Royal Rescue (9 page)

“You really think that I’m the only one who might want you dead?” Josie Jessup had been many things but never naive.

She gasped as if shocked by his question. Or maybe offended. How the hell did she think he felt with her believing he was a killer?

He was tempted, as he’d been four years ago, to tell her the truth. But then he’d found out she was really a reporter after a story, and as mad as he’d been, he’d also been relieved that he hadn’t told her anything that could have blown his assignment.

Hell, it wasn’t just an assignment. It was a mission. Of justice.

She didn’t care about that, though. She cared only about exposés and Pulitzers and ratings. And her father’s approval.

But then maybe his mission of justice was all about his father, too. About finally getting his approval—postmortem.

“Who else would want me dead?” she asked.

“Whoever else might have found out that you wrote all those stories under the byline Jess Ley.” It was a play on the name of her father, Stanley Jessup. Some people thought the old man had written the stories himself.

But Brendan had been with her the night the story on her college friend had won a national press award. And he’d seen the pride and guilt flash across her face. And, finally, he’d stopped playing a fool and really checked her out, and all his fears had been confirmed.

She sucked in a breath and that same odd mixture of pride and guilt flashed across her face. “I don’t even know how you found out....”

“You gave yourself away,” he said. “And anyone close to you—close to those stories—would have figured out you’d written them, too.”

She shook her head in denial, and her silky hair skimmed along her jaw and across his cheek. No matter how much she’d changed her appearance, she was still beautiful, still appealing.

He wanted to touch her hair. To touch her face...

But he doubted she would welcome the hands of the man she thought was her would-be killer. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have helped you tonight,” he pointed out.

She glanced back at their sleeping son. “You did it for him. You know what it’s like to grow up without a mother.”

So did she. That was something that had connected them, something they’d had in common in lives that had been so disparate. They’d understood each other intimately—emotionally and physically.

He shook his head, trying to throw off those memories and the connection with her that had him wanting her despite her lies and subterfuge.

“That was sloppy tonight and dangerous,” he said, dispassionately critiquing the would-be assassins, “trying to carry off a hit in a hospital.”

His father and his enemies would have been indicted long ago if they had operated their businesses as sloppily. Whoever had hired the assassins had not gotten their money’s worth.

Neither had the U.S. Marshals. Like the local authorities, they must have been so desperate to pin something on him that they’d taken her word that he was behind the attempts on her life. They’d put her into protection and worried about finding evidence later. Like her, they had never come up with any. No reason to charge him.

If only they knew the truth...

But the people who knew it had been kept to a minimum—to protect his life and the lives of those around him. So it might not have been his fault that someone had tried to kill Josie, yet he felt responsible.

* * *

J
OSIE REALIZED THAT
he was right. Even if he hadn’t been with her tonight, in the line of fire on the roof and in the garage, it was possible that he had nothing to do with the attempts on her life.

Brendan O’Hannigan was never sloppy.

If he was, there would have been evidence against him and charges brought before a grand jury that would have elicited an indictment. No. Brendan O’Hannigan was anything but sloppy. He was usually ruthlessly controlled—except in bed. With her caresses and her kisses, she had made him lose control.

And that one day that had her shivering in remembrance, she’d made him lose his temper. The media hadn’t been wrong about her being spoiled. Her father had never so much as raised his voice to her. So Brendan’s cold fury had frightened her.

If only it had killed her attraction to him, as he had tried to kill her. Not tonight, though. She believed he hadn’t been behind the attempt at the hospital.

If he’d wanted her gone, he would have brought her someplace private. Someplace remote. Where no one could witness what he did to her.

Someplace like the O’Hannigan estate.

“You’re cold,” he said. As close as they were he must have felt her shiver. And the windows were also steaming up on the inside and beginning to ice on the outside. It was a cold spring, the temperature dropping low at night.

And it was late.

Too late?

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

It would be too late for her if she went inside the mansion with him. She still clutched her purse, her hand inside and still wrapped around her cell phone—the special one she used only to call Charlotte. But she released her grip on it.

It wouldn’t help her against the immediate threat he posed. She didn’t even know where Charlotte was, let alone if she could reach her in time to help.

“I’ll get CJ,” he offered as he opened the driver’s door. But she hurried out the back door, stepping between him and their sleeping son.

“No,” she said.

“He’s getting cold out here.”

Brendan tried to reach around her, but she pushed him back with her body, pressing it up against his. Her pulse leaped in reaction to his closeness.

“You can’t bring him inside,” she said, “not until you make sure it’s safe.”

He gestured toward the high wrought-iron fence encircling the estate. “The place is a fortress.”

“You don’t live here alone,” she said.

“You really shouldn’t believe everything you read,” he said.

So obviously if there had been something in the news about a live-in girlfriend, it hadn’t been from a credible source. Despite her fear of him, she felt a flash of relief.

“You don’t take care of this place yourself,” she pointed out. “You have live-in staff.”

He nodded in agreement and leaned closer, trying to reach around her. “And I know and trust every one of them.”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth in admonishment. “You should know that you can’t trust anyone.”

He stared at her and gave a sharp nod of agreement before stepping back. “You’re right.”

She held in a sigh of relief, especially as he continued to stare at her. Then he reached inside the open driver’s door and pulled out the keys. Obviously she was the one he did not trust—not to drive off without him. He knew her too well.

“I’ll check it out.” He slid the keys into his suit pocket. “And come back for you.”

With a soft click, she closed the back door. “I’ll go with you.”

As they headed up the brick walk toward the front door, she reached inside her bag for the can of mace. She would spray it at him and retrieve the keys while he was coughing and sputtering.

She could get away from him. She could protect her son and herself.

“Remember the first time you walked up this path with me?” Brendan asked, his deep voice a warm rasp in the cold.

She shivered as a tingle of attraction chased up her spine. Their fingers had been entwined that night. They had been holding hands since dinner at a candlelit restaurant.

“I teased you about playing the gentleman,” he reminisced. “And you said that you were no gentleman because you just wanted to get me alone.”

Her face heated as she remembered what a brazen flirt she’d been. But she’d acted that way only with him. And it hadn’t been just for the story. It had been for the way his gorgeous eyes had twinkled with excitement and attraction. And it had been for the rush of her pulse.

Brendan chuckled but his voice was as cold as the night air. “You really just wanted to get inside.”

That wasn’t the situation tonight. Inside his house, with its thick brick walls and leaded-glass windows to hold in her screams, was the last place Josie wanted to be. Maybe he hadn’t been a bad man four years ago, but he’d only just begun taking over his father’s business then. Now that business was his. And he’d been leaving his own legacy of missing bodies.

“You just wanted to search my stuff,” he angrily continued, “see what secrets you could find to shout out to the rest of the world through one of your father’s publications.”

“You’re so bitter over my misleading you,” she remarked. “Can’t you see why I would think you’re the one who wants me dead?”

He sighed and dragged out a ring of keys from his pants pocket. She recognized them because she’d tried so often to get them away from him—so she could make copies, so she could come and go at will in his house, business and offices.

“If you would realize why I am so bitter,” he said, “you would also understand why the last thing I want is for you to be gone.”

He turned away from the door and stared down at her, as he had that first night he’d brought her home with him. His pupils had swallowed the blue-green irises then, as they did now. “I wanted you with me that night...and all the nights that followed.”

There was that charm that had given her hope that he was really a good man. That charm had distracted and disarmed her before.

But she hadn’t had CJ to worry about and protect then. So now she kept her hand wrapped tightly around the can of mace. And when he lowered his head toward hers, she started to pull it from her purse.

But then his lips touched hers, brushing softly across them. And her breath caught as passion knocked her down as forcefully as he had earlier in the parking garage.

He had saved her tonight. He had saved her and her son. And reminding herself of that allowed her to kiss him back. For just a moment though...

Because he pulled away and turned back toward the door. And she did what she should have done as he’d lowered his head—she pulled out the can of mace and lifted it toward him.

Then she smelled it. The odor lay heavy on the cold air, drifting beneath the door of the house. She dragged in a deep breath to double-check.

Maybe she was just imagining it, as she had so often the past four years, waking in the middle of the night shaking with fear. She had to check the stove and the furnace and the water heater.

And though she never found a leak, she never squelched those fears. That this time no one would notice the bomb before it exploded.

This time the fire wouldn’t eat an empty house. It would eat hers, with her and CJ trapped inside. But this wasn’t her house.

It was Brendan’s, and he was sliding his key into the lock. Would it be the lock clicking or the turning of the knob that would ignite the explosion?

She dropped the damn can and reached for him, screaming as her nightmare became a fiery reality.

Chapter Eight

Flames illuminated the night, licking high into the black sky. The boy was screaming. Despite the ringing in his ears, Brendan could hear him, and his heart clutched with sympathy for the toddler’s fear.

He could hear the fire trucks, too, their sirens whining in the distance. Ambulances and police cars probably followed or led them—he couldn’t tell the difference between the sirens.

Despite the slight shaking in his legs, he pressed harder on the accelerator, widening the distance between Josie’s little white SUV and the fiery remains of the mansion where he’d grown up.

It had never been home, though. That was why he’d run away when he was fifteen and why he’d intended never to return. If not for feeling that he owed his father justice, he would have never come back.

“Are—are you sure you want to leave?” Josie stammered, wincing as if her own voice hurt her ears. She was in the front seat but leaning into the back this time, her hand squeezing one of their son’s flailing fists. She’d been murmuring softly to the boy, trying to calm him down since they’d jumped back into the vehicle and taken off.

The poor kid had been through so much tonight, it was no wonder he’d gotten hysterical, especially over how violently he’d been awakened from his nap.

“Are you sure?” Josie prodded Brendan for an answer, as she always had.

He replied, this time with complete honesty, “I have no reason to stay.”

“But your staff...”

Wouldn’t have survived that explosion. Nothing would have. If he hadn’t noticed the smell before he’d turned that key, if Josie hadn’t clutched his arms...

They would have been right next to the house when a staff member inside, who must have noticed the key rattling in the door, had opened it for them and unknowing set off the bomb. Instead he and Josie had been running for the SUV, for their son, when the bomb exploded. The force of it had knocked them to the ground and rocked her vehicle.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

She’d jumped right up and continued to run, not stopping until she’d reached their screaming son. The explosion had not only awakened but terrified him. Or maybe he felt the fear that had her trembling uncontrollably.

She jerked her chin in an impatient nod. “Yes, I—I’m okay.”

“Maybe we should have stayed,” he admitted. But his first instinct had been to get the hell away in case the bomber had hung around to finish the job if the explosion hadn’t killed them.

While Brendan wished he could soothe his son’s fears, his first priority was to keep the boy and his mother safe. And healthy. “We should have you checked out.”

She shook her head. “Nobody can see me, in case they recognize me like you did. And those other men...” She shuddered, probably as she remembered the ordeal those men had put her and CJ through. “We can’t go back to the hospital anyway.”

“There are urgent-care facilities that are open all night,” he reminded her. Maybe her new location wasn’t near a big city and she’d forgotten the amenities and conveniences of one.

She shook her head. “But someone there might realize we were at this explosion...” The smell of smoke had permeated the car and probably her hair. “And they might call the police,” she said. “Or the media.”