Where they differed was in thinking that Troy should play no part in Annie's life. He couldn't go along with that. He'd been excluded from too much of it already.
"No hotel. No camping." Annie's scream pierced his heart. "We'll fall over the edge. Like the house did."
"Why don't you two stay with me tonight," Jill offered. "It's the least I can do after what happened."
Troy wasn't sure he could stand being cooped up in the same house as Jill. He hadn't been this aroused by a woman since he'd been in high school.
"Could we, Troy? Please." Annie grasped one of his hands, holding on to Jill with the other. "She understands. I want to stay with Mrs. Jill. She won't let me fall off the cliff."
"We can't just move in with a perfect stranger," Troy reasoned. "Besides, camping out will be a lot of fun." It had been fun a million years ago when he'd been a kid. Since then, he'd spent far too many nights in enemy territory, unable even to light a fire because it would attract artillery shelling.
"You won't be an inconvenience," Jill said.
Annie tightened her grasp around Jill and Jill picked her up, holding her as naturally as if they'd known each other all their lives. As if Jill could be her mother.
"Of course it will be inconvenient," Troy said.
"Please," Annie wheedled.
He frowned. "I'm sure Mrs. Villars is just being-"
"I'm not just being anything," Jill interrupted. "You can't sleep here. The police will make you move. If you don't have any I.D., who knows what they'll do to you, or to Annie? I really think my place is the only answer. Tomorrow we can see about getting you new papers and some money." She gave him a half-smile he might have thought shy if he'd seen it on anyone else. "And it's Miss Villars, by the way. But call me Jill."
Learning that Jill was single shouldn't have caused the rush of pleasure that swept over him. It only made things more complicated.
"I suppose you do owe us," Troy said, his words less sharp than they would have been a few minutes ago. She might be incompetent with dynamite, but she did great with his kid.
Jill frowned, then nodded. "It's settled. I'll need a few minutes to get my crew settled down and make some phone calls of my own. Then you can follow me to my place."
***
Jill bounced her truck through a pot-hole and pulled up in front of her trailer. She really hadn't had any choice but to let Annie and Troy stay with her, she reassured herself. It wasn't a matter of her hormones getting her into trouble. That she found Troy more enticing than Godiva chocolates had nothing to do with her offer.
"Is this where you live?" Annie couldn't have sounded more dubious if Jill had pulled up to a large shoe with doors and windows.
"Uh-huh. It's real handy. I can hitch it to the truck and move it from place to place when I find work."
"But it's tiny."
Admittedly her trailer wasn't large, even by trailer park standards, but it was home. If Annie reacted like that, she wondered what Troy, sitting in his car behind them, was thinking. Maybe she should have warned them that this wasn't exactly the Plaza Hotel.
"Think what fun you'll have here. It's almost like a play house. Everything has its place and there's more room than you'd think." She stepped out, then walked around to give Annie a hand down from the high pickup.
Troy swaggered up. "You okay, pumpkin?" He tousled Annie's hair.
Annie twisted away, throwing her arms around Jill.
Troy pulled his hand back as if it had been burned. He forced a smile but his dark eyes reflecting the pain he must feel. Despite herself, Jill's heart went out to him. It didn’t seem possible he could have done anything to make his own daughter cringe at his touch.
"Come on in." Jill unlocked the door and held it open.
Annie pushed her way in first. "Hey, this is cool."
Thank goodness she'd cleaned up that morning. Letting Troy into a house littered with lingerie might not have bothered him, but it certainly would make her uncomfortable.
Troy held the door for her, then followed Jill in.
Instantly her trailer closed around her. Before now, it had always seemed ample, if cozy. Troy stood at least six-two but that wasn't the worst of it. His shoulders were so wide he had to turn sideways a little just to make it through the door.
"Do you want a beer?" She opened her fridge, looking for something she could give Annie.
"Why not? Mind if I sit down?"
She gestured toward the couch. "Make yourself at home. Annie, how about a lemonade?"
"Is it real?"
"Ah, no. Powder."
"Okay."
She hadn't noticed before, but Annie's accent was pure New York.
Troy's was from somewhere in the south, although it lacked the slow cadence of many southerners.
Jill dug around in her refrigerator until she found a can of beer buried near the back. She popped the top, then handed it to Troy.
"You aren't worried about breaking your nails?" Troy sounded genuinely mystified.
To Jill's surprise, Annie’s stare was as shocked as Troy. Because she'd opened a beer can?
"I work in construction, remember? If I worried about my nails, I'd never get anything done."
Without thinking, she held her hands out for their inspection.
Annie grabbed one. Troy looked as if he'd rather spit than do anything so personal as to touch her. She must have imagined that hint of desire she'd seen in his eyes when they'd first met. Most likely it was horror at losing his house. Then again, maybe she was just projecting her own desire onto him.
"Ew. They're so ugly," was Annie's reaction.
Well, she'd already guessed that Annie's mother hadn't raised her with an emphasis on tact.
Jill pulled her hand away in spite of herself. It looked a little battered but not nearly as bad as Annie's reaction made it sound.
"Why don't you have a seat and I'll get the lemonade." Troy stood, again filling her tiny living room with his presence. "Annie, don't say mean things about people."
Annie's face fell. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." The little girl pressed her face against Jill's waist, grasping both of her hands.
Troy looked at the two females, his face a study in frustration, then took a big swallow from his beer. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. To Jill's surprise, just watching it was one of the sexiest things she'd ever done. What was wrong with her?
Troy put the beer down on her coffee table, catching her looking at his body. Talk about an embarrassing moment. She probably looked like she was about to throw herself at him.
For an instant, his hand moved toward her, almost like he would reach for her. Then he shook his head and walked into the kitchen.
Jill collapsed on the couch. Her body ached like she had been caught in the blast that afternoon rather than merely setting it.
Annie plopped onto Jill's lap. "Did I really hurt your feelings?" Her voice shook with sympathy.
"Nah." She touched her forehead against Annie's. "I never pretended to be a beauty queen or a supermodel or anything."
A loud thunk came from the kitchen. It sounded as if Troy had dropped the plastic lemonade pitcher into the sink.
At the same time, Annie pulled back, her eyes looking somewhere far away and filled with sadness.
"What? Did I say something wrong?"
"My mommy was a model." She sniffed, then quickly recovered.
"Her mother was Liz Sebhra," Troy added from the kitchen.
Jill pressed her hands into her forehead. The supermodel's death had been on TV and in all the papers. She'd had no idea Sebhra even had a child.
It figured that a hunk like Troy would go for one of the most beautiful women in the country. He was totally out of her league.
A few moments later, Troy carried a couple of filled glasses into her living room pulling up a coaster for each of them. "I thought you might like a glass too."
"Thanks."
He looked around at her living room, taking
in the entire seven- by eight-foot dimensions.
"Troy, you can sit with us," Annie said.
He gave his daughter the sardonic half-grin that sent shivers down Jill's spine every time she saw it. "Doesn't look like I have much choice."
"I know this isn't a palace," Jill said. "But it is mine."
Troy sat as far as he could from her on her small couch. Even so, he was close enough that Jill's temperature rose a couple of degrees.
"There've been a lot of times when I wished for something half this size and half this weatherproof," he said.
She glared at him, sure he was being sarcastic.
His eyes met hers without the slightest hint of an insult. Troy hadn't volunteered much information about himself other than that he'd been out of the country a lot, and Jill couldn't hold her curiosity back. "You like roughing it, do you?"
He shook his head gravely. "I prefer a comfortable bed to sleeping on the hard ground." He paused briefly, looking straight into her eyes. "Speaking of beds, just what are the sleeping arrangements tonight?"
Chapter 2
A faint creak in the floorboard woke Troy.
He rolled from the couch, silently landing in a fighting crouch with his knife already in hand, and stepped toward the sound.
Years of training had developed his night vision, and he made out a shadowy figure creeping across the trailer floor. The black-clad figure was good, stepping lightly and almost silently. He was good, but not good enough. If Liz's parents expected to kidnap his daughter while he was on watch, they'd have to do a lot better.
The loose-fitting black garb brought up his worst nightmare. Memories of that terrible night when the terrorists had attacked his parents' hospital and killed everyone. Everyone but Troy who had been too young to help and who had hidden underneath his parent's bed. He had been too young to stop them then but he'd sworn he'd never be that helpless again.
When Jill had shown him her trailer, he'd automatically mapped out the creaky floorboards, so he was able to move silently after the intruder.
When the figure reached for the bedroom door where Annie and Jill slept, he could wait no longer. A single leap closed the distance between them, crashing both of them to the ground. Troy wrapped one hand around the intruder's mouth and pressed his blade against his ribs. "If you struggle I'll use the knife," he whispered. "You don't want to leave that kind of a mess, do you?"
His elbow brushed against something soft on the intruder's chest and he caught a whiff of fancy bubblebath scent. Years of experience indicated he'd misjudged the intruder's gender.
His knife rested against her ribs. For some reason, the Sebhras had sent a woman. Maybe to gain his daughter's trust, he reasoned.
The woman lay dead-still, only her rapid breathing, hard against his hand at her mouth, disturbed the silence. Her heart pounded against his arm. She was scared.
He was too. He hadn't wanted to take Liz's parents' warning seriously when they'd been in the courtroom. They'd all been upset. Obviously they'd been more serious than he'd dreamed.
"I'm going to take my hand off your mouth," he said. "If you call out, you'll get to deal with the police. I don't know what they told you but the court awarded custody to me."
The faintest hint of a nod against his palm was her only response.
"All right." He removed his hand. "Suppose you tell me--"
"What kind of idiot stunt do you think you're pulling?"
"Jill?" He couldn't believe it. All of a sudden, though, his body flipped a switch. Rather than grappling with a dangerous kidnapper, he held a beautiful woman. A woman who might not know enough about explosives to keep the world safe, but one who sent his pulse into turbo mode every time he looked at her. "Why the devil were you sneaking around your house in burglar get-up?"
"I happen to like black pajamas. So sue me." Jill paused a moment. "Jerk," she concluded.
"I'm protective."
"If you're so protective, maybe you'll put away the knife now. It's not making me feel protected at all."
Troy didn't bother trying to tell Jill he was only protecting his daughter. He'd have to convince himself first. When he'd seen that dark-clad figure, he had been concerned about Annie. But he'd thought of Jill as well.
Without saying anything, he returned his fighting knife to its sheath strapped to his calf.
"Do you always carry that big knife?"
"I've lived in some pretty rough neighborhoods."
"So have I. But you know what? This is the first time I've ever been attacked."
"We might have a different definition of what makes a neighborhood rough." Many times, his work had taken him to places where a woman alone wouldn't have lasted ten minutes. Jill's judo would have done her as much good as a b-b gun would do a five year-old going up against Mike Tyson.
"Maybe. Why don't you tell me about it?" Jill paused for a fractional second. "You know, we could do that sitting down on the couch rather than rolling around on the floor like animals."
When he'd discovered who she was, he'd loosened his grasp. He had not, Troy realized, actually let her go. His left arm still circled her body. His hand touched lightly on her soft chin. He didn't want to let her go either.
Damn.
"Fine." He flipped himself to his feet and reached down a hand to help her up.
Jill stared at his hand for a moment, then shook her head. "I can manage." She paused for a moment after she stood. "What line of work did you say you were in?"
"I didn't." He wasn't particularly proud of how he'd lived his life up until now. He consoled himself with the fact that he tried to support causes that had some democratic ideals behind them, but a mercenary only has so many options. Many times, neither side of a conflict is particularly noble.
"You're living in my house right now. I want to know that I'm safe. What if you'd slipped with that knife and stuck me?"
He shook his head. "That would never happen."
***
Jill bit her tongue to fight back her immediate reaction. It didn't work. "I'm not terribly reassured."
Troy reached for the light switch and flipped on her reading lamp, leaving it at the lowest setting. Then he sat on her couch, pushing the blankets he'd wrapped himself in to one side and leaving a small space for her, directly beside him. He was nearly naked, wearing only a pair of cut-off jeans and that knife on his leg.
Many of the men Jill worked with had massive, muscular bodies developed from hours of lifting heavy tools and construction materials. Troy wasn't as bulky as the largest of her construction workers, but each muscle on his naked chest appeared fully defined. He was more like a jungle cat than a hulking gorilla, she realized, with each muscle honed to do his bidding on an instant's notice. The combination screamed out an animal sexual appeal that had her body quivering with need and desire.
Dangerous, her instincts screamed. She didn't want to sit that close to Troy. Not with the lights turned down low. Especially not with his daughter fast asleep and unavailable as a chaperone.
More light would help the situation.
His hand caught hers and held it as she reached for the switch. "No."
"I was just going to turn it up." He probably thought she was going to attack him or something. Talk about an exaggerated opinion of his own appeal. Except it wasn't exaggerated. He probably had women throwing themselves at him all the time. Even Liz Sebhra.
"I don't want anyone to see silhouettes in the window." He gestured toward the pull-down shades.
"I guess you did grow up in a rough neighborhood. In Malibu, even the trailer parks are pretty nice."
His smile melted her heart. How could a man pull a knife on her one minute and look at her like this not three minutes later?
"I'm sure they are. That's why I bought a house here."
She felt like an idiot justifying herself to him. He'd just lost a house on the ocean-front in the part of Malibu movie stars dream about moving to when they 'arrive.' And now she was bragging on
how nice the trailer park was where she scraped together money to rent by the week. "Don't patronize me."
His smile faded and he touched her hand lightly. "I'm not patronizing you. I just don't know what's safe anymore."
Something he'd said when he'd jumped her stuck in her mind. "Is someone really after Annie?"
"Let's just say Liz's parents didn't take kindly to my reappearing. They thought they'd seem the last of me when they persuaded her to divorce me. When Liz died, they figured Annie would drop into their hands, along with Liz's estate and the child support payments I'd been making. Pretty much like winning the lottery from their perspective."
Troy sounded totally convincing, but most con men do. His daughter seemed awkward around him. Could this entire thing be a huge hoax? Could he be the kidnapper himself, suffering from a guilty conscience? "Sending kidnappers sounds a little extreme."
Troy shrugged. "Yeah. Maybe I'm being paranoid. Still, the Sebhras are motivated. Liz made so much money modeling even she couldn't spend it all. Between what I sent her to take care of Annie and what she never got around to spending, she left a fair estate. Of course Annie is her heir. Her grandparents would love to get their hands on the money. With their lifestyles, Annie would have precious little left when she turned eighteen. All they need is to persuade a judge I'm an incompetent father. Getting my daughter kidnapped might just prove that."
He stared at Jill. "Is something wrong?"
She shook her head, fascinated by his story and by the brush of his hand against hers. He sat only inches where she stood yet he seemed indifferent to her. There was no way she could be indifferent to him no matter how much she wanted to be.
Troy shook his head. "Oh, my attire. Sorry. I'm used to an all-male working environment." His grin was infectious as he pulled on a clean t-shirt. Too bad he had to drop his light grasp on her hand. She wouldn't have minded holding hands with him all night.
Dynamiting Daddy's Dream House Page 2
