Guardian For Hire: A For Hire Novel (11 page)

His jaw tightened and he nodded. Even Maddy didn’t think he was good enough for the doc. A much-needed reminder. “Message received.”

“No, not like that. I mean, amid all your skank-ass usual types, I think you’ve got a winner here. I don’t want you to blow it.”

“That’s not what’s—”

“Don’t be stupid.” Her words were a verbal slap in the face. “You can like her, hell, even I’m starting to like her, but don’t let your feelings override your street smarts. She may not like what she has to do, but it’s your job to make sure she does it. I don’t have time to groom a new partner, and I’m sure as hell not buying new clothes to wear to your funeral, so make sure you keep your shit in order and focus on the job.”

He nodded curtly, annoyed that her approval of him and Sarabeth as a couple made him feel better in some ways, but worse in others. It was a pleasant surprise that Maddy could imagine a world where the two of them worked together, but at the same time, the last thing he needed was thoughts like those clouding his senses. “Roger that.”

“She is cute, you know. Smart, too. Much better than your usual trolley o’ tramps.”

He half smiled. “Right. Not too good for a thug from Edinburgh, though?”

Just as he recognized the same pitying look Maddy had been giving Sarabeth before their journey downstairs, he cleared his throat.

“Not important right now. At the moment, we need to try to find the missing link because we’re clearly overlooking something.”

“I wish I had some clue as to where else we’d look. We looked into possible investors, employees, family friends, clients.”

A tiny bell sounded in his head. “Try to get your hands on the official client list. Maybe call that guy you’re friends with in evidence over there…Baxter? See what he says. Then run background checks. Every little minute detail counts—I want to know what kind of soap they use and where they bought it from. That’s the kind of detail we’re talking about.”

Maddy nodded. “Good enough for me.” She sauntered toward the door, the clicking of her boots echoing as she climbed the stairs.

At least that was one task out of the way. They’d gotten a verbal list from a friend of Owen’s in the DA’s office, but that didn’t mean that someone hadn’t been overlooked. He’d have to cool his heels, hang back, and figure out how to tackle the real work. Number one on the list was telling Sarabeth how serious things had gotten without panicking her. Number two was teaching her how to defend herself. And the all-important number three?

Figuring out how he was going defend himself against her.

…

It was an hour before Gavin came up from his bunker. It was sweet that he and Maddy were trying to make things easier on her, but it was shocking how terrible they were at lying considering their professions. The whole time Maddy sat beside her chatting about the book she was reading, she seemed disengaged. No matter how high she pitched her voice or how well she tried to feign her enthusiasm, there was a stale kind of hollowness to every movement.

The whole thing had her on edge, but she kept up with the show Maddy was putting on, laughing at her jokes and playing along. When the woman finally left, Sarabeth waited to see if Gavin would come to her or if she was going to have to go to him and demand the truth. From the time the door clicked shut behind Maddy and Gavin’s heavy footfalls sounded down the hall, it was only thirty seconds, but it was the longest thirty seconds of her life, as her brain conjured every possible horrible scenario, all ending in her gory demise. When he stood before her at long last, she wasn’t sure if she was relieved that she was finally going to hear the truth or if she wanted him to go away so she could have some more time to wallow in her not-so-blissful ignorance.

“Hey, I want to show you something,” he said, his palm resting on the arm of the couch at her feet.

“What is it? A newspaper report? An autopsy result?” Jesus, was someone else dead? Her heart thundered and she swallowed to work up some saliva in her suddenly bone-dry mouth.

He screwed up his brows, his nostrils flaring. “What? No. Nothing like that. I want to show you the rest of the lower level. Come on.” He walked out of the room without sparing her another glance.

She trotted along after him, her book falling to the ground in her haste. The beat-up steps were cool against her bare feet, but she made quick work of them until she was eventually walking along the dark corridor beside him. “Are you about to show me your
Phantom of the Opera
lair?”

“What?” It was the first time he’d really focused on her, and she noted the tense cut of his jaw. He was grinding his teeth.

“Nothing. Just trying to break the tension. Will you put me out of my misery and tell me what Maddy told you? Please?” She stopped in the middle of the hall, hoping he’d stop along with her.

It worked. They faced each other, their bodies practically touching in the cramped space. “Look, what Maddy told me isn’t important. I’ll tell you when the time is right, but for now we need to focus on what’s best for you. Can you do that? Can you trust me enough to wait?”

She’d never heard him sound so intense before, and her head was nodding before she’d even given it permission to do so. There was a command in his voice that she couldn’t deny, and the rasping growl behind every word had her thinking that if he’d commanded her to strip naked in the middle of the hall, she would have done that, too. Heat rushed to her face, and she tried her best to shake away every thought other than the present. He wanted her focused? That’s what she would be. Because, for some unfathomable reason, she did trust him. After little more than a week, she trusted him more than almost anyone she knew. That thought was almost as terrifying as the car bomb.

He held her gaze for another second and turned away. They continued farther down the hall until they came to a glass-front door, and he held it open for her to pass through.

The room was huge. With gray stone walls and a matching cool dark floor. A chill went up her spine as her feet made contact with the unyielding ground. The room must have gone for a mile, long and narrow, with two large targets poised against the far wall. Where she stood, beside the door, were two small booths cased in glass, each with a pair of protective muffs resting on a Plexiglas counter.

“Oh no, no, no…” she mumbled, her brain working faster than she was able to process. A shooting range? In his house? Seriously, it was like he was about to show her where he hid his Batmobile next.

“You need to learn how to protect yourself. From whatever comes. So it won’t be enough to carry an empty clip anymore.”

“I…I don’t even know how to hold it right,” she said softly. She shook her head and her hair hit her in the face as her movements became more and more spastic. It was one thing to ask her to trust him with her life, but it was another to thrust her without warning into the mind-set of taking some else’s. “I-I can’t do this.”

“Sarabeth, please. You need to be strong, okay? Try to pull yourself together.”

She heard his words as if through a fog, but she stepped up to the shooting window all the same, running her fingers along the cool steel pistol that waited for her there.

“I don’t know…”

“It’s paper right now. Focus on the paper.” He took her icy hand and squeezed it. “You said you could trust me. Trust me enough to know I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t necessary.”

She wet her lips and straightened, nodding. “Okay.”

He started by teaching her the basics of gun care. How to hold it, how to flip the safety, where to point it, where not to point it—at him, seemed to be the biggest suggestion. It was easy enough. Nothing she hadn’t seen in movies a hundred times before.

“Good. You’re doing great. Now I’m going to teach you to aim. Normally we wouldn’t go so fast, but we’re kind of doing a speed course, so you have the basics and I feel comfortable letting you carry while you’re here.”

Because she was going to need it. She could feel the color draining from her face. “Hey, look at me.” She met his intense gaze and let his conviction calm her. “I’m going to take care of you. This is a precaution.”

“All right.”

“Now, you’re going to want to keep your feet hip-width apart, firmly planted on the ground.” He demonstrated and she followed suit. Or tried to. Somehow, despite her best efforts, her knees were shaking at the very idea at what she was about to do, paper or not.

“Not quite.” He walked behind her, his torso pressed to her back, and tapped her upper thigh, positioning her legs closer together. The touch sent a rush of heat through her thighs and the ache that was always dimly in the background whenever he was around burst into full recognition.

Just another reaction to yet another stressful situation. No big deal.

“Thanks,” she breathed, her voice huskier than she would have liked.

“Okay, now I’m going to show you how to aim.” His palms burned against her shoulders as he squared them, and his fingers trailed her arms at a torturous pace until each hand wrapped around hers, the calloused pad of his pointer resting against her own.

“The kickback is going to surprise you, so try to gear up. All right. Let’s give it a try in one—”

His body was so warm…

“Two—”

His hot spearmint breath sent tingles up her neck.

“Three—” He depressed his finger, and the force of the metal shook her, propelling her against the hard muscle of his chest. The sound wasn’t what she had expected—the cinematic glory of the action movies her ex-boyfriends had forced her to watch. No, the actual car backfiring sound was like a wake-up call to the rest of her life.

She dropped the gun, unable to control her shaking any longer. “I-I’m sorry. I can’t. This is too much—I need to know what’s happening.” She stared him down, blinking back tears.

He blanched, but his gaze held hers, firm and steady, before he nodded. “Okay. Okay, I get it. But you have to promise me that you’ll stay calm, all right?”

She did her best to give a solemn nod, but the rest of her body quaked beneath her. This was the moment. Truth
and
dare.

“I can do calm.”

“We have information that leads us to believe that the mob might be involved with the recent murders.”

And just like that, calm flew out the window.

Chapter Ten

Once Gavin managed to talk her out of her hysteria, she’d given herself an hour to wallow in bed. An hour to sit alone and process, but when the alarm sounding the end of her hour found her stuffed underneath the covers of her blissfully horse head–free bed in the fetal position, her whole body ached to stay there until whatever rip-off Sopranos character was after her finally showed up. The mob. The frigging
mob
. She’d seen
The Godfather
. She knew how this ended.

A knock on her door quickly followed the buzzing of her alarm, and her heart stopped mid-beat.

“Sarabeth? You okay?” Gavin’s voice was gruff. She’d been surprised when he let her run off the way she had. He hadn’t approached her door or so much as walked by since he’d told her. It was good of him, really. To let her have her space.

“I’m great.” She struggled to get the words past the ever-increasing knot in her throat.

“Good. Well, then.” There was a long pause and for a minute she wondered if he’d left. “You can have some more time, if you need it, but we do need to keep working as well. This isn’t going to be easy and I want to get you up to speed with at least the minimum…”

Because everything else had been so easy up to that point. “Yes. Okay,” she sniffed. “Give me ten more minutes.”

“You’ve got it, yeah? Right, well, I’ll be in the office. When you’re ready.” His voice was gentler than normal, and the sound had her heart turning over and over before dropping low into her stomach. His heavy footfalls sounded, then faded.

It was an effort, but she crabbed her way back up to the headboard where she proceeded to gently bang the back of her head over and over until she was absolutely certain her mind was clear. The thing that had been bouncing around in there like a ball amid all the fear and panic came back to the surface.

Her life might be ending. She’d never been to Paris. Never been married or had children. Never ran that 5k she’d been training for over the past year.

But she was still alive for now, she reminded herself. And if she only had a few days left, heck, maybe only a few more hours left, she was going to do what she wanted. There was nothing to stop her now—future repercussions might never come. No, now she was Sarabeth unleashed.

And as much as the sinking feeling in her chest made her feel strange, it was oddly freeing at the same time.

She tumbled out of the bed, shaking out her limbs and jumping up and down like a prizefighter, even throwing a few punches in the air to pick up her energy. She pawed through her clothes, but they were pretty much all the same. She hadn’t really needed a nice wardrobe when she was essentially a shut-in.

Right when she was about to give up the search as a lost cause, she got to the bottom of the stack to find her fitted uniform pants, and she pulled them on without a second thought. They’d be a hell of a job to work off later, but for now, she was determined to be the sexiest version of herself she could possibly be with what she had to work with. Moving with the speed of a woman on a mission, she pulled on the tightest T-shirt in her arsenal—the scoop-neck purple shirt that gave the slightest hint of her cleavage. It would have to do.

By the time she left her room and reached the bottom of the steps, however, she came to the stunning realization that she had not made any plans beyond dressing herself. She pivoted on the spot, her mind whirring through things she’d seen on TV shows in this sort of situation. All she could come up with were bad stripteases and big romantic gestures like holding a boom box over her head. With a mental sigh, she acknowledged that she had neither the boom box nor the balls for either option.

So if she couldn’t do any of that, what was she good for? She could do his taxes, but that hardly seemed romantic. A therapy session was out. His house was already clean…there had to be something she could do that would let him know, albeit in her clumsy, reserved way, she was trying to seduce him.

She sauntered into the kitchen and ducked low to examine each of the shelves. The resources were as sparse as the rest of the house, but there was enough to get by. A block of cheese in the refrigerator drawer and a box of macaroni in the pantry. Homemade mac and cheese. That sounded like something a man would like, right? And it should be easy enough.

She searched around in the cabinets for a long minute until she found a large saucepan. She filled it with water before setting it on the largest burner. Then she retrieved the box of pasta from the closet and dumped it into the water with a firm nod. Okay. Good start.

She was only mildly intimidated by the shining copper pans hanging from the rack over the island. Still, part of her knew they were too perfect to survive unscathed.

No matter. It didn’t look like Gavin used them much anyway, and she’d be super careful. She slid a knife through the plastic covering the cheese only to find little flecks of mold hidden by the inside label. Scrambling, she surveyed the fridge until she found individually plastic-wrapped cheese slices. That would have to be good enough.

She’d turned the heat up all the way on the burner before setting the pan on the surface. That’s what they’d always said to do in cooking shows, after all. Get the pans screaming hot. She channeled her inner Bobby Flay, but nothing else was coming to mind. It only made sense that the cheese had to melt in the pan…but given that’s she’d never so much as attempted an omelet before, it seemed easier said than done.

She started unwrapping all the slices, but was distracted by a thin stream of gray smoke coming from the center of the pristine pan. Panicking, she did the only thing that came to mind. She lobbed half a stick of softened butter from the dish on the counter directly into the center of the pan. The solid sizzled as it oozed out, forming a yellowy liquid. Butter made everything better.

Before she could congratulate herself on her quick thinking, an ominous hiss alerted her to the water now boiling over. Noodles cascaded over the sides and settling among the flames beneath the metal grates, instantly charring and filling the kitchen with smoke. She turned down the heat and flailed her hands around until it cleared some, nearly slumping in relief as the last of it burned away.

Okay, she was doing fine. She spared a glance at the butter that had started crackling and was quickly turning a sickly shade of tobacco spit on the adjacent burner. She tossed the cheese into the pool of fat, hoping to slow the cooking long enough to salvage what she’d made so far. The cheese bubbled up, frying and spreading out in neon orange swirls. Not creamy and delicious-looking. More like a pair of pleather pants Lady Gaga would don before a big show. Not very appetizing.

“Crap.”

She opened the fridge again. Milk. Milk or cream would fix it. The closest thing she could find was almond milk, so she closed her eyes and poured it in with the rest of the mixture.
Bombs away.

She straightened her mess and checked on the water again. It was all gone. In its place was a congealed pound of macaroni, swollen to its full, boiled potential. Not too shabby. She overturned the pot into the cheese mixture, taking up a spatula to first break up the block of pasta, and then to stir it so that the burnt pieces that had stuck to the bottom of the pan didn’t show.

Once it was complete, she stood back and eyed her masterpiece, a warm sense of accomplishment filling her. It didn’t look delicious, per se, but it didn’t look terrible either. Although, she still felt like it was missing something…

With a resigned sigh, she shrugged and spooned the meal into bowls. In a last flourish, she sprinkled some parsley on top and smiled. Much better. By the time she’d set the table, complete with wineglasses and cloth napkins, her hands were shaking. Partly with excitement to show off her first actual home-cooked meal, partly with anticipation of what she hoped would come later. It made her stomach twist, but in the best way. In a way she hadn’t known existed until now with Gavin. She needed this. She wanted this.

And she was going to get it.

“Gavin!” she called down the stairwell. “Come on up, dinner’s ready.”

…

The air was thick with acrid smoke. The taste of burning coated the back of his throat and clung to the inside of his nostrils, and it was all he could do to force back the choking sensation every breath elicited. By the time he reached the top of the stairs from the basement, his eyes were stinging with unshed tears, but still he moved closer to the source. What a sap.

“Sarabeth?” he called as he walked down the hall, crossing the living room with quick, long strides.

“I made us dinner.”

She spun around so quickly that her breasts continued to jiggle when she stopped. She was dressed to kill, the dark purple of her tight cotton shirt making her light-green eyes all the more alluring. And he tried hard to focus on those eyes, because the real draw of the whole business was just how obviously she lacked a bra. The front of her shirt had been splashed with something that formed a large, dark spot across her front, and he could see the points of her stiff nipples poking at the thin fabric. A pull of need tugged at him, no matter how hard he tried to push it away. Was this some sort of test? If so, he was definitely going to fail.

“How…nice,” he said, glancing at the table. There were two places set, each with a glowing mound of something gooey, with little black flecks clinging to it here and there like gnats on a decomposing, radioactive orange. “It looks delicious.”

He squared his shoulders as he took his seat, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was beaming.

“I hope you like it. It’s an…uh, old family recipe.”

“I’d gotten the impression your family wasn’t much to do their own cooking.” He forked the center of the mound on his plate, and the utensil sank in and held like it was the sword in the stone. When he tried to pry it out, the entire glob came up with it.

“Oh, I can cook. If you know what I mean.” She blushed, looking up at him through her long lashes.

What the hell was happening? He stared down at the food and shook his head slowly. “No. I don’t think I do.”

He used his fork to cut off a hunk of what smelled faintly like cheese and took a tentative bite. If cardboard could have mated with plastic in the wild, it would have made the meal Sarabeth had prepared. With every chew, a new glob of what he imagined had once been pasta clung to his molars, and he reevaluated, wondering if the dish’s main ingredient had been industrial glue.

It was an effort, but he smiled and muscled through, no matter how sore his jaw got from masticating the putrid mess. It was worth it. At his approving face, her shoulders loosened, and he caught sight of those elusive dimples of hers. It had been days since they’d made an appearance, and he forked up some more “food.”

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

It was strange, after all. She’d been staying with him for a week, and he couldn’t remember her ever stepping foot in the kitchen aside from making them a pot of coffee or fixing a sandwich. To do it now, after the news she’d gotten, seemed odd. Maybe she just wanted to feel normal for a little while. He got that.

His thoughts drifted away as his gaze traveled lower again to take in her braless figure.

Jesus, she was fit.

“I thought you deserved something nice. You’ve been so lovely to me.”

Had he? He set his fork down and stared at her, waiting for the kicker. Finally, she followed suit, reaching across the table to caress the back of his hand, drawing figure eights in the sparse dark hair on his skin.

“I was thinking… Well, it’s down to the wire, right? You and me and this whole thing? Why don’t we give it a go?”

His cock struggled against his pants with every motion of her finger, but he refused to believe that she’d meant what he thought. “Give what a go?” he managed through his suddenly tight throat.

“You. And me. I was reading in my books, you know, and it gave me some ideas.”

“Ideas?” He was starting to sound like a parrot, but he didn’t care. “Have you been drinking again?”

God, he hoped so. Then he could say no. He’d
have
to say no. But if she was sober and this was what she really wanted?

No amount of common sense in the world was going to be enough to make him turn her away.