In the Line of Fire: Hot Desert Heroes, Book 1 (2 page)

“Ah.” Beck tipped his head forward to try to catch her eye and she, like a dork, ducked her head. “Don’t know him,” he said and followed it with a sigh. “Laney, darlin’, I’m not gonna jump you in public in front of God and witnesses. Please relax.”

How did one go about telling a hot guy that you weren’t afraid of him in a you’re-going-to-attack-me kind of way but rather were too afraid of being a big ol’ disappointment? What if she did relax around him and he discovered she just wasn’t all that interesting?

“You seeing anyone?”

There. That was her ticket out. Beck was a good guy. He wouldn’t poach on another man’s territory. If she told him she was dating someone, he’d leave her be. She tried to ignore the sadness she felt at that thought and focused instead on the relief she was sure to feel when he left her alone. “I broke up with someone yesterday. Now he’s texting me nonstop, asking me to take him back.”

Lord. God. Almighty. Why could she not just lie to the man?

“Ah. That explains the look you got on your face right before I came over here.” He reached out once more and this time took her hand in his, tightening his grip when her fingers quivered in his grasp. She stared at his hand, strong, roped with veins, long, square-tipped fingers with neat nails. He squeezed her fingers again. “You okay with it?”

She was fine with his hand. It was masculine and made her own look dainty by comparison. She glanced up and realized he was asking about the breakup.

Good. Here was another opportunity to send him on his way.
Act brokenhearted,
she instructed herself.
Tell him you aren’t ready to get involved with someone else yet.
“Oh yeah,” she heard herself say in a voice too chipper to sound sad. “I wasn’t all that in to him, which is why I ended things.”

Gah. She really had to stop talking.

“I’d like you to have dinner with me.”

Her breath hitched. With her pulse pounding in her throat, she whispered, “What?” Not because she hadn’t heard him, but because she wanted clarification. For the last year she’d done her best to avoid him. It had gotten harder and harder to skirt around him and today, apparently, he’d decided to go on the offensive. But, still, somehow an invitation to dinner surprised her.

His thumb swept over the back of her hand, making her skin prickle in awareness. “You do eat, don’t you?” he teased in a gentle voice with a glance toward her carrot cake muffin.

Her cheeks warmed. How gauche she was being. No wonder she ended up with guys who were disappointing, however nice they might be. If she had low expectations, she couldn’t be disappointed.

Maybe it was time to set her sights higher. Maybe it was time to take a risk. For all she knew, it might be fun. Plus, she didn’t have to go out with him more than once if it turned out she couldn’t handle him.

Live your life,
she told herself. She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. She could do this. She could go out to dinner with a handsome man and the world wouldn’t implode because she wasn’t up to his speed. “I eat,” she murmured. She glanced down at their hands and then met his gaze. It was hard holding eye contact, but she did it. “I’d like to go out with you,” she admitted shyly.

His smile this time wasn’t big, it wasn’t wide, but it was breathtaking just the same. It was a male expression of satisfaction, anticipation, and, if she was reading him right, relief. If she hadn’t been looking at him, she would have missed it, and that expression on his face was something she didn’t want to miss. Ever.

“Great.” He leaned forward. “How about tonight?”

She blinked at him. Tonight? How could she possibly go out with him tonight? Talking herself into it was one thing, but tonight was only a few hours away and that wasn’t nearly enough time to psych herself up for the actual event. “Sure,” she heard herself respond. She blew out a breath.

His delighted chuckle charmed her. “You won’t regret it, Laney.” He squeezed her hand, then released it and stood. “I’ll pick you up at six, all right?”

Delaney gave him a nod.

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and extracted a business card. “My cell phone number’s on the back. Text me your address.” He replaced his wallet and stared down at her, his eyes a deep, warm charcoal. “Don’t worry ’bout dressin’ up; we won’t go anywhere too fancy.” He bent and placed a soft, all-too-brief kiss at her temple. “See you later,” he murmured and was gone.

She pressed her lips together and stared at the front door of the shop long after he’d gone through it. She wanted to laugh and cry and scream at the top of her lungs, all at the same time. She had a date with Beck Townsend.

She grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and stared down at Beck’s card. Leaning back on the sofa, she felt a small, satisfied smile curl her mouth. She wasn’t as hopeless as her mother would have her believe. Most of the time Delaney was able to dismiss her mom’s hurtful words, the negative opinion she had of her older daughter’s worth, but even so, after three decades of hearing it, some of it had stuck, and it’d stuck hard.

Maybe Beck would be the one to finally burn it all off.

* * * * *

Beck climbed up into the passenger seat of the dark-blue Escalade. As he pulled the door shut, he muttered, “Thanks for waitin’.”

“No prob, bro.” Tyrell Thorne put the SUV in gear and pulled out of the parking lot while Beck fastened his seat belt. Ty glanced at him. “Glad to know you’ve finally pulled your head outta your ass and made a move on that sweet thing.” He merged into traffic and headed west toward downtown.

Beck shot his friend a look. “What I do not need from you are any opinions—or little gems of advice—about my love life.” Or lack thereof. But he was determined to remedy that, and soon.

Ty lifted one hand off the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender but continued to put in his two cents. “Hey, you cannot deny you were overdue to make your play. You’ve been watchin’ her for what now? A year?”

So he had moved a bit slowly with this one. She was skittish and he hadn’t wanted to scare her off, but finally he’d had enough of waiting for her to feel settled around him. “We’re having dinner tonight. So what’s your point?” He didn’t need anyone else to tell him he could have lost his opportunity because he was too uneasy about letting her close in case she saw the darkness in him. But once he’d decided he could set that part of him aside, keep it hidden from her, everything else had fallen into place, and he’d taken the first step toward getting to know her better.

“It’s about time, is all I’m sayin’.” Ty stopped at a red light and glanced at him. “You’re a good man. You deserve the love of a good woman.”

Beck frowned. “I’m not lookin’ to watch her walk down the aisle, Ty. It’s just dinner.” And, if he was lucky, some time spent between the sheets. If their relationship grew, great. If not, hopefully they’d both have a good time while it lasted.

“Uh-huh.” The traffic light turned green and Ty accelerated through the intersection. “I’ll remind you of this conversation two kids and a dog from now.”

“Fuck me. When did you get so in tune with your feelings? Now you want to play fuckin’ therapist?” Beck wasn’t above giving his friend the same kind of grief he was dishing out. Maybe it would distract the normally taciturn Ty from this conversation.

“Fine, you don’t wanna talk about her. I get it.” Ty focused on the road. “But I’m here for you, buddy. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Beck slid his right hand to the lower edge of his seat and pushed the lever to adjust the seat back to a greater degree of recline. He thought about Delaney Murphy. What was it about her that drew him? Initially he’d been attracted to her physically—she was about five seven, with the prettiest face he’d ever seen, gorgeous hazel eyes that turned greener when she was emotional, and dark-brown hair that glinted auburn in the strong Tucson sun.

But if he was honest with himself, it had been that luscious ass of hers he’d first zoned in on. A small waist flared into hips he could hold on to while he powered into her. Icing on the cake were her breasts. He knew, once he got his hands on them, they’d fill his palms and then some.

Just thinking of her sent blood flowing to his dick. He’d had this response the second he first laid eyes on her. She’d been sitting on a sofa in the coffee shop, talking to some friends. He hadn’t seen her when he walked in, but after he paid for his purchase and turned to leave, the sight of her had stopped him in his tracks. He’d never had that happen before, and when it did, it’d left him stunned.

He hadn’t been looking for anything serious with a woman. He’d known from the get-go that getting involved with Delaney could be a mistake, given his line of work. He was a man who had done violent things to violent people. Still did, if the job called for it. And that violence had left darkness inside him.

But God help him. He hadn’t been able to stay away from her. He usually didn’t do his thinking with his dick, but where she was concerned… Hell. He had no blood left in his brain to do any thinking with because it all headed south.

After he’d watched her for the last year, ferreted information from her friends, and, when he’d been able to catch her, spend a miniscule amount of time talking to her, he’d discovered facets of her personality that made getting to know her worth the time and effort he knew it would take. She was shy and a little goofy, but loyal as hell to her friends. She had a younger sister of whom she was fiercely proud, but he didn’t know anything about her parents.

He had time and he looked forward to getting to know her, to getting closer to her.

“Do you know why she’s so uncomfortable around us?” he asked Ty.

“Only a guess.”

Beck waited a couple of heartbeats. When his friend didn’t volunteer more information, he prompted, “And? Is your guess one you’re gonna share? Or have you already used all your words today?”

Ty made a turn then flipped him the bird. “I get the sense she has some self-esteem issues. I overheard part of a conversation between her and one of her friends, where Laney was telling her some of the ways she was always compared to her little sister, and found lacking by her mom.” He pulled into the alleyway that ran behind the historic building that housed Red Eagle Group, their security firm. “I think on a good day Laney knows she’s pretty, but she keeps hearing the shit her mother shoveled all her life. That’s hard to overcome.”

“Right.” So it might take a little more effort than he’d originally thought. That was okay. She’d still be worth it.

Ty pulled the SUV to a stop in one of the six spots under the covered parking behind their building. Solar panels spread across the top of the structure. Beck and Ty had installed them, and he was glad they had. They kept the electric bills for the condo units on the second floor low when the air-conditioning ran almost nonstop at the height of the summer heat. Like now.

“Could use some rain,” Ty muttered.

The man was not wrong. Tucson was in the middle of monsoon season and precipitation had been spotty, at best. “Yep,” Beck responded. “If we have to put up with higher humidity, we should at least get the benefit of rain.”

He followed Ty inside the building and up the stairs. Right now he and Ty were the only ones living in the condos. Beck had knocked out the wall between two of the units and made his bigger. Another two were on hold for Rafe Delgado and Solomon Quincy, the last members of his marine special ops team. One condo unit remained available but Beck hadn’t decided yet whether he wanted to rent it to a stranger or just leave it open so it could be used whenever it was needed.

Beck clapped Ty on the shoulder and continued on to his condo. “I’m off-grid ’til tomorrow morning.”

“Happy for you, brother. Really am. So happy in fact that I’ll handle things tomorrow so you don’t have to worry ’bout anything ’til at least noon. In case the night goes better than expected.” Ty’s grin flashed white against his dark skin. “That work for you?”

“Yep. Definitely works for me.”

Chapter Two

Delaney tugged at her skirt. It seemed like all eyes were on her as she and Beck followed the hostess through the restaurant, and the skirt that came to her midthigh now felt like it barely covered her ass. “You told me we weren’t going anywhere fancy,” she muttered to Beck. She glanced around the upscale foothills restaurant and saw men in suits and women decked to the nines. She tightened the hand she had tucked into the crook of his arm. He, too, wore a suit and looked gorgeous, even if he was a big, fat liar. “Everyone’s staring. I’m so underdressed for this place it isn’t funny.”

“I told you not to worry about dressin’ up, and I meant it. This is Tucson, after all. It’s not like there’s a dress code here.” Beck folded his hand over hers and gave her fingers a squeeze.

“Except for the one that states men must wear a jacket and tie,” she rejoined, still muttering. “FYI, that means
I
should be more dressed up.”

His smile flashed white in his tanned face. “Don’t worry about everyone else, Laney. They’re only staring because you’re the prettiest woman in the place. Women are jealous of you and men are envious because you’re with me and not one of them.”

It was probably more that the women wondered what was wrong with him that he would settle for someone like her, and the men… Well, they probably wondered the same damn thing.

Beck gestured for her to precede him through the doorway into a small, private room with low lighting and a round table set for two. “Who cares what they think? Anyway, as you see, we’re dining privately tonight. Nobody will see us now except the waitstaff.”

She sat down in the chair he pulled away from the table. “Still, it was uncomfortable, walking through the restaurant in a plain skirt and blouse when all the women out there are dressed to kill.” As Beck seated himself in a chair to her right instead of across from her, his back to the wall with a clear view to the exit and the remainder of the restaurant, Delaney glanced down at her pretty but inexpensive silk shirt. “Not that I have anything in my closet remotely close to what they’re wearing,” she muttered. “They probably think I’m some kind of country bumpkin.”

“Again, who cares? Like I said, you’re the prettiest one here. Besides, sometimes simple is better.”

She frowned at him.

“What?” He sat back while a server uncorked a wine bottle and poured a small amount into his glass.

Did he really not get it or had he done this on purpose? Was he trying to make her feel bad about herself like her mother and ex-husband had? She didn’t want to believe it, but why else would he tell her not to worry about what she wore and then take her to a restaurant where you couldn’t buy a meal cheaper than a hundred dollars a plate?

Maybe he felt sorry for her. That was even worse. “Look, you don’t have to do this,” she told him.

“Do what?”

She waved one hand to indicate the table. “This. Dinner. Telling me I’m beautiful. Saying things you don’t mean because you think that’s what I want to hear. Or that it’ll butter me up enough to get me into bed with you.” She was getting so worked up she barely processed that she’d just referred to herself and Beck being intimate. She felt a small flare of heat but pushed it aside. “I don’t need fluffy compliments, Beck. I got that all the time from Charlie and it’s one of the reasons I broke up with him.” She stared down at the pristine white tablecloth. “So just stop with the games, okay?”

“What. The. Hell?”

Delaney looked up to see Beck leaning forward, his elbows on the table, lean hands clasped together, gray eyes like hardened ash. “Sweetheart,” he said in a voice that belied the endearment, “you have got to be kiddin’ me.” His scowl dented his brows. “Are you fishing for compliments or are you really that fucking unaware?”

She clenched her jaw. Ten minutes into the date and he was already upset with her. Based upon experience, she knew things would only go downhill from here.

Things would go back to the way they had been, with her avoiding him and him… Well, she’d go back to the way she was. Only now she’d be staying out of his way because of remembered humiliation at how disastrous this date turned out.

Carefully she pushed back her chair and stood. “I should go.” Not wanting to see the disappointment she knew was in his eyes, she kept her gaze fixed to the floor. “Enjoy your dinner,” she said, her throat so tight she could barely get any sound out at all. So far she’d managed to keep frustrated tears at bay, but they stung her nose and burned at the backs of her eyes. “I’ll call a cab.”

Beck got to his feet. “Whoa, wait just a goddamn minute.” He walked around the small table and placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Laney. You gotta believe me when I say I hate game players, so I wouldn’t do that to you.” The heat had tempered, leaving his voice a warm husk of sound. His fingers tightened for a moment. “Don’t leave, baby. Please.”

The Beck haze that happened whenever he called her baby in that deep voice started to creep over her, but she fought it back. She’d learned her lesson from her abusive ex. Just because a man called you baby or honey or sweetheart didn’t mean he couldn’t still rip you up with his words. Or his fists.

“No, you—” Wait. What? What he’d actually said finally hit her. He was the one apologizing? He wasn’t trying to make this out to be her fault? He actually wanted her to stay? Startled, she looked up at him.

His eyes had gone back to that sexy smoky gray that always tripped up her heart. He reached out and cupped her jaw in one warm hand. “You’re beautiful, Delaney Murphy, and not just on the outside. I have a hard time remembering that you don’t see yourself the way the rest of us do.”

The “rest of us” certainly didn’t include her mother or ex-husband. Not wanting to interrupt him, she kept that thought to herself. What she couldn’t do was stop the lone tear from spilling over her lashes.

His thumb brushed her cheek, taking away the moisture and leaving behind a tingling trail of awareness. A muscle flexed in his jaw but his voice remained gentle when he said, “I didn’t know you’d feel awkward walkin’ through the restaurant. I wouldn’t have done that to you on purpose.” When she stood there, searching his eyes, he added softly, “Please stay. Sit back down, and we’ll start again, okay?”

Delaney took a breath and let it out slowly. He seemed sincere, so she’d give him the benefit of the doubt. For now. She sat and let him scoot her chair closer to the table.

“Go ahead and pour,” he murmured to the server she’d completely blocked out.

Heat rushed into her face and she ducked her head. Tightness grew in her chest until she felt like she could hardly breathe. God in heaven above, when would she stop being such a dork? How could she have had the reaction she’d had, and in front of the waiter, no less?

“Hey, hey!” Beck went down on his haunches beside her chair.

She heard him tell the server to give them a few minutes, but couldn’t get disentangled from her embarrassment to pay much attention.

“Look at me.” When she didn’t, he repeated, “Laney, honey, look at me.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze, seeing concern and affection warming his eyes.

“What’s this?” He ran a finger down her still-hot cheek.

“It’s nothing.”

“Babe.”

She rolled her lips in and looked over his shoulder. “I forgot he was here,” she finally whispered. “You don’t need me having a meltdown in front of an audience. It’s embarrassing for you.” She grimaced. “Not to mention humiliating for me.”

“Don’t you worry about me. I don’t want you having a meltdown at all, baby. It’s my fault you did, and I’m sorry about that, more than I can say.” He rested his hands on the arm of her chair and leaned in. “I’m not embarrassed, and you shouldn’t be, either. You reacted to something I did.” His low chuckle rumbled across her senses and drew her gaze back to his tender features. “Hell, I should be the one who’s embarrassed, but by my own actions, certainly not by anything you’ve done.”

Delaney ran her tongue across her bottom lip. Beck’s eyes tracked the movement and turned to molten silver. A different sort of heat spread over her skin and warmed low in her belly.

“Seriously, honey. Don’t do this to yourself. We’re good.” He leaned in.

Being surrounded by his warmth made her feel safe. Protected.

“Right? We are good, aren’t we?” he asked.

He wasn’t playing with her, she realized. He wouldn’t make fun of her or deliberately put her in a situation that would humiliate her. He was straight out of her girlhood daydreams—tall, dark, and handsome, good and kind but with an edge of danger. She’d given up on those dreams, had them hammered out of her first by her mother then, lest she get her hopes up, by her husband.

But maybe it was time to dream a little again. The tightness in her chest eased. “We’re good.” She gave an emphatic nod. “Yes, we’re good.”

He smiled. On his way up out of his crouch he placed a light kiss near her ear. The slight rasp of his whiskers against her face and the aroma of his cologne shot a bolt of awareness to all her lady parts. She took a deep breath through her nose and drew the spicy fragrance into her lungs. God, he smelled so good. She wanted to wrap herself around him and wallow in his scent.

She shifted in her seat and watched him as he returned to his chair. With the crook of two fingers he motioned for the server, who reentered the room with a studiously blank expression on his face. He finished pouring the wine for Beck and waited for him to taste it and nod before moving to Delaney’s glass.

She fought against a renewed blush and mostly succeeded. She managed to get herself together enough to give her order for grilled salmon and asparagus with a side salad, when the waiter asked for it.

Beck gave his order—mid-rare New York strip steak, loaded baked potato and salad—and after the waiter left, he lifted his wineglass and waited for her to do the same. Once she had, he said, “To a memorable evening with a beautiful woman.”

Her cheeks flushed but she clinked her glass against his. “To a memorable evening,” she partially repeated.

A smile widened his sensual mouth. “With a beautiful woman.”

“I can’t say that.” She frowned at him. “It’s too egotistical.” She took a sip of wine and put the glass back on the table.

He shook his head and brought his wineglass to his lips. She watched his Adam’s apple bob with his swallow, and her pulse drummed in her own throat at that sign of his masculinity.

She couldn’t believe she was turned on by a man swallowing a bit of wine.

“So tell me about yourself.”

Oh dear God. She hated this part about dating because she disliked talking about herself. She was boring. She’d probably always be boring. And nothing was more boring than talking about being boring.

She shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I’m thirty-one, married once and divorced and work as an administrative assistant at SNJ.”

He gave her a look over the rim of his glass. “You can do better than that, Laney.”

“Really, I can’t. I’m pretty…ordinary.”

“That I find hard to believe. I think there are hidden depths to you.” When she didn’t respond beyond a shrug, he said, “Tell me about Coffee & Confections, then. How do you know Lily?”

This she could do. “I met her through my best friend, Rachel. Rache and she have been neighbors for about ten years, and I met both her and Andi, the other owner of the shop, at a barbeque Rache and her dad hosted.”

“And how did the coffee shop turn into your local hangout?”

“You’re really asking that?” She blinked at him. “They make the best coffee in town.”

He smiled. “That they do.” He leaned back in his chair. “And you love their carrot cake muffins too. You get a blueberry bran muffin sometimes, but more often than not you go for the carrot cake one.”

Good Lord, he’d noticed what kind of muffins she bought? She guessed she’d been so focused on ducking him she hadn’t realized he was watching her so closely. Rather than making her feel uncomfortable, the knowledge settled deep inside and filled her with warmth and a sense of safety.

“I get the blueberry bran muffin if I feel like I need to be good. You know, eat healthier. But I can’t believe you noticed.”

His smile widened into a grin. “Baby, I’ve been noticing you for a year now. In case you hadn’t noticed. Which, maybe you hadn’t, since you were doing your best to be anywhere I wasn’t.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. Again. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
Let’s see how much
you
like to play this game.

The waiter returned just then with a bread basket and their salads. After setting them on the table, he reached for a water jug on the sideboard and refreshed their water glasses. Beck waited until the young man had left the room before he said, “I’m forty-two, never been married. Served twenty in the marines and got out two years ago. Started Red Eagle Group with Tyrell Thorne last year. He was a lieutenant on my squad.”

“So you’re joint owners?”

“Uh-huh.” He picked up his fork and poked through his salad. “Red Eagle specializes in cyber and personal security, and threat assessment. Ty’s also a licensed fugitive retrieval specialist, so sometimes he’s out of town rounding up a bounty. We run the billing for those jobs through the company.”

That sounded like something big, muscled Tyrell Thorne would do. But the other…

“Personal security as in bodyguards?” Delaney wasn’t sure she liked that. Actually, she was pretty sure she didn’t like it at all. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It can be. Usually isn’t.” He grabbed a roll and slathered butter on it after splitting it in half. “It’s usually pretty mundane. Boring, really.”

She’d bet good money that the last word someone would use to describe Beck Townsend was
boring
. Heck, he could sit around watching paint dry and still he would not be boring.

Delaney ate a few bites of salad then said, “Have you guarded anyone famous?”

He laughed. “We’ve provided security to some high profile people but not anyone I think you’d know. Starting Monday, we’ll be part of the security detail for Mari and the Ever Hard Boys while they do a two-day run in Vegas.”