Gabriel West Still the One

by Fiona Brand

  Movement flickered up higher than he expected.

  West cursed, and circumnavigated the ghostly outline of a clump of palms. He was going over the wall.

  Seconds later he reached the wall, grabbed the gnarled limb of a tree, pulled himself up onto the broad top and sprang down onto the other side. As his bare feet hit the pavement, he heard the slam of a car door, caught the red flash of taillights. A car accelerated away—already too distant for him to catch the plate.

  West stopped, sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was hardly panting; he was fit, but that didn't change the fact that the bad guy had run rings around him because he knew the territory, and West didn't.

  He stared silently down the empty street. That wouldn't happen again.

  Tyler walked through the apartment, chills racing down her spine as she switched on every light.

  When she'd been mugged in the garage, both men had been little more than black shadows, dehumanized by the balaclavas that had blanked out their faces, but she'd been able to see the threat, and when she'd hit out, she'd been able to hurt them. This time there had been only one man, and she hadn't seen him at all. He'd used the smothering darkness as both concealment and a weapon. The cold terror of those moments in her bedroom were still with her, like a core of ice in her belly.

  She walked into the kitchen. The clock on the wall said it was twenty to two. Only ten minutes had passed since she'd woken to find someone in her room, touching her things. Considering everything that had happened in those minutes, the brief span of time seemed ludicrously short.

  Abruptly, she relived the moment when West had, once again, materialized out of the darkness in the exact instant she'd needed him. His gaze had touched on hers, both fierce and remote, then he'd flowed across the room, flung the curtain aside and disappeared into the night.

  She stared through the window, and another spasm of chills attacked her spine.

  She'd lived in this city all her life. She'd experienced the seamier side as a child—she knew about bad, and she knew about evil—but the cold, systematic way the perpetrator had tampered with the lighting and broken into her home had stripped away another subtle layer of gray. Tonight, she'd run smack into evil.

  Automatically, she filled the electric jug with water and switched it on, then placed the tea canister and two mugs on the bench—using the age-old ritual of making tea to settle her nerves. She didn't know if West still drank tea, but he used to, and she needed to do something while she waited for him to come back.

  That he would come back, she didn't doubt.

  As Tyler reached for the sugar bowl, her bone-deep, unquestioning confidence in West as a professional soldier—a warrior—dissolved the cold knot of tension in her belly and abruptly balanced the scales.

  A primitive satisfaction filled her. As evil as the bad guy was, she wouldn't want to be in his shoes when West got hold of him.

  When West walked back across the lawn to Tyler's apartment, all the lights were blazing. Tyler was in the kitchen making a hot drink, her jeans and shirt rumpled, hair tousled around her face.

  She handed him a mug. Her gaze raked him from head to toe. "Are you all right?"

  The demand was husky and flat, the look completely female—the kind of look women had been giving their husbands and sons since time immemorial. "I didn't get near him. He went over the wall by that big pohutukawa. His car was parked just up the street." West took a sip of the hot drink, awareness sliding through him that Tyler's glance hadn't been all about safety. "I was too late to get the license plate."

  She cupped her mug between her hands as if she was chilled, despite the warm temperature, and he caught the fine tremor in her fingers. "He did something to knock the power out." She didn't say, "It's the same guy," but the knowledge was there in her gaze.

  His jaw tightened. "Did he touch you?"

  "He didn't get the chance."

  Some of West's tension dissipated. So, okay, the son of a bitch could live. Just.

  He glanced at the microwave clock, which was showing the correct time. That meant there hadn't been an interruption of the power supply, just selective tampering.

  An image of the guy running through the night, little more than a flickering shadow, flashed through his mind, and frustration and temper ate at his control. The slick bastard knew his stuff. He'd prepared his op and carried it out with precision. The only hitch had been that he hadn't factored West into the equation.

  "He cut the power to the streetlights for a couple of blocks, and turned the security system off, but this time he'd left the power supply to the complex alone."

  That had been smart. If he'd interfered with the power, someone might have noticed and alerted the maintenance crew, or rung the police. "I'm going to put a call through to Cornell. Why don't you pack a few things? We can move to my apartment for what's left of the night. A few minutes from now this place is going to be a zoo."

  "I've already phoned Cornell. He's on his way."

  To West's surprise, Tyler didn't argue about moving to his apartment. Within minutes she was packed and ready to go, her overnight bag parked in the hallway to one side of the door. As he rinsed his empty mug and placed it in the dishwasher, she walked into the kitchen with the fluffy kitten cuddled in her arms.

  He watched as she tipped more biscuits into the cat’s dish, and his fury over the break-in aside, a completely male satisfaction that Tyler would be spending the rest of the night in his apartment and, as it happened, in his bed, settled in his stomach. It was a long way from what he wanted, but more than he'd expected so soon.

  Tyler was wary of him, and she had every right to be. It was a cold fact that he'd been lousy relationship material. The first time he'd ever laid eyes on her, he'd instantly known he should have walked away, but he hadn't. He'd asked her to dance, and once he'd touched her, he hadn't wanted to stop. The first kiss had been endless; the second one had come close to getting them both arrested; the third, in the back seat of his car, had almost catapulted them into parenthood. They'd barely made it to his flat in one piece. He'd lost clothes: a leather jacket, his T-shirt. She'd lost her handbag and her underwear.

  They'd spent the night and all the next day twined in his bed. A week later, when Tyler had finally gone home, West had gone with her and helped her pack her things. A month later they'd gotten married. Two days after the wedding, he'd been airlifted out to Afghanistan.

  The memory of how it had been between them rose up inside him, taking his breath. He had never forgotten the piercing intensity, the bone-deep need. It had shaken him, haunted him. But despite that, he had pushed the marriage to one side, and it had taken two shots from Renwick's handgun—both meant for him—and a dying woman he'd thought for one crazy moment was Tyler, to make him understand what losing her would mean.

  He'd survived the shooting unscathed, but this time he hadn't been left feeling cold and untouched. The moment had been primitive and powerful, and it had changed him in an instant in a way no amount of discussion or education could ever have done— ripping away the armoured shell he'd built around his emotions, leaving him raw and exposed and sharply aware that, while neither he nor Tyler had died, in all the ways that counted, he had lost her.

  Grimly, he watched Tyler fussing over the kitten and moving around the kitchen, refilling the kettle and setting it to boil, and placing extra mugs on the kitchen counter. She managed the tasks with an automatic ease, despite the stiffness of her right hand— despite the head injury and the scare she'd had tonight. In fact, she was altogether too calm and accepting, especially on one particular subject. "You're not arguing about going to my place."

  Tyler spooned coffee grounds into her machine and turned it on. She glanced at West, her gaze stark. "He was in my room, touching my things. I don't know if I ever want to sleep in there again. Your apartment is two stories up. Unless this guy has suction cups on his feet and hands, he won't make it up there."

  West eyed her sharply. "D
id he take anything?"

  "Not that I've noticed. He just seemed to be picking things up and putting them down."

  "There aren't likely to be any fingerprints. He was wearing gloves. He might have got cocky enough to take his gloves off when he was dealing with the power and security systems, but I doubt it."

  Tyler opened the fridge, extracted a container of milk and bent down to top up the cat's milk bowl. "There was something else...." She straightened, the milk container still in one hand. "He had something metallic on his head. I couldn't see him, but I knew where he was standing, and when he moved the curtain a little light came in and I caught a glimpse of metal."

  Cold settled at West's nape, the sense of what he could only describe as "wrongness" about the attacks on Tyler suddenly acute. "Night-vision gear." The guy was really beginning to tick him off. If it was possible, Tyler got paler. "He could see me." West let out a breath. "Yeah, he could see you."

  Cornell and his team arrived about the same time the power board guys and the maintenance service did, but neither of the crews could work until the police had finished dusting for prints. While Tyler was giving her statement, West handed out mugs of coffee and tea.

  An hour later, Cornell packed his tape recorder and notebook away in his briefcase. His eyes were bloodshot and his jaw was set. He looked as though he was running on coffee and about two hours' sleep a night. "This guy's hurting a whole lot of people. If either the maintenance crew or the power board guys get hold of him, they're likely to stick a pair of wire cutters in his head."

  West glanced at the men sitting in the lounge, patiently waiting for clearance to do their jobs. The boss of the power board crew, who was daintily balancing one of Tyler's bone-china mugs on his knee, was about six-four, two hundred and fifty pounds, with a mullet haircut and biker tattoos on both biceps. The lemon-scented tea he was drinking aside, he looked as if he didn't take any prisoners. "They'll have to stand in line."

  Chapter 9

  West's apartment was bare and distinctly masculine, his style minimalist. He showed her into a bedroom with a broad bed covered in a plain cream coverlet—his bed, and his room—she realized, as he walked past her to throw open a set of bifold doors.

  It had started to rain—a slow, heavy pattering— and cool, damp air drifted in from the small paved terrace outside, dissipating the heat that had built up during the day.

  West opened drawers and collected fresh clothing, then paused at the door. "There's only the one bed. I'll be sleeping on the couch."

  As she watched his broad back disappearing down the hallway, she remembered, with a jolt, that West had moved in here for the specific purpose of getting her back. The apartment was so empty because it didn't need to be filled with furniture. He'd brought the bare necessities required to do the job.

  The bareness of the apartment, the fact that he'd uprooted himself from the house she knew he'd bought not long after they'd separated, drove home West's commitment to get her back more effectively than anything else could have done.

  He'd told her that he wanted her back; now she believed it.

  Tyler unpacked a fresh T-shirt and underwear, then quickly showered before closing the terrace doors and slipping into bed, but once in bed, she couldn't relax. She'd taken more codeine, but despite the medication, she was nowhere near sleepy: she was awake and alert, and her brain wouldn't stop.

  After tossing and turning for another few minutes, she switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the new paperback she'd brought with her. Ten pages in, and with no idea what the book was about, she gave up on the story, climbed out of bed, parted the drapes and stared outside. It was still raining, a slow, soothing drumming. She noticed the street-lighting had been restored, but at four in the morning, the roads were empty, the city quiet. She could hear low music playing out in the lounge, the faint clatter of domestic noises, signaling that West was still up; the opening and closing of a cupboard door, a sharp clatter, as if something had dropped on the floor, followed by a plaintive meow.

  Tyler went still. West must have gone back to her apartment and collected Tiger. Or, more probably, since Tiger had most probably been outside hunting moths, he'd had to search the grounds for her. Pulling on her jeans and a cotton sweater, she walked out into the lounge, then through into the kitchen.

  Her stomach did an odd little flip as she watched him shaking cat biscuits into one of Tiger's bowls. Even though it was unlikely that any intruder would bother a cat, she hadn't liked to think that Tiger could be out there in the dark after what had happened.

  "Thanks." She bent down and stroked the fluffy little bundle. Tiger stopped eating long enough to swish her tail and whirr happily.

  She noticed he'd even made a litter tray out of a cardboard box and ripped-up newspaper.

  A second cat, this one a skinny tabby poked its head out of the laundry, which opened off the kitchen, gave her a blank stare, then ambled over beside Tiger and began chewing on biscuits.

  West straightened and set the box of cat biscuits down on the kitchen counter. "I checked your pantry earlier, and you're out of cat food, but they both seemed to be happy with sardines."

  Tyler gave him a blank look. "I don't own two cats, just Tiger, and I know of only two ground-floor residents who have cats. Old Mr. Rayburn has a big ginger torn called Jaffa, and Maia has two Siamese. This one must be a stray."

  West leaned against the counter and folded his arras over his chest. "Looks like I've got myself a cat then."

  She suppressed a shiver. "And I need to get a dog. A big dog." In all the years she'd lived in the city, she'd never before felt so vulnerable or so powerless. The intruder had broken into the supposedly secure haven of her bedroom while she'd been sunk deep in sleep. Even though she had been fully dressed, and knew how to defend herself, in those first few seconds after waking, she'd felt naked and defenseless. In the dark he had been male and invisible; all the power had been in his hands.

  West's gaze caught hers. "Don't think about it. He didn't touch you, and he won't get near you again."

  "He's gotten to me twice—"

  "If he's smart enough to play around with the electrics and the security system, then he's got to know the police are keeping tabs on this place now. He'd have to be certifiable to risk breaking in again.''

  "But what if he is certifiable?" she said quietly. "What if—"

  "Don't." His gaze hooked into hers. He said something low beneath his breath, and covered the short gap between them. His hands settled on her arms, his palms burning through the cotton weave of her sweater. "He broke in because he thought you were vulnerable and alone, and instead he found out that you're protected. In all likelihood he won't be back."

  "In all likelihood—"

  "Forget I said that." His deep voice was exasperated, the first chip in his control she'd yet seen. "I can't predict what this guy is going to do next, but if he's got any brains he won't come back, because if he does, he'll get caught."

  His hands cupped her neck, his thumbs stroked over her jaw, sending a delicate shiver through her. "You're shaky—you're probably in shock. Just...be still."

  One big hand settled at her nape, propelling her closer still, until her cheek was resting against his shoulder.

  She let out a breath, and let herself relax against him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, and a sharp awareness of how large and solidly muscled he was flooded her. Last night, when she'd been mugged, she'd clung to West, and he'd held on to her, but she'd been too sick to register much; now the heat and tension radiating from him was faintly shocking.

  It had been five years since she'd been this physically close to anyone. Now she felt as though she'd buried her head—and her sexuality—in the sand. She'd forgotten how it had been with West—just what he could do to her without trying.

  His breath wafted across her temple. The, weight of West's hand cupping her nape hadn't changed, but now it sent trails of fire shivering through her, and she felt the intangible
moment when comfort faded and a purely physical awareness took over.

  He dipped his head. His forehead touched hers.

  She lifted her hands to his face, cupped the lean, tanned planes of jaw and cheekbones, looked into his eyes and felt her backbone dissolve and her knees turn to jelly. "You know, this was something I was never going to do again."

  "Your choice, not mine."

  She didn't try to rehash it. They both knew why he'd left. The marriage hadn't worked, period. He'd been gone more often than he was with her, and she hadn't been able to tolerate a relationship that was fitted in between SAS missions.

  "What makes you think things could be any different now?"

  "I'm out of the military, and I won't be going back. I don't know if I can change—all I can do is try."

  She wanted to be flippant, but the intensity of West's gaze held her. He had never looked at her that way before, with heat and hunger and...need. She closed her eyes. "What if I don't know what I want? What if I—"

  "Want to experiment?"

  Her eyes flipped open. It had been five years, and in those five years she'd done a lot of growing up she didn't know she'd had to do. She'd learned to reach for what she wanted, and she'd learned to say no. She'd been asked out on dates, and she'd gone out on a few—but never once had she been tempted to so much as kiss one of her escorts—or agree to a second date. The thought of any contact that was remotely sexual had filled her with revulsion.

  She hadn't questioned just why she'd had zero interest in men, zero interest in sex. At first she'd had the trauma of the breakup to cope with, then she'd lost herself in her studies.

  A prickling awareness ran all through her body, and panic knotted in her belly. She hadn't wanted to admit it could be because she'd never gotten over West.

  She lifted her chin, and met his gaze. "What if I just want one kiss? No promises, no guarantees." "Then take it."