Hot Contract (4 page)

Keegan flipped on the light. “Don’t
move.”

Keegan was real?

He tossed a floor cushion to her and scooped
the wastebasket from under her desk. “Why can’t you have a cheap
lamp like everyone else? Stand on that while I clean this up.” He
scooped the lamp into her wastebasket and swore, shaking glass from
his palm.

“It’s Tiffany," she said, staring at his
hand.

“Stay on that cushion. Don't move.”

Blood dripped between his fingers, spattering
the pale flannel sheets. Suddenly, her head was floating a good ten
feet above her body. She hadn’t had a flashback in years. Hadn’t,
didn’t...couldn’t stop crying.

There was blood everywhere. Her mother had
been gone for such a long time. And her father had been so upset
when word reached them that Eliza Stalling had been found. She’d
wanted her mother back, and it was easy to sneak into the back of
her father’s car. Even her brother, up front with the grownups
didn’t notice, and he usually had a kind of sixth sense about her.
When they stopped, Jen couldn’t wait.

She'd hurried after the others only to slam
into Percy. Her brother made a strange moaning sound, and his
skinny back blocked the doorway so she couldn’t see in. She shoved
him—omigod, she
shoved
him—out into that horrible room, that
butcher’s shop where her once laughing mother hung like so much
meat.

Her hands dripping blood.

Jen swayed to her feet, palms pressed to her
eyes. Blocking out the sight didn't make the memories go away. If
anything, it made them worse. “Wipethebloodoffyour hand.”

“What?”

“Wipethebloodoffyourhand—damn it! Wipe the
blood off!
Do it now!
”

The way Keegan's luck ran the minute Jen
stepped off that cushion she'd puncture an artery and bleed to
death. “Don’t move—you're going to hurt yourself.”

Her mouth opened and stumbled over words she
obviously didn't want to say. “Wipe your hand,” she blurted.

“Yeah, I can do that. See? I’m wiping.” He
inched around the tangle of iridescent shards, almost close enough
to grab her.

“I-I...don’t like blood.”

He wiped harder. “I know. Jesus, Jen—”

Her face was white. She was losing it,
getting ready to bolt. Keegan grabbed her around the waist and spun
her out into the middle of the room. Talk about light-headed. He
felt sick and dizzy right down to his stomach. The only thing he
was going to do was stand in one place and hold her until he could
breathe again.

“S-Sorry,” she whispered. Not looking at him,
looking away. Anywhere but at him. “I’m so sorry.”

What the hell was she sorry for? Having a
fucked up life? “You didn’t puke,” he reminded her.

The smile barely moved her mouth, but he was
abruptly fixated on the curve of her lips and chin. She smelled
like roses and musk, sweet and too damned heady.

“Small mercies,” she said.

Keegan dropped his chin on her hair and took
a deep, long breath. “Your family has a lot to answer for.” Which
was about the stupidest thing he’d said in a long time, since he
didn’t know her family from Adam, but she didn't say anything. He
stared at the wall, wondering if she dealt with idiots all the time
or was putting on a show. Both thoughts made him cringe.

He let her go. “You okay?”

Jen stared down at her clenched fists. She
wanted him to keep touching her and how wrong was that?

“...I need a bath,” Keegan was saying.

She forced herself to pay attention and his
eyes darkened like he was angry, but she hadn’t done anything, had
she?

“I’m fine,” she said, turning her back on
him.

He slammed into the bathroom and the water
started an instant later.

Jen leaned against the wall next to the door.
In less than a day Keegan had seen her at her neurotic worst. She’d
let none of her other bodyguards in so close, but Keegan was
different. When he wasn’t trying to play down his arrogance, he
forgot himself and moved with the kind of lethal grace she
associated with her more dangerous cousins.

Her thoughts circled back to Terri. Why
Terri? What made her so important? Jen wiped her eyes, surprised to
find them wet.

The bathroom door opened on a rush of steam
and Keegan eyed her with his default expression—neutral and utterly
bland. He had a towel around his hips and one hand over the hole in
his shoulder.

“I could use some bandages,” he said.

She nodded, then edged around him with her
face averted in a fruitless attempt to keep him from seeing her
tears. Keegan moved at the same time and his elbow brushed her
breasts. She gasped and he swore. She didn’t know which of them was
more shocked.

He stepped back and looked away. “You said
you had a first aid kit.”

She fumbled the flat plastic case out of the
medicine cabinet and pushed it at him. “Here, take it.”

“You’re crying,” he said.

“Good observation.”

“I have a washcloth. Y’know, if you want to
use it?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine if you’re crying so hard you
can’t see where you’re going.” He took the first aid kit from her
hands, put it down, and turned back to her, a balled up washcloth
in one hand. “Work with me, here. I’m on your side.”

Keegan reached for her, surprised that she
didn’t move. Instead she burst into hiccups the second he touched
her, shoulders shaking, all hunched up around her ears like a life
preserver.

Distance was the key. The woman had been
pushed too far in too short a time. She needed breathing space he
couldn’t give her with him all up in her business like he
belonged.

He ran the cloth over her face, smoothing the
salt from her delicate skin. “Better?”

She looked at him, a brief upward flick of
her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No!”

He cleared his throat. “Thought I’d ask,” he
said, feeling like an idiot.

Her totally unexpected smile illuminated her
down-turned face like lightning. She looked at him then, and this
time met his gaze fully. “If I ever do, you’ll be first on my
list.”

Jen closed the bathroom door behind her with
a determined thump. It helped that the day was overcast. Her eyes
hurt, all sore and swollen from her crying jag. Sunlight spilled
across the floor and glitter-skipped across what was left of the
broken lamp.

There were squeaky boards and an equal number
of worn risers on the narrow spiral staircase that led to her loft
bedroom, but whoever was coming up missed them all. Jen saw the
hair first, pale silver blonde.

“You’re his sister.”

Familiar gray eyes gave her an assessing
look. “Yeah, I’m Corlis. Where’s my brother, Ms. Stalling?” She
pronounced it Miz, and for all the inflection she put into her
question she could have been asking about the weather.

“Bathroom,” said Jen.

Corlis looked at the broken lamp and made a
quick circuit of the room. “Go downstairs. I need to talk to
him.”

“Is something wrong?”

Corlis was so contained it was difficult to
tell what she was thinking. She let the silence drag out until it
wasn’t silence anymore, but a weapon.

“We have intruders,” she said.

Keegan opened the door, working at something
around his waist. Jen caught a flash of ballistic nylon before he
pulled his shirt back down.

He glanced at her, his expression closed.
“How many?”

“Two,” said Corlis. “They hit the outer
perimeter a minute ago. ETA in four.”

Jen looked around in panic. “I haven’t packed
yet!”

“No time.” Keegan hustled her downstairs, one
hand in the small of her back. “Right now I want you to get into
the hallway and lay down as far from the door as you can.”

Corlis followed them closely. “Fallon,” she
called. "Give us a sit-rep.”

The stairs looped around and continued down
another flight. Someone moved in the lower vestibule, black-haired
and hard to see in dirty gray camouflage.

“Big and little,” he said. “Looks like the
big one has a key.”

Jen shoved past Keegan. “That’s Makena—”

Keegan pulled her behind him. “If something
happens, I don’t want you in the line of fire.”

The door crashed back and bounced off the
wall. “Guinevere!” he bellowed. Her cousin was a force of nature,
driving through everything that didn’t suit him. He emerged from
the stairwell like a leviathan rising from the deep, took one look
at Keegan’s hand on Jen and went berserk, kicking the legs out from
under him.

Jen hung in her cousin’s powerful grip, toes
dangling. “Mac...I can’t breathe....”

Makena dropped her on her feet and cupped her
chin. He was a doctor, although currently working as a volunteer
paramedic. “Who are the assholes, Guinevere?”

“Dad sent them.”

“Don’t bullshit me!" roared Makena. "If this
guy was from Security, he’d know better than to touch you.”

Keegan got to his feet, cool and professional
like Makena hadn’t just knocked him over like a bowling pin. Bad
move. Her cousin interpreted non-confrontation as weakness.

Keegan stuck out his hand. “You’re Makena
Kualani.”

“And you’re the bodyguard.” Makena was a
Stalling on his mother’s side, and trying hard to be obnoxious.

His friend, Kimo, skittered in, followed by a
tall, black-haired man with hot blue eyes and a gun. Kimo was all
but dancing in his need to get away, hopping from foot to foot, and
looking from side to side.

Makena and his best friend were nothing
alike. Her cousin was a typical Stalling, large and heavily
muscled, with long black hair tied back with a twist of tapa cloth
and a double band of traditional Hawaiian tribal tattoos around
each brawny bicep while Kimo was a scrawny tension coil, ready to
explode.

“Mac,” he said out of the corner of his
mouth. “We’ve got to leave.”

Jen was just as anxious. With the way Makena
was puffing up, someone was going to get hurt. “Chandler called
you,” she said. “I told him not to.”

Makena stopped glaring at Keegan long enough
to give her an irritated look. “I came, didn’t I?”

“Keegan got here first.”

And they both knew how thrilled she was with
that. Art was capable of doing anything to protect his interests.
With Jen’s brother Percy fighting his reproductive duties, Jen was
one half of Art’s direct line of descent.

“This dynastic shit gets on my nerves,” said
Makena. He sighed, heavy and gusty, like she didn’t already know he
was the male version of a drama queen. “Think you could get them to
lower their weapons? Kimo is delicate.”

Jen leaned around her cousin to give Kimo a
quick smile. “Thanks for coming.”

“You’re not welcome, considering I all but
pissed myself.” Kimo glanced around. “What is this, some kind of
Rambo convention?”

“This is Keegan,” she told him. “Corlis.
And—”

“Fallon,” said the man behind Kimo.

Makena folded his arms. “These guys aren’t
from Security, they’re instead of Security. You’re
compromised.”

“Chandler is working on it.”

Makena twitched her a disgusted look.
“StallingCo is impenetrable. You know Art would take you back in a
heartbeat.”

“I’ve spent myself on StallingCo. I belong
here.”

“You’d do that to Percy? Again?”

Jen winced at the reference to her brother.
“I’m not my mother.”

“No,” said Makena, soft and completely
vicious. “You can be your own category, all by yourself, another
nightmare for him to carry around in his head.”

“I can’t live my life in fear. If I give up
now, what happens next time? It’s
failure
, Makena. Don’t you
see?”

“You’d rather fucking die?”

She lifted her chin. “Are you threatening
me?”

Keegan put an arm around her. “Back off,
doctor.”

“Right. Get your clothes, Guinevere.”

“She stays,” said Keegan. Not so pleasant
now.

“She comes with me—you get out of my face—and
we forget this whole thing. Or you can try to make me leave.” The
look in Makena’s eyes was evil.

Jen knew he was itching for a fight.
Something had set him on edge and he wanted to take his anger out
beating someone to a pulp. Not Keegan. Maybe Fallon since the look
in his eyes was evil and calculating. If he thought he could take
Makena, she didn’t want to know what he had to back it up. Anyone
crazy enough to attack someone that outweighed him by a hundred
pounds was crazy enough to win.

She pushed clear of Keegan and confronted her
cousin with her hands on her hips. “Crawling back to Dad is too
much like crawling back into a cage. If I’m out, I stand some
chance of freedom.”

Makena's face softened. “I’m worried about
you, Jen.”

“Damn you, Makena. That is so not fair.”

It wasn’t right to play this scene out in
front of strangers, but there was anxiety in his Stalling-black
eyes, the unspoken statement that if she needed him, he would drop
everything to help her, as he had done years ago during that final
break with her father.

She shook her head, stumbling over words she
had never been able to say, and saw in his eyes he already
knew.

Neither of them did well with words. “I’ll be
all right,” she said awkwardly.

“If you need a safe house, you have my
number. Call me—and Jen?”

“Yes?”

His smile was crooked. “Show up for my mom's
luau. She sent a dress. It's out in the Rover."

****

Fallon re-set the perimeter alarm and
straightened, rubbing the hair out of his eyes.

Before he heaved his enormous bulk up into
the cab of his Range Rover, Kualani flipped him off and his
squirrelly little sidekick followed, taking the opportunity to
repeat the gesture a couple more times before they left. Just
another day in his ass-backwards life. Getting dumped on and
flipped off by people he didn’t even know. Fallon pulled his hood
up and slogged back through the mud.