by Lucy Monroe
“She was wrong to lie to me,” he said, fulfilling her expectations.
Suddenly, Joshua was standing, leaning over the table toward Jake. “Get over it. She’s telling you the truth now.”
She hadn’t realized that when Joshua said he was going to protect her, he meant from her brother as well. It was an odd feeling. Even her ex-husband had never stood up to her family on her behalf.
“Don’t tell me how to deal with my own sister.” Jake was on his feet, too, and looking ready to hurt someone.
She thought he might be considering Joshua as a likely prospect. She knew in Jake’s macho mind, the other man made a better target for his frustrated anger than she did.
But she wasn’t about to let the confrontation get worse. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
Joshua turned his laserlike gaze on her. “You have nothing to apologize for. You weren’t acting out of selfish motives. You gave up everything familiar to you to protect your family. If your brother is too stupid to see that, I’ll gladly set him straight.”
“Joshua!” Bella’s voice was distressed.
Jake looked one step closer to violence and Joshua’s jaw was as hard as quarry rock.
Soon Genevieve would be awake and crying.
So much for a warm family dinner.
Lise stood up, not terribly impressed with either man and feeling sick inside for ruining Bella’s first Thanksgiving as a married woman. “I’m sorry I’ve upset y’all so much. Maybe it would be best if I leave. I didn’t mean to spoil everyone’s holiday.” She looked at Bella with a sad smile. “And I definitely didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
Jake’s face clenched and pain flashed in his eyes. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Why not? You’ve made her feel about as welcome as ants at a picnic.” Bella’s tart voice startled Lise.
Her sister-in-law was busy glaring in equal measure at her husband and her brother, while she gently patted her baby’s back.
Jake grimaced and then came around the table toward Lise. He pulled her into a bearlike hug. It was a little awkward because he’d never been very demonstrative, but he held her tight for a long time.
“I didn’t mean half what I said. You know I’ve got a hot temper and I’m sorry I took it out on you. The idea of some creep stalking you scares the crap out of me and I don’t like knowing you’ve been facing it all on your own, but that doesn’t mean I want you to leave now.”
She hugged her brother back. “I just didn’t want you to worry.”
He pulled away from her. “Do you really think I haven’t been worrying about you living alone in a city a couple hundred times the size of Canyon Rock?”
“I—”
“Don’t apologize again. Joshua is right—you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I love you, Lise. You’re my little sister. I’ll always worry.”
She couldn’t remember the last time Jake had told her he loved her and she could feel the tears tightening her throat. “I love you, too.”
She didn’t know what else to say, but Bella came to her rescue. “Why don’t you gentlemen clean off the table and make up while Lise and I put the baby to bed. We can have dessert in the living room after you’ve both got your civilized manners back.”
Lise was shocked when her brother agreed. Marriage to Bella had certainly mellowed him some.
Half an hour later, Lise found herself sitting on the sofa with Joshua while Jake and Bella shared the smaller loveseat.
She still wasn’t sure what had stopped her from taking one of the armchairs. When she’d come into the living room after helping Bella put the baby to bed, Joshua had been sitting on one end of the couch. And he’d looked at her in such a way that she’d found herself approaching him without conscious volition.
She very nearly sat right down beside him, and only a last-minute spark of sanity had directed her to sit on the far end of the sofa. To cover her confusion at her own actions, she spent some time smoothing her skirt over her knees before looking up to survey the other occupants of the room.
Judging by the way Joshua and her brother were eyeing each other, she wasn’t sure how much making up had gone on during kitchen detail. Jake she understood. He was feeling helpless and that was bound to come out in bad temper, but she could not comprehend what had Joshua so annoyed.
Maybe he didn’t like the way her brother’s anger had upset Bella. He should know by now that Jake would do just about anything to make his wife happy. He’d never hurt Bella’s feelings on purpose.
“So what are you going to do about Lise’s stalker?” Bella asked Joshua without preamble.
“Your brother doesn’t have to do anything,” Jake slotted in. “Lise can move back to the ranch. I’ll hire a private investigator and light a fire under the tail of that no-account sheriff.”
Lise had known that would be Jake’s answer. “I’m not moving in with you.”
“She’s moving in with me.”
She gasped and stared at Joshua. “What are you talking about?”
“Like hell she is,” Jake thundered.
“Want to bet?” Joshua asked, his voice smooth as silk.
Lise shivered even if her brother looked unaffected.
“If I leave Seattle, how are we going to track Nemesis?”
His dark eyes spoke a message she didn’t quite understand. “I guess I should have said I’m moving in with you.”
“That is not going to happen,” Jake said from the other side of the room, looking ready to get up and take Joshua outside to discuss it.
There were times her brother reminded her of his prize bull. All testosterone and dominant male behavior.
She dismissed him with a frown and turned to Joshua.
“You’re moving in with me?” she asked, her voice a much higher pitch than she was used to.
“That’s right. Until we find out who the stalker is and deal with him, I’m your faithful sidekick.”
She couldn’t imagine him as anyone’s mere sidekick. “When you said you were going to help me, I didn’t for a minute think that meant you were going to move in with me.”
“How else am I supposed to protect you?”
“I thought that was what the new security measures Hotwire and Nitro are installing at my apartment were for.”
“They’re backup.”
“You are not moving in with my sister.”
Joshua finally deigned to acknowledge her brother’s blustering. “I’m not threatening to seduce her. I don’t do sex while I’m on the job.”
Lise spluttered while Bella stared in shock at her brother. “You’re charging her for your help?”
“No.” She and Joshua said at the same time.
Bella sighed with relief. “Then it’s not only a job—it’s personal.”
Lise didn’t like the speculative gleam in Joshua’s eyes, or the smug expression on Bella’s face. The one time she and Joshua had gotten personal, she’d been completely overwhelmed. She didn’t need that kind of reaction to a man clouding her life. Not now. Not ever.
“It’s not personal!”
“It would be a damn sight easier for you to catch your stalker in Canyon Rock than in Seattle where no one knows you,” Jake asserted.
“It’s not simply a matter of catching him.” She had to make him understand. This was important. “I thought about it a lot on the plane ride here and I’m through running. He’s not going to get the satisfaction of thinking he’s dictating my life anymore.”
Joshua’s look of approval was in direct contrast to the ugly word that came out of her brother’s mouth.
Bella just looked thoughtful.
“Your determination to fight back might very well get you hurt, little sis.”
“So could crossing the street during rush hour, but I’m not going to hide in my apartment because of it.”
“It’s not the same thing!”
“No, it’s not,” Joshua said before she could answer, “but staying in Seattle makes sense
right now. Nemesis has escalated since the move. It’s only when he acts that we have a hope of tracing who he is.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“By using counterintelligence techniques. Nemesis definitely has sound devices—and maybe even visual ones—planted in Lise’s apartment. That’s a damn good lead.”
“You think he has visual?” Her skin crawled with images of some slimy guy in a dark room watching her go about her business. “Where?”
“I’m not sure he does, but we know what he can’t see. The entryway, hall, or your bedroom. If he could, he would not have thought I left when you shut the door.”
She hoped Joshua was wrong about Nemesis having any kind of visual, but she was sure now that her stalker had been listening to her every move and conversation in the apartment. She recoiled at the idea of some shadowy figure listening to her live her life.
“Our best chance of catching Nemesis is to use his own equipment against him.”
“And if that gets my sister killed, or raped?”
“That’s not going to happen.” Joshua’s extreme confidence soothed the jangling nerves inside her, even if it didn’t calm her brother down appreciably. “And there’s no reason to believe this is a sexual fixation. In fact, as we’ve discussed, the crime seems more vengeance-related.”
“Which does not mean she’s not at risk.”
“I agree.”
“Please. There’s no reason to believe I’m in any physical danger.”
“Have you forgotten being shoved into traffic?” Joshua asked.
She’d deliberately left that out and she didn’t appreciate Joshua revealing it.
She gave him a look that told him so. “If he’d wanted to hurt me, he would have pushed me into traffic when a car was coming. I wasn’t in any real danger.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jake was back to looking furious.
She felt ready to explode herself. Joshua’s view of what her brother needed to know and hers were about as far apart as the north and south ends of the ranch.
She pressed her lips together, remaining stubbornly mute.
If he wanted Jake to know every little detail so bad, Joshua could tell him.
He did.
“And the Seattle police didn’t do anything about it?” Bella asked with outrage.
“No one saw me get pushed,” Lise felt compelled to explain. “The sergeant who filed my report thought I’d been jostled by the crowd.”
Joshua’s dark brown gaze was filled with purpose. “I can get the police to take her seriously. We can even bring the FBI in because Nemesis crossed state lines to stalk Lise, but there’s only so much they can do. We’re better off handling this on our own.”
“Why?” Lise asked, having liked the sound of making that annoying police sergeant listen to her.
“The authorities are hampered by rules and procedures.” He paused so his next words had maximum impact. “We aren’t.”
She shivered at the menace in his voice.
“Which does not mean you have to move in with my sister,” Jake asserted before Lise could say anything else.
Joshua crossed his arms over his chest and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “What exactly is your problem with me being Lise’s bodyguard?”
“You want her.”
“No, he doesn’t—”
Joshua shocked her by interrupting her hasty denial. “If I do, what’s it to you? She’s well past the age of consent, not to mention having been married before.”
“You said you don’t do sex on a job,” she reminded Joshua, her heart thumping in her chest at an alarming rate.
Before Joshua could answer, Jake was saying, “Damn it, you can’t deny it. I’ve seen the way you look at her—it’s like a hungry wolf ready to devour its next meal.”
Lise had felt like that meal once, and it was not a memory she was comfortable with. “Joshua and I are not involved.”
“And if they get involved it won’t be any of your business, Jake Barton.” Bella’s tone left no doubt she thought her husband was being unreasonable.
“She’s my little sister. How can you say that?”
“She’s also a twenty-eight-year-old woman. Get a grip.”
“This is ridiculous.” Lise couldn’t believe how off-target the conversation had gotten. “Joshua is helping me, not threatening me with bodily mayhem. I’m grateful and you should be, too, Jake, because if Joshua hadn’t offered to help, I would have disappeared rather than put you and your family at risk.”
The next afternoon, Joshua went looking for Lise.
She’d disappeared after lunch and he didn’t like the idea of her being alone, even on the ranch.
She’d been quiet all morning, even playing with Genevieve in a subdued way. She’d avoided him as much as possible and he wanted to know why.
He found her standing on the edge of the small pond, her stillness so complete, she seemed a part of the land.
He stopped a few feet behind her.
“I used to come here when I was a little girl and life seemed unfair.”
Her awareness of his presence startled him. His quiet approach had surprised trained soldiers.
He shifted to stand beside her. “Did it help?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’ve been avoiding me all morning.” He looked sideways at her, but could read nothing in her still profile.
“Jake thinks you want me.”
“I do.”
She turned toward him and the deeply troubled expression in her eyes tugged at him, but he could not reassure her to the contrary.
“I’m not interested in a relationship, Joshua.”
“You made that clear the night of Genevieve’s christening.”
He hadn’t been thinking about a relationship then, either. He’d been thinking about sex—hot and consuming, but temporary.
“I thought I did.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Why did you come to my apartment in Seattle?”
“Because Bella wanted you here for Thanksgiving.”
“I see.” Lise’s tense stance relaxed a little. “She asked you to come and fetch me.”
“No, Bella didn’t ask me to come.”
Lise was back to looking worried.
“I thought you were trying to avoid me because of what happened between us last year. I came to apologize and bring you to Texas with me.”
“You were going to apologize?” She sounded shocked by the possibility.
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms around her waist, hugging herself. “You don’t have anything to say you’re sorry for. You didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to.”
He hadn’t forced her, but he had frightened her. “Hell, Lise, you ran off without saying good night to anyone else and didn’t come back to the ranch in the three days before I left.”
“I got busy.” She was a lousy liar.
“Right.”
He’d made a huge tactical error in letting Bella talk him into coming early for his niece’s christening. He hadn’t had enough downtime to get his more primitive reactions under control after the last job. Coupled with the fact that he hadn’t had sex in way too long, he’d been an explosion waiting to happen.
His desire for Lise Barton had tipped him over the edge.
“I got too intense, too fast, and it scared you. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t scare me.” She put up her hand when he would have accused her of lying again. “You didn’t. The kiss was incredible. Your passion overwhelmed me, but it didn’t frighten me.” She sighed, looking both emotionally defenseless and a little disgruntled. “My reaction to it did.”
He hadn’t expected that response. At all. He’d spent months feeling guilty because he’d sent her running and she was telling him her own reaction had done that. “Why?”
“A woman could lose herself in feelings as strong as the ones you brought out in me.”
“And you’re afraid of losing yourself?”
“Yes.” Clear hazel eyes hid nothing.
“Is that what happened in your marriage?”
“Not totally, but I lost enough of myself that when our mutual identity disintegrated, figuring out who I was on my own took a lot longer than I wanted it to.”
“You think going to bed with me could do that to you?”
“I think the emotions that would accompany making love to you could destroy me.”
Such honesty from a woman stunned him. However, he didn’t agree. “Sex does not have to be soul-destroying.”
Only the emotion of love could do that, and she didn’t have a thing to worry about on that score. No way was she going to fall in love with a badass mercenary, and she didn’t have to worry about him getting moon-faced. He’d learned a long time ago that he didn’t do that love thing.
She turned back to face the pond as if he’d never spoken. Pulling her light jacket close around her, she stood silent for so long, he thought she wasn’t going to say anything else. Then she started to talk.
“I married my best friend when I was eighteen years old. I would have done anything to get out of my father’s house, and when Mike asked me to marry him the night of our senior prom, I jumped at the chance.”
“What happened?”
“Life.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “We didn’t have a passionate marriage. I guess you could say we just weren’t compatible in bed, but he was still my best friend and I trusted him completely. He encouraged me to pursue my writing, believed in me when I lost faith in myself, but friendship wasn’t enough. Or at least it wasn’t for him.”
“He wanted the passion.” What she was saying shocked him because Lise had been like living fire in his arms the one time they’d kissed.
“Yes, and when he found it with someone else, he asked for a divorce.”
“He had an affair?”
“No. Mike is too honest for that, but he fell in love. We loved each other, but this was different, or so he told me.”
“You still loved him.”
“Yes, and I trusted him. When my marriage ended, I didn’t just lose my husband. I lost my closest friend, the one person in the world I’d let myself totally rely on.”
