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Done, Harriet texted back a few minutes later.
As soon as Elise was close enough to maneuver her Jaguar into the exit lane, she did, stirring up roadside gravel in her wake as she gratefully left the standing traffic on the interstate and took off down the exit ramp. Resisting the urge to flip the bird to her rearview mirror as she went, she rolled to a stop at the red light at the bottom of the ramp and reached for her cell phone, intending to reactivate the GPS.
She didn’t see the Hummer bearing down on her until it was too late to do anything except stare up at her rearview mirror in disbelief. “What in the world?” She heard tires squealing and then a sharp bump from behind sent her Jaguar hopping forward on the pavement and her cell phone flying out of her hand. Her car shuddered to a stop dangerously close to the Buick in front of it and vibrated with indignation for several seconds afterward.
Oh my God! I’ve just been hit by a stalker! Frantic, Elise threw her car into Park and quickly dived at the passenger-side floorboard in search of her cell phone.
The light changed, and, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred, the line of cars to her left moved forward and merged into traffic, while the Hummer behind her pulled into the tow lane to her right and its driver shut off its engine. It took a second for the gravity of the situation to sink in, but when it did, she joined him in the tow lane, leaving enough space between the two vehicles to make a quick escape possible.
It didn’t occur to her to be afraid. What she was, she suddenly decided, was completely and thoroughly pissed.
* * *
Hidden behind tinted one-way glass, Broderick Cannon saw the woman coming, closing the distance between her sophisticated little gold car and his Hummer with long-legged, angry strides. With every step she took, her leather coat flapped open, giving him an enticing glimpse of nipples hard enough to cut glass underneath her dress and a generous hourglass figure. He sat back in his seat and lazily watched her come, wondering what the Jackie O–style sunglasses covering half of her face were hiding and if she was packing something other than lipstick in the ridiculously large purse dangling from the crook of her arm. She had to be, he decided, pressing a button to disengage the electronic locks and then releasing his seat belt. Either that or she was certifiable.
The pretty ones always are, he thought as his gaze momentarily settled on the rhythmic sway of her hips, then slowly traveled back up to her face. The fact that she could be, this very second, walking into a dangerous trap either hadn’t occurred to her or she simply didn’t care. Either way, the chances of her being completely nuts were looking better and better.
As if she could somehow read his thoughts, she slowed to a stop at the midway point between their vehicles and struck a pose, tapping a foot impatiently on the pavement. He cracked a smile despite himself. She was a sitting duck, and she didn’t even know it. But just in case she wasn’t as stylishly clueless as she looked in her red-bottom boots, he released the safety on his .357 SIG Sauer pistol and tucked it into the rear waistband of his slacks. Twice, he’d seen her touching up her makeup in the rearview mirror, instead of driving. Another time, she’d held up traffic while she fiddled with something on the dashboard instead of driving. And still another time, she’d spent way too much time fiddling with her cell phone instead of driving. Any idiot could see that her negligence was to blame for their accident, but maybe forcing him to rear-end her was her plan all along. Maybe she thought that he was the sitting duck.
And maybe pigs really do fly, Broderick thought as he climbed down from the Hummer and went to meet her.
Fifteen years ago, he’d put away his master’s degree in computer engineering from Brown University, and, instead of heading for Silicon Valley like he’d always planned, he joined the navy and applied to the SEALs program. He was recruited by the CIA’s Special Operations Group a few months after graduation, and the rest was history.
His specialties were global threat suppression and hostage extraction, and, for the past fifteen years, that’s exactly what he’d done—brought home hostages that the rest of the world had written off as hopelessly lost; hunted down reclusive global leaders and brought them to justice; and gathered intelligence on terrorist sleeper cells worldwide. Aside from the fact that he was a fifth-degree black belt, a decorated marksman and fluent in three languages, he was damn good at his job and, somewhere, he had a chest full of medals and commendations to prove it. As a result, when he decided to go into reserve status three years ago and launch Cannon Corp as the initial phase of his eventual transition back into civilian life, his inaugural client list had damn near built itself. Most of the cases that he took on nowadays were significantly less risky than the ones he’d once lived and breathed around the clock, but he hadn’t yet learned how to adjust his actions and reactions accordingly, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
Nevertheless, one thing was for damn sure—he’d never been anyone’s sitting duck.
“You hit my car!” she shrieked as soon as he emerged from the Hummer and sent the door flying shut behind him. Another round of cars whipped past them just in time to catch the tail end of her accusation, complete with flailing arms and a perfectly shocked O of a mouth. He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes to the sky.
The pretty ones were always drama queens, too.
“Are you out of your mind?” he countered calmly, approaching her head-on. “Or does the fact that you seem to have no regard for your personal safety mean that’s already a foregone conclusion?” To her credit, she didn’t flinch when he stopped less than a foot away from her, dropped his hands on his hips and purposely loomed over her. Instead, she crossed her arms underneath those lovely, Jell-O–like breasts of hers, shifted her weight to one side and faced him defiantly. She was taller than he’d first thought, and up close, her glittering mouth was nothing short of amazing.
“That’s funny because I was about to ask you the same thing. I could’ve sworn that road rage is illegal.”
He looked up from staring at her shimmering lips and found the foggy outline of her eyes behind her dark lenses. “So is texting while driving,” he fired back. “And if touching up your makeup while driving isn’t already illegal, it certainly should be. Don’t you think?”
An outraged chuckle burst out of her mouth. “You know, I think that what should be illegal,” she said without missing a beat, “is driving around in a pimped-out monstrosity, hiding behind tinted windows while you terrorize every other vehicle on the road. Don’t you think?”
His head started shaking in denial right around the time that she referred to his baby as a pimped-out monstrosity, and it was still shaking when he said, “Not quite every other vehicle on the road, just little toy ones being driven by Barbie dolls who can’t stop looking at themselves in the rearview mirror long enough to properly operate them.” That pimped-out monstrosity crack had stung.
Her mouth dropped open, snapped closed and then dropped open again. The process was fascinating to watch.
“Excuse me? I’m not the maniac who rammed into the back of someone else’s car. You are.”
“I think you might be using the word rammed a little loosely here, because—”
“You did ram my car! Are you denying it?”
“I don’t think so and no, I’m not denying that there was some contact between your vehicle and mine. What I’m saying is that I merely tapped your rear bumper. I didn’t ram it.”
“There’s a scratch.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is.”
“I don’t believe you. Show me.”
“Are you kidding me? You can’t seriously believe that I...that you...that...” She floundered visibly, then stopped short, throwing up her hands in defeat and sucking in a slow, steady breath. “You know what? Whatever. This is pointless,” she said, waving a dismissive hand in his general direction and then spinning around on her skyscraper heels. “I’ve already called the police, and they should be here soon,” she tossed back at him over her shoulder as she walked off. “I’m going to wait for them over there. You stay here.”
Her butt was a work of art. “Fine,” he called after her, staring at it.
“Fine!” she yelled back.
Okay, so maybe the Barbie doll crack was a low blow. But it wasn’t like she was the only one who had a reason to be irritated. Visiting the Midwest in late February had to rank in the top five on Broderick’s personal list of things that would never occur to a sane person. Yet here he was, and the circumstances that had brought him here weren’t even close to being the best. There were no guarantees on how long he could actually stay, so every second counted. It stood to reason that he hadn’t bothered to factor time into his already-tight schedule for dealing with distracted women drivers and the traffic accidents that they inevitably caused.
And now that his schedule was shot to hell because of one such driver, she was giving him attitude when he was the one who should be furious? What the hell ever. She was over there right now, inspecting her bumper like it was in danger of falling off. Taking picture after picture of it with her laptop-sized cell phone, from as many different angles as she could manage, in case he was thinking about running back to his Hummer before the police arrived and fleeing the scene. She had no idea that, as far as traffic accidents went, she should’ve been happy that he was the one who’d rammed her toy car and not some psychotic maniac, because a scratch on her bumper could’ve ended up being the very least of her worries.
Just last month, his firm had been called in to investigate a kidnapping that had gone horribly wrong long before someone thought to refer the young woman’s distraught parents to him. After nearly a week of local police and FBI involvement, it had taken his men just over two days to find the girl, but by then the only thing that their discovery could offer her parents and local police was closure. That and the identity of her kidnapper—a psychopath who, among other things, had regularly staged minor traffic accidents to lure unsuspecting women into his sadistic trap. It was how he’d gotten their daughter, his last victim.
Minor traffic infractions just like this one. And unsuspecting women just like the one snapping pictures right now.
Where the hell were the police, anyway?
Against his better judgment, he walked over to where she was leaning back against the passenger door of her Jaguar, working her cell phone like a speed demon, to find out. When his shadow fell over her, she looked up, saw him standing there and uttered the sexiest sigh that he’d ever heard. Somewhere along the shaft of his semi-sleeping penis, a nerve yawned and stretched.
Tongue in cheek, he said, “Excuse me, but when you said you’d already called the police, you did mean today, right?” He didn’t need to actually see her eyes to know that she rolled them.
Hard.
“Of course I called them today. Trust me, I would not be standing here indulging your obvious mental instability if I wasn’t absolutely certain that they were on the way.”
The tiny diamond stud in her left nostril was a sparkling stranger in a landscape of even tinier cocoa-colored freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. It, unlike her forked tongue, was attractive, he thought as a grin played with his lips. “I’m sorry, but did you just call me unstable?”
“I believe so, yes,” she said, dropping her cell phone into her purse and then taking out a makeup compact. She flipped it open and inspected her lip gloss critically. “If I’d known exactly how unstable, I would’ve locked myself inside my car from the very beginning and called in the National Guard, instead.”
“Which reminds me,” Broderick sniped back at her without missing a beat. “In situations like this, that’s precisely what you should do. Another time, you might consider staying inside your car while you wait for the police or anyone else to arrive. I’m just saying,” he quickly added when she bristled visibly. “If I were, say, a serial killer, you would have just walked right into my trap.”
“Are you a serial killer?”
He wished he could see her eyes. “Fortunately for you, no, I’m not.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Isn’t it?”
* * *
Five months, Broderick suddenly remembered as he watched her lips form the words that she spoke. That’s how long it’d been since he last made time in his schedule or room in his bed for a woman. Five months.
Crazy work hours, dangerous working conditions and near-constant travel. They were all to blame for his forced celibacy. Mostly, anyway. In his line of work, maintaining a relationship was like being burdened with a second job, especially since he was never really off duty from the first one. There was no such thing as a typical assignment, set time frames or guaranteed outcomes, and he liked it that way. Women? Not so much, especially since those same improbabilities applied to his personal life, as well. He had long since made peace with the fact that his career choice meant that he’d probably die a lonely old man, but in the meantime, he’d been known to occasionally carve out a little time for a no-strings-attached fling.
He wondered if she’d be willing to join him. Then he said, “You know, the fact that you can joke about your personal safety is very telling. A random encounter like this one, on the interstate—any interstate—could’ve ended very differently for you.”
“Then I guess it’s lucky for you that it didn’t, Mr...?”
“Cannon. Broderick Cannon.” He made himself look away from her mouth. “And you are?”
“Quite capable of defending myself, Mr. Cannon.”
Her glistening lips curved into a smile so charming and so innocently sweet that every nerve in his penis simultaneously sputtered. His gaze wandered back down to her mouth just as twin dimples sank into her cheeks, a third one winked out at him from the center of her chin and a soft giggle eased out from between even, white teeth. A second later, it flickered back up, locked on to the dim of her eyes behind her dark lenses and narrowed speculatively.
“And, oh, look!” she exclaimed in a childlike voice. “Just in case you really are a serial killer, here come the police. I feel safer already.” Sidestepping around him carefully, she walked off and left him standing there with visions of his tongue dancing between her thighs flashing before his eyes.
It wasn’t until a half hour later, when their fender bender had been duly documented and his was the last vehicle to drive away from the scene, that Broderick took the time to look at her insurance information and the business card that she’d grudgingly handed him before jumping into her car and speeding away. It was printed on soft pink parchment paper and lightly scented. He’d been too busy staring at her to pay it much attention before then.
Her name, he thought as he wondered exactly what kind of fly-by-night operation Carrington Consulting was, was Elise Carrington.
Chapter 3 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
Classical music was billowing from underneath the study doors, filling the dimly lit foyer, when Elise finally made it home. Knowing that her sister was undoubtedly in the midst of it and hoping to avoid running into her just yet, Elise closed the door as quietly as she could and tiptoed to the coat closet to hang up her coat. After the ridiculous afternoon she’d just had, the last thing she was in the mood for was one of her sister’s nerve-jangling inquisitions. The drive home was stressful enough as it was, without having to get into a whole thing with Olivia as soon as she walked through the door. Right now, all she wanted to do was change into something loose and comfortable, get her hands on a couple of aspirin and then wash them down with a glass of white wine. She’d come clean to Olivia later.
Under the cover of Tchaikovsky’s urgent-sounding crescendos, Elise began creeping toward the staircase at the far end of the foyer. Holding her breath and moving on the tips of her toes, she narrowly avoided teetering sideways into the centerpiece of the foyer—a marble, French baroque-style pedestal table—by a hair and froze for five long seconds. Satisfied that Olivia hadn’t heard her, she started carefully inching forward again. She had almost reached the bottom step when the volume of the music suddenly dropped, one of the study doors swung open and Olivia appeared in the doorway like an apparition. Caught, Elise stopped short and slowly removed her sunglasses.
Great. Just great.
“Soooo...” Olivia said in a singsong voice as she leaned in the doorway and eyed Elise balefully over the rim of her reading glasses. “Joel called.”
“I figured he would. What did he say?” As if she didn’t already know.
“He said that you walked into his house, stayed just long enough to decline his case and then walked right back out. And then you were in some sort of road-rage incident that led to a car accident?” Arms still folded and eyebrows raised, Olivia padded barefoot across the foyer until she was close enough to see Elise clearly in the muted lighting. Circling her slowly, she looked her up and down with a wrinkle of concern creasing her forehead.
“What are you doing?” Elise asked, tracking her movements suspiciously.
“I’m making sure you’re okay. The way Joel was going on and on, it was like listening to an episode of How to Get Away with Murder. I was worried sick. What in the world happened to you after you left here earlier?”
“Well, Joel was right about one thing. There was an accident but—”
“What? Oh my God, what happened?” Eyes wide, she pounced on Elise, checking with searching hands for possible bumps, bruises or breaks. Finding none, she breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Elise said, warding off Olivia’s hovering hands as she moved around her and reached for the wooden banister behind her. “It was really just a tap, and it happened on my way to Joel’s house, not after I left. I’m surprised Joel even knew about it.” She climbed one step, then two and then it occurred to her. “Wait, what am I saying? Of course, Joel knew about it. He probably told him all about it before I got there.”
“He? Who’s he and exactly what was there to tell?”
Elise opened her mouth to explain, then thought better of it. Introducing Broderick Cannon’s name into the conversation right now would only result in more questions, and, if Elise factored in the questions that were already in queue to be asked, they could end up standing there half the night, which was so out of the question that it was laughable. There was only so much harassment that she was willing to take in one day, without a chilled glass of Reisling on hand as backup, and she’d reached her threshold well over an hour ago.
“Elise?” Olivia prompted with a cocked brow when the silence stretched from one second into five.
“Just some friend of Joel’s from college. No one important,” Elise explained vaguely, impatiently. “A private investigator, I think.”
And a demigod, she silently added, mentally reviewing Broderick’s finer points in her mind. Six-three or -four, with the kind of imposing build that was best served scantily clad and glistening with body oil. Smooth, mocha brown skin, full lips and sleepy-looking bedroom eyes, rimmed with long black lashes. A deliberate five-o’clock shadow that was as expertly groomed as his close-cropped black hair was and a slightly off-kilter smile that, by itself, was seemingly harmless but that, together with the whole of him, was exactly the thing that instantly melted a woman’s panties and summarily dismissed every ounce of her self-control.
Elise knew because she’d been transfixed herself by the way his protruding Adam’s apple bobbed rhythmically in his powerful-looking neck as he talked and the way the slashes in his cheeks bracketed his mouth just so when he smiled. She’d been secretly appreciating the way the muscles in his forearms strained against the sleeves of his black trench coat whenever he moved his arms, when she also happened to notice that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and suddenly thought, eighteen months. That’s how much time had passed since her last relationship ended and, not until the moment that Broderick loomed over her and blithely suggested that he could be a serial killer, had it ever occurred to her to question exactly why.
At some point, very early on, when she was still thinking clearly and in her right mind, she noticed the look in his eyes, recognized it for what it was and knew she was in trouble. The same X-rated thoughts that were running through her mind were clearly running through his, but, unlike her, he didn’t seem to care that she could see them. She should’ve been offended by the unobstructed view into his carnal thoughts, but, instead, she was excited and slippery wet, and embarrassed by her body’s reaction to him. And, honestly, she’d been too busy ogling him right back and thanking God for dark sunglasses to hide behind while she did it, to bother jumping on anyone’s feminist soapbox. Frankly, his boldness, his tendency to stare at her mouth when she talked and at her breasts when he thought she wasn’t looking, turned her on.
He was a spectacular-looking man, an interesting cross between Boris Kodjoe and the Terminator, with a hint of something else lurking beneath the surface, something other than his amazing looks and tall, powerhouse physique. He’d been dressed like a business mogul, in a flawlessly tailored trench coat, cashmere dress slacks and hand-sewn Italian loafers. But the energy around him was raw and intense, his gait controlled and predatory, like a caged beast, one that was chomping at the bit and impatiently biding his time on lockdown.
My God, he was sexy.
Elise had never been more attracted to a man in her entire life.
But that information was on a need-to-know basis, and, as far as Elise was concerned, Olivia didn’t need to know. They were identical twins, but when it came to men, the two of them were like Jekyll and Hyde. Olivia was a femme fatale, with a trail of broken hearts in her wake that dated all the way back to kindergarten to prove it. While Elise...well, Elise had simply watched the drama that was her sister’s life unfold from the sidelines. She was a bookworm, who’d been obsessed with maintaining her position as captain of the debate team and with maintaining at least a 3.5 GPA at all times. She was seventeen, almost eighteen, when she got around to her first tongue kiss and a whopping twenty-one when she fumbled her way through losing her virginity, and even then she’d only done it because she figured that it was about time. To this day, she could count on one hand the number of men that she’d been intimate with since then.
And she’d still have two fingers left.
Men like Broderick Cannon scared the hell out of her.
“Wait, so Joel hired another firm?” Olivia wanted to know. “A competing firm?”
“I didn’t really leave him any choice. After he hit me, I—”
Olivia gasped. “What? Joel hit you?”
“No,” Elise cried impatiently, stretching the word out into five long syllables. Just a few minutes ago, escape had seemed so possible. Now? Not so much. “Joel didn’t hit me, Broderick Cannon did. Please try to keep up.”
“I am trying, but you’re not making it very easy,” Olivia said, laying a hand on Elise’s forehead and looking concerned. “You seem rattled, and you’re a little flushed, too. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Elise rolled her eyes to the ceiling and swatted Olivia’s hand away. “Stop that. Of course I’m okay.” She climbed two more steps. “I just need a few minutes—”
“Well, at least come into the kitchen with me and have some tea. It should be done steeping by now. It’ll help you relax, and you can tell me all about whatever happened today...from the beginning and in chronological order this time. How about that?”
—alone to catch my breath and process everything, Elise finished silently. Aloud, she said: “Well—” The ringing doorbell cut her off. For a second, she was torn between hanging around to see who was at the door and getting out while the getting was good. “Who could that be at this time of the evening?”
Olivia frowned at her watch. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the courier that Eli was supposed to send over with some papers five hours ago,” she said, referring to Eli Seamus, the retired CIA agent who moonlighted as their Competitive Intelligence Analyst, or CIA, and all-around computer hacker. “He’s called five times now, each time to let me know that he was running a little later than he was running when he called the time before that.”
“Who? Eli?”
“No, the courier, and you can bet Eli is going to hear all about it first thing in the morning.” The doorbell rang again, and Olivia’s neck rolled ominously. “He’s five hours late, and I’m the one who’s taking too long?” She threw up her hands and let them fall back to her sides wearily. “Incredible.” Sighing disgustedly, she whirled and headed for the door, giving Elise just the opportunity that she needed to hurry up the rest of the stairs. “Listen, don’t go anywhere, okay?” Olivia called out to Elise as she switched on the veranda light and went up on her tiptoes to peek through the peephole. “I’m still not convinced that you’re completely okay, and I want to talk some more about what happened today.”
Elise decided to go with getting out while the getting was good and made a dash for it, heading up a second, shorter flight of stairs to the second-floor balcony that overlooked the foyer while Olivia was still talking. She leaned over the balcony and called back, “Sure, I’ll be right back,” then hurried down the east hallway to her bedroom suite and firmly shut the door behind her.
In about an hour, she thought a few minutes later, as she peeled off her clinging panties and stepped into a cold shower.
Chapter 4 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
The massive entry door swung open, and Broderick’s brown eyes met a pair of gorgeous amber-colored ones. She’d gotten rid of the giant sunglasses and traded her dress and boots for tight black pants, a flowing top that bared one caramel-colored shoulder, and bare feet. Up top, a pair of eyeglasses was anchored in the midst of the wild, curly lion’s mane framing her face, and, down below, glossy, hot-pink toenails and an ultrafeminine diamond ankle bracelet winked up at him. If it hadn’t been for the subtle, provocative gleam in her eye, she could’ve passed for an innocent college coed, with her smooth, clear skin and big, blinking eyes. She was so completely opposite of the snarling sex kitten from earlier that, for a second, he wondered if he was looking at the same person. Then she smiled and he thought, There she is.
