Then Brendan reached between them; his fingers stroked through those curls and his thumb pressed against that special nub. And she came. So she wouldn’t scream, she kissed him more deeply as pleasure pulsed through her.
He groaned deeply into her mouth as his body tensed and he joined her in ecstasy. Pleasure shook his body, just as hers still trembled with aftershocks. But even once their bodies relaxed, he didn’t let her go. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her close to his madly pounding heart.
And she felt safe. Protected. For the first time in nearly four years.
* * *
F
OR THE FIRST
time in nearly four years, Brendan didn’t feel so alone. Josie had had their son; he had had no one. No one he dared get close to. No one he dared to trust.
Part of that had been her fault. After her subterfuge, he’d been careful to let no other woman get to him. But he suspected that even if he hadn’t been careful, no other woman could have gotten to him.
Only Josie...
Maybe Charlotte Green was right. Maybe he did love Josie. And maybe he should trust her. He hadn’t noticed any articles she’d written showing up in her father’s papers. Maybe she’d stepped away from the media world. Not that her articles had been sensationalized. They had been brutally honest, stripping the subject bare. That was why he would have recognized anything she’d written—her style was distinctive.
But maybe becoming a mother had changed her priorities. Maybe she cared more about keeping CJ hidden than exposing others.
He stroked his fingers over her shoulder and down her bare back. “Your skin is so soft.” He’d thought it was because of fancy spa treatments she would have had as American princess Josie Jessup. But with the new lifestyle the marshals would have set up for her, she wouldn’t have been able to go to expensive spas.
She would have had to live modestly and quietly, or else she would have been found before now. Because someone was looking for her.
Why?
To get to him?
She was his only weakness. Hurting her would draw him out, and maybe make him careless enough for someone to get the jump on him.
Had she had to give up everything—her home, family and career—because of him? Then she deserved to know the truth.
“Josie...”
“Hmm...” she murmured sleepily.
He looked down at her face and found her eyes closed, her lashes lying on the dark circles beneath. And her body was limp in his arms, relaxed. He couldn’t wake her. After everything she’d been through that night, she needed to rest and recuperate. Because their ordeal wasn’t over yet. It wouldn’t be over until he discovered who was trying to kill her.
But they were safe now, here, wrapped in each other’s arms, so he closed his eyes.
He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when the alarm sounded. No, the piercing whistle was not from a clock but from the security panel in the den.
“What!” Josie exclaimed as she jerked awake in his arms. “What is that?”
“Security has been breached,” he said, already reaching for his clothes and his weapons.
There were other apartments inside the building, other witnesses or suspects or agents the intruder could have been after. But Brendan knew the alarm was for them—the danger coming for them....
He had just one question for her. “How well do you know how to shoot?”
Chapter Eleven
While she’d held the gun when he’d handed it to her, the weight of it was still unfamiliar in her hands. Before tonight she hadn’t held one in years, let alone fired one. And when she had fired one, it had only been at targets—not people.
Could she pull the trigger on a person?
“Mommy, the ’larm clock is too loud,” CJ protested with his tiny hands tightly pressed against his ears.
Brendan scooped him up and headed toward the apartment door. “Grab your stuff,” he told her over his shoulder. He carried the boy with one arm while he clutched a gun in his other hand.
“Sh-shouldn’t we stay here?” she asked. “And just lock the door?”
His turquoise eyes intense, he shook his head. “We don’t know if the breach was someone getting inside or
putting
something inside.”
A bomb
.
Josie gasped and hurried toward the door. But she slammed into Brendan’s back as he abruptly stopped.
“We have to be very quiet,” he warned them.
“CJ, you have to play statue,” she told their son. “No matter what happens, you have to be quiet.”
“Like on the roof?”
Not like that. She wouldn’t dare leave her little boy alone in the dark again. “Well...”
“We’re all staying together,” Brendan said, “and we’re staying quiet.”
She released a shaky sigh.
“Mommy, shh,” the little boy warned her.
A corner of Brendan’s mouth lifted in a slight grin. Then he slowly opened the door. He nodded at her before stepping into the hall. It was clear. He wouldn’t have brought their son into the line of fire.
But they needed to get out of the building. Fast.
She breathed deep, checking for the telltale odor of gas. But she smelled nothing but Brendan; the scent of his skin clung to hers. While they’d been making love, someone had gotten inside the building.
What if that person had gotten inside the apartment? He or they could have grabbed CJ before his parents had had a chance to reach him.
Her heart ached with a twinge of guilt more powerful than any she’d felt before. And she’d felt plenty guilty over the years.
She followed after Brendan, watching as he juggled the boy and his gun. “If we’re taking the elevator...”
He would need to give her the code to punch into the security panel. But he shook his head and pushed open the door to the stairwell.
Of course they wouldn’t want to be in the elevator. If the building exploded, they would be trapped. But wouldn’t they be trapped inside the stairwell, too? If the gunmen were heading up, they would meet them on the way down—and CJ would be caught in the crossfire.
Brendan didn’t hesitate though. He hurried down the first flight and then the second.
“Brendan...”
Over his father’s shoulder, their little boy pressed a finger to his lips, warning her again to be quiet.
They had stopped, but their footsteps echoed. Then she realized it wasn’t their footsteps that were echoing. It was someone else’s—on their way up, as she’d feared. But Brendan continued to go down.
“No,” she whispered frantically. “They’re coming!”
He stopped on the next landing and pushed open the door to the hall. “Run,” he told her.
“To the elevator?” They could take it now. The men wouldn’t have come inside if they’d set a bomb.
“No,” he said. “Door at the end of the hall. Go through it.” He pushed her ahead of him and turned back as the door to the stairwell opened. But he kept his back toward that door, his body between their son and whoever might exit the stairwell. Before anyone emerged, he fired and kept firing as he ran behind Josie.
She pushed through that door he’d pointed at and burst onto a landing with such force that she nearly careened over the railing of the fire escape. Brendan, CJ clutched tight against his chest, exited behind her.
He momentarily holstered his gun, even though the men had to be right behind him, and he grabbed up a pipe that lay on the landing and slid it through the handle, jamming the door shut.
How had he known the pipe was there? Had he planned such an escape before?
The door rattled as another body struck it.
“Go,” he told her. “Run!”
She nearly stumbled as she hurried down the dimly illuminated metal steps. But gunfire rang out again—shots fired against that jammed door.
Brendan, still holding their son, who was softly sobbing, rushed down the stairs behind her. The shots, the urgency, the danger had her trembling so uncontrollably that she slipped, her feet flying from beneath her.
She would have fallen, would have hit each metal step on the long way to the ground. But a strong hand caught her arm, holding her up while she regained her footing.
When they neared the bottom of the fire escape, the gun was back in his hand, the light from the parking lot lamps glinting off the metal.
She hadn’t lost the gun she’d carried. She hadn’t used it, either, and wasn’t even sure that she could. But then she heard a car door open and a gun cock.
And she knew that someone had a clear shot at them. So she slid off the safety and turned with the gun braced in both hands. But before she could squeeze the trigger, a shot rang out and she heard a windshield shatter.
“Come on,” Brendan urged her. “Your car’s over here. Hurry.”
“But—”
There was a shooter in the lot. Or had Brendan already shot him? The gun was in his free hand while his other hand clasped their son to his chest.
“Do you have the keys?” he asked.
She pulled them out of her purse and clicked the key fob. Lights flashed on the SUV, guiding them to it and also revealing it to the gunmen as they erupted from the lobby of the building.
This time she squeezed the trigger, shooting at the men pointing guns at her son and the man she loved. The weapon kicked back, straining her wrist.
“Get in!” Brendan yelled as he put their boy into the backseat. “Buckle him up!”
She dropped the gun into her bag and jumped into the passenger’s seat. As she leaned over the console and buckled up their son, Brendan was already careening out of the lot.
“Stay down!” he yelled at her, just as more shots rang out. Bullets pinged and tires squealed.
And their son continued to play statue, staying silent in the backseat. “You’re so brave,” she praised him, reaching back to touch his face.
His chin quivered and she felt moisture on her fingers—probably his tears. But he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut, trying not to cry. She pulled back her hand and studied what was smeared across her fingers. It wasn’t tears. It was something red and sticky. Blood.
“Brendan! He’s hurt!” she exclaimed, fear and dread clutching her heart in a tight vise. “Get to the hospital! Call the police!”
* * *
“
N
O,” HE CORRECTED
her as blood trickled down his temple. “CJ wasn’t hit.” He’d made damn certain of that.
“Th-there’s blood on his face,” she said, her voice shaking with fear and anger.
Brendan tipped the rearview mirror and studied their son in the backseat. The little boy scrubbed at his face and held up a hand sticky with blood. “It’s not mine, Mommy. It came off...” His son didn’t know what to call him, didn’t know who he was to him.
“Your daddy,” Brendan answered the boy. “I’m your daddy.”
Josie gasped, probably at his audacity for telling their child who he was. But then she was reaching across the console and touching his head. “Where are you hit?”
“Daddy?” CJ asked.
Brendan’s head pounded. He wanted to pull off the road, wanted to explain to his son who he was, wanted to let Josie touch him. But he had to tip the mirror back up and check the road behind them. Had anyone followed them?
He’d thought he’d been vigilant on his way from the estate to the complex, that he hadn’t been followed. Had he missed a tail?
With blood trickling into his eyes, he was more likely to miss one now, so he asked Josie, “Do you see anything?”
Her fingers stroked through his hair. “No. Where were you hit?”
He shook his head, and the pain radiated, making him wince. “I wasn’t hit,” he replied, lifting his fingers to his left temple. “I was grazed. It’s just a scratch.” A scratch that stung like a son of a bitch, but he ignored the pain and focused on the road. “Is there anyone behind us?”
“What?” She must have realized what he was referring to, because she turned around and peered out the rear window. “I don’t see any other lights.”
The roads were deserted this early in the morning. He passed only a garbage truck going the other direction. No one was behind him. No one had been behind him earlier, either. He blinked back the trickle of blood and remarked, “I was not followed to the complex.”
“So how did they find us?” she asked.
“Daddy?” CJ repeated from the backseat, interrupting them. “You’re my daddy?”
Josie sucked in an audible breath as if just noticing that Brendan had told their son who he was. He waited to see if she would deny it now, if she would call him a liar for claiming his child. If she did, he would call her on the lie. After his close call with that bullet, he wanted his son to know who he was...before it was too late. Before he never got the chance to tell him.
Josie turned toward the backseat and offered their son a shaky smile. “Yes, sweetheart, he’s your daddy.”
“I—I thought he was a bad man.”
Josie shook her head. “No, sweetheart, he’s a good man. A hero. He keeps saving us from the bad men.”
Was she saying that for the boy’s sake? To make CJ feel better? Safer? Or did she believe it? Had she finally really come to trust Brendan, even though he hadn’t told her the truth?
“My daddy...” the little boy murmured, as if he were falling back to sleep. Given that his slumber kept getting violently interrupted, it was no wonder that the little boy was still tired.
“Well, we know who I am,” Brendan said. A hero? Did she really see him that way? “What about who’s after us?”
She kept staring into the backseat as if watching her son to make sure that the blood really wasn’t his. Or that the news of his parentage hadn’t affected him.
“Whoever it is,” he said, “appears to want us both dead.”
“They’re gone,” she murmured. Apparently she’d been watching the back window instead. “We’re safe now.”
“We should have been safe where we were,” he replied. It was a damn
safe
house.
“We need to go home,” she murmured, sounding as dazed as their son. But she wasn’t just tired; she was probably in shock. She’d fired her gun at people. If that had been the first time, she was probably having an emotional reaction. She was trembling and probably not just because the car had yet to warm up. “We need to go home,” she repeated.