Page 70 of Dangerous Lover

“I hate it that someone was in my house, going through my things,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“And you’ll set up a system no one can get through?”

He’d set up a system not evenhecould get through. He nodded.

“Well, I guess you convinced me.” Caroline took in a deep breath and Jack heroically kept his eyes on her face, though he had excellent peripheral vision and could see her breasts swelling a little under the sweater. “I’ll accept your gift with thanks and I guess I’ll giveyoua little gift in return. Dinner.”

She raised herself up on tiptoe to kiss him awkwardly on the side of his mouth. Jack was so surprised, he simply stood there like a dork. By the time he thought to kiss her back, she’d disappeared into the kitchen.

He stood there for a long time, listening to her rattle pans and run water in the kitchen, remembering the sharp burst of feeling in his chest when she’d kissed him.

He rubbed his hand over his chest, where it hurt.

Sanders sat behind his desk,teeth grinding. He’d combed his hair and straightened his clothes in his car before coming back to his office, but there must have been something else visible enough to set off alarms—the rage coming off him like steam, maybe—because his secretary had given him a startled look as he strode by.

Caroline was lost. Doubly lost. It was true, maybe heshouldn’t have pushed her so hard. But damn, walking into her shop, he’d been taken by a sudden surge of lust. He’d forgotten how beautiful she was, how perfect for him. So when she stood there, in her dinky little one-room bookshop that probably barely paid the rent and told him—him!—that no, she didn’t want to go to the most fabulous hotel in Washington State and no she didn’t want box tickets to the opera, he’d lost it.

Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed it, but goddammit, when she said no, something snapped.

Caroline had never been great in the sack, but when she fought him, he could feel her fire and it excited him. He shouldn’t have pushed it as hard as he did, but damn, he’d been turned on.

And then it turned out that Caroline wasn’t free after all. She was fucking someone else and that someone else was territorial and violent.

In all these years, Sanders had taken it for granted that when he finally decided to settle down, it would be with Caroline, and she would fall into his arms with gratitude. After all, he was offering to give her back the life she’d been born to and had lost with her parents’ death.

He’d always expected that she’d be free for him. But she’d hooked up with that son of a bitch who’d nearly broken his arm, and now she wasn’t free any more.

Something would have to be done and soon. Now that he’d made up his mind about Caroline, he wasn’t going to let some violent asshole dressed like a bum steal his woman.

The intercom buzzed. “Mr. McCullin you have a visitor.”

Sanders pushed the button. “I don’t want to see anyone, Lori. Hold off all calls this afternoon.”

“Ah…Mr. McCullin, you might want to see … this person. Wait!” her voice squawked through the speaker. “You can’t go in there without permission! Hey, mister?—”

The door to Sanders’ office opened and a man walked in, holding out a badge at chest height. Not too tall, sandy hair, black horn rim glasses, cheap shiny black suit. “Mr. McCullin? Mr. Sanders McCullin?”

Sanders couldn’t make the badge out. “Yes. Yes, I am. As I told my secretary to tell you, however, I’m very busy this after?—”

“Mr. McCullin, my name is Darrell Butler. Special Agent Darrell Butler, of the New York FBI office. I understand you know a certain Ms. Caroline Lake. We’re making inquiries about a man she’s seeing, who is currently going by the name of Jack Prescott. He is a very dangerous criminal. We have reason to believe that this man has committed war crimes and that he has stolen a fortune in diamonds in Africa.”

Sanders sat back down, staring at the man, feeling hope unfurl in his chest once again. “Please,” he said to the FBI agent. “Have a seat.”

Jack was feeling rattled,so he went to tighten the tubes under the downstairs bathroom sink while Caroline cooked. The tubes were leaking, dripping water all over the place and, all in all, he thought her bathroom sink was a pretty good metaphor for his life. He was dripping too, leaking emotions all over the place.

Jack hardly recognized himself, it was like he was losing bits of himself by the wayside.

Caroline was messing with his head and tripping up his heart. In all these years, while dreaming of her and—in the most private recesses of his head—dreaming of bedding her, it never occurred to him that being with Caroline was going to change him in any fundamental way.

Jack knew himself and was very comfortable with who he was. He’d had a hard life and it had taught him self-reliance and coolness and a great deal of emotional detachment in whatever he did.

Caroline blew all that right out of the water.

His head had nearly exploded when he’d seen that fucker McCullin manhandling her. It was a good thing he hadn’t known that he was the handsome blond boy Jack had seen through the windows that Christmas Eve long ago. He’d spent the past twelve years hating that boy, wondering whether he was the man Caroline would marry and have children with.

Even without knowing who he was, Jack had gone haywire inside. Another minute and he’d have shattered the guy’s arm, and the rage in his head had been so loud he knew he was capable of killing the man, which would have landed him in jail. Once in the slammer, he could kiss Caroline good bye, literally, not to mention spending his life behind bars.

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