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
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Copyright © 2019 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
Formatting: Glass Slipper WebDesign
ISBN: 978-1-910597-81-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
Dedication
My husband, Peter
Chapter One
“What are you afraid of?”
A cold snake of that fear uncoiled down Hailey’s spine and she froze in the doorway into the sitting room of her apartment. Her heartbeat sounded loudly in the otherwise silent darkness.
She had made two patrols of the perimeter of her apartment building before entering. Then thoroughly searched the entrance hall downstairs, despite there being a guard always on duty at the front desk to repel unwanted visitors and regularly check the security cameras throughout the building. Even so, she’d checked the elevator was empty before taking the six flights of stairs up to the third floor. The hallway had been empty of other residents as she hurried to her apartment and quietly let herself in before putting in place the five locks situated precise distances apart down the door. She’d then put the safety chain in place. The door itself was made of steel coated in PVC, to give the appearance of a normal door while being impenetrable.
All those precautions and still this man, his silhouette looming large and dark against the picture window showing the London skyline at night behind him, was waiting for her inside her apartment.
“Who are you afraid of?” The man stepped forward into the room, followed by the click of a switch as he turned on the lamp sitting on the small table beside the sofa, instantly bathing the room, and the man, in a soft warm glow.
Except there was nothing soft about the man as he straightened to stand several inches over six feet tall. His shoulders were wide, his chest and abs clearly defined in the fitted black T-shirt worn beneath a black leather jacket. His waist was slender, hips muscular, with long legs encased in black denim above heavy black biker boots.
His hair was a golden glow above a face that could have been chiseled out of stone: dark gray eyes, aquiline nose, carved cheekbones, his mouth currently a thin and disapproving line above a strong jaw.
But he didn’t usually look like this when he was with her, Hailey reminded herself with an inner groan. Usually, his lips were full, sensual, and smiling, and his eyes were a warm seductive gray.
Something—and Hailey was pretty sure it was her—had really pissed him off. She doubted the next few minutes would improve on his obvious displeasure.
“I’m in no hurry. I can wait all night for you to answer,” Haydn Steele assured in a hard voice as he crossed his arms over that broad and muscular chest.
Temper replaced Hailey’s earlier fear. “What the hell are you doing inside my apartment?” she attacked.
“For the last four evenings, you’ve checked the perimeter of your apartment building twice before coming inside,” he replied, totally ignoring her question. “Same with the entrance hall downstairs. You’ve made sure the elevator is empty and on the ground floor and then taken the stairs to the third floor. You’ve also put two extra locks on a steel door disguised to look like a normal one.” A nerve pulsed in his clenched jaw. “I’ll ask again, Hailey, what or who are you afraid of?”
Her shoulders tensed beneath her jacket. “I’m not afraid of anyone. And even if I were,” she continued as he would have spoken again. “It would be none of your fucking business.”
He lifted one mocking brow. “So brave,” he murmured with admiration before sobering. “You should know I’ve kept this knowledge to myself so far, but I won’t hesitate to bring in the big guns if I have to.”
The big guns, Hailey knew, were this man’s brothers. All six of the Steele brothers were lethal, but Atticus and Bryce more so than the others. Atticus had the bad boy biker vibe, a temper to go with it, and a protective instinct a mile wide. Bryce had been in Special Ops before the brothers all left the military almost six years ago and started their own security company, Steele Protectors. The same company where Hailey had been employed for the past year.
She had a feeling there was a lot more to Lucan too, the second-eldest brother, but as neither he nor his brothers ever talked about it, that remained only a theory. Lucan looked like an accountant in his black-rimmed glasses, but Hailey was sure she wasn’t imagining that tense, always alert air he had even when he appeared outwardly relaxed. Or the cold and merciless killer she’d glimpsed in the black, obsidian eyes behind those dark-rimmed glasses when they managed to apprehend and bring in any of the men who had kidnapped children or women. He usually took a few minutes alone with those men to make his displeasure known.
Hailey shook off those thoughts to concentrate on Haydn. “How do you know what my movements have been for the past four evenings? Hell, have you been watching me?” She looked quickly around the room. “Do you have security cameras outside and inside my apartment?”
He shrugged those broad shoulders. “I’ve had this same conversation with August.” He named his brother Logan’s wife. “And more recently Sophie.” He referred to the wife of Rourke, Logan’s twin. “I’ll tell you the same as I told both of them. All family members and employees of Steele Protectors, including their significant others, have extra security in place to ensure their safety because of the work we do. There are no security cameras inside your homes, but there are surveillance cameras outside and inside the buildings where you live.”
“I haven’t noticed any extra cameras.” Hailey scowled, hating having to admit that.
Haydn grinned his satisfaction. “Because they’re piggybacked onto the security cameras already put in place by the local council and the building security. The difference is that I have access to all those cameras and so can see the broader picture.”
She gave a disgusted shake of her head. “You don’t have to sound so proud of yourself.”
“Even if I am?”
“A heads-up would have been polite,” she challenged.
“At which time you would have made sure your movements and behavior didn’t appear suspicious.”
The fact he was right brought a return of Hailey’s annoyance. “Does this mean you’ve been monitoring when I bring a man home for the night for the past year too?”
Haydn’s eyes became a dark and stormy gray. “Since you began your employment at Steele Protectors you’ve never brought a man—or woman—to your apartment.”
“Maybe I prefer to go back to their place? Much easier to get up and leave when I want than having to go to the bother of throwing them out in the morning,” she taunted.
Haydn knew Hailey was trying to challenge him. Deservedly so, perhaps, but it pissed him off nevertheless. “You’ve spent every night of the past year alone here apart from when you’re away on assignment for Steele Protectors. Nor have there been any visitors.”
“I asked how you got into my apartment?” she persisted.
“Very easily. Too easily.” He frowned. “The diversion of an unexplained noise in one of the storerooms behind the elevator to distract the security guard and voilà, the staircase was available.”
Hailey’s nostrils flared. “That still doesn’t explain how you got in here.”
“Or why you chose to live in a building that has a security guard twenty-four-seven and a state-of-the-art security system.”
Her gaze was defiant. “I don’t have to explain any of that when you’re the one who entered my home illegally.”
Haydn bit back his irritation. This beautiful and challenging woman might not accept it yet, but eventually she was going to tell him whatever he wanted to know.
Hailey Frost was almost six feet tall, with a willowy figure, and fiery red hair that fell in a tumble of curls almost to her waist. And she had been at the center of every one of Haydn’s fantasies for the past year.
It wasn’t just her height of only four or five inches less than his own or those willowy curves that appealed to him. Whether she realized it or not, Hailey exuded a sensuality that was almost feline. Added to which her features were like those of a perfect porcelain doll in a heart-shaped face: creamy skin, arched brows over eyes of deep Mediterranean blue, a short, straight nose, with perfect bow-shaped lips tinted with a natural hint of red.
Put that sensuality, those delicately beautiful features, and willowy body together with the dichotomy of this woman’s five years spent in the military and her kick-ass ability in several martial arts, and she’d been front and center in Haydn’s every fantasy since the day he met her. He could too easily imagined twisting that long red hair around his hand as he spent long, enjoyable hours fucking her senseless.
As always, she was dressed all in black this evening, in a short leather jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and heavy boots.
Haydn had lost count of how many times he’d imagined replacing those jeans with tight leather trousers. She’d wear no panties or thong beneath, of course, so that the butter-soft leather clung to her feminine cleft in the front and outlined the perfect curve of her arse at the back.
His cock had now gone hard merely from thinking about that soft leather clinging lovingly to Hailey’s feminine curves.
He gave a shake of his head to dispel the image. “Nothing illegal about using the key my girlfriend gave me so that I could enter her apartment when she isn’t home yet.”
Hailey’s eyes widened. Whether at his use of the word girlfriend or at his outright audacity, Haydn wasn’t sure.
“Either way,” Haydn continued, “I’m not leaving until I’m good and ready—I really wouldn’t, Hailey,” he advised as she tensed into fight mode. “From what I recall of our bouts in the gym at the Steele Protectors offices, we’re pretty evenly matched.”
And how fucking arousing was that!
He might be the computer tech for the family and Steele Protectors but he’d also been in the army for five years and had trained in every self-defense and attack method there was, tactical as well as physical. He had improved on those skills once in the private sector by becoming a black belt in several martial arts.
He knew Hailey not only matched his physical skills but surpassed them in some of those disciplines.
Merely thinking about that was doing nothing to reduce the painful hard-on pressing against the zip in the front of his jeans.
Her eyes narrowed as she straightened. “Give me the key to my apartment.” She held her hand out, palm up. “Then get the hell out of here. You can expect to receive my resignation on your desk first thing in the morning,” she added coldly.
Haydn didn’t reveal by so much as the twitch of an eyebrow how much the idea of that displeased him. “You really think giving back a key”—he dropped the piece of metal into her hand—“and resigning is going to stop me from doing everything within my power to protect you from whatever has you jumping at every shadow, imagined or otherwise?”
Her eyes flashed, and her clenched hand dropped back to her side. “I don’t need your protection.”
“All evidence to the contrary.” He took a careful step toward her, as if he were approaching a skittish doe. “What or who are you afraid of, Hailey?” He kept his voice gentle when he finally stood only inches in front of her.
Hailey felt a tightening of her chest as she stared at Haydn. He was six foot three inches of powerful male, and she knew he possessed the same arrogance as his five brothers. Yet, at this moment, he was holding back that power and arrogance in order to reassure her of his support and protection.
If the circumstances had been different…
No one had been more surprised than her at the fluttering in her chest and the heat that suffused her body the first time she’d met Haydn Steele. Even more shocking to her was the eventual realization it was the fluttering and heat of physical attraction and arousal.
Eventual, because they were both alien emotions to her. At the age of twenty-five, she’d never felt even a moment of physical attraction to anyone, man or woman.
Yes, under other circumstances, she and Haydn might have had a few weeks, possibly months, of physically exploring each other. She wasn’t only attracted to Haydn, she liked him too. But, nevertheless, she knew she would never, could never, take that liking to another level.
She raised her head to eye him challengingly. “I’m not frightened of anyone or anything.”
“No?”
“No.”
Haydn’s jaw tightened. “When you joined the Steele Protectors team, I did my usual background check into the history of a new employee.”
Her chin tilted higher still. “Yes?”
“Everything panned out exactly as you’d put in your application form.”
“So why mention it?”
“Because now I’m wondering if maybe it checked out too well.” He pursed his lips. “There’s such a thing as being too perfect. Maybe it’s time I changed that usual check to a more in-depth one?”
She gave a humorless laugh at his attempt to unnerve her. “Knock yourself out.”
Haydn wasn’t reassured by the confidence in her expression. It gave him the distinct impression that whatever Hailey was hiding—and he was utterly convinced now she was hiding something—was so well hidden, she was completely confident, even with his computer skills, he would never find it. Never find the real her.
Which was tantamount to waving a red flag in front of an already raging bull.
How could Hailey be so confident when she knew he was respected by other hackers as one of the top five in the world and was capable of plucking any intel he needed from any computer system he wanted?
So who had systems that were virtually impenetrable?
Governments.
Not some potty little local government, district, or council, but the bigger stuff. Such as the M agencies in the UK, or the FBI and CIA in the US. Plus a number of other agencies the public didn’t even know about.
His gaze narrowed on Hailey. Her age really was somewhere in the mid-twenties, but the English accent could be faked. The name Hailey Frost might not be her real one, the fiery-red hair could be dyed, and eye color could be changed by colored lenses.
His facial recognition program could deal with all those things. It might take a little longer if there had been any plastic surgery done to her face, but Haydn was pretty sure he could maneuver his way round those too with time.
Truthfully, he was more interested in knowing the reason why Hailey might want, or need, to have changed her name or appearance and now lived her life in such a way that she never brought unwanted attention to herself. She had no interaction with people outside of a
work environment either, and appeared to have no friends outside of Steele Protectors.
Her employment application had stated both her parents were dead and she had no siblings or other close family members.
More smoke and mirrors to hide her real identity?
Until the past four days, Hailey’s routine when she returned home had always been the same. She did one cursory check of the perimeter, entered the building to chat with the security guard on duty, and then took the elevator to the third floor. For some reason, all that had changed four days ago.
Something was seriously wrong, and Haydn wanted, had to know what it was, if he was to keep her safe.
Whatever Hailey was running from, Haydn’s only reason for wanting to know was so that he could protect her. So that all the Steele family could protect her, if necessary. Because her actions these past few days clearly showed she was afraid of something or someone.
He raised his hand, intending to touch her cheek, only to have Hailey flinch back before his fingers could make contact. “Hailey?” He gave a pained frown.
Her jaw tightened. “As I said, you will have my resignation on your desk first thing in the morning and my own desk cleared out shortly after.”
His brows rose. “As I’m sure you remember, we require one full month’s notice if you wish to leave the company with a reference that doesn’t reveal you walked out on your employment with us.”
“Of course I remember,” Hailey snapped. “I just didn’t think you would want me to continue working somewhere I no longer wish to be.”
He shrugged. “We’ll probably keep you in the office for that month.” For her own safety, no other reason. “See you in the morning.” He turned and walked to the door before unfastening the locks and safety chain. He closed the door softly behind him when he left.
Haydn (Steele Protectors 5) Page 1
