Dare (38 page)

Margaret raised the muzzle of her gun. I leapt at her, pushing off from my healing leg in a move that was probably not very smart. The gun went off, but I managed to hit the muzzle before it did, and the bullet smashed into the ceiling. I fell to the floor, but Margaret came with me, our bodies tangled in a mess of limbs. And then Xander was there, and Margaret was screaming as she fought me for control of the gun. It went off again and the room seemed to go dark, and I was lying there, my ears ringing. And another shot and another and all I could think about was Xander.

Xander

Harley was taking so long getting the ice cream that I finally went to find her. As I was coming down the stairs, I thought I heard voices. And then I turned the corner into the sitting room just as a gun fired.

All I could thing was,
Fuck!

Margaret was on the floor with Harley tangled up next to her, and they were struggling over this damn big gun. I reached in, tried to untangle them and get one or both up on their feet. And then Margaret pressed the barrel of the gun against Harley’s side and wrapped her finger around the trigger. I did the only thing I could think of and that was to grab her wrist and yank. I felt something give and then the gun went off.

The next thing I know, Margaret’s on her feet, the gun pointed at my chest. There’s blood, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. And Harley is still on the floor.

“Why, Xander?” Margaret asked, her wrist limp where I broke it trying to pull her away from Harley. She calmly changed hands, holding the gun with her other hand now. She pointed it at me, tears running down her face and her hand shaking so bad the gun won’t aim straight. “Why did you turn on Daddy? Why did you have to choose her over me?”

“Don’t do something you’ll regret, Margaret.”

“I already regret it all,” she said softly.

She held the gun up not far from the center of my face and steadied it the best she could. I saw movement behind her and felt relief because I thought it was Harley. But then the gun went off, and I closed my eyes, thinking I was dead. But when the body hit the ground, it wasn’t mine.

It was Margaret.

And Jonnie was standing behind her, a pistol in her hands.

I dropped to my knees, my hands moving over Harley’s body. There was blood, but I couldn’t find a place on her that was injured. And then I realized the blood was dripping from my body, from the perfectly round hole in my shoulder.

And Margaret. She was coughing and blood was flowing from between her lips. Jonnie was with her, pressing her hands against a bloody wound on her side.

“Harley?”

Her eyes fluttered, and she focused on me. When she saw the wound on my shoulder, she immediately sat up, but then she did something of a swoon and fell back again.

“Are you hurt?”

“My leg.”

Her leg. I looked down and realized it’d gotten trapped under the edge of the couch. She must have reinjured it in the fight. I gently pulled it out and saw that it was already swelling.

“They told you not to walk around without the boot.”

“Yes, well, I wasn’t planning in wrestling on the floor tonight.”

I lifted her leg and kissed the swelling area. She winced but giggled a little at the same time.

“My hero,” she said.

An ambulance arrived a few minutes later. I didn’t have a chance to ask Jonnie how she happened to be there, or how she happened to have a gun. She disappeared before the ambulance arrived. When asked what happened, Harley gave them an abbreviated version that didn’t include Jonnie. Being the good boy that I sometimes am, I followed suit.

I wouldn’t find out until later that Philip’s help hadn’t been all bad. It turned out that Jonnie, my trusted office manager, was once a prodigy for the CIA. But after some inner-office politics left her out of the promotion game, she quit and applied to work for my fledgling company. And me, being the super-security-conscious guy I am, got the wool pulled over my eyes by a few friends that she had left at the CIA. But one of those same friends also clued her in to what I was up to, and Philip’s contacts got in touch with her, giving her information about both sides of the investigation.

She was the one who’d come to Harley this morning, and she’d told Harley the truth about who she was and what she was up to. But she begged Harley not to tell me because she liked her job and wanted to keep it.

Like I would have fired her for being a bad ass.

And then Harley speed dialed her when Margaret had the gun on her, so she came over. And disappeared for the same reason. She wanted to keep the life she’d built here in Los Angeles. Having the cops writing a report about how she killed a civilian wouldn’t allow for that.

It was finally over.

I’d said that before, but I believed it now.

Harley—Nine Months Later

I started to laugh as my little sister twerked her way down the aisle of my parent’s Baptist church. If Daddy walked in and saw that, there would be hell to pay.

Xander pulled me back against his chest as he, too, laughed, a rumbling laugh that came from deep in his chest. I loved to hear him laugh like that.

“Do you dare me to do that during the ceremony tomorrow?” Shelly asked.

“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars if you do,” Charlie called to her.

I smacked my brother on the arm.

“What?”

“Don’t encourage her.”

“Hey, someone’s got to inject a little levity into this whole affair. And it can’t be at my wedding because if you think our parents are bad, wait until you meet Vanessa’s.”

“When’s Vanessa going to be here?”

“In the morning.”

“Cutting it close.”

Xander’s arms tightened around my waist, his hands wrapping around my swollen belly. “I think we all are, aren’t we?”

I groaned. This whole wedding thing wasn’t my idea. It was my dad’s. He insisted that we be married in a church. A ceremony on a beach, no matter who the preacher was, was not good enough. The marriage vows had to be sanctioned in God’s house.

Especially with a baby due in three months.

I just wanted to go home, curl up in front of the television, and enjoy my new life as a couch potato, but Xander had agreed with my dad. We should do it properly.

The men in my life were beginning to take over everything.

Bonnie walked in, her expression softening when she lay eyes on her son. She looked good. She had just come back from a long cruise to the Bahamas. After the trial and everything that followed, everyone agreed that she deserved the break.

Grant followed close behind her. He’d cut a deal with the feds. In exchange for giving up his law license, his practice, and paying a substantive fine, they agreed to give him just six months of parole and a thousand hours of community service. And his testimony against each of the key players in the terrorist scheme.

Turned out Grant’s clients were planning to set bombs at each of those properties they’d been buying up because they were set near important targets, such as one that was near the governor’s mansion in Sacramento.

Everyone involved has been arrested. Careers have been made or destroyed because of Grant’s testimony. And the terror attacks have been thwarted.

Margaret, on the other hand, was not as lucky.

She survived the gunshot Jonnie put in her belly. But was charged with hit and run and attempted murder. Her lawyer advised her to take a plea, but she chose to go to trial. She was found guilty a month ago and will be sentenced at the end of the year. She’ll likely get twenty to life.

Xander feels horrible about what happened that night. I try to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t predict how Margaret would respond to everything that was happening. And he took a bullet for me. How many women can say their husbands did that?

We’re moving on with our lives.

Xander and I have decided to move to Texas. We’ve purchased a piece of land not far from my parents, and we’ll put a house on it one day soon. Right now, we have a little house in the city that we’re enjoying.

Xander still runs his security firm, but he lets Jonnie do most of the everyday stuff. He even lets her chose the clients, which has significantly reduced the amount of tension between the two of them. I guess he figures if she was once considered a lethal weapon, then maybe she knows what she’s talking about when she says a client is too hot for the company.

And we’re getting married. Again.

***

I feel like there’s a bowling ball strapped to my stomach, as I wait for the music to begin. It’s so hot that I feel like I’m suffocating. But then my dad takes my arm and he walks me down the aisle, and I see Xander smiling as he watches me. He’s dressed in a dark tuxedo that he had tailored-made just for this day. It came out perfectly. It fit him like a glove. I wished I could have worn the dress I’d had designed for our wedding, the one that was cancelled over a year ago. But seeing Xander there, none of the discomfort mattered anymore.

He was mine. Nothing was ever going to change that.

He held my hand the moment we stood side by side and never let go. And that? That was everything.

~ ~

She had never met the man walking toward her, yet she wouldn't consider him a stranger, either—after all, she had just spent the night at his house, and even slept in
his
bed. Not that he had been in the bed with her; that would have been a far more conventional start to their relationship.

              Cara Langford tried to move her legs again, but she was stuck fast. Escape was impossible. The fields of mud that she had been navigating around on the property all morning had caught up with her at last. The black mire sucked at her borrowed galoshes, drawing her farther into the earth the more she moved. It was like a quicksand scene in an old-timey movie.

              The man had reached the foot of the hill, and paused at the shore of the mud patch. Cara twisted her body to look at him, but was unfortunately caught in a position with her back facing toward him. She couldn't make out much before her pride dictated that she turn away and try to raise her foot again; sure enough, she was still rooted to the spot.

              "Need some help coming unstuck?" an unexpectedly posh voice inquired. She thrilled at the unexpected English accent and blushed. This was the Connecticut countryside, after all; nothing she had encountered so far had indicated that her mystery host was an Englishman. His voice was deep and educated, and full of amusement.

              "I'm not stuck," she said confidently. Confidence was key in these sorts of situations—at least, she thought that it was. She tried her left foot again, and struck her shin against the inside of the unmoving boot, nearly collapsing forward in the process. Her arms pin-wheeled.

              "Don't be daft." She could hear the man slogging out to join her. Cara finally stopped moving, going beet-red as she felt a pair of hands alight on her waist. His fingers glided along the outline of her bra band and slipped beneath her armpit as the other arm hooked beneath her legs, pulling her out of the foundered boots and hoisting her into his arms. She latched onto his neck at the last second and tried to fix her eyes on everything but his face. Even from a distance, she had perceived that he was handsome—the English accent only made it worse. Scratch that, the hand pressed firmly on the outer swell of her breast made it worse.

              "I'm not," she said sulkily as her rescuer began to stride back through the mud. "I just didn't want to leave the boots I borrowed out there is all."

              "The boots you stole," the man corrected mildly. "Before you came out here to spy on me."

              "I wasn't
spying
. I was interested, and…mobile."

              "Mobile. Certainly." She felt his hands clasp her a bit harder as they came to a deeper patch of mud. His touch was so assured that she couldn't help but imagine how it would feel, were they locked in a very different embrace. Cara glanced down to look at their progress, before finally summoning the courage to glance up. The man holding her wasn't looking at her; he was concentrating on navigating the treacherous terrain, which made it easier to conduct an up-close-and-personal study. He was much younger than she had guessed he would be—he couldn't be much older than thirty, though he hadn't shaved yet that morning, and the stubble that abraded his jaw might have given him the appearance of additional years. His hair was auburn, almost copper-colored. He was probably in dire need of a haircut, because it looked a little long behind his ears, but he had effortlessly groomed it back before setting out on his morning walk. His eyes were a deep-set blue, and fringed with dark eyelashes. They were in such close proximity that Cara could see the shallow divot of a scar at the left corner of his temple.

              Somehow, coming to the realization that her rescuer was even more gorgeous than she’d thought at first made their situation all the more worse. Thankfully it would be over soon. Thankfully the press of warm, insistent hands wouldn't be distracting her for much longer.

              Their progress halted abruptly. The man hefted her closer and gazed about himself.

              "Uh-oh."

"What do you mean, 'uh-oh'?" Cara looked as well. They were stuck about ten feet from the perceived shore of the quagmire.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, she found herself once more stranded at the mercy of this stranger.