Julie Miller - One Good Man

He pushed away from her, holding her elbows in his palms. “I can only stay a few minutes. But I didn’t want to disappoint my favorite girl.”

He made her feel all of ten years old. She tried to match his smile but failed. “I thought you’d be here…sooner.”

From across the room, another voice answered in a dark, taunting baritone.

“We shouldn’t be here at all.”

Casey looked over Jimmy’s shoulder to the man filling the doorway. Mitch Taylor was even bigger than she remembered. The room shrank as he strode in. He stood a couple of inches taller than her Dutch uncle’s six feet, and she suspected the imposing dimensions of his chest and shoulders could be attributed more to the man than to the tailoring of his suit.

She lifted her chin to ward off the impact of his raw masculinity. Jimmy stepped aside, allowing Mitch’s whiskey-brown eyes to peruse her from head to toe. The warmth she experienced under his scrutiny left her feeling much more grown up than her uncle’s reassurances had.

Unaccustomed to having any man besides her doctors study her so thoroughly, and even more unfamiliar with the responding tension tingling along the surface of her skin, she angled away from him, automatically shielding the weak side of her body. “Captain.”

“How badly did I hurt you?” He spoke in a hushed rumble that shivered along her spine. The unexpected softening of his hard-edged expression did funny things to her pulse rate. She felt her own features relax.

“I’m a little…” Stiff and sore, she would have finished. But Jimmy’s patience with polite conversation had ended.

“You didn’t. She requires her cane or leg brace to walk.” His crude explanation shattered the illusion of compassion, and reminded Casey of the real problem at hand. She threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.

Without making direct eye contact herself, she saw Mitch look at Jimmy, then back at her. His on-the-job mask returned.

“You should be in a safe house. Or at the very least, under around-the-clock police protection.”

His back-to-business mode made it easier for her to summon her defenses. “I asked you not to come here.”

“No, you ordered me not to, princess.” He swung his gaze over to Jimmy. “But a higher authority prevailed.”

Acknowledging his cue with a nod, Jimmy took Casey by the upper arm and guided her toward the sofa. “We want to talk to you, Cassandra.”

Once she was situated, he sat beside her and clasped her left hand between both of his. Not a good sign. “I didn’t want you to know about Raines’s escape so soon, but now that you do, I want you to know that I’m taking care of everything. I put him away once, and I’ll put him away again. He won’t get any satisfaction coming after my family.” He climbed off his soapbox and gentled his tone. “I promised your father that I’d look after you. And I trust that Mitch is the man to help me do that.”

She glanced over at Mitch, who struggled to make himself fit in the brocaded wingback chair across from her. He shook his head as though he already doubted the wisdom of this so-called plan.

Definitely not a good sign. She looked back at Jimmy, only half-joking with her question. “What, you’re going to send him over to the house and have him scare me to death every night?”

Jimmy’s hands tightened around her own. “No, dear. I’m assigning him to be your bodyguard.”

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