Warrior
for One Night
Nancy Gideon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my Road Warrior writer trio, who helped me tackle the ups, downs and almost off the edges of Lake Tahoe. Laurie, the Indie wheel who kept us from a Thelma and Louise ending, Loralee, who thankfully said she was afraid of going up in the gondola first, and Lana whose wet wipes saved my shredded bacon. Thanks, ladies!

Contents

Prologue

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

Prologue

She couldn’t breathe.

Smoke seeped in through the car’s vents, changing the air into something that tasted hot and raw and clawed all the way down.

From where she was belted in the Nova’s tiny back seat, she watched the ridge with mounting apprehension. It was lit with a bright sunset glow. And they were heading toward it, not away. Her mother never looked at it. Her fierce concentration was on the road ahead.

What was wrong? What could be worse than the approaching flames?

All morning Melody had watched her mother and the fire with equal dread as both built and grew more combustible. They could smell the acrid heat pulsing against the cheap walls of their motel as June Parrish paced and panted like a wild thing trapped at the edge of the blaze. She’d held a bag of ice to the ugly welt on her cheek as her frantic gaze cut between the silent phone and the door where all their belongings sat stuffed into the three duffel bags. For the hundredth time, she checked her wristwatch. Each passing minute added to her agitation. Finally, her mother stopped her restless movements and gave a savage sigh.

“Damn him.”

The curse exploded from her like boiling sap from the forest pines. She threw the ice to the floor and grabbed the bags.

“Come on, baby. If he’s not coming to us, we’re going to him. Get Karen.”

Heat from the parking lot hit, a solid wall. Melody ran to the room next door where she and her fifteen-year-old cousin had spent the night. They’d huddled together in the big bed in the dark, trying not to hear the sounds of an escalating argument in the other room. Three years older and a lifetime wiser, Karen hadn’t let her check to see if her mother was all right, even after the angry storm settled into a silence that was somehow…worse. They’d gotten no sleep, afraid of the fire sweeping down on them, terrified of the violence on the other side of the thin wall.

Karen had her single bag in hand. Her features were somber and somehow ancient, but she managed a tight smile as she banded the younger girl’s shoulders with a squeeze of support. The car was running. Karen climbed in front and Melody in back, next to their battered cooler and her father’s extra gear. They tore out of the driveway in a spit of gravel. Heading toward the flames.

The resort was a huge, hillside-hugging building hewn from native logs. Fuel for the fire. Ground pounders were on the roof, wetting it to protect against the deadly embers floating down on the hot wind. In their protective gear, one firefighter looked pretty much like the next. June pulled into the paved parking lot where the night before a half dozen pumper engines had sat waiting to go into the field along with a single helicopter. The copter was still there. Hope surged within Melody as she gripped the back of the seat in front of her.

“Is Paddy coming with us?” Even at a young twelve, she called her father by his name—at his insistence.

Her mother answered with a brusque “Stay in the car.”

The two girls did as they were told, sitting anxiously while the stench of smoke and grit slowly gained a stranglehold on them within the hot interior. They coughed, their eyes fixed on the long front porch and beginning to tear up. Then Karen reached for her lap belt.

“Mama said to wait.”

Karen’s tone was as harsh as the stuff they were trying to inhale. “You wait. I’ll be right back.” She slipped out of the car and raced up to the building, now backlit in an eerie glow.

The minutes passed. Melody hugged the bucket seat. She’d been raised to pay respect to the flames as if they were some unpredictable animal that was warm and friendly one moment then lunging with teeth bared the next. And she’d been taught to listen. But her mother hadn’t listened when she was told to head down the mountain in a hurry. She hadn’t taken the girls home where they’d be far removed from the danger massing on the other side of the ridge. So why should she?

As she got out of the back seat, brushing ash from her hair and eyes, Melody took a choking breath and simply stared in dismay. The left wing of the empty resort was no longer dark and abandoned. Light gleamed behind the wall of windows. A bright, flickering, fearsome light.

It was on fire.

“Mama! Karen!”

She ran up the many steps to the front porch and inside without a thought to her own safety. Her family was in there.

Smoke roiled down the hall, thick, black, deadly. Flames rimmed the door frame like a circus hoop. And she stood frozen, praying her mother or cousin would come jumping through it.

“Mama? Karen?”

A faint cry answered, female and afraid.

Covering her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her T-shirt, Melody ran toward the sound, crouching low. The heat was tremendous, prickling over her exposed skin as she ducked down the hallway. Her tears seemed to sizzle on her cheeks.

“Mama? Karen? Where are you?” she shouted, forcing the words through the searing thickness in her throat.

“Melody! Help me!”

Karen.

The room was swirling with smoke. Flames licked along the exposed ceiling timbers, eating through them with an insatiable hunger. She could hear them cracking over head as she stumbled through the choking haze.

And then she saw her cousin on the far side of the room. She lay sprawled on the floor beneath one of those huge beams. Her fingers were clawing at the floorboards as she tried to pull herself out from under it. Her face was a mask of terror and pain. Her eyes were on Melody.

“Help me, Mel! For God’s sake, help me!”

She started forward just as an ominous groaning sounded above her. She glanced up to see a huge decorative chandelier made of canvas and elk horns plummet toward her, a fireball. Screaming, she lunged back. The fixture hit like a comet, crashing into the floor, scattering debris and flame everywhere. The carpet ignited, becoming a sheet of fire. And on the other side, her cousin began to shriek.

There was no way across the room. No way to reach her fallen cousin. As her head grew light, starved by lack of oxygen, Melody remembered the men on the roof. If she could get their attention, have them turn their hoses…

“Melody! Don’t leave me! Mel!”

She burst out onto the porch, gasping, desperately afraid she’d succumb to the smoke before she could save her cousin. She stumbled down the steps, staggering into the front yard, where neatly groomed flower beds were beginning to wither and fry. She waved her arms and tried to call out for help, but her lungs seized up into a harsh paroxysm of coughing. She could hear screaming over the roar of the blaze, knowing it was the sound of her cousin, her best friend, roasting alive.

“Down here! Help me! There are people inside! Help me!”

One of the smoke wreathed figures on the roof began to turn.

Melody’s legs buckled. She went down on hands and knees, dizzy, gasping, sobbing. Through the grit filming her vision, she could see the forest on fire. As she swayed, fighting to stay conscious, she noticed something moving toward her from the back of the heavily timbered hillside, up between the evenly spaced tree trunks. It whirled to the edge of the trees and there it stopped, a ball of fire that took on a humanlike form with arms and head above the swirl of flames. It made a sound that raised the singed hair on the back of her neck, a sound like a woman screaming. The fire devil danced wildly before her horrified gaze, a frenzied dervish, then fell apart among the flames.

And that was the last thing Melody Parrish remembered.

Chapter 1

“What the hell was that? Mel, what’s going on up there?”

“Nothing. Be down in ten. Everything’s under control.”

Five minutes ago she wouldn’t have been lying.

Jimmy Doolittle once supposedly said there was no good reason to be flying near thunderstorms in peacetime. But then Jimmy had never fought against a lightning storm in a helicopter by dropping water from a Bambi Bucket.

She’d been in the air for five straight hours, swooping down through a double rainbow only once to take on fifty gallons of Jet A fuel. Thunderheads continued to gather mass in the surrounding quadrants, making it harder to dodge around the clouds. Rain battered against her windshield as the ride grew bumpy. When the call came to pull back, she ignored it, shifting her headphones from her ears to ring about her neck. And she kept working, beating back the flames one hundred gallons at a time. Wind swirled around the Long Ranger, hitting her from every possible direction as she went down for another dip. She’d taken the front door off for the water drop and leaves were blowing around in the cockpit. After putting in some big power changes to maintain altitude, she had started to worry. But she didn’t secondguess her decision to stay. There was no way she’d let the fire beat her.

She’d stayed in the air as darkness gathered. Knowing she had to be on the ground by 8:55 p.m. or face the wrath of the Bureau of Land Management safety gods, again, she dismissed the terse order to call it a night. She had until thirty minutes past sunset to make every second count. Then it was Miller time, not before. With position and instrument lights on, she followed her GPS heading. She was on the radio to her crew chief when halfway up the canyon, a thousand feet above the ground, at seventy-five-percent torque and ninety knots, she smacked into a solid wall of air.

The impact threw her into her shoulder straps. She heard a loud thump followed by the whine of rotor RPM decaying. Thinking it was engine failure, she lowered the collective while a million things ran through her mind. Should she turn the routine call into one of distress? Start emergency procedures? Was she going down? But then the rotor RPM came back and with a gust of relief, she realized she was still in control. Elated to get through what left too many aircraft looking like confetti, she sped on to Lake View, where the ground had never felt better.

With the blades still making a lazy circle overhead, she hopped out of the cockpit to toss her helmet to the older man waiting there.

“That was close,” she told her uncle as they both ducked low to trot out of the rotor wind. “I must have hit a micro burst or wind sheer. Bam. Like a brick wall. Make sure you give her a good once-over before we go up again to see that nothing was rattled loose.”

“I can tell you what’s rattled loose,” came another angry voice. “Your brain, that’s what. What the hell were you doing up there, Mel?”

Taking a breath to maintain her calm, Mel turned to face Quinn Naylor, her boss and long-ago, one-night lover, with a disarming smile. “I call it flying, Quinn.”

“By the seat of your tight pants,” he shouted back at her, not in the least appeased by her levity. “I call it reckless. I thought I made myself clear when I brought you in on this gig. There’s no room in the air for any John or Jane Wayne heroics. That’s not how I run my show.”

“I was getting the job done,” she yelled back at him, giving up on civility to go toe-to-toe on the tarmac. She was an impressive five-ten in her La Sportiva boots, but he had a good five inches of tightly compacted fury on her.

“Not with my crew. Not anymore. Go home, Mel. I’m pulling your ticket.”

Too angry to feel shock or distress, she pushed into his face with an aggressive snarl. “Take your crew and shove it. I’ll catch another ride.”

“No, you won’t.”

The flat, brutal way he said that finally cut through her arrogant pose. She knew a moment of reassessing regret, but it was seconds too late to stop the rest of his decree.

“No one’s going to call you up, not even when the only thing they have left to throw at the fire is spit. You’re a menace up there, Mel. You’re dangerous and you’re unreliable, just like your old man.”

Then, in a soft voice that was somehow so much worse than his screaming of minutes ago, he repeated, “Go home, Mel. There’s nothing for you here.”

She turned away from him, furious, frightened and too prideful to let him, of all people, see it. “Thanks for nothing, Quinn.” She didn’t need charity from the likes of Quinn Naylor. And she didn’t need to invest heart and soul where she wasn’t appreciated. She gripped her uncle’s arm and tugged hard. “Come on, Charley. Let’s go.”

As she stalked away, her reluctant crew chief uncle in tow, Quinn yelled after them, “Tell Karen hello for me.”

“I’ll do that, Quinn,” Charley agreed affably and was almost pulled off his feet for his troubles.

As she stuffed her few belongings into her duffel, the magnitude of what had just happened settled in deep and dire. She paused, leaning on her palms on the edge of the bed, panic swelling inside until her head ached with it. Until her eyes swam with it. What if he was true to his word? What if he got her blackballed from doing contract work in this, the height of fire season? When she was counting so desperately on the money to keep their business afloat? To keep them afloat.

What had she done?

“Don’t worry, Mellie.” Her uncle’s big hand fell warm and comforting on her shoulder. “You and Quinn just always seem to rub each other the wrong way, but I can’t believe he’d turn his back on our friendship.”

“I hope you’re right, Charley.” For all their sakes.

But he wasn’t. The next morning proved Quinn Naylor a man of his word. There was no work to be found, no crew that would have her, even with pilots scarce and long hours looming. She had every door politely but firmly closed in her face until all that was left was a disgraced retreat. She wouldn’t go begging. No matter how bad things got. If that was what Naylor was hoping for, he could wait until this particular hell froze over.

“We’ll get by,” Charley vowed with his eternal optimism. But he wasn’t the one paying the bills. He wasn’t the one writing the checks, hoping the bank would clear them. He wasn’t the one looking over the long list of debts owed, dividing them into piles of can-wait, not-yet, and last-call. They needed to make repairs. They needed to pay their insurance premium. And it would be nice to have something in the refrigerator other than beer and tortillas.

“We’ll find a way,” she assured him with a confidence she was far from feeling.

She wasn’t one for belief in miracles. Especially when she opened the door of her makeshift home in the back of their hangar and started picking up the scattering of mail strewn about the floor. Bills. Second Notice. Final Notice. She sorted and tossed them one by one into the wastebasket by the door. Problem solved. For the moment. Then, she caught sight of the light blinking on her answering machine. Hoping it was a crew leader having come to his senses, she hit playback.

“Ms. Parrish, my name is Jack Chaney. I’m looking for a pilot with a lot of moxie. If you’re looking for a job that pays a helluva lot more than you’re making now, give me a call.”

“What’s that all about?” Charley asked, observing her odd concentration.

“I’m not quite sure. Maybe just the life ring we need to keep us from going under for the third time.”

She’d made the follow-up call to Personal Protection Professionals out of curiosity. What would a private protection agency want with someone like her? But after talking, first over the phone, then face-to-face, with its owner and badass operator Jack Chaney she got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, she was in the right place at exactly the right time. Chaney was looking for someone to do piloting security work on an on-call basis. The money was good. The money was actually great—and just the infusion of life-sustaining capital to support her and her uncle’s air charter service until Quinn Naylor saw fit to give her a break. There was nothing in the short assignments to get in the way of the everyday operation of Wings of Fire. And Chaney clinched the deal by paying off the balance on her overdue insurance to keep her airborne. She had the talent and the tools and he had the connections. A marriage made in bartering heaven.

Four weeks later, feeling silly in her formfitting flight suit with its howling wolf logo stitched over her left breast, with her licensed weapon tucked almost as an embarrassment under the seat of her Bell Long Ranger, she set down in Las Vegas to pick up her first assignment. Newly trained in firearms skills, hand-to-hand, surveillance and the legal ins and outs of employing any of those methods under the guise of a bodyguard she felt strong and confident in her new role. Until she got her first look at her client.

Xander Caufield, an insurance specialist carrying a fortune in rare stamps to an exhibit/trade show in Reno. That didn’t sound too dangerous. Or exciting. She was to ferry him wherever he wanted to go and keep him and the contents of his locked case safe. Not exactly shuttling military secrets. Old stamps were about as thrilling as the envelopes she’d tossed into the waste can. She couldn’t imagine any high-level intrigue going on there. But it was her first sizable paycheck, slotted to cover her fuel bill, and she would take it as seriously as the number of zeroes ahead of the decimal point.

She waited in the broil of the midday Nevada sun as a sleek limo approached, fighting the impulse to shade her eyes to get a better look at the man stepping out of that big backseat toting a metal courier case and a garment bag. With the glare off the hardtop, all she could discern were polished shoes and an immaculate suit. The first thing that impressed her, because she couldn’t see his features, was the way he moved. He had a quick, aggressive step implying no hesitation in wherever he was going. An all business stride. Together with the expensive suit, that got her hot-guy Geiger counter ticking away at a brisk pace. Then he crossed into the shade of the Ranger and the needle went off the charts.

He was Maxim gorgeous. Dark, styled, but in no way soft. Chiseled masculine features, a heavy slash of brows, uncompromising mouth and a direct stare that could probably bend steel bars. She caught herself before wetting her lips but allowed an inner rowl-rowl. His gaze touched on her briefly as she came forward to greet him, her hand extended to take his bag.

“Mr. Caufield, I’m Mel Par—”

“Let’s go. I’m in a hurry.”

She rocked back on her heels as he strode by, her brows lifting slightly. Aware that her hand still hung in midair, she scrubbed it against the other one and let both fall to her sides. “All righty then. Welcome aboard, buckle up and we’ll get airborne.”

He climbed up into the copter, giving her a glimpse of a monumentally nice butt. But since he was acting like one, her interest cooled considerably. Sometimes good looks just couldn’t overcome bad manners. A shame.

He settled into the back, draping his suit bag over one seat, strapping into the other. Situating the case between his elegantly clad feet, he looked purposefully out the window. Dismissing her as if she were invisible.

Great. See if she’d offer the in-flight movie.

After a quick preflight check and a chat with the tower, she had them up and off the flat Vegas desert.

The flight was silent and uneventful. Easy money. Because small talk with her coldly gorgeous passenger was off the table, she fiddled with the radio, trying to pick up chatter on the latest blaze chewing its way through remote California forest land, heading for her back door. So far, they were trying to contain it with backfires and burnouts, but it was proving to be a tricky beast. Dry conditions and high winds had it skipping and shifting one step ahead of their best efforts to suppress it.

Listening to the dispatcher and the back-and-forth banter, a fierce longing to be in the thick of it had her clenching her teeth and calling down all manner of ills upon Quinn Naylor. It didn’t matter that she had a job, that her time was well paid for by her arrogant passenger in back. If she thought there was the slightest chance she could zip over the state line and be toting hand crews and hotshots from dawn until dusk, she’d have pushed Mr. Xander I’mtoo-damned-important-to-give-you-a-polite-nod Caufield out the back door to let his glacial attitude warm a bit out in the sun and sand. But that wasn’t going to happen and Caufield’s comfy ride was guaranteed for the moment.

And it didn’t hurt that he was so easy on the eyes.

She settled back in her seat and tried to calm her mood toward her meal ticket.

Mel appreciated affluent men…from afar. She enjoyed fantasizing about those almost too pretty glam boys in the designer suits who attended the theater and drove cars with unpronounceable names. The ones who wore silky scarves or pastel sweaters draped around their necks for no apparent reason and had their nails done. After a long day in the air, after sharing raucous laughs and longnecks with the crew, she found herself imagining what it would be like spending the evening with a man who didn’t smell of smoke and sweat, who didn’t pepper his sentences with profanity and fire acronyms, who could talk about something other than weather systems, fuel management and the closest available waitress with big hooters. A man who didn’t live from season to season on a puny GS rate that hardly covered the bets laid down at the pool table. One who could take her to a restaurant that didn’t serve hot wings as the main entrée.

The men she knew were her drinking buddies, her coworkers, and not the stuff of romantic dreams. In the air and on the ground, they were heroes. Up close, they tended to be petulant, obnoxious, controlling or just plain more trouble than they were worth. She didn’t actually know what she’d do with one of those swanky cover boys if he stepped off his pedestal and into her rather grimy check-to-check existence. But she did like ogling them. And Caufield was worth a long, long look.

She glanced back at him in her mirror. He was staring straight at her, and from the furrowed concentration of his brows, apparently had been for some time. That intense and not quite flattering study gave her a sudden chill. She wasn’t unfamiliar with men’s attention. She’d had them stare at her in lust, in anger, in warm camaraderie. But this was none of those things. His look was as sharp and precise as a surgeon’s blade and her pulse jumped in alarm. What on earth had she done to deserve a slashing tribute from a man she’d never met, didn’t know and had no intention of getting to know better? Maybe he didn’t like to fly. Maybe he didn’t like women who flew. Maybe he didn’t like women. Whatever his problem was, it was giving her the creeps.

Reaching up, she snagged the curtain that separated the cockpit from the back and jerked it closed. Still, she felt the prickle of his stare and was glad to crest the mountains to see the soup bowl of Reno below with its handful of resort hotels sticking up from the desert floor like dominoes. Great. Her first assignment and she was stuck shuttling some weirdo with an attitude and issues. And a great butt.

A car was waiting. She had to jog to get ahead of her client to efficiently open the door. He didn’t look at her, merely tossed his bag in first before sliding into the cool, dark interior. He paid her no attention until she climbed in to take the opposite seat. His surprise was evident in the widening of his eyes. Hazel eyes, with mysterious hints of green. They were gorgeous, too.

“Door-to-door service,” she explained. “Part of the job.”

“You don’t really need—”

“Yes, I do.”

She pulled the door shut, ending any further protest. When push came to shove, she could be rude and undiplomatic, too.

He smelled good.

It was a short hop to the hotel, which bordered the airport. In those brief minutes, the chilly limo filled with the faint scent of whatever exotic cologne he was wearing. It had her nose twitching and her meter ticking again. Because there was nowhere else to look, she found herself studying his hands. Clean, long fingered with neat nails. Not pale as she would have expected from a high-rise type, but lightly bronzed. Probably the tanner rather than the true outdoors. No wedding ring or sign that he’d ever worn one.

She felt his stare and slowly let her gaze lift to meet it. His directness unnerved her, and she was sure he knew it, but she matched it unflinchingly for a long silent minute. Then, feeling rather silly with their stare down, she broke the stalemate.

“Will you be needing me again tonight?”

“No. I’ll see you have an itinerary in the morning.”

She nodded. How frigidly professional of him. He had a nice voice, clipped but low, soft and a little gruff around the edges. In other circumstances, sexy as hell. Who was she kidding? Everything about him was sexy as hell. Except his attitude.

They pulled into the hotel circle, and again he gave her a questioning look when she climbed out with him. She relieved him of the need to ask.

“As long as you have that case, consider us Siamese twins.”

He didn’t smile. He didn’t betray any displeasure. She began to wonder if he had a pulse.

She stood slightly behind him at the check-in desk, aware, without being distracted by the surrounding chaos of the casino behind them, of everyone within snatch-and-grab range. She didn’t offer to hold his bags. She wasn’t there to be his porter. She was there to protect his butt. A delicious duty had there been a little shorter stick up it.

When he had his key card in hand, she walked close to his elbow as they wound through the game floor. The noise and lights and mill of gamblers made her edgy. Nervously, she went over all that Chaney and his instructors had taught her about being ready and vigilant and…damn. She’d left her pistol under the seat of the Ranger. A lot of good it would do there if some collector-stamp junkie leaped on them from behind the nickel slots. Feeling sheepish, she adjusted her walk into ultra tough chick mode, hoping that would be enough to discourage anyone from a tussle. It must have worked, because no one approached them. Or it could have been the arctic blast exuded by Caufield.

The elavator doors closed and up they went. Just as she started to relax, she could see him give her a quick once over in the reflective strip above the door. Nothing flattering about it.

“Tomorrow, do you think you could wear something a little less…obvious?”

She didn’t turn. Instead, she met his gaze in the polished bronze. Her teeth bared in what he couldn’t mistake as a smile. “Whatever you like, Mr. Caufield. Would you prefer business casual or escort service?”

The corners of his mouth twitched, and suddenly, she wanted to see his smile. She bet it would do glorious things to the sharp bone structure of his face. But no such luck.

“I’ll leave that up to your discretion.”

She marched him down to his room and slipped in first to give it a brief but thorough check, acting as if she’d performed this task with countless clients more important than himself. At her nod of all clear, he entered, hanging his garment bag in the closet and tossing the case on the bed. It gave a slight bounce on the taut spread and Mel wondered in wildly unprofessional and inappropriate curiosity how it would feel to take a similar bounce on that bed beneath Xander Caufield. Like being pressed between an iron and ironing board, she assumed, dismissing the fleeting fantasy with a grim smile.

“If you need me—”

“I have your cell number.”

He was levering out of his shiny shoes, peeling his socks off with them. As his bare toes curled into the nap of the carpet, a purely salacious chill raced through her. He was staring at her again, this time with slight impatience.

“Good night, Ms. Parrish.”

There was no reason to linger.

He latched the door behind her and released his pent-up breath. Slipping out of his jacket, Xander let it drop carelessly over the back of the desk chair before he settled on the edge of the bed. He snapped the catches on the case and pulled out the contents he’d brought with him. A fat insurance file and the real reason he was in Reno.

It wasn’t about stamps.

Chapter 2

Sipping the bottled water that came with his delivered meal, Xander leaned back on the bank of pillows he’d wedged against the backboard of his bed. He was wearing only his suit pants, needing the chill of the climate-controlled air against his bare chest and feet to keep his weary senses sharp. He opened his file and spread the reports across the bedspread to give them closer study. He had them memorized, but there was always the chance that he’d missed something. The way he had that afternoon.

His pilot wasn’t what he’d expected and he didn’t like to be surprised. Mel Parrish should have been a man. When she’d told him her name, he’d been knocked off balance, with all his preconceptions askew. The quick glimpse he’d dared take of her while scrambling for his composure revealed the worst. Young, attractive, female. How had those facts gotten under his radar? Need-to-know facts to a man who prided himself on details.

Her being a woman opened up a whole different avenue upon which to discover what he needed to know. But it didn’t change the facts in the file.

He was tracking an arsonist for hire. One who lit a torch for the insurance money. One who either used or created fires to cover his fraudulent activity. In the past seven years, Western Mutual Insurance had paid out in the billions for properties that went up in smoke. The policy owners all had something in common—a serious financial glitch that was solved by the influx of cash. Cash handed over by Western Mutual because they couldn’t prove any wrongdoing. And that made them decidedly displeased.

That’s where Xander came in.

He was the best there was at what he did. Meticulous, relentless, ruthless. He’d made his reputation on those three things. And upon his track record of always uncovering the truth. That’s how he could demand the price he did. A sometimes hard-to-swallow percentage of the policy payout. Money they would otherwise kiss goodbye. Money that didn’t really matter to him. It was the process and the end result that he enjoyed. He liked the challenge and he had to win. That’s why the companies came to him with the cases they couldn’t solve themselves.

For five years, he’d immersed himself in the minds and means of those who thought to cheat the system. He’d start with the obvious. Who had the most to gain? Then he’d follow the money. He didn’t work in an office, not after the first phase of investigation. He excelled in the field. Blending into the lives of those who thought to get away with a payout they didn’t deserve. He’d get close, he’d become their friend, their partner, their confidant and sooner or later, every time, they’d slip up and he’d have them. Infinite patience was its own reward.

Only in this case, the reward wasn’t his hefty fee.

Restless with his lack of progress, he set aside his handwritten notes and made a call on his cell. He made it a practice of never using traceable land lines. There wasn’t much he trusted, except the person who answered his call of “I’m in.” And the response was the one he’d been waiting to hear.

“Got another e-mail. We’re talking money. It’s showtime.”

Xander smiled thinly, trying not to react to the sudden lunge of anticipation. The chase was on. “Don’t be stingy, but don’t be too eager. We don’t want to scare him off.”

“Hey, don’t tell me how to deal with criminals, pal. It’s what I do.”

Kyle D’Angelo was a security expert. They’d gone to prep school then college together. He was the one friend Xander could claim with no strings attached, with no what’s-in-it-for-me agenda. He was the one person who’d suffered him as a fool, who’d seen him at his lowest and hadn’t turned away. Money couldn’t sway him. Hard times hadn’t discouraged him. During the wild years, he wasn’t the one Xander called to bail him out of a tight spot. Because Kyle would be there seated at his side saying, “Damn, that was fun.” He was the closest thing Xander had left to family. And it was Kyle who’d brought him the precious lead he’d been searching for for five frustrating years.

His call came out of the blue. Always happy to hear from him, Xander hadn’t expected the reason to be business. Cut-right-to-the-soul-of-him business. Kyle was installing security in Lake Tahoe at a posh resort/casino whose owners had gotten a little too lean in the pocket to complete the astronomical renovations they’d started. They’d been contacted a month ago. A terse e-mail from an undisclosed sender. The message was brief.

I can make your money troubles go away.

At the first hint at rising from the ashes with the insurance money, Kyle had placed the call that he knew would mean everything to his best friend. Then he had used his resources to help Xander get next to his prime suspect.

“You just let me know when you’re ready to set the trap.”

“Not just yet. I need some time to make sure we’re stalking the right game.” A discomforting truth. For the first time, when the stakes were their highest, he was going on the hunt woefully unprepared. He had only the rudimentary research done, and while that told him he was using the right bait, he didn’t know what he was going to catch. He was after a trophy. Something he could tack up on his wall with an infinite satisfaction. But the catch wasn’t the reward he was after. Not even close.

“I’ll be waiting,” D’Angelo promised. “Your call.”

A cold linear sense of purpose shivered through Xander the way the air-conditioning hadn’t been able to. Just a few short steps left to take. To be sure. This one he couldn’t let escape because he’d taken shortcuts. And the payoff would be sweet revenge.

And thinking of sweet derailed his train of thought.

“Why didn’t you tell me Mel Parrish was a woman?”

There was a pause, then D’Angelo gave a nonplussed laugh. “I didn’t think it would make a difference. Does it?”

Xander drew up a mental picture of Mel Parrish in the enticingly curved flight suit, of her boldly angular face, flashing dark eyes and sassy mouth. And that untamed mass of red hair. He shut his eyes, canceling out the image.

“No, of course not.”

Kyle D’Angelo chuckled. “She’s hot—she must be, to rattle a monk like you.”

How could D’Angelo tell he was rattled from that one concise sentence? But then Kyle knew him better than he knew himself. And, unfortunately, he was right. Xander tightened down the screws on the press of his emotions and vowed, “It won’t matter.”

“I’m sure it won’t. Not with that gift you’ve got.”

Because it sounded like some kind of unpleasant disease, Xander frowned. “What gift is that?”

“You have an amazing gift of blankness, my friend. Slick. Smooth. Nonabsorbing. Nothing gets to you with your nonstick coating. It just slides right off. I don’t know if I envy that or not. It makes you kind of a scary guy.”

Xander tried to laugh it off but couldn’t. Was that what he was? Was that what he’d become?

“Thanks a hell of a lot, Kyle.”

And because D’Angelo knew him so well, he caught the hint of something unexpected behind that mocking sentiment. He’d somehow managed to wound his usually stoic friend.

“It was a compliment. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“No danger of that since apparently I don’t have any.”

He could picture D’Angelo’s grin at having provoked the cynical response. And his own dark mood gave a notch as he managed a small smile.

“Thought you might have lost your sense of humor there for a minute.”

“Misplaced it, perhaps.” He pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off the tension headache that was building from a distant rumbling to fearsome thunderheads. “I had to pack light for this trip. It wasn’t a must-have item.”

“Don’t leave home without it, bud. It’s the all-purpose Rx.” Predictably, Kyle shifted into life counselor mode to offer his one prescription for everything. “When was the last time you kicked your shoes off?”

He wiggled his bare toes. “They’re off right now.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. You need to get a life, bud. All work and no play.”

“Makes Xander a scary guy. I know.”

“And I know the remedy. Leave everything to Dr. D’Angelo. What say we just take the weekend off. Zip up to Colorado to your mom’s condo. Hit the clubs, jump in a hot tub with some lonely lovelies, cigars and a fifth of your choice and enjoy a total hedonistic orgy. How does that sound?”

“Like we were frat boys again.” He was smiling, imagining it. Kyle drew lonely ladies and hedonistic good times like a bacchanalian magnet.

“Tell me you’re not tempted.”

Tempted, yes. Because he couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a break. He’d been wound so tight for so long, he wasn’t sure he could loosen up the notch it would take to be a suitable companion for fun. Not because he didn’t need it, but because he didn’t deserve it. Especially now.

“I’ll have to pass,” he said softly, without true regret. “Maybe when this is over.”

He heard Kyle’s resigned sigh, knowing his friend hadn’t really expected any other answer. “It’s never over with you.”

“If this pans out, it will be.”

Then maybe he could take a breather. Now, it was hard to even think of having a good time when he knew others didn’t have the luxury. For some, there were no breaks, no willing ladies, no hot tubs. That’s why he had to work harder and stay focused. Kyle may not like it, but he did understand it. Because he knew why his friend was a scary guy.

“Keep in touch, bud. Be careful. We’ll nail this one down for you. Anything I can do, anything, you let me know.”

A huge knot of gratitude interfered with his immediate response. When he was able to give it, the words came out all rough and raw. “I appreciate it, Kyle. More than you know.”

Uncomfortable with the thought of his sincerity, D’Angelo shifted back to a light touch. “So Mel Parrish is a woman. And she’s hot. No wonder you’re so grouchy. If I were you, I’d be thinking about on-the-job perks.”

“Goodbye, Kyle.”

He was smiling as he flipped the phone shut. Then his mouth narrowed into a thin, hard line. Mel Parrish wasn’t a perk. She was a puzzle piece. And finding out where she fit in was his reason for sitting alone in a hotel room in Reno.

A monk. A surprisingly apt description. There was a time when he’d never have spent a night in a hotel room alone with only work and late-night television for company. But not being alone didn’t necessarily mean not being lonely. Surrounding himself with a crowd only brought that home with a more painful clarity. So he took a step back from that party-hardy set who had no cares, no worries, no real depth of purpose. All those who had once courted him for his name, his contacts and his fortune, the men who wanted him to buy them drinks and invest in their projects, the women who wanted to hang on his arm to get their pictures in the entertainment news. All those frivolous, fun people who had abandoned him at that first dark whisper of scandal. He’d didn’t miss them. He didn’t need their shallow company. For what he was doing, the isolation served him best. It kept him lean, mean and dangerously determined. But it made for long, lonely nights.

Perhaps that was why Mel Parrish left him shaken, not stirred.

Business casual or escort service.

He grinned wide at the brazenness of that remark. Hooker clothes couldn’t look more enticing than that one-piece zippered distraction. Every curve seemed shaped to fit his hands. And the suddenly damp state of his palms made him aware of just how long he’d been celibate. Too long to remember the circumstance or participant. He told himself that was the reason for his unwise attraction. But he knew he was lying. It was the woman, herself not his reclusive state. It was her eyes, that bold-as-brass-tacks stare that let him know in unblinking terms that he was being an ass. No one, other than Kyle, had dared do that for a very long time. And damned if it didn’t impress him.

A brisk slap of realization startled him from his half smile and simmering musings. What was he thinking?

Back to business. Time was short and he had work to do.

Beneath the official insurance file was a thin folder that held the pain of his past. It contained three meager documents—a fire investigation, an arrest report and a trial transcript. The impossibly weak foundation upon which he’d been struggling to erect the means to escape his shame.

He didn’t want to be impressed by Mel Parrish.

He wanted to put her and her family in prison.

Chapter 3

“Is this better?”

She stood in the hall outside his room, her arrogant pose daring him to make some comment about the way she was dressed. Impossible. His tongue had adhered to the roof of his mouth.

She’d decided to blend both professional and the oldest profession into a look that was in-your-face tough and tempting. Her frizz of red hair was in a ponytail back beneath a ball cap to accentuate the no-nonsense angles of her face warmed by only a trace of makeup. A conservative black jacket that would have been right at home in a realty seminar framed the body that her flight suit had only hinted at. The tiny shirt she wore beneath it with its cutesy cartoon character motif and preteen proportions left acres of Mel Parrish bare. The long tanned line of her throat led his gaze downward to plunge dangerously into a careless offer of cleavage. Then that teensy scrap of snug knit defining the hills and valleys of her breasts the way a man’s hands might above an expanse of taut, toned middle. The sassy wink of jewel-pierced belly button snagged his attention long enough for him to catch a shallow breath before being confronted with the low scoop of her jeans just barely hanging on her hipbones. The negligent crisscross of a studded belt was slung atop denim-skinned legs. In his fantasy, she would be wearing stiletto heels instead of clunky work boots, but those almost absurd contrasts worked upon his no-longer-monkish libido. Kyle’s assessment of “hot” didn’t even come close to the scorch of her boldly flaunted sexuality. And what made the whole package beyond hot was the challenging bristle of look-don’t touch she exuded.

He had to remind himself to exhale.

“Fine.” His rough growl rumbled across the agitation he refused to betray. Mel Parrish would never know how much his palms itched to skim around the warm curve of her waist, to pull her up tight against contours not quite so thrilled with his self-denying celibacy. “I’m ready.”

An incredible understatement.

The elevator grew more crowded as they picked up passengers on each floor. Crushed up next to her, Xander found his stare discreetly dipping down into the shadowed crevice between his bodyguard’s breasts. And on the other side of her, the luggage handler was enjoying that same lush scenery with a bit less care. Mel’s elbow flashed back, jabbing the poor fellow just above the belt, making him suck a pain filled breath as she murmured a mild “Excuse me.” Xander’s gaze jumped front and center, missing the way hers cut to him suspiciously. Then her lids lowered slightly as she indulged in an appreciative sweep of her own.

Some men were made to wear expensive suits. Xander Caufield had the strong, tailored physique and coldly superior attitude to carry off the elitist look to perfection. But in that brief second, when she caught him staring unashamedly down her neckline, there was nothing remotely civilized about him. That dangerous edge of desire making a raw slash across his reserve had her shivering in response. And she thought once again about taking that bounce on the taut bedcovers beneath him.

What grew taut between them during the long day was the silence. After the contents of his case had been delivered to the exhibit floor during the chaos of booth setups, they headed to California for another pickup. They didn’t speak. Xander took his seat in back and left the flying to Mel, apparently content to place himself in her hands. A delightful notion that kept her busy for most of the flight imagining just how one might go about peeling off his prickly protective layers to get to the good stuff inside. His posture never relaxed, not once on the trip there or back, and that made her nervous, wondering if there really was some sort of danger involved in what he was doing. She was very aware of the pistol pressing against the small of her back, and though well versed in its use, she wasn’t eager to pull it in the heat of confrontation.

Stepping from the sear of late-afternoon heat into the near brain-freeze chill of hotel air-conditioning, Mel was thinking about the lunch she didn’t have and whether or not it would be appropriate to ask her client if he wanted to join her at the hotel’s Mexican restaurant for some off-the-clock tequila and spicy food. Perhaps if they were forced to sit across from each other like civilized human beings, they would have to think up some polite conversation to fill the time. Something that didn’t have to do with her wardrobe or the crisp hotel bedspread. Not sure what other topics were up for grabs, she got into the elevator behind him and started mentally rehearsing. The car was going down one before heading up to the tenth floor. Xander had opted to take it rather than wait for the other elevators to return from the double digit floors. Just as the doors began to close, a trio of multiple-pierced punks slipped into the car with them with polite murmurs of “Excuse me,” and quietly waited behind them. Until the doors opened.

A series of subterranean tunnels ran beneath the hotel, offering shopping at touristy and exclusive shops. At four-thirty, when most guests were preoccupied by dinner alternatives, they offered a very quiet and unpopulated spot away from the rush of the upper floors. Away from everything, Mel realized a second too late when she saw two more toughs loitering just outside the doors. As she reached for the Close button, she sensed movement behind them.

Sudden, hard shoves propelled both of them out of the elevator car. One of the punks gripped Mel by the lapels of her jacket, swinging her around and dragging her quickly out of the open area into one of the empty side halls. Xander followed stiffly, urged by a glitter of steel nudged up under his chin.

“We want what’s in your pockets and in the case,” growled the Mohawk-wearing fellow holding Mel. Then his voice lowered and its softness was somehow more threatening. “And maybe if you cooperate, that’s all we’ll want.”

Cursing her carelessness, Mel assessed their situation. A security camera was aimed down the hallway, but its lens was spray painted over. There was no foot traffic. Obviously, their assailants had planned for this meeting a lot better than she had. They were pushed back against one of the walls. Cutting a quick glance at Xander, she was impressed by his stoic expression. As she prayed there would be no reckless heroics to get them killed, those hopes were dashed when he caught her look. His expression was fearless. Slowly, grimly, he smiled.

“I’m reaching for my wallet,” he told the trio surrounding him as he dipped in his trouser pocket. Their greedy attention focused on those fat leather folds and not him, tracking the wallet as it fell to the floor between them. As they went after it, he swung the case, catching the one with the knife in the temple, dropping him like a rock. A vicious upward arc took the next one in the face, pulping his nose and sending him reeling back with a howl of pained surprise.

Figuring it was time to follow her client’s lead, Mel grabbed for her gun. Mohawk read the move and intercepted it, twisting her wrist, wrenching it up behind her back. She didn’t waste time struggling. He was obviously stronger. Instead, she stomped down on his instep and applied her other elbow to his groin. Suddenly freed, she spilled onto the floor on hands and knees. Before she could gain any momentum on the slick tiles, large hands grabbed her about the waist, yanking her up. She kicked the man in front of her, taking him in the kneecap. As he crumpled, she drove back with her elbows, inflicting as much damage as she could. And that’s when her captor swung her around and the side of her head met with one of the support pillars.

Darkness swamped over her in a huge, sickening wave as she was hauled back up to her feet. She got a blurry glimpse of Xander dropping the case, his hands spreading wide in presumed surrender. His stare touched on the blood streaming down the side of her face, on the hands holding her, one by the throat and one groping roughly in search of her weapon. And she realized their attackers were wrong to think the danger was from her gun.

He moved so fast and purposefully they had no time to react. Gripping the knife-wielding hand, dodging its lethal thrust, he dropped his elbow down at the base of the man’s skull. A knee to the face as he was falling took him completely out of the picture. Even as Xander shoved away from the first man, he was intent upon the next, using combined strikes from the back of his fist and elbow followed by a hard upward drive with the heel of his other hand to dispatch thug number two.

Mel had never seen anything like him. She was familiar with bar brawls and self-defense but not this skilled form of controlled attack. He didn’t fight using a fisted punch but rather with fierce hard strikes, using every surface of his body with explosive aggressive force—knees, elbows, the flat of his forearms, even his head, to batter his assailants into submission. Without hesitation, without mercy. Until a roar from Mohawk checked him.

“Enough!”

The blade pressed to Mel’s throat effectively stilled Xander’s unexpected threat. He took a submissive stance, his hard glare riveted to the others as he issued a quiet promise.

“Cut her and I’ll end you.”

The deadly force behind that delivery gave Mohawk an instant of hesitation. Just enough for Mel to act in her own defense. She gripped his thumb, twisting it back until his fingers opened and the knife dropped. As she backed out of his slackened hold, she pulled her pistol free and jammed it into his kidney.

“Think about it!” Mel said.

He froze, apparently thinking hard.

“Run.”

He didn’t have to think twice about that one. He bolted and the rest of his group scrambled after him.

The pistol in her hand wavered wildly. The floor, walls and ceiling began a slow, determined roll. Mel was dimly aware of a firm grip divesting her of the gun, curling about her waist to ease her fall into blackness. After that, it was just dizzying snatches. The sight of an oxygen mask coming down from a backdrop of flashing lights. Of Xander’s immobile features filling her field of vision, a dark angel at her side. His small, tight smile of reassurance and the warm chafe of his hands over one of hers. And the gleam of metal from the courier case in his lap flaring bright as passing streetlights reflected off it. Then darkness, cool and complete.

They swarmed the E.R. like soldiers storming the battlements. Her family, her friends, pushing him out of the way. He shouldn’t have resented surrendering his seat at her bedside. And he wondered why he did.

He’d been sitting on the hard metal chair for the past four hours while emergency staff plugged her in and took her vitals. He acted as if he belonged there and after a while, they stopped questioning his right to be. He didn’t interfere with them, content to remain a silent sentinel, her hand within the curl of his fingers, his attention riveted to her pale features. All the alarm and fear that hadn’t surfaced while confronting the thugs in the hotel whispered through him now as he kept an anxious eye on the monitors and waited for her to wake up—this gutsy woman who would risk her life for him. The fact that she was well paid to do so never quite entered the equation.

They wheeled her out briefly to get a CT scan. While he sat alone behind the curtained walls, with sounds of weeping and suffering on either side of him, he noticed with an odd detachment the blood splashed on his shirtfront and hands. He stared at the dark patterns for a long moment before finally getting up to wash them off in the small sink. That’s when his hands started shaking, tremors spreading until they raced all the way to the soles of his no-longer spotless shoes. Delayed shock. A trickle-down of adrenaline. That’s all it was. His eyes squeezed tight. She could have died right then, right there, protecting his lie.

“Mel?”

Xander scooped a palmful of water and dashed it on his face. Using the sleeve of his ruined jacket to towel it dry, he turned to the anxious man staring at the empty bed in horror.

“She’s getting tests done.”

Relief dropped the older man to the chair Xander had vacated. He sat sucking air, his face pale as the lightweight cotton blanket folded at the end of the bed.

“I’m Xander Caufield.”

Dazed eyes lifted to register his presence. “Charley Parrish. Mel’s my niece. Is she all right? What happened?”

Before he could begin, there was a ruckus in the hall. Six men smelling of smoke and hard work pushed their way past the curtain, followed by a harried nurse. They all talked at once, addressing Charley Parrish as if he had the answers. No one paid Xander the least bit of attention.

Then Mel’s welcome voice intruded. “Hey, you guys mind keeping it down. There are sick people in here.”

They parted to allow room for the gurney carrying a pale but smiling Mel Parrish, then quickly closed ranks about her bed. Leaving Xander on the outside.

“They find anything in that empty head of yours?”

“What’s the other guy look like?”

“Like we don’t have enough to do without worrying about your sorry butt. Hey, Charley. How ya doing?”

“That was one helluva scare you gave us when we heard it on the scanner, One Night.”

“Give her room to breathe, fellas.”

Xander observed them, these big, gruff men all jockeying for the chance to clutch her hand within their dirty paws while she looked up at them with obvious affection. The scene acted strangely upon him. These were the ones who loved her and were loved in return. Hearing she was in trouble, they’d dropped everything to come running. Though they joked and grumbled about the inconvenience, the edge of worried concern was etched in each rugged face. That told him more about Mel Parrish than any amount of research he could have gathered.

“Hey, is this where the party is?”

“Sir, gentlemen, you can’t all go in there!”

“Hey, One Night. Whatcha doing on that bed all by yourself? Want some company?”

“Why? Do you have a good-looking friend?”

Laughter. Warm and rich with relief as more of the men shouldered their way into the small sterile space. Crowding Xander—with his bloodstained clothes and unfamiliar face—out. He lingered a moment longer, absorbing the sight of her surrounded by her fiercely protective posse of devoted comrades, her smile wide and reckless, her eyes shiny with emotion. Then he picked up his case and backed away unnoticed.

By all but one.

Chapter 4

It was her worst hangover squared.

Moving woke an Anvil Chorus between her temples punctuated by the cannons from the 1812 Overture. Every inch of her ached. She had no business crawling out of bed, except the business she had to take care of. She’d used all her persuasive powers on the physician at the E.R. to agree to let her go home without an overnight stay.

Now, to find out if she still had a job.

After shaking a few more pain relievers into her hand and swallowing them dry, she gathered the courage to knock.

He’d saved her butt the night before. There was no way around that. Her mistakes had almost gotten them both killed. If she had a scrap of self-respect, she’d make her apologies and gracefully resign. But she needed the paycheck. Desperately. And now she had the E.R. bill hanging over her head, bouncing behind her aching eyes like a bad check.

He’d done more than come to her rescue. That’s what chafed her emotions raw. He’d stayed with her. Though she’d been drifting in and out, the only constant she could recall was his presence. And she’d clung to it and the firm press of his hand. In the ambulance, in the E.R., he’d stuck by her, offering up a small smile of encouragement as she lay helpless. She hadn’t had the chance to thank him. And he hadn’t told her goodbye. She’d tried to find him through the thick forest of her friends but he was gone. And even though she’d been surrounded by noisy familiarity, she’d felt suddenly alone.

The door opened and they stood face-to-face.

A rush of complex feelings had Mel tongue-tied and awkward. What did you say to a man who’d saved your life and babysat you through a trauma unit? What did you say when your heart was abruptly hammering hard and fast with a press of emotions that gratitude couldn’t come close to explaining? The urge to fling her arms about his neck and steam the stiffness from his lips with her kiss had her trembling in an effort at restraint.

His brusque attitude saved her from that mistake.

“I need to make another pickup from the seller in California. He’s gotten an offer for the rest of his collection and the buyer wants a look at it first.”

He stepped back from the door and went to get his coat. Mel blinked, totally off balance. No inquiry as to her health. No sign of concern whatsoever. After cradling her hand and wearing her blood on his designer clothes, he was back to all business as if they’d never shared…What? What had they shared? What was she trying to make out of it? She cleared her throat gruffly and squared her stance, trying to appear competent and in control while her careening thoughts and emotions pinballed inside her.

“I got a clean bill to fly.”

He didn’t even glance around. “I assumed as much or you wouldn’t be here.”

I’m fine. Thank you for asking.

He shrugged into his suit jacket, grabbed up his case and brushed by her without a glance. Expressing a sigh, Mel followed. And she followed the way he moved with a new appreciation. Xander Caufield was full of surprises.

Once closed in the elevator together, they stood shoulder to shoulder, both intently watching the floor numbers count down. Might as well get it over with.

“Thank you.”

No shift in expression betrayed that he’d heard her. Just when she was about to swallow down her pride to say more, she felt the brush of his fingertips against hers. Then the warm, firm squeeze of his hand. That was it.

Enough said. She smiled faintly to herself as the doors opened to the lobby.

The fact that he chose to sit up front with her said more. She hoped it wasn’t because he was afraid he’d have to be there to catch her if she decided to pass out.

Once they were in the air and cruising, she glanced over at his immobile profile. When she lifted up the edge of his jacket, he turned to her in what was almost alarm.

“Just wondering where you kept the superhero suit.”

“What?”

“I haven’t seen moves like yours outside of an afternoon adventure matinee.”

A slight smile but no response. She prompted him with a lift of her brows.

“Private school.”

It was her turn to look confused.

“I was that skinny, sensitive, geeky kid with glasses who used to get beaten up every morning for his café latte money. I was Alex Caufield III back then and I used to hide in the janitor’s closet until after the final bell so I could sneak into my seat without a bloody nose. There was no dignity in it but it was a lot less painful.”

“So your folks enrolled you in martial arts classes?”

“No. My mother didn’t believe violence was a solution to any problem. So I used my café latte money to pay our Korean gardener to teach me how to kick the crap out of anyone who got in my face. Classes are for earning trophies. Street fighting is to keep your glasses from getting broken.”

“And now no one gets in your face,” she concluded, impressed but not wanting to show it.

A small smug smile. No, she supposed they didn’t.

“So why hire me when you can do your own crap kicking?”

“Company policy. Liability purposes.” Catching her thoughtful look, he turned his attention to the scenery, ending the exchange of more words than they’d totaled for the past two days. She reassessed him with a leisurely look. A street fighter in Armani. An enticing contradiction.

They traveled in silence for a time until he broke it with a soft oath. She followed his stare downward and understood his horror. They were approaching the fire zone.

It was like flying over hell.

A crackle of static on the radio had Mel quickly adjusting the frequency. And what she managed to pick up chilled her.

“Firefighter down. Requests emergency extraction.”

The signal was weak and breaking up. She put on her headphones to filter out the copter noise, but still the message was fragmented. She waited, breath suspended.

“Come on. Somebody answer.”

“What is it?”

Alerted by her tone and tense posture, Xander pulled the earphone away so she could hear his urgent question. The look she gave him was stark with dismay.

“One of our guys is down. He got cut off from his crew by a sudden backfire. He’s injured. I don’t know how bad.”

“He’s down there?” Xander nodded to the inferno below.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t someone going in for him?”

“I don’t think his call got out.”

He followed her anxious attempts to contact the stranded firefighter who wasn’t answering. She put out a call to any nearby aircraft, but the closest was too far away to do the injured man any good. She cursed low and passionately. The nose of the copter dipped and they swooped down to skim the burning treetops. The heat was sudden and intense. Struggling to see through the thick haze of smoke, Xander finally called out, “There he is.”

The situation was a worst-case scenario. They could see the single figure, prostrate on the ground with the fury of the beast rushing toward him. Mel tried the radio again. No answer.

“There’s no place for me to set down and he can’t hook himself up to a harness.”

“I’ll go down.”

She must not have heard him right. “What?”

“I’ll go down after him.”

She stared at him, flabbergasted. “Are you crazy?”

He never even blinked. “You’ve got a hoist back there, right? I’ll go down after him and you bring us both back up.”

He made it sound so simple. Her heart started beating fast and furious. “You have no idea how dangerous—”

“I’ve been rock climbing and base jumping since I was fifteen. I know how to rappel. Does that man have the time it’ll take for you to check my credentials?” His voice lowered, becoming rough, soft and persuasive. “Mel, you’re going to have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. And I’m going to have to trust you to pull me out of there before both of us are barbecue.”

She continued to stare at him, expression frozen, eyes huge. Finally he unhooked his straps and stood. “I’m going to go rig up. You get in as close as you can. It doesn’t look like we’ve got much of a window of opportunity.”

She gripped his wrist, holding hard, needing him to understand the gravity of his situation. “I don’t have any safety equipment on board. Once you’re outside, I can’t help you.”

He covered her hand with his, pressing hard. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

She watched him work his way to the back, swaying with the rock of the Ranger as the rising heat created a vicious turbulence. She would have cursed again but her heart had bobbed up into her throat, choking her with desperate emotion.

What kind of man dropped into hell in his shirtsleeves for someone he didn’t even know?

The quick and competent way he fastened up the harness said he knew what he was doing. His expression was grimly focused. If he was afraid, she couldn’t tell. There was no hesitation in his movements. She could have been looking at one of the seasoned hotshots about to fly like an eagle. Except he was plunging into a furnace with no oxygen and no fire suit.

“Here.”

He caught the bandanna she tossed back.

“Hold your breath,” she warned. She’d be holding hers. “I’m giving you thirty seconds and then you’re coming up with or without him. Understand?”

He nodded, not looking at her as he uncapped one of the bottled waters in the back, pouring it into the cloth square then over his head to wet his hair and face. Then he fixed her anxious gaze with his own steady one and told her, “Don’t let me fry.”

She tried to answer but couldn’t form the words.

He tied the soaked bandanna over his nose and mouth and opened the door. The stench of smoke poured in. He swung the hoist out and locked the cable onto his harness. Then, with one long look at her, he gave a thumbs-up, stepped out into the hazy air and was gone.

There was no time to worry about him. She had her hands full keeping the Ranger at a low steady hover just above the trees. She began to count. One thousand one. One thousand two. She couldn’t see him as he was directly below the belly of her ship, but she could see the flames chewing across her memory. And she could hear the screams, pleading for rescue from the horrible reaches of her past. One thousand seventeen. One thousand eighteen. She tried not to think about the poisonous gases, the heat, the flames. One thousand twenty-nine. One thousand thirty. Ready or not.

She activated the hoist, her breath still suspended as she swiveled in her seat to watch the empty doorway.

She’s right. I’m crazy.

Sure, he’d done bungee jumping and rappelling. But not into a raging volcano. And the difference was searingly apparent as he sang down the line into the fire. He took a deep breath—the last he could safely pull until he was back in the helicopter—and plunged to the floor of hell.

One thousand three. One thousand four.

The heat hit like a closed fist, the waves of it so intense the water and instant sweat beading up his face and neck sizzled. Walls of flame pressed in on all sides. He could hear the sap popping in the firs as it boiled. Tongues of fire raced across the dry grasses under his feet, licking at the still figure stretched out on the ground. His vision blurred behind the scorch of smoke as he bent over the unconscious man. From the corner of his eye, he saw something fall and reached without thinking to catch a limb as big around as his forearm, deflecting if before it struck the downed firefighter. He could smell the cooked flesh on his palms before the pain actually registered. Then he gasped and, immediately, was coughing, choking, reeling.

One thousand twelve. One thousand thirteen.

He couldn’t draw a breath. His nose, his throat, his lungs burned with a raw, tearing agony. Dropping down onto elbows and knees, he swayed, struggling not to succumb. Seconds. He only had seconds to secure the other man’s safety.

One thousand twenty. One thousand twenty-one.

He crouched over the firefighter, wincing as he grabbed onto his slack weight and dragged him up into a seated position. Buffeted by dizziness and the relentless pounding waves of heat, he banded the man’s chest and locked his arms about him.

One thousand twenty-seven.

Burning embers lit on the back of his neck. He shook his head but couldn’t knock them off. Not without letting go. He gritted his teeth. Come on, Mel! Get me out of here!

And then the line pulled taut, dragging him and his limp cargo up and off their feet, snatching them up through the thick plumes of blackness. He was barely aware of them stopping. Of his feet groping for the open doorway. Of swinging his heavy burden inside. Of collapsing, crawling the last few feet and rolling onto his back to suck the first sweet taste of air.

At the controls, Mel shouted back, “Alex, are you in?”

Then his hoarse reply. “Go.”

Mel headed back to Reno, not daring to turn around until they touched down on tarmac where the ambulance waited by the Parrish hangar. She threw out of her belts and hurried back to where Xander sat on the floor beside the still firefighter, one hand clutching the other’s motionless fingers, the other rubbing at his own eyes. He glanced up when Mel touched the back of his dark head. His face was a mess of black soot smeared by runnels from bloodshot eyes. From out of it, his wide smile was a sudden shock of white. Relief and something bigger, something massive, plugged up in her chest.

“We got him, Mel.”

Her own smile wobbled. “Yes, we did.”

The paramedics were quick to secure the young firefighter, Teddy Greenbaum, to a stretcher. They had Xander breathe through an oxygen mask until he could suck air without spasms of coughing. He let them take his vitals then declined further attention with a gruff “I’m fine,” and a promise that he’d check in with them if he had any problems.

Then Teddy Greenbaum, who’d been scant minutes from beyond help, was whisked away to the hospital.

“Come on,” Mel coaxed the slumping figure of Xander Caufield. “I’ll stand you to a cold one.”

Groaning, he slid off the chopper step onto his feet and took a reeling pitch to the right.

“Whoa. I gotcha.”

Mel slipped in under his arm and let him lean on her while he gathered his bearings then steered him toward the hangar. Acting without thinking, she sat him down in her swivel desk chair, stuck an opened longneck in his hand and went for the first-aid kit in the small bathroom. She came back to find him hunched over, untouched beer dangling between his knees. She tipped his head back with the cup of her palm beneath his chin. His sore eyes were flat with fatigue as they fixed upon hers. Slowly, very gently, she began to clean off his face with the wet towel she’d brought for that purpose. His eyes closed as she uncovered more of his splendid features with each determined swipe. Beautifully masculine lines. Irresistible. She bent, touching her mouth to his. He tasted like dry ash on the outside. Sweet, so sweet inside. When she lifted away, his eyes were still shut, his breath coming softly, shallowly between the slight part of his lips. With her hand on the back of his head, she had him tuck his chin so she could attend the singed nape of his neck while her fingers meshed and kneaded his dirty hair. All the while a curious fullness kept building around her heart.

Crouching between the spread of his knees, Mel took the beer from him and had a long drink of it before setting it aside. She took up his hands, again, her touch so very tender, examining the blistered palms.

“There’s no easy way to do this, Alex.”

He braced at the quiet warning.

At the first touch of the ointment to the raw skin on his hand, white-hot pain ripped along every nerve ending, slashing, sharp, gnawing, right-to-the-bone agony that had his heels clattering a helpless staccato on the cement floor. Just when he thought his teeth were gritting with enough force to crack molars, she stopped and blew slowly over the aggrieved surface to win some small degree of relief. She looked up at him and he managed a tight smile as he offered up the other hand the way he might to a meat grinder. By the time she was done, he was panting and blinking hard. But still, that small slight smile.

“You could have told me it would sting a bit,” he chided, then was dismayed when the brightness shimmering in her eyes dissolved in a blink, tracing down her cheeks in quicksilver trails. Her palms pressed flat to his chest, moving up and down in a restless motion before fisting in his soiled shirt. She leaned into him, butting her head against him between those clenched hands. And she began to tremble.

With his hands all gooey and trapped in a swaddling of gauze, he was at a loss to do more than trap her quaking shoulders between the press of his elbows. Resting his cheek against the soft riot of her hair, he closed his eyes and rode out her silent weeping without a word.

“Mel?”

The sound of her uncle’s worried voice had her pulling back, pulling herself together with quick, self-preserving practice. She stood away from Xander Caufield, away from the sudden confusion of feelings that had her lost and seeking comfort from the embrace of this near stranger, who had managed, for a brief moment, to hold her fears at bay.

“I passed an ambulance. What’s going on?” Charley’s gaze cut between the careful opaque of her expression to that of her rumpled and worse-for-wear client. “Everything all right here?”

“A little unscheduled stop to pick up a passenger. I’ll explain it to you later, Charley.”

Sensing there were volumes she wasn’t saying, Charley simply nodded. He was too used to the complexities behind his niece’s brusque manner to push for more than she was ready to give.

“We’re running late for a pickup,” she continued so he wouldn’t have time to press for additional information. She needed time to sort it out, to suppress her reactions, and she didn’t want to risk spilling any more pieces of her soul in front of Xander. He’d seen more than she was comfortable with already.

More than he was comfortable with, if she read his impenetrable facade correctly. He gave nothing away when she glanced at him.

“Are you up for another trip?”

“As long as there are no more unscheduled stops. I want to shower and change first. I’m rather…unpresentable.”

She took in the whole of him, the smudges of ash, the suit that was far beyond the help of any dry cleaner, the stink of smoke and sweat. And nothing had looked more attractive, more appealing, than this rumpled version of Xander Caufield.

“I’ll bring the car around,” she managed in a tight little voice, using that excuse to run from the confusion of her heart.

Xander met Charley Parrish’s curious stare unflinchingly. Finally the other man fidgeted and came out with it.

“Mel told me what you did the other night. I never got the chance to thank you at the hospital.” He held up a hand before Xander could brush off his gratitude. “That girl and my daughter are the only things that mean a damn to me. They’re my life. I just wanted you to know that, so when I say thank-you, you’ll know it’s more than just words.”

Because there was no way to respond to that, Xander simply nodded.

Charley cleared his throat awkwardly. “My daughter Karen wanted a chance to thank you, too. She’s got a private gallery showing over in Tahoe tomorrow night and asked me to extend you an invite. I don’t know if you’re interested in that kind of thing or have the time for it. Mel can bring you.”

“Bring him where?”

“To Karen’s showing tomorrow night.”

Mel’s wary glare bored into her uncle’s, chastening him for his bumbling attempt at matchmaking. “I’m sure Mr. Caufield has better things—”

“No, actually I don’t,” Xander cut in. “It would be a nice distraction from room service and pay-TV.” He paused then added silkily, “If you don’t mind.”

“No trouble at all.” She checked her watch. “We’ve got about forty-five minutes to get in the air.”

Nodding to Charley, Xander followed Mel out to her battered Jeep. After climbing in, in deference to her tense mood, he said, “Don’t feel obligated. If you have other plans—” He let that drift off.

She glanced at him. Other plans? Plans better than spending an off-the-clock evening with him? Let me check my calendar? Her smile was fierce. “If I minded, I would have said so. Buckle up.”

The Jeep jerked forward, giving Xander scant time to grab on. He continued to study the tight set of her jaw and the rigid line of her shoulders. She minded plenty. But she was taking him where he needed to go.

Play the role. Remember the part. And try not to look forward to it quite so much.

Chapter 5

A shower and a change of clothes. Easy to say, harder to execute with the way pain was pulsing up from his fingertips. He glanced at Mel Parrish, who was gazing out the window of his hotel room toward the pool area ten floors below. What would she say if he were to ask if she’d mind helping him undress, suds up and towel dry? If she minded following up on that tease of a kiss that had sucked the oxygen from his lungs as effectively as the fire? Would she give him that cool, assessing stare and say no problem?

Maybe she would.

“I’ll be just a minute.”

He had started for the bathroom when she said his name. She called him Alex. No one had called him that for longer than he could remember. Except his parents, who would always see him as the awkward Alex rather than the coldly confident Xander he’d worked so hard to cultivate. He didn’t correct her. He liked the way she pronounced it, all soft instead of the crisp-cut syllables of his new persona.

“Here. I brought these for you to use.”

He stared at the plastic bags and rubber bands, not understanding.

“Put them over your hands to keep the dressings dry. Unless you want me to reapply the salve.”

The threat made him grimace. “No, thanks. And thanks.”

She released a shaky breath after the bathroom door closed and she heard the shower turn on full blast. She’d been about to say, Let me know if you need any help. Help to do what, exactly? She glanced restlessly at the closed door, angrily denying that what she wanted was to help herself to her quixotic client. She paced, thoughts prowling aggressively, until the water shut off and a long silence followed. Finally, he emerged, dressed in dark slacks with his crisp white shirt unbuttoned, his black hair slicked back and gleaming wetly. He struggled for a moment with a bottle then extended it to her in frustration.

“I can’t get this.”

She took the bottle, popped the plastic childproof top and shook out four of the pain relievers. He reached for them, hand unsteady, and was quick to swallow them. Observing the pinch of pain about his mouth and eyes, she asked, “Are you sure you don’t need a prescription, something with a little more kick?”

“No, this is fine.”

But he was far from fine and not happy that she knew it. Intuiting that he wouldn’t ask for further assistance short of dialing 9-1-1, she relieved him of the embarrassment of asking by stepping up closer and efficiently buttoned his shirt over the temptation of a truly amazing chest while he stood still and silent. Before he could object, she unbuckled his pants and tucked the shirttails in with a brisk efficiency. As he stared down at her, not breathing, she zipped him back up and impersonally patted his taut middle.

“There. The rest shouldn’t be difficult for you.”

What was difficult was expelling his breath in a steady stream.

Their second attempt at a flight to California went smoothly. Xander sat in the back, staring moodily out the window on the way there and slept with what appeared to be a fierce concentration on the way back. She waited in the lobby while he had the contents of his case placed in a hotel safe-deposit box and it was there he said a clipped good-night to her. As he turned away, she snagged him with that quiet call of his name.

“Business casual.”

“What?”

“Dress for tomorrow night. Unless you’d prefer escort service.”

At his slight smile when he caught the reference, she added, “Drive or fly?”

“I’ll meet you there. I’m looking up a friend for drinks afterward.”

Her features remained carefully neutral. “Fine. Seven.” She told him the address. He didn’t write it down. Then, with a nod and the small curve of his smile, he disappeared into the mob on the casino floor.

A collection of Tahoe’s elite gathered in the multilevel gallery in the silent shadow of the off-season ski runs to nibble on canapés, sip fairly decent champagne and stroll amongst Karen Parrish’s paintings, admiring and making small talk. Mel could spend hours gazing at her cousin’s ethereal landscapes, but after the first five minutes, her tolerance for chitchat was expended. The only things that made it bearable were the sounds of her cousin’s laughter and the man she pretended not to be watching for.

“You just missed Quinn. He could only stay for a minute.”

Mel smiled tightly, forgiving her cousin for the softening of her voice and heart. And head. Karen was usually so much smarter. But she’d always had an unrequited yearning where the Texas playboy was concerned. “Probably just as well considering civil conversation is out of the question between us.”

“Then what is between you?”

Mel was busy sifting through the new arrivals and missed the edge to the question. “A good right hook, if I had my way. Naylor’s a pain in the behind. Always was. Always will be.”

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