A Stranger on Her Doorstep

by Julie Miller

  The pillow beneath her laptop couldn’t completely mask the faded scars that dotted her thighs and disappeared beneath the hem of her shorts, matching the similar trail he’d seen on her arms earlier. While the marks of torture didn’t take one thing away from his body’s physical response to her, the visible evidence of some bastard hurting her triggered a primitive, protective anger in him. As strong as Ava was, as much as she wanted to fight her own battles, if there was breath in his body, no one would ever hurt her again.

  Perhaps sensing the intensity of his thoughts, Ava looked up from her work to meet his gaze. Although she raised an eyebrow, silently asking if anything was wrong or if he’d found out something new, Luke smiled and waved aside her query. He wasn’t sure exactly how the creative process worked, but he was quickly learning that too many interruptions messed with the flow of getting the words down on the page. He’d get an impatient huff followed by a polite smile, which were infinitely worse than a pointed lecture or one of her sarcastic comebacks.

  He’d already asked her to stop for dinner and to show her the information in the files he’d taken from BDS—evidence of illegal transactions and moving money around to hide payments into an account marked “JR” from overseas investors for technology BDS was designing for the American military. Ava had asked some smart questions that helped him recall what had put him onto the discrepancies in company records in the first place. And her suggestion that he give himself another night’s sleep to allow his battered brain a chance to completely heal and recover other pertinent information, such as what he had done with the evidence on the flash drive before the car chase and bullets, if anything—and where he’d been heading when his SUV had spun out of control—made good sense. Although he suspected continuing that conversation would gradually draw out the information he needed, he’d already turned her life upside down this weekend. He wasn’t going to let his presence here impact her work, especially now when she claimed to be having some sort of breakthrough. With a sweet little wink, her head resumed its bobbing to the music, and she turned her attention back to the keyboard.

  Luke spun back to his own workspace, looking beyond the holstered gun he was keeping within easy reach on the desk beside him to the tiny clock in the corner of the computer screen—1:15 a.m. He wondered how late she’d stay up writing. He wondered if she could understand his need to keep her in his sight, both for her security and for the grounding sense of calm that being with her these past two days had given him. He might not know who his enemies were in the world outside this cabin, but here with Ava he knew peace and trust and—like she’d said up at the cave he’d dubbed Stormhaven—normalcy. He could live this life. Spending time in the outdoors with a great dog, watching Ava write—helping her brainstorm an idea or two. He’d need a job, of course, so he could stay out of her hair while she created her fantasy world on the computer, but he could come home to a brilliant, brave woman and greet her with another one of those kisses that damn near made his body explode. He liked the way she thought. He admired her talent. He appreciated her strength. As inevitably as Larkin Bonecrusher and Willow Storm were destined to be together, he was falling in love with Ava Wallace.

  With that sobering thought, he pulled up the internet and focused on his own work, researching the players at Bell Design Systems, wondering which of them—or if all of them—wanted him dead.

  The reason why BDS had put a hit on him was obvious. Some very powerful people were doing some very illegal things. Selling plans for US military tech to a subversive Chinese faction was a threat to national security. Maybe the insurgents intended to build the tech and start a revolution in their own part of the world, or maybe they were paying to have the inside scoop on what America and her allies might be using in a war zone or on border patrol duty.

  Either way, this sort of industrial espionage and infiltration had been part of what he’d been up against when he’d been promoted to investigative duties as an MP. He’d recognized the money laundering in accounts and the encrypted emails that included both schematics and negotiations. Although he suspected these files didn’t tell the whole story, along with his testimony, they would certainly give a federal prosecutor, or even the IRS, plenty of material to obtain a search warrant to go through all of BDS’s files to find more evidence and pinpoint all the players involved in the illegal transactions. If he’d been as smart as he thought he was, he’d made more than one copy of the files and had hidden them somewhere, or he had sent the originals on to someone else. But maybe the perp at BDS had blocked his messages or rerouted his voice mails. Maybe that’s what had led to the desperate act of fleeing from the people he worked for and swallowing the flash drive. He’d be a fool to risk his life for one little data stick, knowing that destroying it and killing him would eliminate the threat to BDS. He must have had a backup plan in mind that he’d forgotten, a contact he’d been trying to reach in case things went south for him.

  They had gone way south, and he still had no idea who he was up against, and how much anyone in the outside world knew about the secrets he’d uncovered.

  Take a deep breath. Do your job. You got this.

  Luke pulled up a recent magazine interview and stared into the eyes of the main man himself—Gregory Bell. The founder and CEO of Bell Design Systems was a brilliant engineer in his own right. More than that, he was an adept businessman who’d built BDS from the ground up. Bell knew how to hire the right people, and when to buy out the competition or sell off a division, to turn his company into a billion-dollar empire. So why would a guy like that resort to under-the-table dealings? Was someone else in his company dealing with the Chinese faction? Or did the white-haired man in the tailored suit have a secret to hide? Blackmail to pay? A lover he was keeping in diamonds and a penthouse? Good old-fashioned greed? Did he have a personal vendetta against someone that made him willing to risk the expensive contracts he had with the government and military? The article included a picture of Bell with his wife and three daughters. But while the information sounded familiar because of his job, any spark of recognition about the CEO himself did not.

  The next player he pulled up was Roy Hauser, the chief of security. Hauser had hired him earlier this year, fresh after his Marine Corps discharge, to work as a military consultant and do background research on potential hires, and to help provide security for BDS executives and visiting guests, including the Chinese dignitaries he remembered from the hotel at the top of the mountain. What had Ava called it? Ridgerunner Lodge. He’d mistakenly thought he’d uncovered some hacking activities from their guests or from someone in IT who’d been working with them. There’d been a late-night meeting with Hauser where he presented his suspicions about someone in the company leaking information to the Chinese.

  The next morning he’d been racing down the mountain highway in a car with no brakes and a contingency of BDS security hot on his trail.

  He had no idea how many people at BDS were involved in the treasonous business activities. He had no idea if Hauser or Bell were involved, or if Hauser had reported Luke’s findings and had inadvertently alerted the wrong person in the company. The men pursuing him could simply be taking orders. Whoever was behind this had probably labeled Luke as the traitor so that they could use him as a scapegoat, eliminate him and his evidence and go on their merry way, making illegal millions and endangering his fellow military men and women.

  He had to have told someone outside of BDS what he’d found. Or at least been on his way to do so. But who? Who would he have trusted enough to share the secret with? A military contact? An attorney? State police? The FBI? He’d told Ava he’d called a friend in the Corps the day before all this started. Was that the connection he’d shared his suspicions with?

  He needed to make phone calls.

  He needed to find numbers first. They’d probably been programmed into the phone that was taken from him. BDS had that, too. They could know his contacts before he did
.

  Step one was to recapture those last elusive bits of his memory. Who did he think was responsible for these crimes? Who would he have called for backup?

  Then he heard a soft snore from behind him and smiled.

  Who would he call besides his very own Willow Storm?

  Time to give his battered brain a break. With the clock ticking past two in the morning, Luke strapped the Hellcat around his ankle and powered down the computer. It was nice to be able to stuff the data stick into his pocket instead of feeling the need to hide it down his gullet again.

  Now that Ava was clearly ready to turn in, Luke got up and went to the sofa. When Maxie sat up in curiosity, he put a finger to his lips, as though the dog would understand the warning not to wake up her mistress.

  Ava’s lashes were long and dark against her pale skin, and they barely fluttered as he saved the story on her laptop and removed the headphones.

  When she didn’t stir, Luke stretched his shoulder to test its tenderness and strength. Confident that he was the man for this job, he slipped his arms beneath Ava’s knees and back and picked her up, laptop and all. He held her for a few seconds, waiting to see if she’d wake or panic at being confined to his arms. But when she snuggled her cheek against his chest with a sleepy sigh, he turned toward the stairs.

  “Come on, girl,” he whispered to Maxie, and the dog followed as he carried Ava upstairs to her bedroom and laid her on the bed.

  He pulled the sheet and quilt over her and set the laptop on the bedside table. But when he spotted his name on the middle of the screen, he picked up the laptop and read the page she’d written there. The voice of the A. L. Baines he knew leaped off the page and he scrolled back to the beginning of the scene.

  Although the chapter took place between Larkin and Willow in a cave where they’d been stranded after a rescue from Lord Zeville’s castle, he found at least two instances where she’d slipped and typed in his name instead of Larkin’s. Luke stood there beside the bed in the shadows, completely engaged in the newest chapter of the Chronicles. Son of a gun. It turned into a love scene. Luke felt a punch of desire in his gut. It wasn’t a technical love scene with a bunch of bells and whistles. It was a tender, slow and sensual, okay, a freakin’ hot love scene between Larkin and Willow.

  A drowsy voice interrupted him before he reached the last paragraph. “Nosy. You better not plagiarize my book or leak that onto the internet.”

  Luke sank onto the edge of the bed beside her. “Is this what you want to have happen between us?”

  Her eyes opened wide. “What?”

  “You used my name a couple of times. Slip of the imagination?” he teased.

  Suddenly wide awake, Ava sat up and snatched the computer off his lap. She closed the program and shut the laptop completely, stuffing it under the pillow next to her. “That’s a rough draft. Not even my editor gets to read that version. I spew out all my ideas, and then I go back and make it pretty.”

  “It gets better than that?” He didn’t have a creative bone in his body, and her talent was oozing out her pores. “Don’t tell me you can’t write a love scene. That was...really good.”

  “It’s fiction.”

  Fortunately, Luke Broughton had other talents. “It doesn’t have to be.”

  And there was that beautiful blush he loved. “How did I get upstairs?” Unexpectedly shy about a man sitting on her bed flirting with her, or maybe realizing too late that she’d been vulnerable to him while she’d dozed, she pulled the covers up and hugged them to her chest. “What about your shoulder?”

  “Loved every second of carrying you.”

  “You know what I mean. Did I hurt you?”

  “I loved having you in my arms. Figured if you were sleeping, I didn’t have to count.” Her hair hung loose and wavy around her face and shoulders. Luke brushed the long waves back behind her ear, wanting to let her know there was nothing she needed to hide from him. “You’re a snuggler, by the way, when you lower your guard. I loved every second of that, too.”

  She briefly turned her cheek into his palm before scooting away and changing the subject. “Did you find out everything you needed from the data stick? Is BDS selling their tech to someone besides our military?”

  He nodded, knowing he shouldn’t push her to admit she wanted the same thing he did. That love scene could have been an extension of her subconscious mind, not a conscious wish. And he wanted her fully with him when he made love to her, whether it was an hour from now or a year from now. Providing, of course, he survived this mess at all. “I still don’t know who the players are. But I uncovered something big. When I alerted Hauser to what I found, I set a chain of events in motion.”

  “You think he’s behind the attempt on your life? Did he shoot you?”

  “I don’t know.” With his mind focused back on where it needed to be, Luke got up, allowing her to slide farther under the covers. “I do know that as long as I’m alive and the information I found can destroy BDS, someone will be coming after me. I hope I called for backup before everything went FUBAR. That someone I trust is out there looking for me.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  “I’d better let you get your sleep. Looks like you’re mentally all played out.”

  “Thanks for the inspiration.”

  So that chapter was about the two of them. At least, a little bit.

  “Anytime.” He patted the bed, urging the dog to jump up and curl up beside her. “Maximillia Madrona Draconella Reine will keep you safe tonight.”

  “Good night, Larkin.”

  “Good night, Willow.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Luke woke to the sound of muffled screams. What the hell?

  He rolled over in bed, orienting himself to the darkness. Not screams, but whimpering, muffled words that didn’t make sense. He glanced over at the clock on the table beside him—4 a.m. Then he heard a thump, panting. A big dog scratching at a door.

  Luke swung his legs over the side of the bed. Although the doors were closed between them, he recognized the sounds from the morning before.

  Ava.

  “I’m coming, sweetheart.” He grabbed his jeans from the foot of the bed and slipped them on. He thought about retrieving his gun from the drawer of the bedside table, but he left it behind and ran to the door. He’d be scary enough charging into Ava’s bedroom.

  He pushed her door open and was instantly greeted by Maxie. The big dog glowed with the light from the moon seeping in around the curtains, the only illumination in the room. The dog seemed to be in distress, possibly because she wasn’t able to wake her mistress. Ava was thrashing in the bed and crying out, in the full throes of a nightmare. He scrubbed his hand around Maxie’s ears, soothing the beast. “I’m here. We’ll help her. Don’t you worry, girl.”

  Although he didn’t want to alert anyone who might be watching the house, Luke didn’t hesitate to turn on the lamp beside the bed. Ava’s skin was flushed, her forehead dotted with perspiration. Her long hair clung to the dampness on her skin, masking her expression. But her moans were full of pain, and he couldn’t stand by while she muttered pleas to be let go. Looking at the sheet and quilt twisted around her legs and the hair covering her face, he had a pretty good idea about where her mind was right now. He prayed that what he was about to do wouldn’t make it worse.

  He touched her.

  “Ava.” He grabbed the covers and pulled them from beneath her, unrolling her from her cloth prison. She screamed into her pillow. Luke pulled her hair away from her face and saw she was still in the grips of the scene that was haunting her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He grasped her by the shoulders and gave her a slight shake. “Ava, wake up.” He tapped her cool cheek. “Ava!”

  She came awake, knocking his hand from her face, screaming.

  He retreated several inches away from her on the bed. Her eyes
were wide, frightened, unfocused in the moonlight. She blinked. They darkened as she looked at him. Luke nodded to the furry caretaker sitting beside her, and Ava reached for Maxie, burying her face in the dog’s neck and breathing deeply.

  Luke watched for several minutes, making sure she was all right. Gradually, she eased her grip on the dog and Maxie licked Ava’s face and neck, earning a soft laugh and making Luke smile. Content that she could finish recovering without his help, Luke pushed to his feet. “I’ll leave the light on for you, okay?”

  Then she surprised him by reaching for his hand. She lifted her beautiful eyes to his. “Thank you.”

  When her grip tightened around his, he moved a step closer. “Way to scare the team, Wallace.”

  She nodded. “Instead of trying to hash any of this out, would you...?”

  Luke sat on the edge of the bed again. He switched hands and tucked a tendril of coffee-colored hair behind her ear. “Anything. Just ask.”

  “Would you hold me? I’m so cold.”

  Whatever the woman needed. He didn’t have the power to say no. After folding the quilt and sheet at the bottom of the bed so that nothing could tangle between them or around her again, Luke stretched out beside her, propping up the pillows beneath his head and gathering her to his side. She rested her head on his shoulder and her hand in the middle of his chest where he threaded his fingers with hers and held them against the beat of his heart. Maxie curled up on the other side of her. Cocooned between their body heat, he doubted she needed any covers. “Better?”