Cassie Miles - Mountain Bodyguard

“Jeez Louise?” He lifted an eyebrow.

“I don’t swear. It’s a nanny thing.”

“Did you used to?”

“Hell, yes.” She felt a grin spread across her face, and she was amazed by how swiftly her mood had transformed. Mason was magic. “I have three brothers.”

He nodded. “Every other word was obscene.”

“Not as much as you’d think. Dad didn’t tolerate bad language.”

“Was he a religious man?”

“Worse. A marine sergeant. Discipline was his middle name.”

“My older brother was in the corps. He worked with the admiral in the Middle East.” His shoulders flexed in a tense shrug. “I’d like to think that one of the reasons TST Security was hired was the admiral’s good opinion of my brother.”

Being from a military family, she was sensitive to the fact that he spoke of his brother in the past tense. “I wonder if your brother knew my dad, Daniel DeMille? He was stationed in the Middle East, too. He retired five years ago.”

“My brother was killed six years ago in Afghanistan.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” He peeled off his suit jacket, tossed it into the bedroom and started rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Now I’m going to clean your wound.”

She pointed toward the open bathroom door. “What about those thugs in the hallway?”

“My partners have it under control. The local police and sheriff are on the way.” He tapped the listening device in his ear. “TST Security has rounded up all but one of the bad guys. He locked himself in a room down the hall and thinks he’s safe.”

His full lips quirked in a wry smile that told her the criminal hiding in one of the rooms was making a big mistake. She asked, “What’s going to happen to him?”

“While he’s watching the door to the hallway, one of the snipers on the roof is going to bust through a window.”

“And you’d like to watch,” she said.

“Oh, yeah.”

His tone reminded her of the DeMille men, but there was nothing brotherly about the tingling she felt when he touched her arm. He moistened a washcloth under the hot water she’d been running in the sink. Holding her arm below the elbow, he cautiously wiped away the blood.

“The cut isn’t too deep,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but you should have a doc take a look.”

“Sure.” While he focused on taking care of her, she studied him. Her father would approve of his buzz cut and no-nonsense attitude, but she was more impressed by his deep-set dark blue eyes and high cheekbones. His tanned forearms showed that he spent time outdoors, but her thoughts about him required an indoor setting... A bedroom scenario, to be specific.

He lifted his gaze. What would it be like to wake up and see those eyes looking back at her? He was almost too handsome, too good to be true. Please, Mason, don’t be a liar or a cheat.

Using a clean towel, he patted her arm dry. When he reached behind her head, unfastened her ponytail and let her curly hair fall to her shoulders, his face was near hers. If she tilted her head and leaned in, their lips would touch.

Impulsively, her fingers snatched his striped silk necktie, and she held him in place. He was mere inches away from her, so very close that she felt the heat radiating from his body. She smelled his aftershave, a citrus and nutmeg flavor with a hint of something else...the indefinable scent of a man.

“You smell good.” She hadn’t intended her voice to become a purr, but that was what happened.

“So do you.”

Her gaze twined with his, and she tugged at his necktie to pull him a half inch closer. She wanted to kiss him, but the situation was messy. She was sitting on the countertop at a weird angle. If she pressed her body against his chest, she’d smear the blood all over his shirt. More important, she barely knew this man and could be setting herself up for a world of embarrassment.

He ended her indecision. She should have known that he would. Mason was a take-charge kind of guy. He buried his fingers in her untamed hair and held the back of her skull so that he was supporting her. Then he kissed her.

Crazy, wild sensations bloomed inside her. He kissed the same way he seemed to do everything else: with skill and finesse. His lips were firm, and he exerted exactly the right amount of pressure.

His tongue traced the line of her mouth, slipped inside and probed against her teeth. She opened wider for him. Her tongue joined with his and—

There was a hammering noise from the door to the hallway. A deep voice shouted, “Mason, you in there?”

They broke apart so quickly that she bit the inside of her cheek. “Bad timing,” she muttered.

“I have to go.”

Twenty questions popped inside her head. Can I see you again? Will there be another kiss? Can I give you my phone number? She said only one word aloud. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Saving my life.”

He dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “My pleasure.”

As she watched him walk out the door, she whispered, “The pleasure was all mine.”

* * *

PEERING THROUGH THE infrared scope of his rifle, Anton Karpov scanned the windows on the seventh floor of the mountain hotel, trying to catch a glimpse of Franny. Earlier tonight, he had watched her through the crosshairs on his scope. She’d been outside on the terrace, meeting and greeting, laughing and smiling. She looked good—damn good. Until tonight, he hadn’t paid any attention to the nanny.

But now he knew. Anton had positively identified Franny DeMille, the chick he’d almost moved in with. Why was she calling herself Lexie? How the hell did she get to be a nanny?

The Franny he knew was a kick-ass daredevil who couldn’t care less about kids and didn’t know a damn thing about taking care of them. When he was dating her, she’d told him—flat out—that she didn’t want babies. Hey, great news for him. He wasn’t meant to play daddy. He wasn’t serious about her, either. Still, it made him mad when she dumped him. It was supposed to be the other way around. He made sure she knew that.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he answered.

The voice on the other end was the leader himself. There had been a lot of talk at meetings about how no single person was more important than another. They were equals. Some had special skills or areas of expertise, but their group didn’t operate within the structure of a hierarchy.

Anton didn’t buy in to any of that phony, mealy-mouthed philosophy. While others talked about all for one and “the greater good,” he held his silence. There was only one truth he believed in: dollars and cents. He’d been associated with the leader for almost ten years, performing special tasks for decent pay.

Quietly, the leader said, “Move out. I’ll contact you later, Tony.”

Long ago, Anton had Americanized his name to Tony Curtis after the old-time movie star. He even looked kind of like that Tony, with his curly black hair and blue eyes. The real Tony Curtis was usually cast as a pretty boy hero, and that didn’t suit Anton Karpov, not at all. He only changed his mind when he saw the movie star play the role of Albert DeSalvo, widely believed to be the Boston Strangler.

“Are you sure I should go, sir?” He was one of the few who knew the leader’s real name, but he seldom spoke it. “I have a couple of angles for a clear shot.”

“I’m tempted, Tony. I’d like to kill those idiots who got caught.”

“Is there any chance they won’t spill their guts?”

“Oh, they’ll talk. The admiral’s men are skilled interrogators.”

“Is that a problem?”

“They don’t know enough to worry about. They’re unimportant.”

The leader didn’t seem concerned about losing five men. The less influential members of Anti-Conspiracy Committee for Democracy, also known as AC-CD, had access to a limited amount of information. They were assigned simple jobs. Tonight, the only thing they’d been required to do was disable the hotel security and fill in for them, leaving the way open for more experienced operatives. The trained, experienced staff, led by Anton/Tony, would have kidnapped the admiral.