Yes, he was a hard man, but his mouth hadn’t been. When she’d nipped it, she’d felt the give of his lower lip, felt him stiffen. Her heart had leapt into her throat and all her muscles had tightened, and she’d wanted him to do . . . something, though what she didn’t know. She only knew that there was a blaze of emotion inside her and it had to come out one way or another.
She swallowed, trying to ignore it.
“You ready?” he asked shortly.
“Yes.”
His gaze dropped to the guitar case and she tensed. If he told her she couldn’t take it, she’d hit him over the head with it until he agreed.
But all he said was, “Do you want to know where we’re going?”
Oh yes. It was probably important she knew how exactly they were going to escape her father, since once he’d found out she was missing, she had no doubt he’d move heaven and earth to find her.
Then again, Jack had told her to trust him. And she did. “As long as you get me away, I don’t care where or how.”
He stared at her a second longer, something she couldn’t quite catch gleaming in his eyes. Then he gave a sharp nod. “You won’t be coming back here. So make sure you have all the shit you want to take, understand?”
She took a small breath, waiting for distress or shock to hit her at the thought of leaving her little place of safety. But it didn’t.
Because you were never safe here.
No. She never had been. Not once. And it struck her suddenly as she looked at Jack, standing there so tall and dark and dangerous, that she knew where she was safe.
With him.
“I understand,” she said, without a single shred of regret. “Let’s go.”
He didn’t wait. Jack headed for the door and held it open for her, and she walked through it without a backward glance.
The night was cold, making her shiver despite her coat.
Jack headed down the street a little way and she followed, coming to a stop as he unlocked what had to be a hired car. He opened the passenger’s side and she got in, closing the door after her. She put on her seat belt, then shoved her hands in her pockets to keep them warm as he came around to the driver’s side and got in.
A minute later and they were pulling away from the curb and joining the late-night traffic.
Jack didn’t speak, his attention on the road and flicking occasionally to the rearview mirror as if he was checking to make sure they weren’t being followed.
It made her feel even colder to imagine they were and what might happen if her father caught them. What he might do to her . . .
Nausea churned in her gut. Yet another horrible sensation to add to the anger and fear and all the other emotions tangling inside her.
“Don’t worry,” Jack said, not taking his attention from the front windshield. “I won’t let him find you.”
Of course he knew that she was afraid. He seemed able to read her mind with uncanny accuracy. How the hell did he do that?
“I can hear your breathing,” he added, lifting the thought directly from her head. “I know fear when I hear it.” Callie opened her mouth, but he went on, “And don’t bother denying it. I’ve known you were afraid since the moment I met you in the nightclub.”
She shut her mouth, clenching her fingers in her pockets. Why was it so hard to admit? Maybe because she’d spent so long denying it, that finally saying it was difficult to do. Especially to someone she hardly knew.
She glanced at him, watching the streetlights cast shadows over his face. His scars were hidden from this angle, the lines of his jaw and cheekbone unmarred, his skin smooth. There was a certain purity to his features, a very male beauty, that made him look less hard. Less dangerous.
But he wasn’t either of those things. He was hard and he was dangerous, and those scars she couldn’t see told a difficult story all their own.
Looking at him, she forgot about the sick feeling, about the fear and the anger, curiosity gripping her tightly. A grenade blast had given him those scars, he’d said. But how had it happened? Where had he been and what had he been doing? And why the Marines?
“I thought Dad hired you to keep an eye on me,” she said into the heavy silence. “That’s the reason I’ve been . . . bitchy to you.”
“A simple question would have cleared that up.”
“Yeah, well, you can see why I didn’t though, can’t you? I barely know you. I thought that even a veiled question might get back to Dad and I didn’t want that.”
“Fair enough.” He glanced at her, a brief flash of emerald. “I didn’t mind you being bitchy to me, though.”
She didn’t quite know what to do with that, so she ignored it. “So, I guess you weren’t hired to keep an eye on me?”
“I was hired because of the death threats against you. That’s all your father told me.” There was a slight hesitation, then he went on, “He wanted me to put the cameras back in your house.”
A small pulse of shock went through her, though she really shouldn’t have been surprised. “Well, considering the cameras were his in the first place, I guess that’s expected.”
Jack gave her another glance. “They were his cameras? I wondered.”
“Oh yeah, that’s why, when you told me, I was so shocked. I didn’t know they were there, but I was certain he’d installed them.” She paused, anger stirring inside her once more at the memory. “He likes knowing what I’m doing and he hates secrets. Controlling people is his favorite thing, especially controlling me and my mother.”
Jack didn’t say anything for a long moment, his attention firmly in front of him. Then he said quietly, “He told me not to tell you about the cameras going back in. He didn’t want you to know they were there.”
Her anger twisted, a hot current of it. “Bastard. Of course he wouldn’t. He must have been pissed you found them in the first place.” A thought struck her all of a sudden. “You didn’t—”
“No.” The word was hard and flat and absolutely certain. “I didn’t put the cameras back in. In fact, that was what made me suspicious about him in the first place. Not that I wasn’t already suspicious, given your behavior.”
Oh crap. Had she really been that transparent?
“What about my behavior?”
“Like I already told you, I know fear when I see it. And when a woman is afraid the way you were afraid, there aren’t too many places it can come from.”
“What do you mean the way I was afraid?” Great. This was getting better and better.
“You were angry and argumentative for no reason. Territorial about your place. You didn’t want to do what I told you, even though it was for your own safety. And you kept avoiding telling me what the problem was. And lastly, I know what fear looks like. I could see it in your eyes.”
She stared at him, momentarily stunned at all the things he’d noticed about her.
He gave her another intense, green glance. “I notice everything about you, Princess. Protecting you is my job and I take it very seriously.”
“Is that why you’re taking me away now?” she couldn’t help asking, not even sure why it mattered. “Because it’s your job? Or would you do this for anyone?”
“Yes,” he said harshly and for some reason, that made her feel . . . disappointed, though she didn’t really want to examine why. “I’d do it for anyone in danger from an asshole like him.”
“So why didn’t you simply call the police?”
His expression twisted. “Did you ever call the police?”
Callie swallowed. “I thought about it a couple of times, but . . .”
“But he’s a senator,” Jack finished. “And the police are his best buddies.”
It was true, but it wasn’t the fact that he’d guessed that caught at her all of a sudden. It was the sound of an edge in his voice. An edge that hadn’t been there before.
She studied him, watching as the headlights from passing cars illuminated his face, the ache and burn of curiosity twisting tighter
. “That sounds almost personal.”
His head turned sharply, the full impact of his green eyes hitting her, the emotion in them so sharp and intense it stole her breath.
Then just as sharply, he looked away. “My employers have a charter plane standing by.” The words were flat, expressionless. “We’ll be flying to San Diego.”
CHAPTER 10
Jack studied his rearview mirror all the way to the airport, but they arrived without incident and, more importantly, without tails. Kellan had gotten in touch with him to get a situation debrief while Callie had been getting her stuff together, and after Jack had given him the facts, he’d told Jack that a charter jet would be organized for him ASAP to take them both back to San Diego.
No questions were asked, but he did make it very clear that the mysterious Mr. Night, the money behind the 11th Hour operation, would be expecting a full rundown once Jack had returned.
Jack had no doubt that Night would, but he couldn’t worry about that now.
The most important thing was getting Callie on that plane and out of Boston ASAP.
There wasn’t any reason to believe the senator would know Jack had his daughter and was currently in the process of taking her out of state, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He kept himself on the alert as they were greeted by the pilot and taken out to the tarmac where the jet waited. There was a flight attendant who showed them aboard and while she was helping Callie get her guitar case put away properly, Jack sent Kellan a quick text to let him know they’d be on their way shortly.
He had no idea what the team there would be thinking about how he’d fucked up this particular job, but he realized he didn’t much care. Callie’s life was far too important to fuck around with and if it screwed his chances at joining the team, then maybe it wasn’t a team he wanted to be part of anyway.
The marine in him balked at that. The marine who wanted to be part of something again, who wanted to have a purpose. But he couldn’t sacrifice what he believed to be right simply because he wanted a purpose.
That wasn’t who he was. He’d always been a protector and protecting Callie was the job he’d signed up to do and so he’d do it.
She’s more than a job now, isn’t she?
Jack powered his phone down as he took his seat, watching as the flight attendant showed Callie to hers and dealt with her bag. Callie still looked pale and there were shadows under her eyes, swamped by the big black winter coat she’d refused to take off as they’d boarded.
Christ, she was more than a job and she’d become more than a job the moment he’d decided to extract her from the situation she was in. And now, thanks to his snap decision in the limo, he was stuck with her. Because she had nowhere to live and no job. No money. She would need to go into hiding until he dealt with her father, because no doubt the prick would send someone after her.
She would be dependent on him completely. Was he ready for that?
You are. You wanted it.
The thought was so strange he almost didn’t acknowledge it, because it made no sense at all to him. He’d decided long ago that a family wasn’t for him, let alone a wife, or even a long-term girlfriend. Not that Callie was any of those things to him, but the responsibility of it simply didn’t interest him.
He was built to protect people, not care for them.
That was in the future anyway. Once he’d gotten her back to San Diego, they’d have to figure out where they went from there and that would all be dependent on what her father did.
The plane, though a luxury jet, was fairly narrow, with only room for a couple of big seats with soft leather on either side of a central aisle. Jack was sitting with his back to the pilot, while Callie sat opposite, a low table between them.
“Would you care for drinks before we take off?” the flight attendant asked, laying a hand on the back of his seat and leaning down, smiling.
She was pretty and there was a certain attractive warmth to her that in another time and another place, he might have found intriguing. But right now, despite two years of abstinence, she didn’t even make his dick twitch.
Her eyes weren’t blue and they didn’t glow. And she didn’t have that fascinating combination of fragility and strength to her that Callie had. And he didn’t want to push her or test her. He didn’t want to break her, not even a little.
It pissed him off.
“No,” he said curtly. “Just get us up.”
The flight attendant nodded. “Takeoff will be in five minutes.”
He barely heard. Callie’s hands were clasped hard in her lap, her knuckles white, and he wanted to lean forward and take them in his the way he’d done back in the hotel room days earlier. Rub them to soothe her agitation.
But the plane was starting to move, so he remained where he was, catching her gaze with his instead. “He can’t get us now,” he said quietly, because he knew what she was worried about. “Nothing’s going to stop this plane from leaving.”
She blinked. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Know what I’m thinking all the time?”
If she thought about it, she’d know. In fact, she’d touched on it back in the car, just before they’d gotten to the airport. She’d picked up on the note in his voice he’d let slip, while thinking about his own father and his pal, a police sergeant, who’d looked the other way the few times his mother had called 911.
Yeah, Callie had figured out this was personal to him and if she’d thought about it in any depth, she’d be able to figure out why he knew all this stuff about her behavior, too.
But even if she hadn’t, he wasn’t going to go into it with her. He never went into it with anyone. It was his private tragedy and it had nothing to do with anyone else.
So he didn’t respond. He should have looked away, too, but he didn’t. Because there were sparks of green in her sea-blue eyes, emotional currents that twisted and turned and tangled, that pulled at him and drew him for no good reason.
The plane began to taxi, the engines kicking in, and Callie’s mouth suddenly curved, more sapphire than green in her gaze now.
He’d never seen her smile, not a real one, not like this. And even if he hadn’t been caught by the shifts of emotion in her bright gaze, he would have been caught by the brilliance of that smile. It wasn’t forced or fake like ones he’d seen her give at the fund-raiser that night. It was warm and bright, lighting her up like a candle inside a hurricane lamp.
The nose of the plane began to lift and as the wheels left the ground, her smile got brighter, warmer. All the tightness left her body, her shoulders relaxing, her fingers, no longer white-knuckled, lying still in her lap.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
And he felt something in his chest clench tight, as if the words meant something to him. Which was stupid, because all he’d done was gotten her out of a bad situation. Shit, he’d gotten a lot of people out of bad situations and he’d never had a reaction quite like this one.
He wanted to tell her not to thank him, that he was simply doing his job, but then as he already knew, she wasn’t just a job anymore. And he didn’t want to minimize it either, by telling her it was nothing, because he had no doubt she’d been in serious danger.
So all he did was nod, staying silent as the plane began to climb up to cruising altitude, and eventually she turned to gaze out the window as the lights of Boston grew smaller and smaller. But her smile remained, a slight, tantalizing curve of her mouth that he couldn’t seem to look away from.
Desire was snaking through him, low and hard and savage, reminding him of things he shouldn’t be thinking about. Such as the fact that she would need a place to stay while the aftermath of escaping her father was dealt with and that obviously, she could stay with him.
Wrong to want that. Wrong to be glad that he had the perfect excuse, too. He didn’t want to book a hotel for her, not where he couldn’t be sure of her safety. No, she needed to be with him, where he could keep an
eye on her. Where he could protect her if her prick of a father decided to send someone after her.
You want her too, don’t deny it.
Jack ignored the thought, watching the curve of her mouth, remembering the nip she’d given him earlier that evening. Christ, he could still feel the small sharp pain of it, an electrical charge that had gone straight to his cock.
Fuck, he wanted it again.
The plane was leveling out and soon the flight attendant was back to offer refreshments. Callie turned her brilliant gaze from the window and requested a glass of champagne, while he ordered a bourbon.
He could have a drink now that the immediate danger was past. They’d be in the air for a little over six hours, so he might as well relax while he could.
“San Diego, huh?” Callie said as she unbuckled her seat belt. “So, is that where you’re based?”
“I was brought up in LA, but I moved to San Diego after I was discharged.” He hadn’t wanted to go back to that shithole. Or have anything to do with the woman who’d brought him up in it. “It’s cheaper than San Francisco, plus the weather’s better.”
She tilted her head back against her seat. “So how come you’re in Boston then? Seems a long way to go for a job.”
How to answer? That the job was a test for a shadowy ex-military group who took on “special assignments” from a man none of them knew anything about? Yeah, that didn’t sound so great. And actually, now that he thought about it, what role had Night played in the job itself? Had he known that the senator was an abusive fuck? And how did the senator know about the 11th Hour in the first place?
Christ, maybe he shouldn’t have told Kellan what he had. Maybe he should have found his way out of Boston with Callie on his own. Well, too late now. But he’d certainly be asking a shitload of questions when they finally arrived in San Diego, that was for fucking sure.
“The people I received the job from are the best in the business and the senator wanted the best,” he said, which was essentially all true.
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