by Lisa Childs
“I can bring you home with me,” Candace said. “Garek and I have a great security setup. You’d be safe. But I need to check in at Payne Protection first. See what the plan is.”
“I haven’t hired Payne Protection,” Annalise said.
Candace chuckled. “You don’t hire family.”
“I’m not a Payne.” And neither was Nick—at least, not legally.
Candace glanced over again, but at Annalise’s belly—like she suspected that she carried one of them. “Your last name doesn’t have to be Payne to be part of the family.”
Annalise opened her mouth to argue, but Candace continued, “Your brother works for Payne Protection. And every bodyguard becomes part of the family.”
She needed her brother. But Cooper was right. She couldn’t risk upsetting Gage now. He had already been through too much. And if she tried going home alone and something happened to her...
She shuddered. She couldn’t risk that for Gage or for her baby. She had to accept help from the Paynes.
“Okay,” she agreed. “But can we stop somewhere first so I can pick up some things? I need clothes and toiletries.” Her overnight bag had been stolen with her car.
Candace glanced into the rearview mirror and nodded. “I haven’t noticed anyone following us. It should be safe.” A few miles farther, she pulled into the parking lot of a department store. “This should have everything you need.”
It wouldn’t have Nick. She’d once thought he was everything she needed. But Nick would never be there for her the way she needed him. He could be physically present even when he was injured, but she doubted he would ever be emotionally available. He’d shut off his emotions long ago, when he was a kid.
And now he wasn’t even physically around. He’d run off, leaving her to the protection of the Paynes. At least she could trust them.
As she reached for the door handle, Candace cursed.
Annalise’s hand trembled. She recognized the frustration and fear in that one word. “What?”
“I was wrong. We were being followed.” And she reached for her gun.
Chapter 6
What the hell had he agreed to? Sure, Nick wanted to work for Payne Protection. He had actually been thinking about it for a while—had been thinking about how bodyguards protected people. Nick usually just put them in danger.
Was that why someone was after Annalise? Was it his fault?
It had to be. Annalise was too sweet and honest to have angered anyone enough to go after her. But someone was after her.
He’d been too late getting back to the hospital. The Payne Protection SUV had already been pulling away from the lobby doors—with Annalise in the passenger seat and Candace driving. He’d pulled out behind them, but his hadn’t been the only vehicle.
It wasn’t Annalise’s small SUV. That would have been too conspicuous with its shot-out windows and bullet-ridden metal. That must have been ditched somewhere—for a rental with an Illinois plate. It was a nondescript sedan, something he might not have noticed if not for the plate and the fact that it stayed behind Candace’s SUV.
Why hadn’t she waited for him at the hospital?
Because Logan was giving the orders. He was the boss. Why the hell had Nick agreed to that?
He would do anything to keep Annalise safe...
He’d thought Candace would, too. But instead of heading toward the Payne Protection Agency, she pulled off into the parking lot of a busy department store. Maybe that was smart, though.
Whoever else was following her might not try anything here. But then, he and his partner hadn’t hesitated to open fire in a hospital parking garage. What would stop him now?
Nick.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just a coincidence that it had an Illinois plate. But it wasn’t a chance he was willing to take—not with Annalise’s safety at stake. So he careened into the lot behind the car.
He’d had to ditch his shot-up SUV, too. It was probably good that Logan had hired him since he now had a Payne Protection company vehicle. It had more horsepower than even his government SUV had had. He pushed hard on the accelerator and headed toward the sedan.
Before he could ram it, shots rang out. But the bullets didn’t strike his vehicle. They hit the glass of the SUV Candace drove, shattering the rear window.
Had Annalise been hit?
Rage coursing through him, he continued to drive straight toward the car. But as if the driver had finally noticed him, he gunned his engine. Nick could have chased the car as it sped from the lot. He didn’t.
His heart was beating hard and fast with fear and dread. He had to make certain that Annalise was okay. She was his only focus—she and the child she carried.
* * *
Garek Kozminski’s skin itched beneath his clothes that suddenly felt too tight, too constricting, like all the bars and bulletproof glass of the concrete fortress. He had been in prison before, a long time ago. And he’d vowed to his sister and to himself that he would never go back.
But he had been back—to visit his own father. And now he was visiting the man who’d tried to step into his father’s place when Patek Kozminski had gone to prison. But like his father, Viktor Chekov had only wanted Garek to steal for him.
“Bring back memories?” Chekov asked as he settled onto a chair across the table from Garek in the visitor’s area.
Too many memories. But Garek refused to admit that to the former crime boss—his former boss. He just grunted. “I didn’t come here to get all sentimental with you,” he said.
“Have you come to gloat?” Chekov asked. He looked older now than his fifty-five or sixty years. His hair was even grayer. His face was gray, too, and wrinkled. And he’d gotten thinner, his shoulders bowing as if he didn’t have the strength to hold them straight anymore. Or as if he carried too heavy a weight on them.
Guilt?
He doubted Chekov had enough of a conscience to feel any guilt. To feel anything.
Except concern for his daughter. That was what had driven him to confess to all his crimes in order to reduce her sentence for the people she’d killed and had tried to kill.
“No gloating,” Garek said. He couldn’t believe he had once feared this man. But he’d been a kid then—afraid of what the crime boss would do to his younger brother and sister if he defied him. “No reason to gloat.”
“You’ve gotten your revenge,” Chekov said. “Doesn’t it feel good?”
“Is that what this is about?” Garek asked. “Revenge?”
Viktor’s dark eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Revenge,” Garek said. “You brought it up. Isn’t that why you’re going after Nicholas Rus?”
A gasp of surprise escaped Viktor’s thin lips. “Nicholas? He’s in danger?”
“It almost sounds like you care,” Garek remarked. And the surprise was all his now.
“I like Nicholas,” Chekov admitted. “He’s one of the last honest lawmen.”
“He’s changed that,” Garek said. “He’s found other honest lawmen. He’s cleaned up River City.”
Chekov snorted. “I’d expect a naive remark like that from your brother, Milek. Not from you.”
Milek was the sensitive one—the artist. No one had ever called Garek naive.
“Nicholas would never make such a naive remark,” Chekov said. “He knows better. He knows there’s no cleaning up corruption. Men will always be greedy for money. For power.”
“What about revenge?” Garek asked, steering the conversation back where he wanted it. Motive. “Are men hungry for revenge?”
“Not just men,” Chekov said.
Garek’s pulse quickened. What was Viktor telling him? “Your daughter...”
“Is locked up in a psychiatric hospital wher
e she can’t hurt anyone,” Chekov said.
Garek snorted now. “Just because people are locked up doesn’t mean they don’t have any ability to get things done on the outside.”
Chekov uttered a dirty little chuckle. He was probably still ruling his crime empire from the inside despite Nick’s best efforts to contain him. Then he shrugged. “I would not hurt Nicholas.”
“There are plenty of other people who would like to, though,” Garek surmised.
Chekov nodded. “I have no problem with Nicholas. He has kept his word to me. He’s a man of honor.”
That meant more to Chekov than anything else—that a man kept his word. If someone was after revenge against Nick, it wasn’t Chekov.
“But some people don’t respect honor like I do,” he allowed.
“Who are these some people?” Garek asked. Not that he expected the mobster to give up names. Chekov was old-school. He would not narc on anyone else—even if he could have reduced his own sentence.
Predictably he shook his head. But then he added, “Tell Nicholas I hope that no harm comes to him.”
“You know Nick,” Garek said—because it was apparent that Chekov did. “He isn’t worried about himself.”
“I didn’t think Nicholas had anyone else to worry about,” Chekov said.
Neither had Garek...until he’d heard about Annalise Huxton. His wife had met the pregnant young woman. Was she carrying Nick’s baby?
And even more important, was she in danger because of Nick?
* * *
Annalise studied the house. It had a stockade fence around it and bars on the windows. This was where Nick had been staying in River City? Where her brother had been staying with him?
Nick held open the front door for her to walk past him. He’d left Candace to file the police report at the department store parking lot while he’d brought Annalise back here.
She glanced around the stark living room. They had a leather couch and a chair, but both had been duct-taped back together. What had happened to them?
“Are you okay?” Nick asked the question again—just as he had when he’d pulled open the passenger side door of the shot-up SUV.
And just as then, she assured him, “Yes.”
But that was only because Candace had pushed her down—below the windows. Otherwise she might have been hit. Glass from the back window had exploded throughout the vehicle and rained down onto the dash above Annalise’s head.
She reached up to touch her hair. Nick’s hand was already there, fingering through the tresses.
“There isn’t any glass,” he said as if he’d read her mind.
Sometimes she had wondered if he really could read minds. He seemed always to know what someone else was thinking or feeling. It was his own feelings that were hard to read—so hard that Annalise had occasionally wondered if he felt anything at all.
His hand moved from her hair to skim along her jaw. He tipped up her chin so that her gaze met his. He stared at her intently—as if he was trying really hard to read her mind now.
She shivered from his touch and because she knew he could see all. She had never been able to hide her thoughts or feelings. He had to have known that she loved him, that she had loved him for years. But she had finally realized love wasn’t enough—not when it was on only one side.
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked.
Maybe he didn’t know everything.
“About what?” she asked. Finally she summoned the willpower to step back, to step away from him. His hand fell to his side. But her face still tingled as if he was touching her yet. “My car being stolen before?”
“It wasn’t just your car,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, my office was broken into,” she said. “My apartment, too.”
That muscle twitched along his jaw. And he glanced around his place.
“Maybe if I had bars on the windows and a fence, it wouldn’t have happened,” she mused.
“Those don’t keep everyone out,” he murmured.
“Someone has broken in here, too?” she asked. And her pulse quickened even more than it already had from his touch. “Are we safe here?”
He nodded. “Gage put up the bars.”
“So he didn’t feel safe here?”
He sighed. “I don’t know if Gage will feel safe anywhere ever again.”
She shuddered. What had her brother been through? “Has he talked to you about what happened over there? Where he was those months he was missing?”
Nick sighed again. “He hasn’t talked much.”
Nick had been over there, too. He had never talked about it, either. But he was Nick. He rarely talked at all—at least, not about himself.
But Gage had once been so gregarious and charming. Even when he’d been missing, she hadn’t believed she’d lost her brother. Now that he was back, she was worried that she might have lost the man she had known and loved.
“Seems like neither Huxton has been talking to me like they used to,” Nick mused aloud.
“You haven’t talked to me, either,” she reminded him. Not since the night they’d made love. And he actually hadn’t done much talking that night, either.
Kissing...
Touching...
Stroking...
She shivered again.
“You’re cold.” He picked up a plaid blanket from the duct-taped couch and wrapped it around her shoulders. But he didn’t step back. His hands stayed, holding the blanket on her. “Or you’re in shock.” He peered into her eyes again. “Maybe you should go back to the hospital.”
“I’m fine,” she said irritably. “And I’m sick of everyone fussing.”
“Good thing you didn’t meet Mrs. Payne yet.” A slight smile curved his lips, and affection warmed his blue eyes. “She fusses.” But judging from his tone, he didn’t seem to mind it.
Of course, Nick had never had anyone fuss over him except Annalise...
He’d hated it when she’d done it. He’d called her a nuisance and a pest. He’d told her to get a life. They had been kids at the time. But his words had still stung because she’d loved him so much—even then.
“I won’t be here long enough to meet her,” Annalise said. “I need to go home tomorrow.” She had a closing on a home she’d sold and a property management business to run.
His grasp on her shoulders tightened. “You need to stay here where you can be protected.”
She didn’t feel safe. Staring up into his face, she felt scared. “Nick...”
“You should have called,” he said. “Or come to me.”
“About the break-ins?”
Finally his hands moved from her shoulders. But they only slipped lower—down her body—to her belly. He cupped it in his palms. “You should have called me about getting pregnant.”
The baby shifted beneath his hands as if she felt her daddy’s touch. Tears stung Annalise’s eyes. This was what she wanted. Nick and their baby. But it wasn’t what he wanted, or he would have called her after the night they’d made love. He would have come back to see her.
She was just a pest to him, just the nuisance she’d always been when they were kids. Even more so now that she carried his baby.
But maybe he didn’t have to know it was his. “Why would I have called you about that?” she asked.
“Because it’s my baby.” He said it as if he had no doubt, as if it was a foregone conclusion. He hadn’t looked that certain back at the hospital.
“Why would you think that?” Because she didn’t want him to think that. She didn’t want him to assume he had to take care of her because of the baby. She didn’t want to be a responsibility that he resented.
“The doctor said you’re twenty-four weeks along,” he said. “It was twen
ty-four weeks ago.”
She closed her eyes as images tumbled through her mind: Nick’s blue eyes darkening with desire as he stared down at her. His arms rippling as he dragged his shirt over his head, baring his chest but for a dusting of dark hair over his sculpted pecs. He was so muscular. So handsome, so sexy...
And the way he’d touched her...
The way he’d kissed her...
Her heart pounded, and it was hard to draw a deep breath, hard to focus on anything but her desire for him to touch her again, to kiss her again.
She opened her eyes and his face was close, his head lowered to hers. Anticipating his kiss, she drew in a quick gasp of air.
But he only stared at her—as if looking into her soul. “Are you telling me it’s not mine?”
She flinched as the baby kicked her ribs, as if in protest. She couldn’t lie to anyone, let alone Nick, and not about this. “I don’t—”
The muscle twitched in his cheek as he tightly clenched his jaw. But somehow he managed to ask, “Is there someone else, Annalise?”
Because of him, there had never been anyone else. Even knowing now that he would never return her feelings, she doubted there would ever be anyone else. Like Nick knew everything, he had to know that. So she began, “Of course—”
But then her cell phone rang. At least that hadn’t been in her car when they’d stolen it. It was in her purse. She fumbled inside for it, mumbling, “That’s him.”
Nick tensed. “Him?”
She nearly laughed at the expression on his face—the utter shock. He thought another man was calling her and that man was the father of her unborn child. Maybe Nick didn’t know her as well as she’d thought he did.
She held the phone out to him. “I can’t answer it,” she said. “I can’t talk to him right now.” Because Gage would hear it in her voice, the fear that hadn’t left her since the man had tried to pull her into the backseat of her vehicle. And she didn’t want him to worry.
He had enough problems of his own—more than she’d realized.