Hot Contract (7 page)

She kept walking, a Popsicle in pink. But a
pretty one. “I don’t have to tell you anything. I could walk away
from you right now and you’d simply follow. You’re my bodyguard,
not my shrink.”

“Fuck the blood.” He caught up with her and
grabbed her arm, spinning her to face him. “You’ve had some kind of
past trauma. I need to know what it is.”

“Because you care?” she snarled.

He made a frustrated sound. “Get it straight,
I give a damn. We leave in six days and—”

“Six days?” She stopped trying to pull her
arm away from him and lifted her chin instead. “Oops, sorry, Ms.
Stalling. Your time is up? Why the hell did you take this
assignment?”

“I need the money.”

She frowned. “You’d just leave?”

“If you don’t feel safe after the threat is
contained, we’ll drop you off at StallingCo.”

“I’m not crawling back there. Ever.”

“Your safety is more important than your
pride.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Make me. Try real hard.”

“No one understands!” Jen snapped, sharp and
intense. Her anger built to a screaming haze. “Not my brother, not
Mac. You aren’t even a Stalling. We have no common ground. How can
you understand what it’s like to be an object, to be of use simply
because every genetic cross in my background has been documented to
the nth degree?”

She shoved him away. “They tried to breed me,
Keegan—like a dog.”

“Jesus.”

Jen spun on her heel in an angry pink
flourish. “Good fucking answer.”

Fallon got out of the car. “Man, this bites.
If I’d wanted to watch a soap opera, I’d have stayed back at the
house.”

Corlis swung up on the hood of the big sedan,
raking a hand back through her hair. He loved that color, pale,
silver blonde. She shot him a look as if she knew what he was
thinking.

She probably did.

Fallon shifted his weight, wishing he had the
balls to simply reach down in his pants and adjust himself. If she
hadn’t noticed, and yeah, that was about as freaking likely as a
rogue tornado drop-kicking his ass to Oz, he didn’t want to draw
attention to himself.

Down boy, nothing today.

Or ever.

Fuck it. He didn’t care.

He reached down in his drawers and adjusted
himself anyway. It was all up in his head and if he thought
otherwise, yeah—he was the idiot.

Corlis didn’t mess around. She never said
anything she didn’t mean and so far there’d been a conspicuous lack
of words. That one night they’d spent together, okay that
mind-blowingly intense twenty minutes they’d spent together, had
been marked by silence.

The screaming had come later.

“Liss, I—” love you. “God, Liss, please?”

“Fuck you, Padraic Fallon! No, wait. I
already did that. Fuck
me,
I’m so stupid.”

Par for the course. Him groveling and her
pissed off. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him their relationship
was sick. He’d seen her once, talking to Nick, animated like she
never was when she talked to Fallon. Nick Radnov, a.k.a, Nick the
Dick.

The big Russian hadn’t wasted time moving in
on Corlis while Fallon was away. Okay, while Fallon was fucking
locked up, a guest of the Shining Path. And who was he to judge
her?

He’d barely seen her during his stint in Q
course and pretty much dropped out of sight once he’d signed on
with Special Forces. She’d stayed behind at Fort Bragg to finish up
college and become an officer coordinating the Spec Op field
units.

She’d dumped Nick to take Fallon back as her
partner, but Fallon had come to the conclusion that she’d done it
to beat the crap out of him emotionally. Corlis shifted silently.
Yeah babe, the hood was hot. They’d driven straight through, from
Hilo to shit-nowhere, and like all loaners, this one
overheated.

Her hand flickered, shorthand from their
shared childhood in the projects.
Security coming.

He gestured back.
Move
.

****

Jen squeezed through the surging crowd,
painfully aware of Keegan right behind her. He caught her arm again
before she could disappear into the shadows behind a catering
tent.

“Walk around front,” he told her. “Stay where
there are people.”

“Just follow. It’s your job, isn’t it?”

He stepped in closer, eyes enigmatic. “It’s
dangerous. Too many random factors.”

He didn’t let go, the warmth of his hand
imprinting itself on her flesh. She’d climbed into his lap. God,
legs slung over his and claws sunk deep. He’d bled for her. And on
top of that he knew about her vertigo. He didn’t look like the kind
of man who’d try to leverage his knowledge, but she’d been wrong
before. She’d overreacted, and now Keegan had a handle on her. She
should have offered to drive. It was always better when she
drove.

“Slow down,” he continued, like he was trying
to tell her something important. “Don’t let emotions get in your
way. Living is the best revenge.”

She looked into his eyes. “Who do you want
vengeance on?”

His expression turned hard. “No one.”

“I’ll walk slower.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

She twitched her dress close, grateful for
the stiff salt breeze blowing in off the ocean. The heavy cotton
clung like a wet towel. “It’ll be over soon. Aunt Kate is a
stickler for appearances, but she could care less if any of us
stay.” The idea of her father watching her through Keegan made her
sick, but it would be a workable compromise if she could just get
her mind out of the gutter and off his incredibly hot body.

No one was dumb enough to start something at
one of Aunt Kate's parties. Katherine Kualani had been born a
Stalling, and she still had her full contingent of bodyguards, as
well as use of whatever security happened by.

Her immaculately preserved Victorian loomed
over the gathering, wedged up at the far end of the valley like a
fever dream of lights and music. Enormous white tents billowed in
the breeze and sunset painted the underside of the high trestle
bridge they’d just crossed over with splashes of gold. Kate owned
the entire valley, all the entrance routes, and a good slice of the
mountain behind her. The ancient Hawaiian land grant had been in
the Kualani family for more than a century.

“Cara!” Raphael Caravaggio started toward
them. The only thing the black-haired operative needed was a
stiletto to complete his impression of a renaissance
soldier-of-fortune.

He loomed up beside her with his hands tucked
out of sight. A sure bet he was hoping Keegan would be stupid
enough to challenge him.

Keegan looked him up and down. “What the hell
are you doing here, Caravaggio?”

“My job,” said Rafe.

“What’s with the get-up? I saw you in Jakarta
two months ago and you were a mercenary.”

Rafe lifted a brow. “Still am. Want to buy
me?”

“Fuck, no.”

“You suspicious bastard, I didn’t mean it
that way.” Rafe pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket
and shook one out. His black leather trench fell back to reveal
cross-holstered guns and the holographic black ID of StallingCo
Security hanging from a lanyard around his neck.

“Don’t try to intimidate my bodyguard,
Raphael.” Jen considered him a friend even if he did work for her
cousin, Tris.

Rafe fished in his pocket for a lighter. A
sullen red glow flared over the elegant line of his jaw. He took a
long drag and eyed her, smoke curling from his lips. “Trouble in
paradise, poverina?”

Jen tilted her head back, eyes narrowed on
the tall Italian. “Doesn’t Tris know?”

“Tris knows everything. I merely work for
him.”

Jen told Rafe everything up to and including
Keegan’s involvement.

“Per Dio,” he said. “That’s messed up.”

Jen looked past him to the line forming
outside a tall pavilion picked out in gilt and sapphire lacquer.
“I’ll be messed up if I don’t pay my respects to Aunt Kate.”

“Then go,” said Rafe. “You were
announced.”

Keegan followed Jen through the growing
crowds until she found a place where she could cut through and come
out near her aunt. Katherine Stalling-Kualani was Art’s sister, and
she held court like a queen, sitting on a throne-like chair lit by
the glow of antique Japanese lanterns. A whisper of chamber music
brought the doomed court of Marie Antoinette to mind, but this was
no girl playing dress up. The former Stalling had married her
cousin Teddy, reinforcing bonds that had been in place since the
time of the missionaries. Born to money, Katherine carried herself
with all the arrogance of Old Bess.

Teams of heavyweight thugs in matching suits
watched the line and the people trying to get in. Noise and
laughter, and the thumping wail of something with a lot of
percussion washed over Keegan in waves. There were people
everywhere, walking, talking and eating too much. Keegan left Jen
at the end of the receiving line and faded back. For every man that
glanced at him, anonymous in his black t-shirt, there were twenty
more that walked right on past.

Caravaggio ghosted around a table laid with
fancy pastries, coat flared out behind him.

Keegan would never have pegged the Italian
ex-pat as a StallingCo operative. They’d met in passing over the
last two years and what Keegan knew of him didn’t suggest the
elegant former aristo would accept an actual corporate hierarchy.
It was a good thing Caravaggio had interrupted that argument with
Jen. If the operative hadn’t appeared like the ghost of Christmas
Past, Keegan would have done something so messed up that
repercussions would have shot out in all directions. Despite her
ugly pink dress, it’d been hell to confine his touch to her wrist.
He’d wanted to slide his hands up inside her sleeves and touch the
rest of her velvety-plush skin.

She shuffled forward, almost to the front of
the line. Only a handful of people separated her from her aunt. A
girl as short as Jen, with purple-tipped black hair and a big
notebook, pushed aside a guy wearing what had to be the world’s
tackiest aloha shirt.

Keegan couldn’t make out what they said, but
Katherine Kualani handed over what appeared to be a check, which
the girl smiled at and immediately put in her notebook.

Jen took her turn, talked to her aunt for a
while, then struggled to escape the crowd.

“Hey, you! Jen is family, yeah?” A boy
planted himself in front of Keegan, arms folded over a pouter
pigeon chest—still a kid despite the man-sized attitude.

People were moving up on his right and damned
if that wasn’t Kualani running a fast intercept on Jen. She swerved
around him and pointed at Keegan. If Keegan had to fight his way to
her, he wasn’t going to make it and he didn't think Queen Kate
would take kindly to someone shooting her kid.

Kualani stood down reluctantly, his voice
weirdly distorted by the ambient noise. “Rescue him? He’s a piss
poor bodyguard if he can’t protect himself from a
seventeen-year-old kid.”

Aww, shit. She wasn’t asking Kualani for
help? Yes, she was.

“You, Dalfrey! Over here—oww! God damn it,
Guinevere! Why’d you kick me?” Kualani glared at the boy. “Wendell.
Move and take your friends with you.”

The boy hesitated and took two steps back.
“Kimo said—”

“Kimo is not part of this family.” Kualani
rolled his eyes and made a disgusted snort. “C’mon, does he look
like one of us?”

The boy smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, yeah?”

A sudden movement made Kualani turn, eyes
narrowed. He turned back. “Sorry is what you will be if you don’t
get your ass out of here.”

The group from the receiving line pushed
past, the guy in the aloha shirt way out front. Up close, the
effect of orange plaid and purple pineapples was blinding. The
purple-tipped hair girl grabbed his arm and pulled him around.
“Hold on, there’s enough for everyone.”

“I don’t want to eat the buffet. I want to
see it—up close.”

Two men behind him laughed, and the younger
one cocked a taunting brow. “Yeah, right.”

The boy who’d faced down Keegan shoved
between the men and vanished into the darkness behind a catering
tent.

“Behave,” said the girl to the other two.
“All of you. We’re here to raise funds for Avatar, not eat.”

“Eating is a nice perk,” said the older
man.

“Daddy!”

“Pig and poi, Amy-girl. Time to eat. Raise
funds later. Go dance. All the men here have money, and it’s as
easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man.”

“But I don’t want to get married.”

“Complain, complain,” said the man. “You!” he
pointed to Keegan. “You have money? Take my daughter out dancing.
She’d make a good wife.”

“Sorry,” Jen grabbed on to Keegan’s arm,
“he’s taken.”

Amy smiled her gratitude. “Thank God, I
don’t—no, Daddy! Not Makena—”

“Okay, maybe not Makena. His mother
would—”

“Got to go, Daddy,” said Amy. “Your oldest
son has slipped his leash. If we don’t find him soon, we’ll have to
wheel him out.”

“Along with half that pig and a pan of
noodles,” said the younger man.

“Good boy.” The older man nodded. “Think of
your family. I like leftovers.”

“Daddy! He didn’t mean...” Amy herded her
family away, still arguing.

Jen frowned at Makena. “Stop laughing,
Makena. It’s not funny.”

“Come on, Jen—it’s priceless! The
opportunities for tasteless jokes abound. Let’s get out of here.”
He wiped at his eyes.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m going to get you something to eat before
that Avatar crew makes off with my mother’s caterers, and your
security is going somewhere else,” he added pointedly. “But...if
you think I can’t protect you?”

Jen trusted Makena more than she trusted
Keegan, who even now was looking down at her like she was something
he wanted to scrape off his shoes. She let go of his arm and rubbed
her hands down over her hips, smoothing her too-stiff dress for the
umpteenth time.