Page 68 of Dangerous Lover

Of course, Caroline’s TV and stereo set were at least ten years old and worth zero on the resale market. Though he didn’t know anything about art, he suspected that what was left on the walls wasn’t worth stealing. More or less everything of value in the house had already been sold and not even the best thief in the world could steal walls and a roof.

When Jack was absolutely certain that the house was empty, he pushed his gun into the waistband of his jeans and went out to get Caroline.

She was freezing and he could have kicked himself for not having thought to keep the engine running with the heat on. He’d been so taken with keeping her safe and finding out if there was still someone in the house, that he hadn’t thought to keep her warm.

He hustled her up the steps.

“What was it, Jack? Is there someone in the house? Has the house been robbed?”

Damn, but he hated that white, pinched, anxious look on her face. If he had the fucker or fuckers who’d broken into Caroline’s home, he’d break their hands, finger by finger, to ensure that they never picked another lock again for the rest of their natural lives.

Not that Caroline’s locks were hard to pick. They weren’t, a two year old could get through them. They were worth shit.He could pick them blindfolded, with his hands in a cast.

He closed the front door behind them, turned up the heat and folded her in his arms.

Too much stuff happening, all of it bad. He needed the feel of her in his arms like he needed his next breath.

“Jack?” Her voice was muffled in his jacket, shiny locks of red-gold hair escaping her wool cap to curl along his jacket. Jack bent to kiss her lightly, hand along the softness of her neck. His thumb grazed the pulse in her neck, beating a light, fast tattoo.

Feeling her safe in his arms, heart beating, calmed him a little.

“Jack.” Caroline’s voice was stronger and she pushed at him a little. Jack opened his arms and she stepped back to look him in the face. “Tell me what’s going on.” She looked around carefully, then brought her gaze back to him. “I don’t see any damage.”

“No, no damage. Whatever it is they were looking for, it wasn’t here. What they usually look for are TVs, high-end electronics. Expensive artwork. Meltable silver.”

“All gone,” she said. “A long time ago.” Her eyebrows drew together as she looked up at him. “Jack …when you got to the door you pulled out a gun. You had agun. Where on earth did you get that?”

Uh oh. Jack had to be careful here.

Caroline had just entered his world and he wanted her to become security-conscious without being afraid of him. Jack was perfectly aware of the fact that most people considered men like him to be paranoid. If you’velived your life in safety and comfort, and you haven’t traveled to the places he’d been, where humanity was at its rawest, most cruel, and where greed and lust and hatred were unbridled, then you looked at the precautions Jack took as a matter of course to be the result of a sick mind.

“I’m always armed,” he said gently. The heavy weight of his Glock in the small of his back felt good and right. “Or I know how to get my hands on a weapon pretty damn quick.”

“You mean, all this time we’ve been—” she waved a pink-tipped finger between them—“you’ve beenarmed?”

“Yes.” He let the word drop like a stone between them. This was part of him, an integral part. She had to learn to deal. Jack was willing to compromise, but not on this.

Caroline blinked and gave a half-laugh. “I don’t believe this.”

“Believe it. I’m fully licensed to carry a concealed weapon, and I know how to use it, don’t worry about that.”

She was staring at him. “To tell you the truth, that hadn’t even occurred to me. I’m still trying to come to grips with the fact that someone I’m—” she swallowed, “someone I’m seeing runs around with agunon his person. I don’t think I’ve ever even met someone who owns a gun, besides the sheriff. Not that I know of, anyway.”

“It’s a bad world out there, Caroline,” he said gently. “You have to be prepared.”

Fuck, but that was true. He’d seen it, he’d lived it. In the shelters he’d grown up in, a beauty like Caroline would have been raped the instant she’d reached puberty, probably even before. In Afghanistan, she’d have been dressed in a head-to-toe burqa and beaten if a man could hear her footsteps. There, too, she would have been raped, with the added pleasure of being sentenced to death for fornication.

In Sierra Leone—Jack’s back teeth ground together. He’d seen the shattered remains of the women who’d fallen into the hands of the Revolutionary Army. Death for them had been a release.

He knew what the world was like. Being armed, willing and able to defend the things he cared about, was deeply embedded in his bones, in his very DNA. And right now, Caroline topped the list of things he’d defend to the death.

“One last thing, honey.” Jack clasped her shoulders. Through the thick down he could feel her shoulder bones, delicate, fragile. Everything about her was delicate and fragile, in a world that hated beauty and delicacy. He could lose her at any time to the scumbags of the world. He had to remember that. “Do you have a safe?”

Caroline nodded, eyes big, fixed on his face. “Yes, it’s?—”

“No.” He lay a long forefinger across her lips. “Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know. I want you to go check your safe to see if everything’s there that should be. Will you do that for me?”

Without another word, she disappeared upstairs, while Jack went over the living room again, more carefully this time. He still didn’t see anything missing and he had a good visual memory.

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