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That was twenty minutes ago. She still hadn’t heard his footsteps on the stairs. And she listened for them. Kept her door open, careful not to wake Lara and Davis down the hall.

She paced the space between the chest of drawers and the end of the bed. Much more of this and she’d wear a hole right in the pretty cream-colored carpet.

“Hey.” Ben poked his head in the doorway. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

She almost knocked against the wall mirror. At the last minute she managed to stifle a scream. Barely. “You’re the one who should be resting.”

For six feet of muscle, he sure could sneak around. He wore sneakers, and the stairs hadn’t so much as given the smallest creak as he came upstairs.

He tipped his head to the side and shot her that sexy smile that made her toes curl. “Still a little keyed up, so I walked the family room for a few minutes and rechecked the locks and alarm.”

Of course he had. Sounded like him, but she refused to let that could-take-him-home-to-mother look win her over. “Did you kill him?”

“What?” He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “You mean the guy in the garage?”

“Unless there are more bad guys lying around out there?” A chilling thought.

“What kind of man do you think I am?” All amusement vanished from Ben’s face. Tiny lines appeared around his mouth.

She thought they might be from stress. No wonder, since the entire evening was an invitation to a heart attack. “I have no idea.”

“How about thinking I’m the guy who saved you?” He held up two fingers and stepped in closer. “Twice.”

Without thinking, she moved back. When he frowned, she knew he’d noticed the shift away from him.

Guilt whirled around her. Despite the gun and the job, he’d never actually scared her. She’d been unsure of him and worried he hid a side that could rear up at any moment, but their date had been so freeing. So fun and relaxed.

Nerves had made her fold her hands on her lap to keep from fumbling and knocking over a water glass or something equally embarrassing at the table. But his charm and stories of life aboard a ship had made her laugh out loud.

Truth was she didn’t really know him, and the past few hours had her emotions whipping from grateful to wary. No sane woman fought off a man who saved her life. But the ease with which he accepted violence took her mind spiraling down a dark path.

She forced her feet to stop moving. “Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk about this and know I’m failing.”

“You’re just tired.”

His hands landed on her shoulders and his thumbs massaged her joints. The gentle touch lulled her, reeled her in. She wanted to slip into his arms and forget her worries.

When she felt his breath across her cheek, she blinked. She was practically on top of him.

With a hand on his chest, she stepped back, breaking his hold. “Ben, I can’t do this.”

He held up his good hand, as if in surrender. “I won’t try to kiss you. I mean, I want to and without the newest attack I’d planned to tonight, but the timing stinks.”

She added his cute rambling to the list of things she liked about him. But the “con” list sent up a flashing red warning light she couldn’t ignore. “I mean this, the violence, the shooting. Worrying you’ll lose control and do something crazy. All of it.”

His hands dropped to his sides. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve lived through this before.” The words ripped out of her, actually felt as if they tore at her throat as she admitted them. “I can’t do it again.”

“Lived through what exactly?”

On top of everything, she couldn’t drag that baggage out and paw through it. “Can you stand there and tell me this—the attacks—aren’t because of you?”

His face went blank. “I have no idea.”

But she had her answer. He clearly thought he was the cause. She’d seen him for weeks at the hospital as he guarded that other man. Watched him a bit too closely, but she’d seen the practiced look before. Blank meant he purposely wanted to hide his feelings.

Another con.

“We went out and I got attacked. We came here and attackers came again.” It sounded pretty obvious when she spelled it out like that. “I’m a nurse who works long shifts and, except for the occasional drinks with the girls, lives a boring life. That’s how I want it.”

But did she? She’d been repeating the mantra in her brain so frequently for a year that she now wondered if she’d finally fooled herself into believing it.

The best part of the past few months had been flirting with Ben. At the hospital, on the phone. When he stopped by and just happened to be in the hospital cafeteria getting coffee during her breaks.

She’d started timing her life around those meetings. She realized that now. The attention flattered her. The thought of not seeing him for days, or longer, started an ache in her chest that weighed down her whole body.

She knew that made her a hypocrite or a tease, but she couldn’t stop the battle between what intrigued her and what scared her witless. That left only one solution.

“You’ll get the sense of security back. We’ll figure this out.” This time he didn’t reach out, but his voice dipped low to the soothing level that made all the other nurses sigh.

“I said no to you five times because I wanted quiet. Peaceful.” The second the words left her mouth, part of her knew they were a lie.

“Sounds boring.”

“One date and all this happens. You can see where I’m reasoning out the cause and effect and—”

“Blaming me.”

The word stung her. She didn’t mean that. “Not blaming. Connecting the dots.”

“Same thing.”

She reached out for the brush on top of the chest because she needed something in her hands. Needed to find a way to keep from twitching because the way her insides jumped all over the place, it was inevitable that would soon show on the outside, too.

“Some women might find it all thrilling. I find it terrifying.”

He lifted the brush out of her hands and put it back down. “What are you saying exactly?”

“Tomorrow I find somewhere else to go. Somewhere safe because I sure don’t have a death wish, but somewhere away from all this.” She rubbed her hands together then wrapped them around her middle. When that felt wrong, she dropped them to her sides again. “And then we end this before whatever is following you makes me collateral damage.”

“Happy to know you’re concerned about my well-being in this scenario.”

Everything was coming out wrong. She wanted to drop her head into her hands. Maybe scream for an hour or two to work out all the frustration building inside her. “Don’t you get it? I’m trying to get out before you mean too much.”

His head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “That’s an excuse.”

“I’m being realistic.”

“You’re being a coward.”

In a blink, guilt turned to fury. Anger washed over her, heating her skin everywhere it touched. “How dare—”

“Let’s try this.” Without warning, he stepped in close with his hands on her hips. “I’m going to kiss you. If you don’t want me to, you need to say so.”

This far away she could smell the soap on his skin. Something clean and fresh. If she reached out, she could brush a finger over that sexy scruff on his chin.

And he asked permission. It was all too much for her wavering self-control to handle. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. She was pretty sure she’d forgotten how to do both. She may have nodded and she certainly didn’t remember putting her hands on his forearms.

But she felt the kiss.

His head dipped and his mouth brushed over hers. Soft at first, gentle and undemanding. Then the second pass, bone-shattering and intense. Deep and full of need. His lips crossed over hers and a hand went to her hair. It drove on, unlocking something deep inside her that she’d shut down and forgotten.

When they broke apart, all she could do was stare into those rich green eyes. “Uh, wow.”

“Tomorrow we’ll figure out date number two.”

Chapter Five

Gary Taub sat in his top-floor office in the nondescript office building away from the historically protected houses and expensive yachts associated with Annapolis. His business, Worldwide Securities, required anonymity and more security than a hundred-year-old town house with its faulty wiring could offer.

He looked around. The place might be new and state-of-the-art, but it was drab. If his wife were still alive, she’d drag in photographs and paintings. But he’d lost her a year ago to improperly diagnosed stomach cancer, six months after losing his brother to carelessness.

Without Marilyn’s touch, from the unadorned beige walls to the beige carpet, it could be any office in any corporation, anywhere in America. The only nod to the subject matter of his work was the presence of three computers lined up around the utilitarian metal desk.

He’d set up the surroundings this way on purpose. The only way to hide what happened here was to make it boring, forgettable. He’d been conducting the same work, moving the money around, for ten years. No need to change his operation now.

And he knew how lucrative silence could be. He had the expensive modern waterfront home a few miles away to prove it. He’d earned it. As a businessman he demanded perfection—in his clothes and his technology. He thought it would be obvious he expected the same of his employees.

For the first time since he took his seat, Gary stared across the desk at Colin Grange, the man who had served as his security manager for over two years. Fifty and suffering from the syndrome where his pants got lower and his stomach got thicker every year.

But his credentials, first in the military and then with a defense contractor, made him the perfect choice for this position. So long as he didn’t go soft or fail in his planning. Unfortunately, this time he had.

“How hard is it to grab a woman who lives alone and maybe weighs a hundred and thirty pounds?” Gary asked.

“There was a man there.”

“I am aware.” Gary had been receiving reports all night. He’d gone home and come back because the phone kept ringing. An attempt to remove the woman from her house, then a second attempt at some other residence in Annapolis.

Turned out Ms. Jocelyn Raine, reported loner without many friends or any family, had a savior. Finding that out after the fact ticked Gary off.

“Then you understand how we couldn’t—”

Gary blocked the excuse with a simple raise of his hand. “I was told she was single.”

Overprotective boyfriends tended to muck up everything. The body count was already two too high.

Gary had spent the past hour retracing every step and making sure nothing could tie the dead men littering the houses of Annapolis to him or Worldwide.

He’d been careful and neither man knew about Gary or the reason they were being paid, other than to grab the woman. Still, that left a loose end or two. And from Gary’s experience, someone always tugged on them.

“Explain.” That was all he said. Colin had been with him long enough that he should have been able to pick up on the fury behind the word.

“At the apartment...this guy came out of nowhere.”

Apparently Colin thought it was his job to sit in a car and watch. “And why didn’t you step in and subdue him? I assume he wasn’t so large that he was immune to a bullet.”

Colin touched the two pens lined up at the edge of Gary’s desk blotter and rolled them between his fingers. Even picked one up and twirled it around. “It was a losing battle.”

When he toyed with the more expensive of the set, Gary slapped his hand against the pen and flattened it on the desk again. “Maybe I’ve failed to impress upon you how important this job is.”

Colin jerked and withdrew his hand. “No, sir.”

“I have two men down and another in police custody. Independent contractors, yes, but you can see where that might be a concern for me.”

“I can get her.”

The clock was ticking and Colin picked this time to be incompetent. Gary figured he’d need to handle that problem, but he wanted this job done first.

They had three days. Exactly three.

“There was nothing in the apartment?” he asked even though he’d watched the video surveillance of the search.

“No.”

“Then first, take care of Jacobsen before he talks. Make it look like a suicide while in police custody or whatever will call the least attention to his death. Use our contacts for that. Clean up after. Delete files. You know the drill.” Not that Gary trusted this sort of thing to his staff. He’d erased what he could find. He doubted anything else existed, but he needed Colin to think it was a matter of life and death—his own—if anything was found.

“He won’t talk,” Colin said.

“Not once he’s dead.” And that better happen soon or Colin would be next. “Then we need to come up with a solution for grabbing Ms. Raine that isn’t a direct attack.”

“Sir?”

The lack of common sense infuriated Gary. He felt his temper rise, but he strained to wrestle it back again. “We’re trying not to raise suspicion, though I’m not sure how that’s possible now.”

“Why?”

The urge to kill him surged. “Because there are people involved with this job who are not going to be happy with the way you’ve bumbled your way through this so far.”

Colin nodded and lifted his hand as if he was going to take another run at the pens, but stopped. “Right.”

“And get me intel on the boyfriend.”

Gary had names for the town-house ownership but there was surprisingly little to find. Looked like a dummy corporation of some sort.

That meant there was more digging to do. He wanted everything from credit reports to the second cousins’ medical records on this guy. Every stone would be turned over, scrubbed for information and dumped.

Colin checked his phone then looked up again. “I don’t have a name for the boyfriend.”

And that fact intrigued Gary even more. If Ms. Homebody was seeing someone, people would be talking. Find the right nurse or neighbor, or even on-scene policeman, and this would all be resolved. Good thing Gary had an “in” there.

But he still wanted to check Colin’s skill. See how far he could get. “Examine the police reports. Eyewitness statements.”

“By when?”

“Tomorrow morning.” Because there was a bigger concern at work here. Someone who disliked mess and surprise more than Gary did. “Whatever you need to do, do it before we both need to answer for this Ms. Raine and her ability to dodge capture.”

* * *

T
HEY
ALL
GATHERED
in Davis and Lara’s kitchen the next morning. Three members of the team were out of town and had been for months. They were the traveling squad. The skeleton crew that manned the office every day in Annapolis was there, along with Jocelyn. Lara hadn’t come downstairs yet.

Ben eyed the ever-present coffeepot in the center of the table. Before he could reach for it, Jocelyn grabbed it and poured a mug for herself and one for him. Straight-up and black for both of them.

In the stark light of day, Ben still didn’t regret the kiss. She’d stood there babbling nonsense and acting as if he was some kind of criminal. Not because of NCIS but because of who he actually was inside and what he believed in.

The suggestion he somehow lacked humanity or would let her get hurt kicked him in the gut. It had ticked him off and kept him up most of the night.

But that kiss. That taste and feel of her turned out to be even better than he imagined, and he’d been having some pretty hot dreams about her almost from the beginning. That hair, a deep rich red, and eyes a sky-blue.

She was trim with an athletic build. And when she wore that nurse’s uniform, his brain flipped to autopilot and his lower half clicked on.

Being patient and giving her time to get comfortable was slowly eating away at him. He’d wait if that was what it took, but when she’d talked about cutting it off last night, he’d shifted into fast-forward. The relief that poured through him when she leaned into the kiss, meeting him touch for touch, not pulling back, still filled him today.

He leaned over and caught the scent of vanilla. Good grief, she smelled like cupcakes. A man could only take so much.

Joel swiveled his chair from side to side like a little kid. “You okay over there, Ben?”

Yes, but he planned to kill Joel later. “I was making sure Jocelyn remembered everyone. Yesterday was a bit crazed.”

She smiled and pointed as she went around the room. “Joel Kidd, the tech wizard. Connor Bowen, the boss. Davis Weeks, my current landlord.”

Pax nodded. “Nice.”

She frowned at him. “But you I don’t know.”

“My baby brother, Pax.” Davis dumped a tray of muffins on the table, then sat down with Connor across from Ben. “You’ll find that Pax is annoying, but you get used to it. You kind of have to because we need him around here.”

Pax leaned over Connor to snag a muffin. “I’m the good-looking one.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “And so modest.”

Ben noticed the Weeks brothers were alone when they usually had women by their sides these days. One absence was particularly notable, since she owned the house with Davis. “Where’s Lara?”

Davis didn’t look up from his coffee. “Sleeping in.”

“Now that we’re on the same page, we need to come up with a new solution.” Connor opened a folder as he talked.

“That’s why he’s the boss,” Joel joked. “Jumps right to the point.”

“So will I.” Jocelyn smiled as if she’d been waiting all night to drop this bomb. “I can stay in a hotel near the hospital.”

Ben almost groaned. He knew she’d immediately pick a solution that made him nuts. Forget running from him—this was just dangerous. Yeah, she believed he was the target, but whoever was behind this knew her and associated her with him. That made her safety his biggest concern.

“You can’t go to work.” Admittedly this wasn’t her field, but she had to know that fact. Seemed obvious to him. From the nods around the table, the rest of them got it.

“I have to.”

For a very smart woman, she was slow picking up on this point. “Absolutely not. And you can frown at me all you want. It’s not happening. It can’t.”

He glanced around the table looking for backup, and Davis jumped in. “Not a good idea, Jocelyn.”

“I have bills to pay.” She slid her fingers over the handle to her mug, back and forth over the smooth surface.

He was mesmerized by her lean fingers and trim, manicured nails. He blinked to break the trance. “Don’t worry about those.”

She made a face that suggested he needed meds. “How can I—”

“Whoa.” Davis held up a hand “She can continue to stay at the house. Lara would like the female company. Apparently, I can be difficult.”

“No.” All eyes turned to Pax when he gave the curt reply.

Gone was his usual lighthearted banter. He wore a matching scowl to Davis’s expression, and tension spilled through the room as they engaged in some sort of brotherly standoff.

Ben didn’t understand what was happening. “Something you want to share with the rest of the class?”

Pax didn’t break eye contact with his brother. “It’s not my news.”

“What are we talking about?” Jocelyn asked.

Pax folded his arms over his chest. “Davis, you know I’m right. It’s not safe. You’re offering because that’s what you do, not because you think it’s a good idea.”

Whatever was going on arced back and forth between the brothers. The rest of them sat there watching the staring contest.

But Ben had to pipe up. “Someone took two shots at Jocelyn in one day.”

A fact he still couldn’t process. Men at her home. Others following her around town to this house. He expected danger in his job. Even though he watched Davis and Pax get ripped apart when the women they loved stepped close to danger, Ben never thought his work would bleed into his personal life. Lately that was all it had done.

His father blamed him, claiming after all his years of service he was suffering a backlash at the Pentagon for Ben’s choices. Powerful people sat in jail awaiting trial. And Ben had walked away from a career that had once meant everything, only to have his name stamped on the front of every paper and as the lead in every news broadcast.

“Lara is pregnant.” Davis made the announcement with a slap of his palm against the table. “Okay, that’s the issue.”

Everyone started talking at once. There were backslaps and congratulations. Davis took it all in, nodding and thanking everyone even as his face grew more drawn.

“Why the secret?” Not that Ben knew much about babies, but he couldn’t imagine a better set of parents than Davis and Lara.

“She’s not far along, and because of what happened before with the miscarriage...” Davis blew out a harsh breath. “Well, we were being careful and preferred not to talk about it yet.”

That explained it. Fear gripped Davis. Ben didn’t blame him one bit. “Congratulations.”

The only one not jumping up and down with good cheer was Jocelyn. For a few seconds she just sat there. “It’s great news, but how could you let me in the house at all? Or Ben?”

Again with the theory that he was the devil’s right-hand man. “I’m sitting right here.”

Jocelyn gave him a “wait until I get you alone” glare, and not in the good way. “My point is that Davis strikes me as the kind of guy who might put his wife in a protective shell when she’s pregnant. And in this case, he should. We’re talking guys with guns here.”

“I would if Lara would go without yelling the house down. I’d take her to an island with a private doctor and hide out until the baby comes,” Davis mumbled under his breath.

The click of Connor’s coffee mug against the table had everyone turning. He didn’t slam it down or yell. No, neither was Connor’s style. He simply commanded attention and somehow got it without any fanfare.

He cleared his throat. “I’m not convinced this is a Corcoran issue but—”

“What does that mean?” Jocelyn asked.

“I think they—whoever
they
are in this case—are after
you
.”

“Why?” Ben asked.

“I’ve been with Ben the whole time,” she said at the same time.