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Tempt Me
Caroline Cross
He was chained to her bed. Ex-Army Ranger John Taggert Steele couldn't believe the pretty little mess he was in. The case should have been easy: Track down runaway murder witness Genevieve Bowen and return her to police custody. But somehow he ended up shackled to the sassy brunette's bed–and rather than thinking how to get out of it, he was sorely tempted to get Genevieve in it so he could teach her a much-needed lesson in domination.Because one way or another he'd regain control, and show her what happens when you play with a desperate man's heart.
Tempt Me
Caroline Cross
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
One
John Taggart Steele stood motionless in the shifting shadows that edged the towering stand of evergreens.
Snowflakes swirled in the icy air around him, swept from the treetops high overhead by a capricious wind. Narrowing his eyes against the October sun, he raised his binoculars to zero in on the tidy A-frame cabin in the clearing five hundred yards away, only to jerk the glasses away as his cell phone vibrated. Ripping it from the clip on his belt, he glanced at the screen and saw the call was from Steele Security’s Denver office. He hit the receive button and slapped the instrument to his ear. “What?”
“Looks like it’s her, all right.” As calm as a summer day, his brother Gabe’s voice held neither reproach at the brusque greeting nor satisfaction as he delivered the long-awaited confirmation.
Taggart said nothing, merely waited.
“The truck was recently registered to a woman calling herself Susan Moore. The previous owner is a Laramie grad student who says he sold the vehicle three weeks ago to a cocktail waitress at the bar he frequents. He described Bowen to a T, said she was ‘a real sweet little thing.’ She paid cash for the vehicle and confided she was headed south to see her ailing grandpa.”
“Laramie, huh?”
Gabe seemed to know exactly what Taggart was thinking. “Yeah. When she left Flagstaff, she bolted toward Denver, not away. Totally unexpected, completely illogical.” There was a pause, then he added thoughtfully, “It was a damn good strategy.”
Good strategy wasn’t quite how Taggart would describe it—not when he’d been chasing the elusive Ms. Genevieve Bowen for close to three months. Still, he shoved away the rude comment that sprang to mind, along with his uncharacteristic impatience. Emotion didn’t have a place in the job he did as a partner in Steele Security, the business he and his brothers ran out of their home base in Denver, Colorado. The kind of work they did—hostage and fugitive recovery, personal protection, threat management, industrial security—required clear but creative thinking, situational analysis, high-stakes decision making.
Taggart regarded being cool and impartial an absolute necessity. It ought to be chiseled in stone, if you asked him—his brother Dominic’s recent marriage to a wealthy debutante he’d rescued from the clutches of a ruthless Caribbean dictator notwithstanding.
He shifted his gaze from the cabin to the ancient Ford pickup parked at the far end of it. Just because the vehicle’s recent history fit with his quarry’s MO—blend in, deal in cash, vanish after dropping false hints about your destination—that didn’t automatically mean it was Bowen. There was still a chance she’d again eluded him—and gained the gratitude and ensuing silence of yet another needy young woman matching her general description—by giving away the truck the way she had three previous vehicles.
Only Taggart didn’t think so. And not merely because his instincts were clamoring that his luck had finally turned. Because this time, damned if he hadn’t seen her himself, bold as brass, driving out of the Morton’s Grocery parking lot on the outskirts of Kalispell.
The cabin door swung open. “I’ve got movement,” he told Gabe. “I’ll catch you later.” Not waiting for a reply, he disconnected and shifted the binoculars into place as a woman stepped out onto the porch that skirted the cabin.
With icy calm, he let his gaze climb her length, starting at her fleece-topped boots and moving up her slim, blue-jeaned legs, past a serviceable green parka until he arrived, at long last, at her face.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It was her, all right. After the dozen weeks he’d spent on her trail, interviewing her friends and showing her picture around, her features were as familiar to him as his own. There was the full mouth, the straight little nose, the big dark eyes and the slightly squared chin. Her glossy brown hair, which she’d once worn in a thick braid that reached to her waist, was now cropped short and, after a number of cut-and-color transformations, back to its original color.
He frowned as something nagged at him, and then his face smoothed out as he realized he was simply surprised by how small she was. Even though his information on her included the fact that she was only five foot three, for some reason he’d expected her to appear taller.
Nevertheless, it was her—Ms. Genevieve Bowen, Silver, Colorado, bookstore owner and literacy booster, teen mentor, animal lover, occasional emergency foster mother. A woman so well-known for her random acts of kindness that her friends fondly referred to her as their own little Pollyanna.
Polly-pain-in-the-butt was more like it, Taggart thought, recalling the absolute futility of the past three months. Given Ms. Bowen’s glorified Girl Scout reputation, and the fact that your average model citizen didn’t know jack about being on the lam, he’d assumed he’d be able to track her down without breaking a sweat.
Wrong. First to his surprise and then to his exasperation—and his brothers’ not-so-subtle amusement—little Genevieve had made none of the usual beginner’s mistakes. Hell, she hadn’t made any mistakes. Instead, she’d simply vanished, turning a job that should have been a week-long romp into a test of Taggart’s cunning and perseverance.
It was just too damn bad for her that he was very, very good at his job.
That, being a methodical son of a bitch, he’d decided after losing her trail yet again to revisit all the places he’d initially pegged as being potential bolt holes for her, including her late great-uncle’s northern Montana cabin where she and her brother—who was currently being held without bail on charges of capital murder—had spent several long-ago summers.
And that, in an unpredictable turn of luck, he’d just happened to pull into that grocery store lot at the same time she’d been pulling out. Otherwise, he not only would have missed her, he’d have once again struck the cabin off his list for now and most likely spent another few weeks fruitlessly trying to locate her.
Instead, he’d called in the pickup’s plates to Gabe and followed her back here, managing to remain undetected only because he’d been pretty damn sure where they were going. Once again, what had been good for him had been bad for her.
But then, Genevieve hadn’t exactly had a banner year, what with her brother’s arrest for killing James Dunn, his client’s only son; her own unwanted role as the prosecution’s key witness and her dumb-ass decision to flee rather than testify.
Because now she was his. With a distinct surge of possessiveness, he watched as she reached the truck, keeping the binoculars trained on her vivid face as she retrieved a bag of groceries and trekked back the way she’d come.
Suddenly, just as she reached the stairs that led up to the cabin’s railed porch, she stopped. Swiveling her head, she looked straight at him.
Taggart knew damn well she couldn’t see him. Still, he felt her gaze like a lover’s touch. Rooted in place, he forgot to breathe, stunned as his skin prickled and he felt the oddest tug of recognition….
It seemed like an eternity before she looked away, gave the rest of the clearing a careful once-over, then squared her shoulders and went quickly up the trio of steps. Pausing under the wide overhang that sheltered the door, she abruptly glanced one last time directly at the spot where he stood before she disappeared inside.
Annoyed, he blew out his pent-up breath, asking himself what the hell had just happened. Just who did she think she was? Some sort of psychic? His long-lost soul mate?
Yeah, right. It’d be a cold day in hell when he started believing in that kind of delusional mumbo jumbo.
Jaw clenched, he stowed the binoculars and surged into motion. Carefully hugging the shadow of the trees, he began to work his way toward the back of the cabin, his powerful body making short shrift of the thigh-high snowdrifts.
Enough cat and mouse. It was time to take her down.
Genevieve set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. Chilled despite the warmth of her parka, she rubbed her arms and did her best to dispel her lingering sense of unease.
Try as she might to downplay it, she’d had the most uncomfortable sensation of being watched while she was outside. It had been sharp, overwhelming, eerie—as palpable as an actual touch. Alarm had flickered along her spine; gooseflesh had erupted on her arms and prickled the nape of her neck.
She’d felt a powerful urge to run.
That’s what you get for staying up late last night reading Stephen King. Keep it up, and the next thing you know, you’ll start to think the trees are alive. Or that a mutant squirrel is coming to get you….
A wry little smile tugged briefly at the corners of her mouth. Okay. So maybe she was a wee bit jumpy. It wasn’t really surprising, not when her stop in town to get supplies had filled her with such conflicting feelings.
Typical of her current existence, she’d been scared to death that someone might recognize her while also wishing fervently that she might see a familiar face. Which was not only illogical and contradictory, but also highly improbable since the last time she’d been in the area for more than a night she’d been barely fifteen, nearly half the age she was now.
Still, she knew she was taking a chance by coming here. How to Vanish without a Trace, the book that had been her bible these past months, warned against seeking out known and familiar places.
And yet…Not only was she running dangerously low on money, but she’d changed her identity so many times they were starting to run together. She needed a break—just a week or maybe two—to rest and regroup. And surely, after all this time, anyone still looking for her would have written this place off.
Lord, she hoped so, she thought, turning to glance fondly at the cabin’s simple interior. The structure was a standard, open-concept A-frame. Toward the back, an L-shaped kitchen occupied one side, while the bathroom and a sleeping area with a massive built-in bed occupied the other, the two areas separated by a narrow stairway that led up to a small loft.
A bank of windows stretched across the cabin’s front, divided by a floor-to-ceiling native-stone fireplace equipped with a glass-fronted heat insert. Although the oversized navy couch, the trio of maple occasional tables and the pair of padded rocking chairs were new, chosen by the property management company she’d hired when the place had passed to her and her brother, they had clean, uncluttered lines, like the old furniture she remembered, and were placed to make the most of the sweeping view of the surrounding peaks.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe it was fourteen years ago and that any second her great-uncle Ben would come clattering through the door, an adoring twelve-year-old Seth dogging his heels. The two would snatch away whatever book she happened to be reading—her little brother complained that Genevieve was always reading—and tug her out on the deck to see the sunset or watch an eagle soaring overhead.
Except that Uncle Ben had been gone more than a decade, the last to pass of the quintet of elderly relatives who’d done the best they could to provide their great-niece and great-nephew with some occasional normalcy. While Seth…
Her heart clenched at the memory of the last time she’d seen her brother. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hands weighed down with shackles, Seth’s normally easygoing expression had been closed and implacable as he faced her through the mesh divide of the visitors’ room of the Silver County Jail. “No. No way, Gen,” he’d said flatly. “You go into court and refuse to testify, they’re going to throw you in jail, too.”
“But—”
“No. It’s bad enough that you’re probably going to lose your house—and for what? To pay an attorney who thinks I’m guilty? But I swear to God I’ll confess before I’ll let you sacrifice your freedom.”
“Seth, don’t be foolish—”
“I’m not kidding. It’s a slam dunk I’m going to be convicted.” His voice had been even, almost uninflected, but his eyes had been so defeated it had taken all her strength not to lay her head down on the scarred counter between them and weep. “The best thing you can do is accept that I’m a lost cause and just…move on.”
As if, Genevieve thought fiercely now. The mere thought of giving up on her little brother was inconceivable. They’d never known their father, and it had been just the two of them ever since their mother had abandoned them for good when Genevieve was ten and Seth was seven. She certainly wasn’t about to sit back now and do nothing while he was punished for something he hadn’t done. Any more than she would play a part, however unwilling, in making him appear guilty.
So, after considerable agonizing, she’d decided to run. It was far from a perfect solution—she accepted that eventually she’d have to pay for defying the court—but so far, at least, she’d done what she’d set out to. The trial had been delayed, buying Seth some time. And there was always a chance that one of the dozens of people she’d written to over the past three months—policemen, attorneys, private investigators, her congressman—might actually decide to do what she’d begged and look into the case.
In the meantime, she was doing okay. Sure, she was lonely—just as How to Vanish warned, the hardest part of disappearing wasn’t constructing a new identity or not leaving a paper trail or even not staying too long in any one place.
The hardest part was having no one to talk to. She couldn’t count the number of times during the course of a day that she longed to hear a familiar voice or see a familiar face. As much as she missed home, what she missed even more was someone to confide in, someone she could trust.
Still, as long as she had her books, her freedom and her sincere belief that if she just continued to insist on Seth’s innocence somebody somewhere would eventually listen, she could survive anything.
Uh-huh. Except for that killer squirrel that’s lurking outside, just waiting to get you.
Well, really. What was she going to do? Let herself be controlled by a nonexistent bogeyman, animal or otherwise? Crawl under the bed, cover her eyes and hide?
She drew herself up. Heck, no. She had enough legitimate worries without letting her imagination into the act.
Before she could lose her nerve, she zipped up her parka, strode to the door and flung it open. Marching outside, she caught her breath as a blast of frigid air swept over her, but she didn’t falter. Planting herself at the top of the stairs, she scanned the clearing one more time, determined to put an end to her foolish fears. She scoured the snow for telltale footprints and searched the shadows at the base of the pines for anything out of place.
Nothing. Yet she still had the strangest feeling….
Determined to be thorough and be done with this once and for all, she turned and marched out onto the large, prow-shaped section of the deck that jutted from the cabin’s front. Again she looked and listened, but there wasn’t a thing to suggest another human presence. There was just a glint of sun on snow, the intermittent call of a hawk and the whisper of the wind sighing through the surrounding trees.
See? There’s nobody here but you.
Blowing out a breath, she forced her stiff shoulders to relax. Everything was fine. She and her memories were the only ones here. And once she had the rest of her things out of the truck and got started on the soup she planned to make for dinner, she’d feel even better. She turned and took a step toward the stairs.
Like a ghost come to life, a man materialized out of the shadows of the overhang.
Her heart slammed to a stop along with her feet as she stared at him, the blood suddenly roaring in her ears.
Like her, he was dressed for the weather in a parka, boots and jeans. But that was where all similarity ended. He was huge, six foot four at least, with powerful legs and shoulders like a linebacker’s. His hair was coal-black, cropped close to his head, and his hooded eyes were a pale, icy green.
His face was all angles, with a slash of high cheekbones, a straight blade of a nose, a stubborn chin and firm lips set in a straight, uncompromising line.
He looked dangerous as hell, and Genevieve hadn’t stayed free for three months without learning to trust her instincts.
Whirling, she ran for her life.
Two
Well, hell.
Feeling a distinct stab of annoyance, Taggart launched himself after little Ms. Bowen, who appeared to be operating under the delusion that now that he’d found her, he might actually let her get away.
He swallowed a snort. There was about as much chance of that as of him dancing in the Denver Ballet.
She might be fast, but he was faster. Not to mention bigger, stronger and trained—by the US Army Rangers—to take down considerably tougher, rougher members of society than Genevieve would ever be.
Although he had to admit, closing this case was going to make his week. Hell, who was he kidding? It was going to make his year.
Catching up to her with ease, he tackled her, hauling her close as they reached the edge of the deck, crashed into the railing, flipped over the top and plunged toward the snowbank below.
Instinctively—he wanted to take her into custody, not put her in the hospital, damn it—he twisted, taking the brunt of the impact as they slammed to the ground. He winced as his hip struck a rock and he heard a distinct crunch of plastic as his cell phone bit the dust. Then he winced again as the back of Bowen’s head slammed into his collarbone.
Baring his teeth at the pain, he loosened his grip a fraction, only to bite out a curse as his captive drove her heavily booted heels into his shins at the same time as she punched him hard in the stomach with one sharp little elbow.
That did it. Setting his jaw, he locked his legs around hers and tightened the grip he had on her midriff. “Knock it off.”
“Let go of me!” she countered. “Let go of me this instant or—” her voice wavered as he increased the pressure on her solar plexus, making it impossible for her to get a deep breath “—I swear…you’ll—you’ll be—sorry—”
