Blindsided (Sentinel Securities) (3 page)

When the duplex next door became empty, Gladys immediately offered it
to
Briella and the three soon became their own small family unit. Gladys was a nurturer—plain and simple. With her own children grown up and scattered all over the country and globe, she missed having someone to take care of. For Briella, having to bring up her child alone, with no family to ease her loneliness, the bond was a precious gift indeed.

"Good night possum," Gladys said, giving Briella a quick hug as she reached for the front door.

"Night Gladys, thank you." She waited until she heard the soft click of the door and closed her own, locking it securely and checking all the windows. A quick peep at her sleeping daughter as she lay with one small hand curled beneath her chin, and Briella smiled softly easing from the room and counting her blessings that she had such a gorgeous creature in her life.

As she snuggled down in her bed after a quick shower, she shut down her tired mind and allowed the seductive lure of sleep to claim her.

****

"
That
, is Briella Matheson?" Nash asked doubtfully as he sat beside Mac in the front of the plain white van they used for surveillance the next day.

"Yep."

"No way."

"That's her," Mac was adamant.

In his mind, the ex-girlfriend of a drop
-
kick like Cruz, had looked nothing like the woman they were watching, as she sat cross-legged on the front lawn, blowing bubbles with her daughter. Her dark hair hung loose, just brushing the tops of her shoulders as she laughed along with the delighted squeals coming from the child on her lap.

"She doesn't look like a biker chick."

“What’s she look like?” Gracie’s voice immediately came over the radio. The other three were on watch back around the Three of Swords clubhouse, while Mac and Nash were out
doing a little recon, observing
Briella Matheson. They were all wearing headsets so he knew their conversation
could be
overheard by the rest of the team.

“Normal,” Nash said dryly.

"Well they don't all wear spiked heels and Daisy Duke denim shorts."

Nash sent his friend a sceptical glance that clearly asked,
and you’d know…how?

"I read bike magazines."

"If you say so," Nash murmured, fixing his gaze back on the young woman who played with a small child on the front lawn of the tidy duplex house diagonal to where they sat in the van.

"How we going to do this then?"

“Well, I’ve been thinking.”

"Why have I got a bad feeling about this?" Nash asked with a long sigh.

"Just hear me out—"

"I knew I wasn't going to like this," Nash groaned.

"You're going to have to charm your way in."

"
Me?
Why me?"

"Because I don’t have the patience or the disposition to woo a woman, and no woman in her right mind would give the other three a second glance."

"Well that’s a bit harsh
,
Mac. Gracie isn't that bad looking
;
he does alright picking up women. Admittedly it’s usually at the end of the night and they’re drunk, but still... and if Stone ever works up the courage to actually
speak
to a woman, he'd do okay. You might have a point about Casper, he's a bit of an ugly bastard."

"You think Gracie's good looking?" Mac asked doubtfully.

"He's got a better mug on him than you."

"Well we don't have enough time for Stone to work on his self-confidence issues, Gracie's too young for this bird, and Casper doesn't speak, so that rules him out. Which leaves you." 

"I don't know anything about kids."

"You’re not applying for a nanny position—what’s to know?"

"Well how the hell am I going to get her interested that fast?"

"With a face like yours? She'd have to be half dead to not fall for you, mate," Mac said in a disturbingly good impression of sincerity.

The radio crackled and Gracie's voice floated up to them. "I agree with Mac, Nash—if I were female I'd do ya."

Nash grinned at the radio.

"And, I do so, know how to talk to women," Stone muttered.

"If you lot have finished with your love fest—you want to get on with it? I'm missing out on a footy match for this," Casper's rare contribution to the conversation cut through the banter, cynically.

"Well you have until this afternoon to figure out a way in. We don't have time for something subtle, so you better make it good."

"No pressure or anything." Nash muttered under his breath.

****

Briella reversed out of the driveway and put her small hatchback into first gear, glancing into her rear-view mirror before pulling out onto the street.

The sudden squeal of tyres and loud scream of an engine revving loudly, made her gasp as a blur of black whizzed past her window and slid across her front lawn.

Dazed for a moment, she stared out her front windscreen at the figure lying very still beside a ferocious looking motor bike, its wheels still spinning although the engine had thankfully stalled and was now silent.

Forcing herself to move, she unlatched her seatbelt with
shaky
hands and pushed open her door to run to the prone individual on the ground. A grown reached her ears and she breathed a small sigh of relief. 

"Don't move, just stay still," she said when he began to move around. From up close she could tell it was definitely male, she reached out and lifted the tinted visor to look into the riders eyes and check for signs of a concussion.

Two dark brown eyes stared back at her steadily, and for a moment, caught her off guard. Quickly searching for her professionalism that seemed to have fled the scene like a fugitive, she ran her hands over the rider, although couldn’t feel anything while he was dressed in his well-padded jacket and Kevlar camouflage patterned riding pants. "Are you hurt?" she asked, bringing her gaze back to his, after ensuring none of his limbs were twisted the wrong way or finding any sign of blood.

"Just my pride," he muttered.

His voice was deep and had a gravely texture that made her more than a little aware of him in a way she hadn't experienced in a long time…a way she promised she would never allow herself to experience again.

Slowly he sat up and Briella watched for any sign of dizziness. "I'm going to call an ambulance," she told him getting to her feet, intending to head to her car to retrieve her mobile from the front seat.

"No. I'm fine, I don't want an ambulance," he told her as he reached up to unbuckle his helmet slowly.

Briella found herself holding her breath as she waited for him to remove it, forcing her gaze to be objective as she searched for any sign of lingering injury, as he levelled a steady gaze onto her.

His short hair was less than an inch long and the five o'clock shadow on his face gave him a rugged appearance, that much to her irritation, she discovered she was not completely immune to.

"I didn't see you there—I looked before I pulled out. I'm really sorry," she apologised, more to fill in the silence as they took in each other's presence.

"I was probably going a bit fast for the corner," he shrugged, flashing her a grin that made the skin around his chocolate coloured eyes crinkle and only added to his appeal…appeal she
did not
want to acknowledge. 

"This is a residential area, you shouldn't have been going that fast," she snapped a little more briskly than she'd intended.

"Hey, you backed out in front of me, remember?"

"If you'd been going slower, you might have had time to slow down."

He stared at her for a moment, seeming to regather his thoughts before summoning that sexy grin once again. "Well, it's nothing too serious."

"I still think you should go to hospital and get checked out."

"I'm fine. No harm done."

"Briella? Is everything alright?"

Briella turned around to see Gladys standing in the doorway with Lucy on her hip, staring at the bike on the lawn and the big man at her feet.

"Just a small accident, everything's okay though, no one hurt."

"Shall I call the police?"

Briella saw the man on the ground look up in alarm, before getting to his feet and shaking his head. "No need thanks, it's all good."

"You sure you're alright?" Briella asked keeping a close eye on him as he reached down to heave his machine upright.

"Nothing a date won't fix," he said on a grunt as the bike came upright.

For a minute Briella thought she'd misheard him. "Excuse me?"

"A date. To apologise for the accident."

"I…ah, don't date."

She watched as he dropped his gaze to his helmet and pulled it back on over his head. Staring at her through the opened visor, she saw his eyes were smiling even though she could no longer see that cocky grin. "Are you married?"

Briella stared at him as though he'd lost his mind—certain in fact, that he had. "You must have hit your head harder than you think. You need to get checked out."

"I can usually pick women who are in a relationship. You're not are you," he said smugly.

"That's none of your business!"

"I'll pick you up at seven."

Briella's mouth dropped open. "I said I –"

Holding her gaze, he flicked the starter switch on the handlebars and turned the key, a loud roar drowned out her protest. With a nod and a wink, he pushed off and rode away, leaving her frowning in his wake and cursing below her breath angrily.

"What was that all about?" Gladys had made her way down the path and across the lawn to her side.

Briella shook her head, as she stared after the figure vanishing in the distance. "I have no idea. I really don't." She dragged her irritable gaze from his back and walked to her car. "But he better think again if he thinks he's going to show up here and whisk me off my feet."

She ignored her neighbours raised eyebrow and small twitch of a grin with a groan of foreboding. The last thing she needed was for Gladys to get a sniff of a good romance. The woman was constantly trying to fix her up and get her out on a date, but not this time and
definitely
not with that man—he was trouble with a capital T.

****

Nash rotated his sore shoulder slowly as he dismounted his bike back inside the garage, half an hour later.

Mac watched his progress from where he stood, polishing his car. "When I said don't be subtle, throwing yourself in front of her car was not exactly what I had in mind."

"I didn't hear anyone else offering suggestions," Nash muttered. "Any movement at the clubhouse?"

"Not a lot. They copped a fair whack after the scuffle the other night. As far as we can tell they haven't found out
Jack shit
about the woman's whereabouts. But we're going to have to work fast on this—who knows how soon they’ll figure out how to use the bloody white pages."

Nash gave a snort of scorn; it was a little more involved than flicking through the phone book to locate Briella. Admittedly,
they
had access to a few more avenues than the average Joe, but seeing as she didn't leave the state, and was in the same damn city, it wouldn't be impossible to track the woman down, and even a knucklehead like Cruz would eventually find someone who knew where she was.

Nash went upstairs to take a hot shower and hoped to work out some of the stiffness in his shoulder. He'd tried to lessen the impact as much as possible, but his shoulder had taken the brunt of the fall and he'd been lucky it hadn't been worse.

Under the hot steam of the shower his thoughts drifted back to Briella Matheson. He'd known she was attractive after seeing her the previous day, but up close he suddenly realised just
how
attractive she really was. He hadn't been prepared for the gut-clench reaction he'd experienced as she'd leaned over him asking if he was alright. Lifting his visor, he caught a sniff of something fresh and sweet as she ran her hands over his body and searched his gaze for signs of injury. For a minute, he almost
wished
he'd had something broken that she could have fixed for him. A bit of blood, a broken bone—anything to keep that gentle, comforting gaze on him for a bit longer. He wasn't normally concerned about the odd injury, it was part and parcel of his work, but those gentle hands on him and those big brown eyes were enough to turn him into a bloody hypochondriac.

Turning the shower from hot to cold, he grit his teeth for a moment, enduring the torment before stepping from the cubical to get dressed. No time to think about attractive brunettes with big brown eyes, he had to get this job finished.

Tossing stuffed dinosaurs and plastic blocks into the toy box behind the lounge, Briella finished picking up the last of the toys from the lounge room floor and paused to listen to the evening current affair news about an increase of bike related violence in the city. A knock sounded at her door and she sent a quick look at the clock as she walked from the room and answered it. It wasn’t late, but she never had visitors dropping in at seven-thirty very often. She left the security screen locked, staring out at the man on the other side of her door.