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The shadows shifted back and forth until the fire outlined the intruder’s features—caught the slide of the man’s hand, the bulge of the book shoved under his overcoat.
“Come on,” Beck urged, his words clipped. Shifting toward the doorway steps, he willed Regina Menlow to appear in her doorway. “Get the hell out of there, damn it.”
Inside the store, the flames shimmered, growing in height behind the door’s window. In his mind, Beck visualized the blaze greedily consuming the dry kindling of books and wooden shelves.
Seconds sped by. The intruder slipped around a nearby corner, kicking over Santa’s bucket in his haste. The coins scattered, making little sound on the snow-covered sidewalk.
Beck willed himself to follow the man, then cursed himself when his legs wouldn’t obey.
Swearing again, he hit the wall with the side of his fist. After taking one last glance at the corner, he pulled his cap from his head, ripped a hole in the top and created a tube.
He raced across the street, yanking the tube over his face while he ran, until the material covered his mouth and nose.
The heat blasted him before he hit the sidewalk. He didn’t waste time on Menlow’s door, the glass having already turned black with smoke. Instead, he heaved the coin bucket through the display window. Alarms punched the night, but he barely registered the noise. He jumped over the broken glass, shoved books and shelves to the side and slid to the floor.
Quickly, he pictured the blueprint of the store in his mind. If she was as smart as her file claimed, she’d be in the loft upstairs or the office in the back.
Beck glanced up. Flames licked the ceiling, then spread in a bloom of crimson and orange—the loft above already engulfed. If she was upstairs, she was already dead.
He started toward the office.
Smoke and heat choked the air. Fire fed off the books, turning the shelves into blazing walls of hell. Cinders stung his eyes, pierced the cloth until the heavy weight of ash coated his throat and lungs.
He coughed in convulsive fits, battling the heat for oxygen.
He heard it then. An echo of his cough. Haggard, rough. Muffled.
Beck discovered her under a desk in the back office, her body clenched in a tight ball. Grudgingly, he gave her credit for having enough sense to crawl out of harm’s way.
When he reached her, he realized she hadn’t found safety easily. Her hands and feet were bound in duct tape, her mouth covered with the same. He carefully removed the tape from her mouth, making it easier for her to breathe. When she coughed, he fought the relief that rolled through him. Quickly, he shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her head. He lifted her into his arms, cradling her face to his shoulder.
The office held no other exit or windows, forcing Beck back through the flames. Dread raked his gut as he fought through the inferno. Hot sparks burned his neck, smoked his clothes.
Five steps from the front, a crack of thunder exploded over his head. He charged the broken display seconds before the ceiling crashed at his heels. Beck dove out onto the sidewalk and rolled, hitting the snow packed cement with his back, cushioning the woman against his chest.
For a moment he could do no more than drag in oxygen to his lungs, ignoring the raw burn in his throat. Tears filled his eyes, setting off a thousand needle pricks beneath the lids.
With an impatient hand he wiped the blurriness away and shoved the woman down beside him. He placed two fingers to the side of her neck. A flutter of her pulse beat against the pressure, reassuring him she lived.
The urge to protect speared through him, cutting him clean to the bone.
The feeling was familiar. Controllable. A person didn’t do what he did for a living without dealing with the instinct now and again.
Beck grabbed his switch blade from his pant pocket, and within moments sliced through the tape that bound her. Gently, he peeled it back, not wanting to mar the skin beneath the adhesive.
She was a little thing, he noted. The top of her head not even coming to his shoulder. Her hair was dark and shoulder length now, the color masked by the low light of the evening. According to the file, her eyes were hazel. But the file didn’t mention the pale skin—now smudged with ash and blood—the sprinkle of freckles across her nose, or the slender line of her neck.
Blood thickened in his veins, slowed the flow to his brain. It was the only excuse, he thought, for the sharp tug of attraction that pulled at the deepest part of his gut.
The wind blew a strand of hair across her cheek. With a gentle hand he brushed it away.
At his touch, her eyes fluttered opened. The irises were more mossy than hazel beneath heavy lids. Huge, somber eyes that drew on him.
“Chris?”
His father’s name hit him—a slap that stung worse than wind and ice.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, he looked like his father and this, of course, was his father’s mistress.
“No.” Anger ripped through him, forcing him to tighten his jaw. Grief edged his temper.
“Chris?” A frown creased her brows, but she said nothing more as her eyes closed once again.
Like father, like son. How many times had he heard that in his lifetime?
Jordan Beck swore in disgust even as he picked her up, cradled her in his arms.
Instantly, a hand grabbed his arm.
“Shouldn’t you wait for the ambulance? We’ve called them.” A couple stood next to him, both bundled against the cold, like two misplaced Eskimos, in pea-green parkas.
Jordan dismissed the cell phone the man Eskimo waved in his face with a mitted hand.
“She’s my fiancée,” he replied instead, adopting an American accent. A British one would be remembered later. He tugged his shoulder free and stepped quickly into the street before the man could react. “I’ll take her to the hospital myself.”
For a split second, he almost gave in to the temptation to leave her and follow the street where the attacker escaped.
And if the guy had a partner waiting in the crowd for another opportunity to murder her?
He’d given his word to protect her. And she wouldn’t be protected well by the police.
Sirens sounded in the distance. The eerie sound blended with the crackle of the fire, the howling of the wind.
Even on snow-packed streets, it wouldn’t take them long to reach the fire.
“You’d better be bloody worth it,” Jordan muttered as he reached the car, opened the door and shoved the woman onto the front seat. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”
Chapter Three (#uf6217199-d3b7-5a2e-9b1e-4af8bd88bf04)
Smoke and tape choked her screams, smothered the oxygen she so desperately needed. The flames licked her skin—jagged knives that sliced a downward swipe, flaying a path through skin and nerves.
Suffocating, Regina struck out with her hands, defending herself against the swipe of blades, the bogged down fog that surrounded her.
“Wake up, damn you. Before you hurt yourself.”
Chris.
Relief flooded through her, intensifying the burning in her throat. But when she tried lifting her eyelids, they remained stubborn and heavy.
A string of curses floated above her head, then suddenly the weight was gone and in its place a cool rush of air.
Slowly, her eyes fluttered open. Light burst, bringing tears that stung under the lids. Regina looked down, waiting for her vision to adjust and for the first time, she realized her arms refused to move.
“So you’re finally awake?”
It took effort to turn her head. Chris Beck stood next to the bed, holding a wet washcloth in one hand.
“Well? Are you okay?”
Regina blinked. No, not Chris.
This man wasn’t her friend. She noted sharp cheekbones, the hard line of his mouth, the rigid set of his jaw.
What did Chris say about his son?
The man had no give.
“I asked if you were okay.”
“No, I’m Regina.” She glanced down for the first time, taking in the tan cotton slacks and gray cardigan with a scooped-neck tee beneath. All smudged with ash, all reeking of smoke. “Do I look okay?”
“You look like hell.”
No humor, either.
She almost sighed. Almost. But when her gaze met his, she actually forgot to.
The eyes were the same. Chris’s and Jordan’s. Both pale blue, cut laser-sharp with specks of silver that flashed little bolts of lightning-edged emotion. Pleasure, sadness, anger, impatience. It didn’t matter which, the intensity never diminished.
Harnessed, yes. Controlled, certainly. But never diluted.
“I guess this pretty much defines ‘in the nick of time,’ doesn’t it, Jordan?”
“Yes—” He stopped, surprise flashed in the blue eyes, just before they narrowed.
Regina bet not many caught this man off guard. A huge dose of satisfaction eased some of the frustration—and admittedly, a small bit of fear—stewing in her belly.
“You know who I am?”
She grimaced more from the pounding pain in her head, than his reaction. Know him? She wondered what the man would do if she told him the truth.
Instead, she settled for another truth. “Chris carried your picture in his wallet. You were younger and in uniform. You’d just received your Royal Air Force pilot’s wings.”
“Considering our relationship, it’s hard to believe he carried a picture of me around anywhere.”
“He was proud of you.” Slowly, she eased up on one elbow. Her gaze skimmed over his jeans and sweater, noting the anger that rode the hard-lined muscles beneath.
“You’re taller than Chris. Leaner, too.” Regina spoke without thought. Something she tended to do. A habit people developed when they spent most of their time alone.
“I’m not here to be compared to my father, Miss Menlow. In or out of bed.”
“Bed?” Confused, she frowned. The sledgehammers in her head had scrambled her brain more than she’d thought. “You think Chris and I were lovers?”
“Weren’t you?”
“This is my hard-earned tax dollars at work?” Annoyed, she brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “Your father collected books. First editions. I sold books. First editions. It’s really quite simple. Even for a government man like yourself.”
“My father told you quite a lot, it seems.” His tone was flat with disbelief. “What was in the book?”
“Book?” She froze, remembering. “Your father’s journal. Do you have it?”
“No,” Jordan replied. “The guy who attacked you left with it. I wasn’t able to follow him.”
“He grabbed me from behind and shoved a gun at my head.” She rubbed her right temple, remembering. “I don’t know how he broke in. I had already closed up. Maybe a window in my loft. Although I usually keep both locked.”
“If he was a professional, a locked window wouldn’t have stopped him.”
“He demanded the journal and I told him where to find it. He must have hit me with the pistol right after because I don’t remember anything until I came to in the office. I saw the fire and managed to roll under the desk.” Automatically her fingers went to her head and she winced when she found the top of her skull tender. “I honestly didn’t expect to survive. Thank you.”
“Just your tax dollars at work,” he commented wryly.
Her head jerked up, her mouth tilted in self-deprecation. “I deserved that. I’m sorry. I guess my only excuse is that I’m not at my best right now.”
The apology caught Jordan off guard. She had surprised him for the third time in less than three hours. The fact that she crawled under the desk, then knew he worked for the government and now the apology.
His gaze skimmed over the dark chestnut hair, liking the way the thick waves drifted over the graceful line of her neck, drawing his eye to the delicate spot just above her shoulder.
But it was her eyes—big, somber, moss-green. Pools of liquid that swallowed a man whole.
“I cleaned the wound. The bruise is minor.” He sat on the side of the bed. When she continued to probe the cut, he pulled her hand away. “Stop playing with it or you’ll make it bleed again.”
“I’m sorry.” Her fingers fluttered beneath his, just for a moment before she tugged them away.
Nerves?
“What did your intruder look like, Miss Menlow?”
“Regina,” she corrected him automatically. Slowly, she sat up and drew her knees to her chest.
The woman intrigued him. She was soft, feminine, intelligent. She stirred something he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Desire. Interest.
Another surprise.
“He was football-player big. Linebacker size. Cool, mercenary type. Six-two. Dark brown hair. Crew cut. Dark brown eyes. His features were flat. Almost like his face had been pressed by glass.”
“Identifying marks?”
“No tattoos that I saw, but he wore a black corduroy coat. So if he had any on his arms, they were covered. He had a scar, though. A crescent one. Right here.” She stroked the side of her left cheek. “But he didn’t escape with anything important.”
