by Julie Miller
“You’re a looker,” she joked with her reflection in the mirror. “If you’re a prize fighter.”
She touched the red-and-purple mark on her cheekbone and studied the stitched-up gash in her arm. She started counting all the tinier bumps and abrasions she’d earned while celebrating the holidays this week, but lost interest after number twenty.
Now, what exactly was it she had to offer a man again? Besides her heart?
She wasn’t sure if it was a case of opposites attracting, or two lonely souls finding each other at a time of crisis, or because he was her comic-book hero come to life, but she’d fallen for Quinn Gallagher in the short span of a week, and had fallen hard.
Work was settling into place for her, she hoped, as long as she could keep those self-doubts in the past where they belonged. Captain Cutler was writing up a proposal to the commissioner to make KCPD SWAT teams six-man units because it had required every man and woman on the team to bring everyone safely home. And she was beginning to think that making Holden Kincaid a surrogate big brother like the rest of the men of SWAT Team 1 might be better than treating him as her enemy. Dr. Kilpatrick was going to have a field day with all the changes going on in Miranda’s life the next time she sat down to talk with the police psychologist.
David Damiani had been arrested for multiple counts of murder, including the deaths of his accomplices, Holmes and Rowley. Elise Brown, suffering from an unfounded guilt that Miranda could relate to, had asked for a leave of absence from GSS. Apparently Nikolai Titov’s flirtations that she’d found so charming had been a ruse to keep a close eye on Quinn’s actions and reactions to each and every threat against GSS and Fiona. And now that there was an FBI and Interpol warrant for Nikolai’s arrest, maybe Miranda could take her badge off for a few days to see if she could be the woman Quinn wanted and the friend Fiona needed.
She supposed that new mission started right now.
She opened the bathroom door and walked right into the middle of Quinn’s chest. He wore a new pair of sweatpants from the hotel gift shop and nothing else but smooth skin and a dangerous smile. Singed by the contact, her cheeks hot with color, her words stuck in her throat, Miranda retreated a step.
But he followed her right through the doorway, leaning in to capture her mouth in a kiss. “Happy New Year.”
Miranda teased him as he pulled away. “You’re supposed to do that at midnight.”
He shrugged those beautiful shoulders. “I was a little preoccupied at the time.” He laced his fingers with hers and pulled her into the main room, where Fiona was stretched out with Petra in one of the room’s two queen-size beds. “What do you think?”
Her eyes were on Fiona’s sweet face. Oh, to be so young and innocent and to willingly move on from the things that could scare a body right down to her toes. “Is she asleep?”
“She’s zonked.” He tugged her another step. “I meant this bed.”
“Quinn!” she gasped as he pushed her onto the covers and followed her down. His thigh landed between hers, nudging the towel up to an indecent position. Her breast pillowed against his chest as he moved in right beside her. His hands were on her shoulders and face and in her hair. And he was kissing her. And, oh, how this man could kiss. Leisurely. Hungrily. He teased. He took. He lavished. He tenderly invited her to be an equal in every brush of his lips, every foray of his tongue, every gentle nip of his teeth. She was a clinging, grasping puddle of hot, gooey need before she could catch a breath and find her voice again.
“We can’t do this here.”
“Where do you suggest? My house is closed off as a crime scene. My office has glass walls. This hotel is the perfect place. A locked door. Privacy. Some good friends from SWAT 1 keeping watch outside so we can catch up on our…rest.”
“No, I meant…we shouldn’t…”
He discovered a sensitive bundle of nerves at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and he teased it with his lips again and again, enjoying how it made her squirm and stammer. He licked the spot and blew warm air across it, raising dozens of goose bumps and making her shiver.
“Damn it, Quinn.” She caught his face between her hands and demanded he look into her eyes and listen. “We can’t do this here with Fiona sleeping in the next bed.”
“You mean, what if you cry out and wake her?”
Miranda caught a taut male nipple between her thumb and forefinger, and grinned as the pectoral muscles bunched beneath her hand and a breath hissed through his teeth. “What if you cry out?” she challenged.
“You are… I can’t…” Was the mighty Quinn Gallagher actually at a loss for words?
But he wasn’t at a loss for action. As smoothly as they’d fallen onto the bed together, he pulled her to her feet and led her back to the bathroom.
He locked the door behind him and lifted her up onto the granite sink countertop. It was a cold shock to her bottom and thighs at first, but only for a moment. With a sweep of his hands, the towel was gone and his mouth was on her breast, teasing, tormenting. He caught the tip with his tongue and coaxed it to eager attention. His fingers kneaded her hips, her back, her bottom, until they slipped down to her thighs and went suddenly still.
He lifted his mouth from the hard rise and fall of her deep, stuttering chest and looked into her eyes. “I’m finishing what we started in the kitchen last night. Unless you tell me to stop.”
Miranda pulled off his spare pair of glasses and gently kissed the puffy bruise beneath his eye. Then she kissed another mark. And another. She kissed his chin. His pulse was beating along his jaw. She laved her tongue around his nipples until he was gripping the edge of the counter and moaning her name.
And then she found his mouth and kissed him there.
She opened her lips to him.
She squeezed a palmful of his butt and pulled herself into his heat, opening her body to him.
He sheathed himself and entered her slowly, filling her, completing her.
He reached over and turned on the shower, but made no move to get either of them wet.
“I don’t…” she gasped, clinging to his shoulders, balancing on a precipice of desire and vulnerability, of need and want. “Quinn?”
He grinned. “We’ll see which one of us cries out first.”
Then, with those blue eyes never leaving hers, he rocked against her and she gasped. She tongued the base of his throat and he spasmed. He flicked his thumb over her nipple and she moaned. She hugged him with her legs and he grabbed up handfuls of her hair as he plunged in deeper and deeper, faster and faster. Their duel found a rhythm, and a pure molten heat gathered in the tips of her breasts and weighed heavy at her core.
He kissed her, lifted her, plunged into her slick warmth, and she cried her pleasure into his mouth as she crested on wave after wave of aftershocks. And when she started to tumble over, he stiffened between her legs and groaned his release against her neck.
And when she was spent and weak and truly sated, he wrapped her in his arms and she opened her heart to him.
QUINN SAW MIRANDA GO INTO protector mode one more time when the bellman knocked at the door to deliver a mysterious letter attached to a stuffed teddy bear that was as big as Fiona.
It was difficult to conceal a gun in the pocket of her red flannel pajamas. And there was no hiding the protective mama posture she had when she inspected the unmarked gift before letting an eagerly curious Fiona play with it. Miranda turned her back to the room and carefully opened the letter as though it might contain something poisonous or explosive.
When her shoulders sagged after reading the note, Quinn was instantly at her side. He thought she needed to sit, but she shook off attention and handed him the card and a photograph instead. “I’m so glad we didn’t let her see this.”
The card itself was brief, but the picture of Nikolai Titov with a bullet hole in his head and a knife stabbed into his heart spoke volumes.
Quinn was the one who sank into a chair and needed Miranda’s comforting arm aroun
d him as he read the message again.
Quinn—
I am a man whose health is failing and whose history has not always been something a family would be proud of. But I still have some influence in Lukinburg.
I give you this gift.
I will not make further contact with Fiona, as I do not wish for any of my troubles here in St. Feodor to endanger her as they did my daughter. But know that she is safe, and that my enemies, and yours, here in Lukinburg, will never trouble her again.
Someday, tell her that her grandfather loved her. Be well, my son. And be good to the beautiful blonde who looks at you both with such love in her eyes.
Vasily
The three of them had breakfast in bed at about four in the afternoon. It was a messy business involving pancakes and dolls and laughter, flannel pajamas and a newspaper that these two women were never going to let him read.
It was a perfect way to celebrate the New Year, a perfect way to celebrate the terror of the past week finally ending, a perfect way to celebrate the beginning of…what?
Quinn watched the contrast of gold and dark hair bent together as they plotted some silly plan that probably involved him eating a pancake with his hands clasped behind his back again. He listened to the whispers and laughter. He drank in the smiles.
He couldn’t ask Miranda to be his new chief of security. Michael had called her less than half an hour ago with some news that had made her throw her arms around his neck and kiss him. Apparently, no amount of money or charm or personal persuasion on the nearest countertop could lure her away from her job at KCPD.
He couldn’t ask her to stay on as Fiona’s nanny. He hoped there would never be another call for someone as fearlessly determined as she to step up and protect his child.
And clearly, unless there were some lessons involved somewhere along the line, he couldn’t ask her to be the cook.
Fiona needed a mother.
And he needed…Miranda.
If he could just figure out what sort of proposition would appeal to her, then he’d do it. A week wasn’t a long time to get to know someone. But he felt more sooner, deeper, differently, with Miranda Murdock than with anyone since his dear Valeska. And it was different than the innocent, rosy-eyed feeling he’d had for his wife. He felt alive, energized, sometimes a little frustrated, but always lucky to be with Miranda.
After Miranda set the tray aside, and Quinn had the chance to sit back and read his paper while they sat together with Petra and read the television listings, he found himself staring.
“What?” Miranda looked up from the grand adventure of a cooking show and tucked that silky fall of hair behind her ear.
“How do you feel about my daughter?” The direct approach might just work with this puzzle of a woman.
Miranda hugged the child at her side. “I’ve fallen in love with her.”
“And her father?”
He’d negotiated million-dollar deals, invented technology on the fly and dealt with people from nations all over the world. But there was no question he’d ever asked where he was this nervous about the answer before.
Miranda smiled. “You’re the smart guy, Quinn. Figure it out.”
Finally, an answer he understood.
He reached for her hand and they hugged Fiona between them.
“I love you, too.”
Thank you to MaryAnn McQuillan.
You opened up your big heart and your busy schedule to take pity on my sore fingers and computer frustration. Thanks for retyping the manuscript for me!
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8230-8
NANNY 911
Copyright © 2011 by Julie Miller
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*THE PRECINCT
**THE PRECINCT: VICE SQUAD
‡THE PRECINCT: BROTHERHOOD OF THE BADGE
‡‡THE PRECINCT: SWAT
