Mr. Dangerous (The Dangerous Delaney Brothers Book 1)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
READER INVITE
Sneak peak of Dangerous Love
Also by July Dawson
Mr. Dangerous
July Dawson
Copyright © 2017 by JULY DAWSON
All rights reserved.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
READER INVITE
I. Sneak peak of Dangerous Love
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Also by July Dawson
1
Naomi
If you already hate a man because he broke your heart, doing his laundry will not help his case.
Okay, I didn’t really know if these Egyptian cotton towels, mildewed and dried into stiff shapes at the door of the laundry room, had ever touched Rob Delaney’s chiseled body. It could have been any of the Delaney brothers visiting the family-mansion-turned-summer-house.
“Disgusting,” I said out loud. Even though none of them could hear me pronounce judgment. I was here to clean the house and open it before their next visit. I turned the washer onto hot and poured in a heaping cup of detergent.
I could probably just throw the towels out, but I balked at being so wasteful. With my sleeve pressed over my mouth and nose, I threw the towels into the steaming hot water and slammed the lid shut.
The Delaneys would probably never want these towels again if they knew what had happened to them. They would probably happily donate them to my kitten shelter for bedding.
If the Delaneys even liked kittens.
Well, I was almost out of here. The first two floors of the Delaney house were pristine. All I needed to do was run the vacuum across the basement floors and escape before whichever gorgeous, handsome, asshole Delaney showed up.
The floor above my head creaked.
“Dad?” I called hopefully. I’d taken over most of the family cleaning business, including taking personal care of the Delaney house. There was no point in hiring on extra staff when the Delaneys were never here for very long. And, as I always reminded myself, these terrible people paid us well for catering to their whims.
The footsteps overhead faded away. Oh, of course I could hear everything from the laundry room; it wasn’t insulated like the rest of the house. The Delaneys would never come down and use their fancy laundry room, with its two side-by-side silver high capacity washers and the long Corian counter for folding clothes. They couldn’t be arsed to do more than throw their towels in the general direction of the laundry room on their way from the hot tub.
I sighed. I really hoped it was my dad, not a burglar or worse, a Delaney.
I climbed the lushly carpeted stairs from the basement and emerged into the back hallway, between the kitchen and the garage. Everything up here was dark wood and Italian tile floors. Sunlight trickled down the hall from the expansive kitchen.
The garage door swung open, and I jumped, pressing my hand to my chest, even though I’d known someone was here.
Rob Delaney stepped into the house. He was even taller than he'd been as a teenager, broad-shouldered, and strikingly handsome: short black hair, piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones. It wasn't fair that someone so rich was so gorgeous, too. Did they use their money to buy better genes?
"I'm sorry I startled you," he said.
"It's you,” I blurted out. Then I bit my lip. Gosh, I sounded like an idiot.
No, worse. I sounded angry.
Rob gazed down at me with those tranquil, cool blue eyes. "Yes. It's me. Didn't your dad mention I was the one who asked for the house to be opened?"
I shook my head. "Doesn't matter to me. I just work here."
"Right," he said. "Well. I could have sworn the Suburban was an automatic. No? No auto in the garage?"
"No auto in the garage," I repeated. "I guess you should keep two unused cars on hand. In case you have a hankering to go for clam cakes, you wouldn't want a manual when you want auto, god forbid..."
He held up his hand as if waiting to be called on. There was a white cast on his wrist.
"I can't drive an auto," he said. "We might need to add chauffeur to your duties."
I smiled slightly at that, a smile of disbelief. After the accidental heat in my tone, he should have known what I thought of him – and his goddamn towels – but he was completely unaffected. He expected the help to hop to, whatever he needed.
"I came here to recuperate," he said. "Can't get much work done with a broken wrist. Might as well eat some clam cakes. If I can get there."
I crossed my arms over my chest. I would do his laundry and put his plates in the dishwasher, but being confined to an automobile with him? Just him standing there, with his big shoulders and his roguish little smirk, was too sexy for me to handle. I didn’t want to come any closer.
"I'm sure you can hire a driver in town."
"Naomi," he said, his voice suddenly soft and familiar. "I need you to help me. I don't want to have a bunch of people trekking in and out of here, waiting on me. I want one person here I can depend on."
"You don't want a bunch of people waiting on you, you just want me waiting on you?"
He smiled, white teeth flashing out of his handsome face. Oh, forget him and his perfect dental work and unnecessary gorgeousness. "When you say it like that, it sounds so inappropriate."
I took a deep breath. Think of the money. Think of the kittens. Don't think about being trapped in close proximity to your childhood crush who turned out to be a total dick, aka a typical billionaire. “Fine. It’ll be extra.”
“I’ll pay whatever you want,” he agreed.
I swung open the door to the basement stairs again. “Whatever. I have to finish cleaning your basement.”
"I wanted to go grab some lunch. I took a cab from the airport. Didn't st
op. I'm starving."
I leaned against the doorway, gathering myself, because my heart was beginning to pound with irritation. I will not yell at the billionaire. I will not yell at the billionaire. My voice came out low and cool. "I stocked the fridge."
He leaned back against the wall, crossing his muscular arms across his chest. Slowly, it dawned on me that he was mimicking me. I straightened up, letting my hands fall to my sides.
"Clam cakes?" he asked.
I sighed and took an assenting step toward him and the garage. "How do you stay so thin, eating like that?"
"I burn a few calories, here and there," he said. "Being a SEAL."
He held the door open for me, and I passed in front of him into the three-bay garage. The garage was empty except for the Suburban parked in the far stall. He locked the door behind us as I walked down the garage steps and then strode past me towards the Suburban.
I couldn't help staring at the lean V of his waist. Those broad shoulders made me want to run my hand over his back, to feel the hardness of his muscle under that soft-washed t-shirt. It was just as intense and impossible a desire as the temptation to punch him in his smug, beautiful face.
"I'd heard you joined the Navy," I said. "Didn't hear much besides that."
"Really?" he asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
When I swung up into the driver's seat, I breathed in the scent of leather and the citrus air freshener Dad had tucked beneath my seat. Little touches, he had told me, while we stood in the garage to start the unused vehicle.
"Guess we don't run in the same circles." I twisted the key in the ignition. The engine turned right over.
Rob pulled his seat belt across his chest, leaning towards the window to clip in. He was so big. Besides his intimidating height, he had broad shoulders above that narrow waist and powerfully muscled arms. His knees bumped into the dashboard before he pushed his seat back.
Even in such an oversized SUV, he seemed to take up all the space. I couldn't sit far enough away from him. I breathed in a new scent besides the leather-and-air-freshener smell: the minty, soapy scent of his body.
"You've taken good care of it," he said, patting the dash.
"Yeah," I said. "Well, that's what we do."
We take good care of the Delaneys.
We don’t expect them to take care of us. We don’t expect them to even notice.
2
Rob
As Naomi steered us along the tree-lined country road that led from the house on the shore back to Newport, I glanced over at her hands. They were petite, like her, with short, unpolished nails. There were small purple scars on the backs of her hands and an angry red cut across one thumb.
I can tell a lot about someone from their hands. Reading people is part of my job, part of what keeps me and my team alive. But Naomi has always been the hardest person in the world for me to read.
“You don’t have a future as a hand model,” I said.
“What?” Her eyes flickered to me; those eyes were golden-brown, long-lashed, and irritated, as usual. “A hand model?”
I reached out and stroked her injured thumb with my thumb. Her eyes flickered my way again, more confused than anything now.
“What happened?”
She didn’t pull away from my touch, and I felt like I’d won a small victory as I returned my hands to my own lap. Why the hell was she so angry at me? I hadn’t even seen her since we were seventeen.
“Cats,” she said shortly.
“Cats?”
“Yes, cats, I’m a crazy cat lady before my time. You want to turn on the radio? Find us some tunes?”
I shook my head. “I want to hear about these cats.”
“I run the Rhode Island Kitten Rescue,” she said reluctantly. “Which makes it sound like more than me and my sister.”
I nodded, encouraging her to go on.
She groaned. “Anyway, kitten season is coming up. Little kittens born to feral cats, all of which need to be spayed and neutered and placed in homes. Like I said. Crazy cat lady."
"And they repay you by tearing up your hands?"
"Well," she said, "It wasn't much of a living, doing dish detergent commercials. So it's all right."
"It sounds like you're a nice person. Caring about cats. Not crazy."
"You like cats?" There was a surprised note in her voice.
"I'm more of a dog person..."
"I thought so."
"...but I can't commit to a dog anyway. I travel all the time for work."
She swung the Suburban into a parking space at the edge of the Abby's Clam Shack parking lot. "Right. Of course you can't commit. I want to hear all about what it's like being a Navy SEAL."
"It's not that interesting."
She shot me a disbelieving look. It made me grin.
"You're right. It's incredibly interesting."
"You," she said, but she smiled slightly too, shaking her head. For a second, I glimpsed the old Naomi. The first few times we talked as teenagers, once things changed between us, she would look anywhere but at my face. She would bite down on her lower lip, holding back a shy smile. And it made me ache like crazy to kiss her.
We crunched across the gravel parking lot side-by-side. It was late lunchtime, and Abby's was full. A cool breeze blew in from the ocean a block away, carrying the tang of salt water. All the picnic tables below the flapping blue awning were occupied.
"We can always get takeout," Naomi said.
"I think you have to eat Abby's fresh out of the frying grease," I said, which made her pale. I had thought we were just bantering in the house. Now I wondered if I dragged her out for lunch when she not only didn't want to be with me, she didn't want to eat at all. "You want to go someplace else?"
She waved me off. "I'm here for you, buddy. We can wait for a table."
We ordered at the counter. I would have teased Naomi for ordering chicken tenders at the best seafood joint in town, but before I could, the woman at the counter asked, "Oh! Rob Delaney, is that you?"
I nodded. With her swinging blond hair and brown eyes, she was pretty, but she didn't ring any bells. She passed over the number tag to place on our table, holding it out to me so that our fingers brushed when I took it.
"Our favorite hometown hero!" she exclaimed. "Look, I'll get a table set up for you. Give me one minute."
"It's really okay," I said, but she was already bustling off. Two teenagers who had queued up behind us sighed.
"Hometown hero, huh?" Naomi asked.
"It's not what I would call myself," I said.
Naomi leaned in close, pulling her braid of dark hair over her shoulder. "Her name's Amy, by the way. We all went to high school together."
She had obviously leaned in to whisper, but this close together, I breathed in the creamy vanilla scent of shampoo from her glossy dark hair. It made me want to stroke the escaped strands of hair back from her forehead and kiss the bridge of her adorable nose.
Instead, I asked, "Was it that obvious I don't remember her?"
"I don't think anything's that obvious to Amy." Her voice was dry as she leaned away again.
Amy led us to a table up against the navy-blue-painted fence around the deck. From here, when I squinted between the buildings, I could catch a glimpse of the sun glinting off the ocean. Sometimes people interpret ocean view pretty broadly in Rhode Island.
"I'll be right back with your drinks," she promised me, patting my shoulder before she sashayed back through the crowd of tables. She hadn't actually spoken to Naomi.
"If I had known we were going out in public," Naomi said, tugging on her braid absently, "I would have put on some makeup. Especially with such a very important person. Aren't you embarrassed to be seen with me?"
Her tone was teasing and light, but I didn't buy it. I gave her a serious, appraising look over. She rolled her eyes, glancing away and twisting back in her seat as if to find that sliver view of the ocean. But she’d given me permission to study the face I�
��d missed, and I wasn’t going to pass it up.
In profile, her small nose tilted up dramatically at the end, like a tiny little ski slope. Her pink lips were wide and perfectly formed, with a distinct bow at the top. When we were teenagers, I'd thought far too often about kissing that bow, about getting Naomi to drop the smirk. The smirk, apparently, was permanent. Ten years had gone by, and Naomi was even pricklier than she'd been in high school.
Her eyes, though. Wide hazel eyes, touched with green, flecked with gold. Her lashes were long and even darker than her hair. Naomi might have been wearing a baggy blue t-shirt, jeans and a pair of battered running shoes, but she looked irresistible.
Not that I could let her know that.
But I could get away with telling her, "Oh, shut up. You're gorgeous and you know it."
She shook her head, looking pleased at the same time as she rejected the compliment. "I think Amy's probably more your style."
I glanced at Amy, who wound her way back through the crowd with a tray. She wore tight jeans and an even tighter white tank top embroidered with the Abby's logo.
"I think maybe you could take style tips from her," I said, to give Naomi something to prickle about. Naomi shook her head as Amy unloaded the sodas and a basket of fries.
"Here you go," Amy said, flashing a wide grin at me. "Everything else will be right out, all right? Let me know if you need anything. You can even text me while I'm at the counter in case I don't see you wave, here's my number."
When Amy had gone again, she left me with a Post-it note and Naomi with barely concealed laughter.