her assignment was over, and he realized he wanted at least one opportunity to dance with her before it happened. “Then I’m going to the club.” He hefted his pack over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”
She looked taken aback, as if she hadn’t noticed the gym bag in the excitement of her breakthrough. “Oh. Yes, sure.”
They left the apartment, but Nolan bypassed the elevators.
Her gaze narrowed. “Why are we taking the stairs?”
He shrugged. “It’s good exercise, right?”
Since she’d avoided the elevator on the way up to this floor, she knew exactly how good the exercise was, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
He pushed open the door and started down.
“Whoever broke into your building came up the stairs,” she reminded him.
“Well, we’ve got to catch this guy sometime, right?” He pushed through the heavy fire door.
“If you insist on this course, then at least let me go first to make sure the way is clear.”
“Can you honestly say that you think someone’s lying in wait for me on the tenth floor landing?” He pointed to the emptiness ahead of them, his voice bouncing off the concrete walls.
“Did you think your place was going to get trashed?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure everything was fine. After all, she’d been up those stairs not ten minutes ago and encountered absolutely nobody. “Didn’t you promise to be the perfect body for me to guard just last night?”
He laughed and swept his arm out with a flourish. “You’re right, I did. Please protect me from the stairwell dust bunnies.”
She stepped ahead of him. He may still be giving her grief, but some of his indignation had faded at least.
Four floors later, with eleven still to go, she broke down and asked, “What’s the real reason you didn’t want to take the elevator?”
“Getting tired?” He grinned. They descended side by side. She could have insisted he stay behind her, but she didn’t press her luck. “Like I said, it’s good exercise.”
She narrowed her gaze. “And it has nothing to do with my…issues with elevators?”
“I may have noticed that you didn’t seem particularly comfortable.” His awareness surprised her. It had been her experience that people like Steve Nolan, who’d been born to expect others to pay attention to them, rarely returned the favor. But he was proving to be very different from what she’d expected, in a lot of ways.
“It’s not that I’m afraid or anything,” she said.
“I never assumed that was the case.” He didn’t sound patronizing, and she let out a long breath.
She was being overly paranoid about the germs thing. It wasn’t like her father even wanted her by his side, anyway. But she still had hope that he would change his mind, and when he finally asked for her, if she’d caught something and didn’t realize it, or was sick and couldn’t go to him…
She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, and she swallowed the urge to explain her fears to Nolan.
She didn’t say anything the rest of the way down the stairs.
They took her car since he still didn’t have a rental, but Steve didn’t mind. She drove with as much competence as she did everything else, and he liked watching her. He liked that she could probably kick his ass, and that she had no problem telling him off, too. He liked that she had enough confidence to choose a blue dress, even though he’d suggested a black one. He liked her independence, her intelligence, her grit, and fire. The stiff and professional bodyguard he’d first met was still there, but now it was just another facet of a puzzle he was becoming desperate to solve.
All these years, he’d been trying to give his family back the kind of life that had been ripped from them when his father died. If he continued the way he was going—the way he’d always planned—Optimus Inc. would go global before the end of the year. He’d probably be engaged to a socialite just as fast. His mother would reclaim her place at the country club, and his sister would have her pick of rich, successful young men. He could be the man that his father had failed to be.
It should have been enough. He looked at April Porter. Why wasn’t it enough for him now?
At the club, they split up to change. Leo was waiting for him in the ring when he came out onto the floor, bouncing on the balls of his feet with a hard look on his face.
“We’ve got to stop doing this after you’ve had a bad day.” Steve groaned.
“Come on, tough guy. You can handle it.”
He grinned and got in the ring.
April was waiting for him when he finished his sparring match, and both he and Leo climbed down. She’d dressed in her gym attire with a pair of gloves tied by the laces over one shoulder and a towel over the other, but his fierce protector was in full bodyguard mode, sticking close with her eyes peeled for danger.
“Not bad.” Leo clapped him on the shoulder. “I think you almost gave me a bruise this time.” He had miles of experience and was just razzing Steve. “See you on Monday?” he called.
“I’ll let you know.” He started stripping off his gloves.
As Leo headed for the locker room, Steve tossed the gloves on the bench and collapsed there, draping his towel over the back of his neck.
“The two of you are pretty evenly matched,” April offered.
“No matter how many hours I put in, I can’t get a leg up on him.” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. “I thought I finally had him on that last move, but he danced out of the way like he saw me coming a mile away.”
“That’s because he did,” she said.
He looked up at her. She stood at attention beside him, looking so gorgeous he could barely hold himself back. All he wanted to do was throw her down on the canvas and do wicked things to her with his hands and his tongue.
“It’s not your speed or your strength that’s the problem.”
He hadn’t been able to get the taste of her out of his mind. Every little thing she did made him want to kiss her again. She chewed her bottom lip right now and he was this close to pulling her down onto his lap. “David can always take down Goliath with just one shot, as long as it’s the right shot. But you’re so eager to throw as many punches as you can, you’re never going to have the right shot.”
He’d actually gotten similar advice before. “But he’s relentless. There’s no time to hold back and wait for an opening that will never come. I’ve got to get in there and make my own opening.”
She shook her head. “Boxing isn’t about who can be the most aggressive.” There was a dark look in her eyes as she said it, as if the tip had conjured a memory for her.
“You sound as if that was a lesson you learned the hard way.”
She glanced down and visibly swallowed, but said nothing. Nope. She still wouldn’t let him in.
He told himself it was too soon but couldn’t help the stab of disappointment that speared him in the gut.
“A pro will tell you that a match is all about strategy,” she said. “It takes as much planning and preparation as anything else. You have to study, so that you know exactly what your opponent’s going to do before you get in the ring with him. And then it isn’t a matter of waiting for openings or pushing back, because you’ve worked out the entire fight from beginning to end before it even starts. No matter what he does, you can keep steering him where you want him until it’s time for that final shot, the one that takes him down.”
He soaked in her advice, but at the same time, he wanted to take the bottom lip she kept chewing on between his teeth and run his tongue across it. B
ut then she would stop talking, and when she spoke it was like being bathed in sunlight. She could tell him that an ice storm was on the way, and he would still melt.
“Everybody has a tell , and if you can figure out what your adversary’s are, then you use them against him. For example, you have a tendency to project your moves with a double step, especially your right cross. In fact, Leo’s shoulders tensed up every time you did it, so he obviously recognized it, and he was able to counter every time.”
He grinned. “Is that all?”
She hesitated. “Well…”
He chuckled.
She shrugged, drawing back a step with a crease in her brow. “It’s nothing, never mind. I didn’t mean to—”
He leaned forward and grabbed her hand to keep her from backing away. The contact shocked them both. Each of them drew in a short breath and froze in place.
When she would have extracted her hand from his, he squeezed. “I have an honest to goodness professional boxer offering me advice on my technique, and you better believe I’m going to suck every drop of knowledge out of her.”
Her cheeks went pink as if he’d offered to suck something else from her.
Damn. And now that’s exactly what he was thinking of, and he wasn’t going to get it out of his head until he got her alone.
“You throw too much weight in front of your lead step. It makes you vulnerable, because in that moment it wouldn’t take much to send you toppling off balance with the right nudge.” She cleared her throat and glanced down at his hand still clasping hers. “You know, I could maybe give you some pointers. If you wanted me to, I mean.” She shook her head almost before the words were completely out of her mouth. “Sorry, you don’t need… That’s presumptuous of me, and—”
He stopped her before she could take back the offer and stood up to look into her eyes. “Yes.”
She blushed even deeper, but nodded. “Okay.” He pulled the towel off her shoulder and draped it across the bench. Her gaze snapped up. “Uh, now?”
“Have you got somewhere better to be?” he asked with a smile.
“Not if you don’t.”
Her response didn’t satisfy him like he’d thought it would. Was he still just an assignment to her? There would come a time when it was no longer her job to be with him, and then what would her response be to that same question?
But he wasn’t going to be asking that question once this was all over. He was going to move on and seize the future he’d been planning for ten years, like it never happened. He was going to focus on giving his family the lifestyle they deserved.
Chapter Eight
April stood under the spray of water as she showered in the club’s locker room. She and Nolan had sparred together for about an hour, the best hour she could remember spending in a long time. Not too many guys would have been able to take boxing instruction from a woman, but his confidence shone from him like a beacon, and she quickly realized he wasn’t really taking her advice because he needed it. He was more than capable of analyzing his own weaknesses and hammering them into strengths. He had entered the ring with her because he enjoyed it, and Steve Nolan didn’t deny himself anything that would bring him pleasure.
That should have been just one more reason for her to keep her distance, but being with him, she didn’t think about death, germs, her career, her past, or anything else. He was like a force of nature, overwhelming her senses with his vitality and intensity, and all her worries stayed on the other side of those ropes. She had no choice but to focus on him completely.
A dangerous activity. Watching him move, watching the sweat trickle over every bulge of muscle, watching him watch her. More than once, the tips she’d opened her mouth to tell him floated away from her like all of her good intentions, and all the reasons why falling for him was a bad idea seemed unimportant.
He turned out to be a great partner, except for the fact that he’d refused to hit her. She’d egged him on, but he hadn’t budged. They danced around each other, and she gave him a few tips her dad had taught her back in the day, but whenever she came at him, he dodged and faked, and if it looked like she wouldn’t be able to evade a hit, he’d always pulled the punch.
When she’d climbed out of the ring, she had been breathing heavily, her entire body singing, her blood pumping. But not just because of the workout. Even now, she still hadn’t cooled off, even under the icy spray of water.
She turned off the shower and quickly dressed. But this time, Nolan was the one waiting for her when she came back out fifteen minutes later.
He’d changed back into his new jeans and sweater. It should be a sin for someone to look so good and so laid-back at the same time. He leaned against the post with his arms crossed , and his gaze turned scorching as she approached. “You have no idea the trouble I get into when left to my own devices,” he said in a low voice when she stopped in front of him. “Ten minutes waiting with nothing to do but imagine you naked in the showers, and I was this close to going in there and joining you.”
She hissed and looked around, but thankfully, they were alone. She understood by now that he thrived on unsettling people and she couldn’t take anything he said seriously, but her heart pounded despite the reminder. “You’re horrible. Why can’t you be serious just once?”
His eyes flared with challenge. He pulled away from the post and came closer. He traced the line of her jaw with his finger. “You’re not ready for me to be serious,” he murmured.
They stopped to pick up Nolan’s tuxedo for the gala. Luckily, it had been at the drycleaner’s and not his apartment, or it probably would have been slashed along with the rest of his clothes.
When they got back to his place, John was already there, waiting in the hall by Nolan’s front door. He nodded hello as they passed. April had insisted on some added backup for the gala tonight. Posing as Nolan’s date would keep her close to him, but now that the incidents had escalated into violence, she’d suggested to her boss that they should also have eyes on the sidelines to watch the crowd. The head of their agency was a good friend of April’s from college. When April went to Quantico, Nora had taken over her father’s security company, where she’d met John—now her husband and business partner—and she’d agreed with April.
April hung back at the front door to make it clear she wasn’t staying. “What time do you want me to return in order to leave for the event tonight?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll pick you up,” he said. Nolan hadn’t been overly impressed with the idea of more bodyguards, but surprisingly, he hadn’t argued with her. He seemed a little preoccupied, though. Was he having second thoughts about not having a real date?
She grimaced. “That’s probably not a good idea. It wouldn’t be—”
“Professional? I asked you out on a date, which means I get to be the one in charge of the details.”
“Not a real date,” she reminded him. She should keep reminding herself as well, because it was all too easy to envision herself on his arm as he looked down at her with the promise of what would come afterward gleaming from his eyes.
He grinned. “If we’re going to fool anyone, we’ve got to treat it like a date.”
“Fine, but you’re the client. You shouldn’t have to drive all the way out to Brooklyn when I could just come—”
His voice lowered. “April, if it doesn’t involve a security issue, you will not be calling the shots tonight. Do you understand that?”
She opened her mouth to object, but his expression turned dark. He stepped forward. Unprepared and unnerved, she took a corresponding step back. Her shoulder blades hit the closed door. His hand flattened against it, trapping her there between the wood…and a hard place.
“Tonight you are going to enjoy yourself. You are even going to let me get to know you.” He dipped his head.
“I am?” she croaked. A rush of goose bumps rose in response to the provocation of his hot breath against the too-sensitive skin at her nape, right there just b
eneath her ear.
“You are,” he promised. She felt his mouth twitch against the column of her neck. He was smiling.
A shiver of anticipation shook her.
“Do you think you can loosen that ironclad grip you’ve got on yourself long enough to do that?”
She swallowed hard. She was a control freak. Lately, so much had spiraled out of her control—including her father’s illness and her own future—that she hated the idea of willingly giving up any of the things she could control.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you care about getting to know me? Another few days and I’ll be out of your life again, anyway.”
He nodded, acknowledging without hesitation that their acquaintance had a short shelf-life. “But we have right here, right now.” He punctuated every word with a press of his lips to her neck, starting at her jaw and working his way down to the protrusion of her collarbone. Her legs turned to jelly, and her grip on the door handle tightened until she couldn’t feel her fingers. “And there’s no reason not to make the most of it.”
Could she do it? Could she give herself a free pass and live in the moment for one night? It wouldn’t be repeating her past mistakes with Jeremy if she kept her eyes wide open and her heart closed. Besides, she had to admit, she was curious. So far he’d been inappropriate, irreverent, and mostly charming, but what would it be like to get the full-on Steve Nolan charm, the kind of treatment that inspired entire websites to his prowess? Finally, she nodded. “As long as it doesn’t compromise your safety, I can agree to a certain level of…intimacy.”
“Good. Very good,” he murmured. She held her breath and waited for him to kiss her…but he didn’t. Abruptly, he drew back, looking like the cat that got the canary. “Then I’ll pick you up at eight. Be ready.”
She was still thinking about his proposal as she drove up to her father’s house, but the sight of the dark windows was sobering. She turned on the hall light as she unlocked the door, turned on the kitchen light on her way through to the living room, and turned on the lights going all the way up the stairs.