Mollie Molay - Secret Service Dad

Instinctively, Mike reached to catch Charlie before she fell. Too late—she stumbled, squealed and, to his discomfort, landed squarely in his arms.

He closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten. However misguided Charlie Norris might be, and no matter how wary he was of what she might do next, she was every bit as soft and warm as he’d been afraid she would turn out to be.

Washington, D.C., April

It was said by some that Washington’s Blair House was jinxed.

Now that it looked as if a second State Department guest within six months had become the target of a disgruntled foreign nationalist, Secret Service agent Mike Wheeler was prepared to believe the rumor. At least this shooting, thank God, hadn’t happened on his watch.

For some reason, whenever Mike thought of Blair House, his thoughts turned to the Blair House concierge, Charlene Norris, dubbed Charlie by all who knew her. She was trouble, blond, blue-eyed trouble. If that wasn’t bad enough, she usually got him involved in whatever trouble she managed to get herself into.

His fears had been realized when he reported for duty that day. The foyer of the residence was teeming with activity. The air smelled of cordite. Cell phones were ringing. Sirens screamed outside, Secret Service agents, anyone with the credentials to get in the front door milled around the reception room where, to his dismay, it looked as if another attempted assassination had taken place.

His practiced eye took in a wounded man who lay sprawled, groaning on the marble entry floor clutching his bleeding shoulder. An agitated man dressed in a foreign military uniform stood handcuffed in the custody of two D.C. policemen. The cuffed man was protesting at the top of his lungs, but the police seemed to be ignoring their suspect. One D.C. lawman gingerly held a smoking gun by two fingers while a third was preparing to fit the gun into a plastic evidence bag.

Off to the side, six uniformed staff members stood gaping at the scene being played out in front of them. Mike didn’t blame them. He could hardly believe it himself.

He cut through the mob scene until he caught sight of Charlie Norris. She looked as if she was in a state of shock. There was blood on one of her wrists and on the skirt of her tailored beige suit. He was concerned at the sight, but not surprised. He’d had the sinking feeling that somehow she would be in the thick of any action, hadn’t he?

And not for the first time.

As if on cue, his leg started to ache. The pain reminded him of the night a disenchanted Baronovian nationalist had attempted to assassinate Prince Alexis of Baronovia and his daughter, the duchess Mary Louise, the night he’d been wounded in the line of duty.

In his book, trouble, Charlie and his aching leg were synonymous.

He wasn’t actually afraid of what she might do next. Almost half his size, he could have handled two of her. Besides, problem-solving was his job. What he was afraid of was a loose cannon, a description that custom-fit Charlie Norris to a T.

There was another concern, he thought uneasily as he made his way through the crowded room to where the shooting had taken place. He was too fascinated with Charlie for his own good. A fatal attraction if there ever was one, he thought unhappily.

Gazing at Charlie today, he realized that Charlie Norris, the coltish figure from the Baronovia caper, obviously was a magnet for trouble. Her hair was summer sunbeams, her eyes the color of clear blue summer skies. Used as a weapon, à la the famed Helen of Troy, her blue eyes could have sunk a thousand battleships. But instead of her usual professional, tailored appearance, tonight she looked distraught and disheveled.

Normally, Charlie had the most sinful and inviting smile he’d ever encountered on a woman. And, to his professional way of thinking, the darndest way of talking herself out of any problem she managed to get herself into. She wasn’t smiling now. After a glance around at the chaotic activity, he couldn’t blame her.

He bit back his frustration as he came up along her side. To his chagrin, his body reminded him he hadn’t been with a woman for a while; not since before the Baronovian shooting. Why in the hell he remembered this now, in a room full of people that resembled a scene out of a TV mystery comedy, beat the hell out of him. Maybe it was the excitement of the moment—he always seemed to feel high when danger threatened. If that weren’t so, he never would have joined the Secret Service nor would he have met Charlie.

Mike ground to a halt and turned his gaze on her. From the distressed expression on her face, he knew she had to have been present when all hell had broken loose.

“What?” she said before he could open his mouth. She glared at him from under narrowed eyebrows and crossed her arms in front of her as if to put some distance between them. She certainly didn’t look pleased to see him. Maybe it was difficult for her to read his opinion of the situation.

He might have been more surprised at her question, if he’d been paying closer attention. The truth was, he’d been so busy admiring the dimple on her left cheek he hadn’t been concentrating.

Wrong.

He knew better than most that the best defense, when you’ve painted yourself into a corner, was a good offense. After his experience with Charlie in Baronovia, he knew firsthand she was damn good at the offensive end of the game. To complicate matters, she made him feel guilty for not trusting her even when he had nothing to feel guilty about.

“Wheeler! Over here!” a loud voice cut through the noise and confusion.

Mike glanced over to where several Secret Service men and women were huddled in conference. His assistant gestured for him to come over. “In a minute,” he called, then turned back to Charlie. “What happened here?”

She glared at him, her blue eyes blazing. “You mean, what did I have to do with it, don’t you?”

“You’ve got it.” Damn, that fierce look cooled any sexual fantasies he might have entertained. Just as well. Another thing he’d learned the hard way was that it was never wise to fraternize with the people you worked with. It didn’t look as if she were interested in fraternizing, anyway. If looks could freeze, he would have been an icicle by now. He jammed his hands into his pockets and waited for the fur to fly.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” she said and gestured to the handcuffed swarthy man who by now had lost his voice and was glowering at her. “All I did was introduce General Negri here, to Mr. Oberhammer of the visiting United Nations’ contingent over there.” She gestured to a man who lay on the marble floor in the entryway. “At the general’s request, I might add.”

“That’s all that happened?”

“No,” she answered breathlessly. “That was only the beginning. The general pulled a gun. At first I thought it had to be joke.”

“A joke?” Mike glanced over at the gun. “That doesn’t look like a toy gun to me.”

She plastered her hands on her hips before he got any further. “How was I to know the man was going to start shooting?”

Mike glanced at the man who lay moaning on the marble floor. “Have you called 911?”

“Of course. That’s part of my job.”

Mike nodded curtly. From his previous experiences with Charlie, he had the feeling she wrote her job description as she went along. As for the wounded man, from the look of things, he would keep until the paramedics arrived. “Anyone else get hurt?”

“Well,” she went on, brushing her hand across her forehead, seemingly unaware her wrist was bleeding. “I guess you could say so.” She aimed a shaking finger at a ceramic bas relief sculpture over the mantel that depicted a trio of angels holding hands and dancing across a cloud-filled sky. A bullet hole was visible where one of the angel’s belly button would have been. “He took the other bullet.”