Sweet Seduction Shield

by Nicola Claire

  Ryan was in the process of building a cubby-house in the garden, a place for her to entertain her new school friends. It had a gabled roof, a miniature deck with railing, and little windows staring back towards the main house and out over the Hauraki Gulf. Daisy was set to paint it when it was done, I'd been given the task of making curtains. She'd shadowed Ryan every second he was out there laying the foundations and building the frame, nailing the weatherboard in place. School had meant she had to reluctantly tear herself away from his side, but that was when Ryan caught up on his own work.

  And his own work had been mainly involved in the closure - once and for all - of the Roan McLaren case. The ledger had done what I had always hoped it would. And the reach it had was still being realised.

  I didn't get the same feelings of dread I used to have when I thought of that man though. Time heals. Time with Ryan washes all those bad memories away. We had a new life, the evil that existed on the periphery before had been replaced with love and hope. I was in the process of starting my own accountancy firm up, here in Gulf Harbour. One of my first clients was the There Is Always Hope Trust. Ryan had handed over his trust into my care, and surprised me with the number of rentals he owned, which all contributed to the New Zealand Women's Refuge.

  Life was good, for all of us, and getting even better.

  "Thanks," I managed to say as he handed me the glass and then sank into the couch seat beside me.

  "Have a good sleep?"

  "Mmmm. Perfect. I could hear the sea gulls and the kids laughing. No better way to snooze."

  "It's a beautiful spot," he admitted.

  I flicked a gaze towards him. The haunted look he used to have, whenever he thought of this house and his birth mother, was gone. Peace painted a relaxed picture across his façade.

  There was more than just one person receiving therapy by living here.

  "What are the girls doing?" I asked, sipping my drink.

  "Daisy is singing, while Caitlin is swinging. I think its a show of some sort, because they take turns and give each other X Factor advice."

  I smiled. "She loves Caitlin visiting. Someone near her own age to spend time with."

  "She'll make new friends at school, but Harvey and Sherry need the break right now. Having Caitlin for a few hours lets them work through a few things. They've talked about shifting up here, and letting Caitlin start the same school as Daisy when she turns five in two week's time."

  Daisy would love that. "How are they going?"

  He gave me one of his intense looks, the one that says a conversation's worth of words in just one glance. I didn't need to read them though, because I felt it too. We were lucky to be alive. Harvey and Sherry were lucky to be alive. Daisy and Caitlin were lucky to be alive. But even that does not take away the memories.

  "Harvey has a lot of regrets," Ryan murmured. "And the inquiry at work is taking its toll."

  There'd been a very good reason why Harvey had cooperated with Simon Andrews; Roan McLaren's man. But valid reason or not, he'd chosen to keep his superiors - the Police - out of it, and tried to handle it on his own. It had backfired miserably. Resulting in a kidnapped five year old and two dead felons.

  The New Zealand Police had not taken the news kindly. Harvey was on paid compulsory leave, and Sherry, his wife, was trying to pick the pieces up. Ryan was helping where he could, unable to turn away from a friend in need. I didn't blame him. How can any of us know what we'd have done in the same situation as Detective Harvey Stone? I will not pass judgement on a parent in abject fear ever again.

  I've lived with fear, I know it intimately. I also know there is something beautiful if you make it out alive.

  Ryan slipped his hand into mine, fingers squeezing.

  "Do you like it here?" he whispered, lifting my wrist to his lips for a sweet kiss.

  "I love it here. Do you?"

  "Wherever you and Daisy are, Tiger," was all he said.

  He leaned forward and placed his glass on the table, then reached for mine and did the same. Then he lay back down on the couch, pulling me along the length of his body, shifting slightly, tucking me in against his side and chest.

  I couldn't get enough of snuggling into this man. I was at my happiest when we climbed into bed at night and he wrapped me up in his arms, like he was now. My head to his chest, my leg over one of his thighs, his arm draped down my back and over my hip. He kissed me in amongst my hair. Let out a contented sigh. And stroked tender fingers across my jeans, dipping down over my butt.

  "Did you ever think you'd live here?" I asked, voice quiet and at peace.

  "Not in a million years."

  "It's good, isn't it, Ryan?"

  "It's heaven on earth, Marie."

  "I love you."

  "Babe, I've loved you from the first day I met you."

  "From the moment you laid eyes on my butt?"

  He chuckled, gave said butt an affectionate squeeze, then said, "No. I was impressed with the butt, but I think something shifted inside me when you crawled out from under that desk and turned, chin up, face set, to look at me. I saw it then. I saw it hidden behind that confident shield. Strength. Control. Conviction. Then when you looked at Daisy's photo on your desk, I saw something else too, and I was lost, then and there."

  He paused, I lifted my head off his chest to look at his face. He had a far away gleam in his eyes, remembering that day probably. I could remember it vividly too. His concern, his compassion. His understanding. An understanding only someone who had been through hell like you can show.

  "What? What else did you see?"

  "A slight vulnerability wrapped up in the perfect shell."

  I frowned at him. He raised his eyebrows back at me.

  "I knew," he whispered, lifting a hand to brush my hair off my face, and then leaving it cupped around the back of my neck, "that given the right incentive and care you would prove my greatest challenge and most wonderful reward. You were everything I wanted in a woman. Strong. Capable. But someone I could also protect, someone I could do right by. Someone who needed me as much as I needed them."

  He was right. I did need him. He was my rudder, keeping me level and on track when the waves got too high and the wind became a gale. He was my lighthouse in the storm. He gave something better than a shield; he gave me hope, and belief, and the knowledge that I can reach the other side.

  And I gave him what he needed too. Someone to watch over, someone to fill that necessary place inside. That place in his psyche where he felt he had failed to protect his birth mother. That place in his heart where he needed to know he'd finally got it right.

  Ryan was always going to be a knight in shining armour. Just because he was mine and Daisy's, did not mean he wouldn't forever be trying to be someone else's too. It was just him. Who he now was. A good man, a moral person, an outstanding cop.

  And I loved him for it. And I could share that part of him from time to time, because I knew once he'd done his bit to help someone else in their hour of need, he'd come home to us.

  "You're so beautiful," he whispered, his eyes searing into mine, such an intensity there, such a depth of longing and love.

  "You're pretty hot, yourself," I whispered back.

  He held my gaze a moment longer, then lifted his head and pressed his lips to mine. Kissing Ryan was like come home, tasting paradise, and flying free like a bird all at once. He tilted my head with the grip of his hand at the base of my hair and deepened the kiss. His tongue darting inside and dancing with mine.

  I may have moaned.

  He may have groaned.

  X-rated was definitely on the cards.

  Then the thunderous stampede of five year olds as they headed through the house from the back door.

  Ryan dialled the kiss down, but refused to end it. I didn't complain.

  "Daddy! Daddy!" Daisy urged as she tugged on the back of Ryan's shirt. "It's time to get back to work! 'Nuff kissing Mummy. We want to paint our house!"

  He pulled b
ack to looked at me, surprise and awe in his beautiful brown eyes.

  They said, She called me Daddy.

  Mine smiled and replied, I know.

  His laughed, I don't know what to say.

  Mine whispered, Yes, you do. You were made for this.

  He turned his face and beamed at Daisy. "OK, Princess. I'm coming, I'm coming. What colour will we use first."

  "Well, duh!" Daisy replied heading for the door with a prima donna flounce in her step. "Red of course, silly."

  "Of course," he muttered, smoothly getting to his feet.

  He took a step away, and then spun back to look at me. I sucked a breath in at the sight that met my eyes.

  "Realised you want it yet, Tiger?" he asked, the most contented and happy look gracing his handsome, goatee bearded face.

  He didn't wait for an answer. Just offered a wink, spun on his heel and left.

  I stared after them. My family. My daughter. The man of my dreams.

  And in them, one day soon, his answer would be a yes.

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  Find out more about Nicola Claire books at:

  nicolaclairebooks.blogspot.com

  Read on for the first chapter in book one: The Tempting Touch Of Fire, of the new Paranormal Romance Series by Nicola Claire: Elemental Awakening.

  Chapter 1

  I Had A Sinking Feeling

  My heart thundered in my chest. I could feel every... single... beat. I thought I was dying.

  Hazy images of a horror movie memory skittered across my mind, trying valiantly to hide from me. Something had happened. And it was very bad. I tried to roll onto my side, but my movements were hindered. For a frozen moment in time, I feared my attacker was still here, pinning me to the ground. A whimper rose up from the depths of my chest, a sob broke free from my mouth.

  As soon as my lips parted dirt poured in. Suffocating, tasteless, gritty. It surrounded me, filled me, consumed me.

  And I knew I was dying.

  I struggled against the sensations of asphyxiation and entrapment. I dug my fingers into the dirt at my sides as though they were claws. I firmly kept my lips compressed in a thin line and took only shallow breaths through my nose, but the damage was done. I was surrounded with, buried in, entombed by... dirt.

  I frantically tried to remember where I was, how I got here. Not that those memories would probably get me out of this predicament, but it was a survival instinct that came from deep within. I couldn't run, I couldn't fight, so I tried to out-think my captor. Knowledge was power, and the knowledge of escape lay in remembering how and why I was here.

  I'd been out for an early morning run, before the store opened. I always ran through the Rose Gardens between my house and lower downtown. Then out along Tamaki Drive, taking in the sea and the gulls that swooped along the foreshore. The path for pedestrians along the winding drive is dotted with Pohutukawa Trees. I often brushed my hands across their gnarled and rough bark trunks as I jogged past.

  But I didn't have a memory of touching the bark, or of seeing the gulls in the sky. I hadn't made it to Tamaki Drive, so was I still in the Rose Gardens?

  I attempted another struggle against the binds that held me tight. I felt a responding tug against my limbs, then the shock of something pricking my skin, tearing at the flesh, scraping against my legs and wrists and sides. It wasn't enough that my mugger had buried me alive in the ground, he'd also securely tied me up with thorny rose bushes and vines.

  Differing emotions of bristling anger and heart-stopping panic warred inside me at that realisation.

  But I hadn't seen my attacker. I don't think I heard a thing at all. I simply woke to this nightmare, covered in dirt, unable to call for help. Unable to move without getting cut to shreds on thorns.

  What the hell did I do now?

  Relax, came a soft whisper, a rustling of leaves that somehow formed words.

  What the...?

  Let us in, said a similar voice, but this one held a different tone than the other. Not so much the rustling of leaves, as the creaking of branches overhead.

  Oh God, I was hallucinating. There was nothing else for it. I was about to pass out from lack of oxygen and thought the rose bushes were talking to me now. What a way to go. I always enjoyed nature, but right now I'd take the concrete jungle of Queen Street over lush green lawns, that was for sure.

  I waited for the next onslaught, but the roses had settled down. Instead I could hear something scratching, something stirring off to the side of my face in the dirt. I couldn't turn towards it, I couldn't turn away. The vines held me securely and any movement meant a thorn through my skin. A whimper sounded in the back of my throat. I hate insects. Creepy crawlies are the only animal life I cannot abide. Give me a rabid dog over the quivering legs of a soil dwelling insect any day.

  I couldn't help it, it came from deep down inside. I struggled away from that sound with all of my might, feeling every prick of blood and tear of my skin. Every scratch and tug and pull against me. I struggled for mere minutes, growing weaker by the second. Pain radiating from every scratch, every puncture wound in my flesh. I ached from straining, and stung from the harsh scratch of thorns. I'd never been one to shy away from getting dirty, but this was character changing.

  I didn't think I could enjoy nature ever again. I'd avoid parks and shun animals, and spend the rest of my life walking paved streets and living in tall buildings, far from the scent of soil.

  It must have been that thought that did it, because suddenly I could smell so much. The earthy loam of dirt, the pungent smell of a budding rose, the clean scent of newly mown grass, the crisp tang of salty air, the ugly stench of diesel, the acidic bite of bile. I realised that last one was coming from me and it wasn't the taste I was responding to, but the smell. How bizarre.

  My struggles had stopped while I took the plethora of scents in. As though their presence, and my recognition of them, was grounding, calming even. My heartbeat had settled, my skin no longer crawling with the sensations of insect-like feet, my nostrils no longer filled with dirt, but filled with the delightful smells and scents of the earth.

  And... I liked it. I liked it a lot. For a moment I just savoured it, all of it. Even the intrusion of exhaust fumes and pollution. My nose reacted badly to those, but immediately pulled the scents of nature around me to soothe. As though a natural protection from the outside world.

  I realised, from feeling trapped and imprisoned by something so very foul, I was now embraced within it, cared for by it, comforted and cosseted and protected from unnatural sights, sounds and smells. I still couldn't see, and I was no longer hearing any scratching sounds.

  But, oh God, could I smell. I wanted to sit up and see what else I could scent. I wanted to embrace the earth around me, give worship, roll around in the welcoming smell of dirt.

  As soon as those thoughts found my conscious mind, the earth above me shifted. Weight lifted off my body and the vines and rose bushes that had held me, parted and simply slipped away. I sat up gingerly, finding myself in a deep trench at what I presumed was the back of the Rose Gardens on Gladstone Road. Where my early morning run always took me. I hadn't made it to Tamaki Drive, I'd only made it this far. And fallen into an open pit in the early morning dark.

  What a dork. Clearly I'd tripped and fallen and then the dirt, being newly dug over, collapsed on top. Somehow making the rose bushes and some nearby vines get tangled up in the whole mess. My struggles had only gotten myself more entangled in them, until I almost buried myself alive, trapped by prickly thorns. What a friggin' freak.

  I shook my head and staggered out of the pit, into a brighter sunlit sky than when my self-inflicted ordeal began. I had no idea how much time
had passed, but by the position of the sun in the sky I was late. Way late for work. I dusted myself down, feeling soothed by the sensation of dirt beneath my palms as I cleaned my leggings of sod.

  Then I raced back up Gladstone Road and slipped my key in my apartment door. Traipsing dirt across the entranceway, I kicked off my running shoes and tiptoed towards the bathroom down the hall. My efforts were entirely wasted, as little spots of soil followed behind in a zigzagging trail. I showered as quickly as I could, but several hours in the dirt meant three shampoos and conditioning treatments, as well as half my extremely expensive Lilly of the Valley body-wash from Monsoon.

  Fifteen minutes later, no doubt half a day's pay packet, and I was pristine clean, but weirdly still smelling the earth. It was as though it was all around me. In the kitchen as I downed a glass and a half of milk. In the lounge as I snatched up my latest supplier's bill off the coffee table for work. And out on the concrete driveway of my apartment complex as I hot-trotted it towards the shop.

  I couldn't shake the scents of nature around me. Every blossom on a tree caught my attention, their fragrance meeting me first, calling my eyes to find out where that delightful scent came from. Crossing Parnell Road, to walk down the side in the sun, I could smell the hanging baskets several feet away, before I even registered they'd been replanted for Spring. Smells assaulted me at every corner, they were rich and delicious, making me lick my lips and smile a mile wide. After what had happened this morning, you'd think I would abhor anything to do with dirt. But I seemed to gravitate towards it, weaving along the pavement, avoiding harried mid-morning workers, just so I could walk beneath each basket overhead.