Assignment: Marriage

by Jackie Merritt

  God knew her questions weren’t because she thought him incompetent. If anything, Hannigan went too far the other way. He was going to protect her if he smothered the breath out of her doing it.

  Sighing, Nicole finished her wine, got up and took the empty glass to the kitchen sink. With a shower in mind, she switched off the little lamp in the living room and made her way in the dark down the hall to her bedroom.

  The shower felt wonderful. Turning her face up to the spray, Nicole realized that her system had returned to normal. She was relaxed now and even a little sleepy. Good. When she got into bed, she wouldn’t roll and toss from anxiety.

  Turning the water off, she stepped out of the stall and reached for a towel. Her hand froze at the sudden, sharp cracking noise from outside, as though someone had stepped on a dry limb that had fallen from one of the trees.

  Fear immediately constricted her throat and for several moments she couldn’t move. But then mobility returned in a rush and she hastily snapped off the overhead light. Grabbing the towel, she wrapped it around herself, darted into her bedroom, where she extinguished those lights, and then ran down the hall to Hannigan’s door.

  “Tuck?” she whispered. No answer. “Hannigan?” Still no response.

  With her heart pounding, she turned the knob and pushed open his door. He heard her at the same time she saw him in bed, and he bounded up, grabbing the gun he’d placed on his nightstand.

  “It’s me!” Nicole cried, aware of that awful weapon pointed at her.

  Tuck squinted in the dark, recognized Nicole and realized she was only wearing a towel. He lowered the gun. “What’s going on?”

  “I heard a noise…just outside my bathroom.” Her voice was shaking. Her wet hair was drizzling water down her neck to her bare shoulders. “I was just getting out of the shower when I heard it.”

  Tuck was already off the bed. Without stopping for clothes, he walked past Nicole in his briefs. “Stay right behind me,” he whispered.

  She wouldn’t be anywhere else, she thought with a shudder. Not on a dare. If it were possible, she would glue herself to his back. Behind him she felt safe from whatever was lurking outside in the dark.

  Moving quietly, Tuck entered first Nicole’s bedroom and then her bathroom, aware of her all but breathing down his neck. She had taken his instructions literally and couldn’t be more than two inches from his back.

  Her bathroom was still steamy from her shower. Cautiously, Tuck separated two slats in the miniblind at the one tiny window to peer out. Then he grinned. Outside was a fat little porcupine, sniffing and shuffling through brush and twigs.

  Tuck turned slightly—he had very little space with Nicole standing so close. “Take a look.”

  “Outside?” Her wide, frightened eyes registered surprise.

  “It’s a porcupine. Check it out for yourself.”

  “A porcupine!”

  Tuck rolled up the blind and they exchanged places, with Nicole ducking under Tuck’s arm to see out and him standing behind her to look over the top of her head.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Nicole mumbled. “I’ve never seen a porcupine in his natural habitat before. What’s he doing?”

  “Probably feeding.”

  “He gave me a few gray hairs, I can tell you.” She turned around. “Tuck, I’m sorry I woke you. I guess I’m just jumpy because of…” Her voice trailed off as it occurred to her that they were mere inches apart, him in his underwear, her wearing a towel. His white briefs appeared almost luminous against the darker tones of his skin and she wondered if her white towel looked the same to him.

  “You didn’t wake me. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet.” Even he noticed the husky timbre of his voice. The setting, though a little bizarre, bore an intimate quality and he was feeling it in the pit of his stomach. Nicole was shadowy and looked mysteriously beautiful, and the air was redolent with the scents of soap and shampoo. “Besides,” he added in an even hoarser voice, “feel free to wake me anytime. It’s what I’m here for.”

  Nicole swallowed. He wasn’t dashing away. That he was seemingly rooted to the spot and immersed in the situation—her own feelings exactly—made her pulse race and her heart beat in an erratic pattern. She could like this man, she thought within the euphoric daze of her mind. With any encouragement at all, she could really like him. Unquestionably there was chemistry simmering between them. One move from either of them right now would have them in each other’s arms.

  Tuck was thinking virtually the same thoughts, but he was also at war with himself. Touch her now—he sensed she wouldn’t object—and their relationship would change forever. He’d rued that other kiss the second it was over, and he had a feeling that in this steamy little bathroom in the dark, a kiss would merely be a prelude to much deeper involvement.

  His gun was still in his hand. It was as good an excuse as any to break up this unexpected tête-à-tête. Backing up a step, he raised the gun slightly, just so she would see it.

  “I’m going to put this away,” he mumbled thickly. Then he got the hell out of there before he changed his mind and did something that he knew he’d regret in the morning.

  Nicole stared at the vacant doorway with her mouth open. He couldn’t have retreated any faster. “You…you coward,” she whispered, shaken by the intensity of the disappointment rattling around in her system. He’d felt exactly what she had, she would bet anything she possessed on it, only he’d denied it and fled.

  Challenging, definitely. Nicole’s eyes narrowed in speculation. Just how noble was Tuck Hannigan?

  Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out?

  Seven

  After a nearly silent breakfast, Nicole began tidying the kitchen and Tuck went outside. She rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher, frowning all the while. They were more uncomfortable with each other than they’d ever been, obviously because of those few moments in the bathroom last night when more than a porcupine had been on their minds.

  Nicole was still fussing with this and that, folding a dish towel, hanging it on a rack, wiping counters, when she heard sharp, hacking noises from outside. They sounded like an ax in use, but why would Hannigan be chopping wood? The sun was bright again. They certainly didn’t need a fire. In fact, even during yesterday’s rainstorm and Tuck’s mentioning he liked wood fires, he hadn’t started one.

  Nicole went to the window to see what was really happening. Exactly as she’d suspected, Tuck was wielding an ax and whacking the hell out of chunks of wood, chopping them into small pieces, apparently slated for the fireplace or, on second thought, to add to that pile of already chopped wood next to the small storage shed that was partially hidden in the trees.

  It was a beautiful day and Nicole had no intention of staying inside herself. Almost belligerently she went through the back door and folded her arms. “Why are you chopping wood?”

  Tossing two pieces of split wood to the ground near the chopping block, he gave her a disgruntled look. “For something to do.”

  Her sigh sounded like a complaint. “I need something to do, too. Do you have any objections to my walking down to the lake?”

  Tuck laid down the ax. “I’ll go with you.”

  “That isn’t necessary,” she said. “I’m not afraid of porcupines.”

  He shot her an unamused look. “Come on. If you want to go down to the lake, we’ll go to the lake.”

  He took off walking around the cabin and headed down the slope toward the water. Although she followed, this wasn’t what Nicole had had in mind. She would just as soon be alone. In fact, she preferred being alone. After last night she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about Hannigan. Thinking of him as a challenge was not only foreign to her nature, it seemed foolish this morning.

  Tuck parked himself on a rock. There were several around, good-sized, scattered along the beach. Nicole picked up a few pebbles, tossed them into the water, then dipped her hand in. She glanced back at Tuck.

  “The water’s really quite
warm. Do you think it’s safe to swim along here?”

  “Do you want to go swimming?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a thought. I can’t just do nothing day after day. Yesterday was intolerable. You thought so, too. Locked in the cabin just because it was raining. The rain wasn’t your fault, of course, but neither was it mine.”

  “No, it was no one’s fault. Take a swim if you want. Looks pretty safe. I can see the bottom for quite a ways out there. Just don’t go out too far.”

  “I’m a good swimmer,” Nicole said tartly. “You really do worry about me a little too much, don’t you think?”

  His expression was cool and unreadable. “That’s what I’m being paid for.”

  She straightened from the water’s edge. “Are you being paid a lot for this job?”

  “Standard pay,” he said. “Nothing to get excited about.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Were you ordered to take this job, or did you volunteer?”

  He laughed, a sharp, staccato sound. “I sure as hell didn’t volunteer.”

  “Then you were ordered.”

  “No, I wasn’t ordered, either. I asked for some time off— my vacation time and sick leave. It added up to about six weeks. I wanted to get away from Vegas. Captain Crawford suggested that if I wanted to just get out of Vegas for a while, I might be interested in this job. I thought it over for a few minutes—it was all he gave me to think about it—and I said okay. What he didn’t tell me and I didn’t think to ask was who the person was that I would be protecting.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I didn’t know the witness was a woman.”

  “Ah. And when you found out the witness was female, you didn’t like it.”

  “Not particularly,” he replied.

  She felt for the first time that she was seeing beneath the hard exterior of Hannigan’s demeanor. He’d wanted time off, been talked into taking this job, found out that he would be protecting a woman and hadn’t liked it. Consequently, before he’d ever met her he hadn’t liked her.

  She waited a few seconds, not quite glaring at him but certainly not laying a pleasant look on him, and finally said, “I’m going to go change into my suit. I don’t suppose you’d care to go swimming.”

  “No,” he said flatly. “I’ll just sit here and watch you swim.”

  From his tone he obviously thought she wasn’t much of a swimmer. She sniffed. “I’m probably a better swimmer than you are.”

  “You might be better than I am at a lot of things,” he said in a voice that implied, So what?

  Nicole went up the hill toward the cabin. Tuck reached down, picked up some small rocks and gave them a fierce toss into the water. He didn’t like this whole setup, starting with what had nearly happened in Nicole’s bathroom last night.

  What’s more, he didn’t like anyone knowing where they were. Despite Joe’s confidence that only some top people in the department were aware, or would be made aware, of what was going on, there were always leaks. Secretaries talked and cops speculated about rumors among themselves. He’d been on the force long enough to know that in-house. secrets were damned hard to keep.

  For one thing, the prosecutor’s office knew about there being a reliable witness, and there were numerous people working in the prosecutor’s office. Whether they were all trustworthy or not was a damned good question.

  Joe had told him not to call again without good reason, but he wanted to talk to Joe. He wanted to ask him, “Is there a possibility of a leak?” He also wanted to find out for himself if he was being overly protective and spooked without a reason. Of course, he wouldn’t ask Joe those questions; asking them of himself was bad enough.

  Nicole came down the hill wearing a royal blue cover-up that stopped at her upper thighs. Her legs were bare, lightly tanned and beautiful. Tuck didn’t miss them. Without looking his way, she discarded the cover-up and stood for a moment in a matching blue bathing suit before wading into the water.

  Now here was something he did like—the way she looked in a bathing suit—which wasn’t especially comforting. She was slender, with narrow hips and nicely rounded breasts, the type of woman he was normally drawn to. She ducked into the water and began swimming. She’d told him the truth: she was a good swimmer. Her overhand crawl was smooth and appeared effortless. Tuck never took his eyes off her.

  She turned over on her back, floated and called, “It’s really great. Why don’t you get your bathing suit and come in?”

  He felt the urge to do so, to join her in the water, to let go and have some fun. It had been a long time since he’d had fun, this kind of fun. But something held him back, probably the memory of last night and how close he’d come to making a bad mistake.

  The sound of a speedboat jerked Tuck’s eyes in its direction. There were so many boats on the lake that he wasn’t immediately alarmed. But the boat seemed aimed at Nicole, and it kept coming. It was still some distance away when he jumped up. “Nicole! Get out of the water!”

  “What?” she called.

  He waded in, shoes and all. “Get out of the water. Do it now, fast!”

  She looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. But then she heard the boat and she turned in the water to see it coming toward her. Surely it would veer, she thought, but maybe the driver didn’t see her. She started swimming toward land. When her feet could touch bottom, Tuck was there to grab her by the arm and haul her to shore. The boat sped past, a white craft trimmed in blue. The driver was covered up, wearing an oversize T-shirt and a hat. There was no one else in the boat.

  Tuck cursed under his breath. Was this his imagination? Had the boat been aimed at Nicole? If so, someone was keeping very close tabs on their activities. A neighbor, someone farther away with field glasses?

  He kept hold of her arm and dragged her away from the water. She shook off his hand and picked up her cover-up with a scowl. “That boat really wasn’t going to hit me.”

  “Oh, you know that?” he said somewhat sarcastically.

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t going to hit me on purpose!”

  He didn’t argue with her. He merely said, “I think you’ve swam enough for today.”

  She sighed in frustration. “Well, let’s go lock ourselves in the cabin. Then nothing can get to me, can it?”

  “You know, you’re taking this pretty damned lightly,” he said harshly. “This whole thing.”

  “And you’re taking it too damned seriously,” she snapped. “No one knows we’re here. No one knows I’m here, and yet you see danger and a threat to me in every occurrence. I still don’t understand what happened last night, why I had to wait in the car while you checked the cabin, and I’m sure I never will because you don’t talk.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I talk just as much as anyone else.”

  “Oh, give me a break, Hannigan. You say only the bare minimum.”

  Their retreat to the cabin was conducted in sullen silence. Nicole’s system reeked with resentment, resentment of Hannigan’s excessive protectiveness, of Joe Crawford, who’d apparently planned this whole awful fiasco, of the other detectives who’d scared her away from windows, resentment of herself because she’d been stupid enough to make that telephone call reporting what she’d seen, resentment because she was probably going to lose her job over this miserable affair, and maybe the hardest to deal with, resentment because in spite of everything else, Hannigan made her feel like a woman.

  But he was about as romantic as a rock, and why she’d been putting him and romance in the same thought was an unnerving mystery, one she had absolutely no hope of solving.

  Entering the cabin, she went directly to her bedroom.

  After Nicole showered away the lake water, she donned a robe and lay on her bed. Her mind was full, her thoughts jumping around like popcorn in a skillet. What was happening in Las Vegas? Thinking of her job and what might be going on in the Monte Carlo’s purchasing department was unbearably frustrating, so she forced that topic as
ide to question what, if any, headway the police department and prosecutor’s office were making in the Buckley murder case. Was it asking too much to be kept informed? Wasn’t she entitled to hear of any progress, however small?

  Sliding off the bed, she tightened the sash of her robe while leaving her room to ask Hannigan those questions. She found him in the kitchen, seated at the table and hunched over a mug of coffee.

  He’d been brooding over that boat, one minute telling himself the incident had been accidental and the next, certain it wasn’t.

  He looked up to see Nicole’s frigid expression. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said gruffly.

  “Hear what?” she retorted. “You don’t know what’s on my mind.”

  “Like hell I don’t. You’re ticked off because I ordered you out of the water.”

  “Your giving orders is old hat, Hannigan. That’s not why I’m in here talking to you. I want to know if Crawford and his people have made any progress in Vegas. Call him and find out.”

  Tuck sat back. “He said he’d do the calling. When there was something we should know.”

  “That’s not good enough! Doesn’t he realize that even the smallest gain would give me some relief? Call him, or I will.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

  Their gazes locked in a stare down while Nicole’s anger grew. He wasn’t going to let her call anyone. She felt so trapped that she wanted to scream.

  Instead her lip curled. “You’re sorry? I’ll just bet you are.” Whirling, she flounced from the kitchen and returned to her bedroom, cursing Hannigan every step of the way.

  She flopped onto the bed again. Hannigan wasn’t just her bodyguard, he was her captor, damn him!

  That boat hadn’t been trying to run over her. Good Lord, boats raced by all the time. Hadn’t they both watched one speed past just the other evening? It was probably the same boat, the same driver, some idiot who disregarded safety and made a habit of coming too close to shore.