Evidence of Attraction

by Lisa Childs

  Nikki pressed a finger to her lips for Wendy to be quiet. Then she pointed up. They couldn’t go down. So they had to go up.

  Wendy’s legs shook, and not just from exertion, as she ran up those stairs. Fear gripped her. Fear for herself and for Nikki. It was a bad idea going up. It left them nowhere to go but down, from the roof of a twelve-story building.

  She was also afraid for Felicity and Hart. If something happened to her and Nikki, maybe nobody would find Hart. And he needed to be with his daughter.

  She needed them both. So she had to fight to survive, for them as much as for herself. She pushed open the door at the top of the stairwell and stepped onto the roof. Nikki came out behind her and shoved the door shut. Then she looked around, trying to find something to prop against it.

  Wendy saw a pipe sticking out of the roof and worked quickly, her hands shaking, to spin it loose from the threads holding it in place. When it was free, Nikki pulled it from her hands and shoved it through the door handle. Just as she did, the door shuddered as a body struck it.

  The pipe held but it wasn’t that thick. It might give out eventually. Then what would they do?

  They had no place to go. They were trapped. And from the way the door was shaking, there was more than one body slamming into it. Probably more than two.

  So they were outnumbered, which meant they were also outgunned.

  * * *

  Hart ducked low as his windshield exploded. It wasn’t branches coming through it this time but bullets. He pressed harder on the accelerator and kept going, ramming into the body of the shooter.

  The guy flew over the hood and then the roof.

  Apparently, Hart had found the right hotel. Parker had told him which one when he’d called to find out where the hell Wendy was. But Hart hadn’t known for certain which street it was on—just that it was near the River City airport.

  He drew his weapon, glad now that he hadn’t wasted any more bullets on Bruno as gunfire exploded all around the lot. Like at the Thompsons’, the perimeter guards had come under siege first. But he couldn’t be certain that none of Luther’s hired guns hadn’t already made it inside the hotel.

  He slammed Bruno’s rented sedan into a van parked near one of the Payne Protection SUVs. More gunfire exploded as guys scrambled out of the van. They dropped to the pavement as the Payne bodyguards advanced on it.

  He didn’t know if they’d been shot or if they’d just had the sudden sense to surrender before they got shot.

  A weapon pointed at him through the driver’s window. “What the hell...?” Lars Ecklund murmured as he lowered the barrel of his gun. “I thought you’d gone missing.”

  “I had,” Hart admitted. “Where is she?”

  “With Nikki,” Lars grimly replied, jerking his head at the hotel.

  Hart didn’t have to ask which room. He saw the broken glass on the sixth floor. “How the hell did they know?”

  Lars cursed and shook his head. “How the hell does Luther Mills know anything...?” His voice trailed off as he bounded toward the building.

  Hart shoved open the driver’s door and hurried past the other bodyguards who were dealing with the shooters on the ground. Lars’s legs were longer, but Hart caught up with him at the lobby entrance. He was about to ask if any gunmen had made it inside when he saw the fallen security guards.

  He cursed.

  Were they already too late?

  If Wendy and Nikki were trapped in a hotel room, they had no place to go.

  “I called her. I warned her,” Lars said, his voice gruff with emotion. “She got out. Nikki’s good. I’m sure they got out.” He sounded like he was trying real hard to convince himself of that.

  Hart wasn’t so sure. “If they got out, where the hell would they go?” He stepped back out of the lobby and peered around the building. The only movement was in the parking lot, where the guards took down all the shooters.

  Then there was a sudden whoosh of air and a dark shadow fell across Lars’s face and then Hart’s. Seconds later, something struck the sidewalk near them. A body.

  They rushed over to it. The impact with the ground had done significant damage, but it was apparently a male.

  “The roof,” they said together.

  The women had made it to the roof. That wasn’t any safer than being locked in a hotel room, though. They had no place to go there, either, but down, like this body had come.

  An image flashed through Hart’s mind of Wendy landing on the sidewalk.

  He flinched as pain gripped his heart. He could not let that happen. What the hell had he been thinking when he’d walked away from her lab?

  Why had he trusted anyone else to keep her safe?

  Because he hadn’t trusted her not to break his heart?

  He’d never been as angry or scared as he was now. But he was angry at himself. He’d been such an idiot. Such a coward...

  He heard gunfire coming from a distance, coming from up on the roof. How many of Luther’s crew had made it up there to the women?

  Lars and Hart rushed through the lobby. There were no elevators at the lobby level. It looked like they’d all stopped on the twelfth floor. And he knew...

  There were a lot of hit men, enough that they’d needed all the elevators. Even if both women were armed, they were drastically outgunned.

  He and Lars ran toward the stairwell and bounded up the steps as fast as they could. But they had so many floors to go and no way of knowing what they would find when they reached the roof.

  Would they be able to save the women they loved? Or would they be too late?

  Chapter 24

  They had rushed out of the hotel room so quickly that they hadn’t much ammunition with them. So Wendy and Nikki had had to make every bullet count.

  But there were too many...

  Too many men and not enough bullets.

  Once she heard the click of the empty chamber, Wendy closed her eyes and braced herself for the worst. As she’d feared, the barrage of gunfire increased in intensity. She heard the blast of Nikki’s gun; she must have had more magazines on her. But then she stopped.

  All of it stopped.

  Wendy sucked in a breath. Was she the only one who had survived? Or was she dead, too?

  Before she could open her eyes, strong hands closed around her arms. Then she was lifted. Carried. She could have tried playing dead, but she knew she was alive from the wild pounding of her heart.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw why her pulse had leaped and why her skin tingled. Hart was carrying her toward the open door to the stairwell.

  “You’re alive,” she murmured.

  Or had she joined him wherever he’d gone after he’d died? Were they both dead?

  “You, too,” he said as he glanced down at her.

  “Where are you taking her?” Nikki called after them.

  Wendy peered over his shoulder to see her bodyguard. Nikki moved away from her husband, who’d had his big arms wrapped tightly around her. Wendy’s breath shuddered out with relief that the other woman had survived, too. If anything had happened to Nikki, Wendy never would have forgiven herself for not sharing Parker’s warning.

  Obviously that Payne sixth sense was not a myth. It really existed. It really worked.

  “I’m her bodyguard now,” Nikki called after Hart.

  He kept walking. Hell, he was nearly running despite his wounded leg.

  “Hart!” Wendy exclaimed. “You need to put me down. You’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine now,” he said. And he certainly seemed fine as he descended that first flight of stairs with no trouble despite carrying her. Then he pushed open a door with his shoulder and headed to the elevators.

  Once the doors closed on them, she tried again to wriggle down, but he held her tightly and as effortlessly as if she was the rag doll
his daughter loved so much. The one she thought Winnie looked like...

  “You’re putting too much extra weight on your leg,” she protested.

  “You’re fine.”

  She wasn’t as light as that rag doll or Felicity. He shouldn’t have been carrying her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Taking you someplace safe.”

  In the parking lot, he had to convince another bodyguard to give up an SUV.

  He drove off with her, passing police cars and ambulances heading for the hotel.

  “Shouldn’t we go back?” she asked. “Won’t we have to give a report?”

  “To who?” Hart asked, his voice gruff with frustration. “One of Luther’s moles? He keeps finding out where you are.”

  “I don’t think he was behind the shooting at the other hotel,” she said. “And neither does Parker.”

  “I know he wasn’t,” Hart acknowledged. “That was my ex’s new husband.”

  She gasped. “Shooting at us?”

  “That was the assassin Bruno, Monica’s husband, hired,” Hart said.

  Wendy realized now how his vehicle had crashed. “You had a run-in with him.”

  He nodded. “It’s over now.”

  “Was she behind it?” she asked.

  Hart grunted. “I’m a bad judge of character,” he said. “But no, I wouldn’t have married someone capable of murder.”

  She flinched as she thought of all the people she might have just killed. Her head pounded so hard, she closed her eyes.

  A hand gripped hers, squeezed reassuringly. “There’s a big difference between self-defense and murder,” he reminded her. “Whatever happened up there on that roof? That was self-defense.”

  She knew that, of course. But it didn’t lessen her guilt that much.

  “It was you or them,” he said. His grip tightened slightly before he released her hand.

  She opened her eyes but didn’t recognize the scenery moving quickly past the windows of the SUV. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Someplace safe...”

  She tensed. “Don’t take me where my parents and Felicity are,” she protested. “I don’t want to put them in danger.” She didn’t want to put him in danger, either. She should have fought harder to free herself when he’d carried her off the roof and out of the hotel.

  But she hadn’t wanted to get away from him. She’d wanted to cling to him just as she had, her arms linked tightly around his neck. That was selfish, though, and she felt another pang of guilt.

  “Felicity is expecting you,” she said. “You need to go to her.”

  “I will,” he said. “I called her while I was on my way to the hotel. I told her that I was going to try to convince Winnie to come with me.”

  Tears rushed to her eyes. She closed them tightly, trying to hold them back. She was afraid that if she started, she might not stop.

  Wendy cleared her throat and said, “You shouldn’t have done that. I can’t go...”

  The vehicle stopped. Maybe he’d finally listened.

  She opened her eyes, but he was stepping out of the SUV. Then he came around to her side of the vehicle to open her door. She peered around him at the small house behind him.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  They couldn’t have already arrived at the safe house. Parker had made it sound as if it was far from River City. And Hart had not been driving that long.

  “My mother’s house,” he said.

  “But she’s dead...”

  He nodded. “I’ve had it rented out since she passed away,” he said. “The last tenants just moved out and the new ones aren’t moving in until the first of next month.” He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket as they walked up the sidewalk to the front door.

  Why had he taken her to his condo earlier instead of here, then?

  “I would have brought you here earlier,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “But it was actually being fumigated and cleaned for the new tenants.”

  Unlike the lie she’d told her parents.

  When the door opened, she could smell chemicals. Fortunately, it was the scent of carpet cleaners rather than pesticides. They could stay here.

  But they shouldn’t...

  Hart needed to get to his daughter. Felicity needed him. But then he pulled her into his arms and lowered his head to hers and need overwhelmed her. Her desire for him—her love—was too intense for her to deny.

  Just a short while ago she’d been worried that he was dead. That she would never be able to tell him how she felt. Now that she had the opportunity, the words, along with the emotion, stuck in her throat.

  She was scared. She’d survived a rooftop shoot-out with desperate gunmen. But she was more scared now—with Hart—than she’d been then.

  She was afraid that he did not return her feelings. At least, not her love...

  He certainly shared her passion as he lifted her again. Even as he carried her, he kept his mouth on hers, kissing her deeply. His shoulder struck a doorjamb, jarring her. He nearly dropped her but then he tightened his arms around her again.

  She giggled even as she clutched at his broad shoulders.

  Then he was dropping her—onto a bed, though.

  She settled against the soft mattress with a sigh. “It’s a furnished house...”

  “They’re short-term tenants, just here on assignment,” he said. “They need it furnished.”

  She didn’t care why there was a bed. She was just grateful that there was one. She was even more grateful that he was there.

  That he was alive.

  And so was she...

  Adrenaline rushed through her. She’d come so close to death now—too many times—that she had to celebrate life. She had to celebrate love.

  Even though she was too scared to tell him about her feelings, she showed him.

  With her kiss...

  With her touch...

  She ran her fingers along the fly of his jeans, which strained from his erection. As she released the button and lowered the zipper, his breath hissed out like the rasp of the metal sliding down.

  Then she freed him from his jeans and his boxers and wrapped her fingers around him.

  He groaned. A low, intense groan, as if he was in pain. The tension must have been wound as tightly inside him as it was inside her. But, instead of seeking his release, he pulled her hand from him and focused on her.

  He removed her clothes quickly, as quickly as he’d removed her from the crime scene at the hotel.

  And, just like then, she got carried away.

  But now it was on a tide of passion. It swept through her from her lips, as he kissed them, to the tips of her nipples, which he teased with his tongue as he moved down her body to her very core. His finger touched her there, teasing her to the brink of madness.

  He moved his mouth even lower, his tongue flicking over the most sensitive part of her. She arched off the bed as an orgasm overcame her.

  Then he was there, moving between her legs. While she’d panted for breath, he’d donned a condom. So he was sheathed when he eased inside her. And she was so ready for him.

  Despite the release he’d just given her, the tension built again with each stroke. He lowered his head to hers and kissed her passionately as he moved deeply inside her.

  The ache that had been in her heart from missing him was finally filled, like he filled her. She felt closer to him—connected—in a way that went beyond the physical. When she came again, he came with her, their bodies shuddering, their hearts beating frantically and their names on each other’s lips.

  When he slipped away to clean up, Wendy felt the ache begin again because she knew she had to let him go. He was already missing his daughter and Felicity was missing him. Wendy couldn’t keep
him from his child any longer, and if he tried to protect her until the trial, he risked dying—like so many had died at the hotel—and then he would be away from his daughter forever.

  Wendy could not do that to the child or the man she loved.

  * * *

  Hart left the water running when he answered his cell. He didn’t want to disturb Wendy with his conversation in case she’d fallen asleep again after they’d made love.

  At least that was what it had been for him. Making love...

  Had it only been sex for her, like she’d claimed?

  Hart was beginning to have his suspicions about that, though.

  The running water made it hard for him to hear his caller, until Parker shouted his name. The cell fairly vibrated with the anger in his boss’s voice.

  “Yes,” Hart replied.

  “Where the hell are you?” Parker asked. “You can’t just take back an assignment I took you off.”

  Hart’s lips curved into a grin. He hadn’t just taken the assignment back. He’d taken the woman. And he never intended to return her, if he could convince her to give him a chance.

  Back at the hotel, he’d worried that he had missed that chance. He’d worried that he had let his fear cost him a future for her and a future for them.

  Not just him and Wendy but for Felicity, too.

  He’d been such a damn fool.

  “Nobody will keep her safer than I will,” Hart vowed. And not just until the trial was over, but for the rest of their lives.

  “No!” a female voice chimed in.

  It wasn’t Nikki, defending her efforts to protect Wendy, who made the protest. It hadn’t come through the cell phone. It had come from the woman standing in the open door to the bathroom.

  She had got dressed already—while he stood naked before her, in more ways than one. He wanted to give her his heart. But she held his keys instead, gripped tightly in her hand.

  Had she intended to sneak out on him?

  Hart clicked off the cell phone even as Parker was sputtering, demanding to know what was going on. He wanted to find that out for himself first.