Barbara McCauley - Nightfire

“And you probably thought watching over me was going to be easy,” Allison said, laughing.

“Easy?” Kane held out a hand and helped her up. “Jumping out of a plane is easy, scaling a twelve-foot wall with a thirty-pound knapsack is easy, even digging trenches in a desert is easy.”

He tried not to look at her lips, tried not to remember how only a few hours ago they’d been so eager against his own. He saw her eyes deepen to a seductive shade of smoky green. He fought the tightening of his groin.

“But watching you is by far the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.”

BARBARA McCAULEY is the author of over thirty bestselling romance novels, including Blackhawk’s Sweet Revenge, the first volume of her popular SECRETS! miniseries for Silhouette. Her work has been nominated eight times by the Romance Writers of America for Best Short Contemporary® in the prestigious RITA Award contest. She has also received numerous “Top Picks” from Romantic Times BOOKclub, plus several Best Short Desire and “W.I.S.H.” awards for her hunky hereos and two Career Achievement Awards. All of her books have appeared on the Walden books romance bestseller lists. A native of Southern California, Ms. McCauley enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, and working in her garden when she can manage to break away from her computer.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Judy. Thanks for being such a great sister. And for Frank. Always.

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Twelve

He stood at the window, waiting, his gaze dispassionate as he quietly observed the traffic moving over the rain-slicked roads below. When her blue minivan pulled up in front of the twelve-story glass-and-chrome office building he recognized it immediately, just as he knew he would recognize her, though he had never actually seen her before. As if announcing her arrival, lightning split the Seattle sky in a burst of white-hot brilliance and the pursuant crack of thunder rattled the office window.

Five hours ago he’d never heard of Allison Elizabeth Westcott, but now he could tell her what she ate for breakfast, where she shopped for clothes and even where she bought her gas. She was five foot six in her stocking feet, brown hair, green eyes. He knew she had a mole on her left breast 1.6 mm wide, a scar on her right knee from a horseback-riding accident two years ago that had ended her dancing career and a speeding ticket from the Seattle police department. A ticket she’d fought against and won, he noted with a flicker of admiration.

Some people might consider his knowledge an invasion of privacy, but it mattered little to him whether they liked it or not. When he had a job to do, feelings meant nothing to him, his or anyone else’s. He simply did what he had to do and made sure no one got hurt.

It was raining hard now and he watched as she darted from her car toward the shelter of the building. It would take her two minutes and forty-five seconds to walk into the room, three minutes, twenty-two seconds if the elevator stopped at every floor.

He stared at his watch and waited.

The storm was already in full force by the time Allison pulled in front of Westcott Pavilion. Raindrops the size of nickels drummed like angry tin soldiers on the hood of her car while a flash of lightning, followed by a distant crack of thunder, promised more to follow.

Allison stared out her windshield at the fierce gray sky, thinking she might wait it out, but the somber note in her father’s voice when he’d called St. Martin’s Center and requested that she come to his office right away allowed no hesitation.

Drawing a deep breath, she opened her car door and dashed furiously across the sidewalk and through the smoked-glass entry doors, catching enough of her reflection to see that her shoulder-length hair was already a mass of damp, disobedient curls. Some people complained it rained every time they washed their cars. With Allison, it rained every time she straightened her hair.

Twelve stories up the elevator doors opened and she stepped out, hesitating at the sight of two men in dark suits standing at the outer door of her father’s office. Though it was certainly not unusual for employees or clients to be milling about, there was something about the men she couldn’t quite place that disturbed her, something that caused a knot to form in her stomach and the hair on the back of her neck to rise. Though she didn’t know them, she had the distinct feeling that they not only knew exactly who she was, but that they’d been waiting for her. They continued to watch her as she approached, then nodded stiffly when she moved past them.

Mrs. Harwood, her father’s secretary, was on the phone. The attractive brunette looked up from her call, then waved anxiously toward the interior office, mouthing the words, “Your father’s waiting.”

What in the world was going on? Allison thought, noting the grim expression on Mrs. Harwood’s face. The woman always had a smile for everyone. The knot in Allison’s stomach tightened a notch.

Her father was sitting at his desk, tapping the polished mahogany top with a silver pen, deeply intent on the paperwork in front of him. She’d always thought he looked more like the football hero he’d once been rather than the president of a computer company—a company he’d started on a dream and five thousand dollars borrowed from a bank he now partly owned. She closed the door behind her. Startled, he looked up from his work.

“Dad, who are those men out in the—”

That’s when she saw the other man. He was standing by the corner window, his arms folded across his wide chest, his dark gaze locked on her. Allison faltered, but it wasn’t just the surprise of realizing she wasn’t alone with her father that had her heart beating faster. It was the intensity of the man’s eyes as he continued to stare at her. She held his gaze, at first because a three-foot crowbar couldn’t have pried her away, and then as she gained her composure, out of sheer defiance.

His hair was dark as coal, his eyes midnight blue, intensely intelligent and completely void of emotion. There were tiny lines at the corners, most certainly from frowning, Allison figured, based on the hard set of his jaw and lips. And tall. At least six foot three, and even with the sport coat and slacks he had on she could see that he had the distinct build of an athlete: broad shoulders, narrow waist, muscular arms and legs. His stance appeared casual, but Allison felt the vibrations of the energy coiled inside him, and she sensed he could move with the same speed as the lightning that streaked across the sky behind him at this very moment.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Allison turned back to her father. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were with anyone. I can come back—”

Oliver Westcott shook his head. “Come sit, Allison.”

There was something wrong, something terribly wrong, Allison realized with icy dread. She hadn’t heard that tone in her father’s voice since the night he’d called her into his study and told her that her mother had died.