Make Mine a Marine

by Julie Miller

  She shouldn't be obsessing over dangerous-looking private detectives who thought they knew her.

  To Mr. Gallagher's benefit, instead of working on the Consolidated Technologies buyout, Emma had frittered away most of her morning brainstorming ideas on where they might have met. It certainly couldn't have been at a P.T.A. meeting. And he didn't appear to have the means or even the interest in being a client of LadyTech. Her company worked at the wholesale level worldwide, supplying businesses with communications technology and products for retail.

  Maybe he was somehow connected to her husband. But if Gallagher had served with Jonathan, he'd lost the swagger and clean-cut looks that marked a soldier, even in civilian clothes.

  That stuck her with only one unsettling option. Upon his resignation at age thirty-five, Jonathan had remained with Marine Corps Intelligence as a consultant. Although he revealed little about the purpose and destination of his missions, Emma knew he'd worked with some very dangerous, very powerful people. Criminals. Terrorists. Spies. Subversives.

  Any one of which fit Mr. Gallagher's looks and demeanor a whole lot better than a soldier.

  So who was the good guy in all of this? The nervous man who'd forced Emma into her van, claiming he could help find her husband? Or the man with the transfixing eyes and gallant ways who had cost her a chance to discover the truth?

  "Oooh!" She articulated her frustration on one five-step breath. She wished she could just walk away from yesterday and return to her dull, predictable routine. She'd made a good life for herself and Kerry, living like a loyal wife instead of a widow, waiting for Jonathan to return one day.

  But last night Andrew Gallagher had filled her dreams. Today, he nagged her conscience, forced her into taking two extra laps of after-lunch walking just to purge his image from her brain so she could get some work done.

  Why were these sensations coming to life again within her? She shouldn't be worrying about lion-haired mystery men whose intense gazes stripped her to her very soul, and whose callused handshake left her quaking with some unnamed and raw physical attraction. Andrew Gallagher had been aggressively, unapologetically male, with none of the gentle edges she had loved in Jonathan.

  That was what disturbed her the most, she realized. That a man so unlike her husband should be the first to again stir to life her own feminine awareness. An awareness of physical and emotional needs that had fallen dormant over the years.

  One, two, three, four, five. Inhale. Emma concentrated on her stride. She didn't want to feel. She didn't want to care about another man again. Not now. Not ever.

  "Mrs. Ramsey?"

  She screamed and whirled, fists poised to protect herself.

  "Whoa!" With his palms raised in surrender, Andrew Gallagher stepped out from between the stacks of crates behind her.

  "Damn you." The thumping in her chest verified that her heart had indeed started beating again.

  His chiseled stone face softened with the hint of a smile. He'd clearly caught her off guard, and seemed to be enjoying the advantage. "Let me guess. You carry those weights in your purse, don't you?"

  Emma frowned. "I carry everything in my purse."

  Then she got the joke. Of course. She'd clobbered him yesterday. Relaxing her defensive posture, she lowered the weights. And raised her guard. "I can have security here in sixty seconds."

  That took the grin off his face. The unforgiving stamp of pride that replaced it made Emma wish she hadn't sounded so harsh. He stepped toward her, backing her against a crate. He reached out, resting his hand on the wooden frame beside her head.

  He never touched her, but he trapped her just the same—more effectively than the superior strength Begosian had used against her. His arm blocked her on one side, his tall, lean body on another. He left her an escape. She could simply step to the left and be free of his consuming presence and the heady leather-and-male scent of him.

  "It'll take longer than that. They're responding to a silent alarm in one of your outbuildings."

  "But the computer codes—“

  “—were impossible to override."

  Emma's partner, BJ, the brilliant mind behind their most sophisticated software and security systems, programmed computers as powerful as those used by the national defense. LadyTech's security chief—and BJ's husband—Brodie Maxwell, through unique skills of his own, had been making it his business to protect people for a very long time. Between the two of them, it should be harder to break into the LadyTech warehouse than into the White House.

  "Then how…?"

  "I have my ways." It was a statement of fact, not a threat. His apparent cunning only reinforced her suspicions of him. There must be more criminal than savior in this man.

  The chilling surety of his actions sparked Emma's self-preservation instincts. She straightened to her full height and stood her ground. Whatever trickiness he'd used to misdirect the security guards wouldn't work on her.

  "What do you want?"

  "Is there someplace private we can talk?"

  "You could have made an appointment for that."

  Laughter rumbled deep in his throat. It was a sexy, warm sound. He stepped back, shoved his hands into his pockets, and broke the spell that bound her. She hadn't intended for her sarcasm to be humorous, but when he relaxed, so did she. A fraction. Enough to continue the conversation without bolting.

  He seemed every bit as dangerous today as he had yesterday. Leather jacket, black jeans, wheat-gold hair tumbling past the collar of his shirt. Even his professor's glasses fit him like a mask, an attempt to civilize the rangy lion hidden beneath.

  But his laughter humanized him. "That wasn't the impression you gave me yesterday," he said.

  Emma averted her eyes, shamed by the accuracy of his observation. She owed him something for rescuing Kerry. And the idea of trusting a man like Stan Begosian to lead her to Jonathan showed just how desperate she had become. Desperate and ungrateful. She prided herself on having more sense than that. Jonathan himself had always complimented her on her level-headedness. But since yesterday's field trip she'd done little more than react to her emotions.

  She breathed deeply and summoned the Emma that Jonathan would want her to be. "Show me your license again."

  She looked straight into his eyes while he pulled his billfold from a back pocket. His gaze never left hers. His expression never wavered. He placed the open wallet in her hands and watched her study each line of information on his i.d. He didn't protest when she flipped it over to read the personal data underneath.

  Thirty-eight years old, she calculated. Six-three. Two years as a licensed private investigator. She closed the billfold, and he returned it to his pocket. "Okay, Andrew Gallagher, what is it you want?"

  "An exchange of information. I brought you a peace offering from our friend Begosian." He unzipped his jacket and reached inside. "I borrowed a bit of evidence from Stan's coat you may be interested in."

  "You stole evidence?" She sputtered in a flare of indignation. "Unorthodox is one thing, but illegal is something else altogether. I'm grateful for what you did for Kerry yesterday, but you can't involve me in this."

  She waved him aside and strode toward the main concourse, angry with herself for even having considered cooperating with him. If she walked fast enough and far enough...

  "Take your nose out of the air and look."

  His raspy voice, low and deep, stopped her in her tracks. A biting remark froze on her lips when she spun around and saw the thin computer disk case held between the first two fingers of his right hand.

  "The disk!" Forgetting her precious scruples, she lurched forward to take the proffered gift. But he swept it behind his back, and her fingers instead brushed against the soft suede of his coat and the harder leather of the holster he wore underneath. The solid breadth of his chest stopped her forward momentum. Emma snatched her hand back and retreated as if she'd been burned.

  He had her at his mercy, she could see that now. She'd never once had th
e upper hand.

  "You're a cruel man," she accused, drawing on every bit of shattered heart and endless fear and incompleteness she lived with each day of her life. "You don't know what it's like to lose someone you care about, to have that part of your life ripped away from you. You don't know how desperate a person can become or you wouldn't tease me like this."

  "I know what it’s like to lose, Emma." His pupils shrank into tiny black dots in a sea of emerald ice. A chill shimmied down her spine at the absolute void in his voice and expression.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Answer some questions for me and the disk is yours."

  He'd deliberately avoided her question. "How do I know that isn't a fake?"

  "How do I know you'll give me straight answers?"

  The challenge lay between them like a gauntlet thrown down before a duel. He left her no choice but to pick it up. "We can go to my office."

  He waved his hand to the side and dropped his chin in a mocking bow. "Lead the way."

  * * *

  Drew followed Emma into the tailored simplicity of her Colonial-style cherry wood office. Before offering him a seat, she hurried to the wet bar and poured herself a cup of coffee. "Would you like some?"

  "Sure. Black, please."

  He recognized a challenge when she presented him with a delicate china cup and saucer. She carried her own over to one of a matching pair of pale rose loveseats. He let her have the time and space she needed to gather her strength and collect her thoughts. He'd more than startled her in the warehouse. Breaking in had been no easy task, and he had no doubt that finding an unwelcome stranger on the premises came as a real shock.

  He waited patiently, intrigued by her long-limbed grace. He pretended an interest in the first-grade works of art proudly displayed on one wall while he covertly watched her perch on the edge of the seat and slip out of her tennis shoes and cotton socks. He outright stared when she stepped into a pair of high-heeled pumps and ran her hand up her calf to her knee, smoothing her hose.

  He imagined his own hand following that path, exploring even higher. Her husband had to have been kidnapped or killed, he thought. No healthy male would leave a pair of legs like hers voluntarily.

  Even as the thought hit him, his gaze settled on the brass-framed photograph sitting on the corner of her desk. The thumbprints that smudged the glass and metal indicated a much-handled, well-loved picture. He set down his coffee and picked up the photo.

  "Is this your husband?" he asked, feeling a twinge of envy for the dark-haired man in Marine dress blues holding an infant girl in his arms while a younger Emma curled her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder.

  "Yes." Emma crossed the room in three long strides and took the picture from him, setting it back on the desk with gentle reverence. The Emma before him now had the tiniest of crow's-feet crinkling beside her eyes. The woman in the picture had a smooth face, lined only with the dimples of laughter.

  She must have suffered a great deal over her husband's disappearance. Drew felt like a heel for taking advantage of her loss, but he had something equally important at stake.

  She'd said her husband had been missing for five years. Five years gone from her life. An incredible loss for a young wife and mother to bear. But five years was all he knew. Five years to claim as his own. And she might be the only person who could provide a clue to that missing prelude to his meager life.

  Yes.

  An echo of a voice whispered in his ear. He ignored the plea and buried it along with his reservations deep in his conscience. He went to the picture window on the west side of her office and looked out at the gray sky and snowy landscape. From three stories up, he could see over the parking lot past an orchard of leafless dogwood trees to a park area. "Quite a view from here," he said.

  "LadyTech sits on two hundred acres of land, giving us room to expand." Emma followed him to the window. "Jas—our marketing and PR director—is partial to open space. So we bought enough acreage to keep a good portion of it undeveloped as well."

  Her white silk blouse and gray wool skirt reflected the same cool elegance of the room, but the tight clench of her jaw revealed what this show of patience and civility cost her. Drew decided that now was as good a time as any to press her for answers. She didn't look as if she wanted to get any friendlier.

  "Have you always been on top, Mrs. Ramsey?"

  "Excuse me?" A rosy blush dotted her cheeks, pushing that cool composure of hers right out the window.

  "Sorry. I phrased that badly." Did she remember their tumble at the museum yesterday? He didn't think he'd ever forget that moment. His body had kicked into overdrive and responded to the imprint of long, soft female sprawled on top of him. A simmering heat licked through his veins now at just the memory of it. He'd been alone too long for his body to react so quickly to the mere thought of touching the woman beside him.

  He crushed that notion by refocusing on his missing past. "You run a corporation here. Did you start off as a secretary?"

  "Oh." She tucked a strand of sable hair behind her ear. She wore it down today, and he could see the thick waves fell past her shoulder blades. "No. LadyTech is BJ's brainchild. She and Jas and I were roommates in college. We banked our skills in design and marketing and management, got a loan, and created our own company. Jas had the idea to take it global eight years ago. We opened it to outside investors a few years back, and it’s been growing by leaps and bounds ever since."

  The image of a younger Emma, seated behind an office desk and making an innocently seductive offer to help him, blipped into his mind. "Did you ever work as a secretary?"

  "I've done my share of office work. I clerked through college at a local hospital. Became an office manager before I met my husband and moved away. What did you do before you became a private investigator?" She slipped in the question with a sly finesse he admired.

  "Odd jobs," he answered honestly, allowing her that much satisfaction while maintaining the upper hand in this silent contest of wills. "Bummed around the country a bit. Felt at home here in K.C., so I decided to stay. What about you? Is this where you and your husband settled? Or did LadyTech bring you to town?"

  Emma's cup rattled on its saucer when she set it down. "Is this what you wanted to discuss? My work history? I’ll give you a copy of my resume if it'll get you to show me that damn disk."

  "All right." Drew relented a fraction. Maybe she truly didn't remember him. Or maybe she was so obsessed with finding her husband that she couldn't concentrate on anything else until he gave her a glimpse of the information he held. "Here."

  He barely had the disk out of his jacket before she snatched it from his grasp. Mildly curious about the contents himself, and profoundly hopeful it didn't contain any of the smut Begosian liked to put on the Internet, Drew followed Emma to her desk and watched her load it into her computer. With her hands pressed together in a praying position, she held them to her mouth. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Drew to put his hand on her shoulder and give it a squeeze of reassurance. He held his breath along with her as she scrolled through the menu of files.

  "It's encrypted."

  Drew felt the tension in her dissipate beneath his hand. He pulled away, surprised at the apologies he wanted to make for playing a part in her disappointment. "Can you open and read any of it?" he asked.

  "No. But I know someone who can." She ejected the disk, rose, and pushed past him. Watching his leverage zipping out the door with Emma's revitalized determination, Drew followed. She hurried down the corridor to the next office, knocked, then pushed the door open, announcing herself as she poked her head in.

  "Beej, can you decode these files? They might have something to do with Jonathan."

  "Seriously?"

  The voice that answered was bright, and Drew wondered to whom Emma had turned to as she walked in. "I need to find out."

  Drew scanned the name on the door before he followed. BJ Kinkaid-Maxwell, Cr
eative Director. In stark contrast to Emma's tidy office, this one held a clutter of toys, pillows, and books. It also had a crib stashed in one corner, empty now, but clearly it was a focal point in the room, judging by the path made through the plethora of stuffed animals in, under, and around it.

  He hovered inside the doorway, awed and unsure of the energy he felt in this room. A life force that reminded him of sunshine radiated from the curly-haired blonde seated at the old oak desk between two computer terminals.

  Drew could see and appreciate the sensibility Emma provided to the leadership at LadyTech.

  "Who's your friend, Em?" the blonde inside asked while loading the disk and typing a series of commands on her keyboard.

  Emma stood behind her, hugging her arms at her waist. A frown of impatient concern marred the classic lines of her face.

  "Drew Gallagher. He's the man who rescued Kerry yesterday." Her focus seemed entirely on the monitor, leaving Drew to feel like little more than an afterthought.

  The blonde continued to type as she stood. "Pleasure to meet you, Drew. I'm BJ." She looked away from the screen for a moment and extended her hand across the desk. As they shook hands, she greeted him with a smile that offered the first real sign of welcome he'd had at LadyTech. "Thanks for helpin' out."

  "No problem."

  She sat back down and studied the results of her work. "It's not as complicated as it looks. But it'll take me a while so that you can make sense of the text." She turned and glanced up at Emma. "I can work on it this afternoon and bring it over tonight when we come for dinner."

  "I can't leave without that disk," warned Drew. Without it, he'd have no excuse to press Emma about their past connection.

  "Oh, you'll leave." A deep, dark voice rumbled through the air behind him. Drew's eyes narrowed a fraction, the only outward sign of surprise that someone had somehow gotten the drop on him.

  He stiffened his fingers, tamping down the surge of adrenaline that made him want to curl his hands into fists. Drew turned to face the reckoning he'd figured would find him sooner or later when he'd first slipped through LadyTech's security. He centered his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to fight, if need be, ready to…