“Did they ever get the guy?”
Sahara wanted to turn away, but that would be too revealing. “Yes. I shot him.”
After the briefest pause, Brand clasped her other arm, too. “Tell me what happened.”
“The sick bastard wouldn’t give up. In his second attempt, he crawled in her bedroom window. He...had a knife. So I killed him.” More brisk now, she explained, “He’d helped install the security system so he knew exactly how to shut it down. He claimed the girl was his, that he’d slept with Drayden’s wife. She denied it of course, and to his credit, Drayden believed her. That turned out to be a good thing because they found out the psycho had made the same claim about three other children. Apparently he fixated on kids and convinced himself they were his even though he’d never touched their mothers.”
“Damn.”
His hold was soothing, but the last thing she wanted from him, from anyone, was pity. “The little girl, Mari, screamed from the gunshot, but she never saw the body. Soon as the guy hit the ground I scooped her up and got her out of the room, telling her it was just a loud noise.” Sahara could still remember the thin arms clinging so tightly to her neck, the shaking of that small body and the soft sobs after the scream.
Until that day, she’d never thought about having children of her own. She missed Mari a lot.
“How long were you on assignment with the family?”
“Two months. But the time flew by since I mostly played with Mari.” She twisted her mouth. “Afternoon tea with a G.I. Joe, a stuffed bear and a Barbie. Oh, the scrapes Barbie and Joe got into. The bear and I would just watch in amazement.”
Brand grinned. “You know, I can almost picture it, you in a tiny little chair sipping out of an empty plastic teacup with an audience of toys.”
“Good times,” she said, then tipped her head. “Can you see me killing a man?”
After briefly locking on her eyes, his gaze moved over her face and settled on her mouth. “Yeah, I guess I can. If it came to protecting someone you cared about.”
Well, that was something anyway. “I had a shorter assignment with a twenty-three-year-old. I was only a year older than him and he had some serious misconceptions about the role of a bodyguard.”
“How so?”
“I spent more time fending him off than protecting him. He got impossibly grabby.”
Brand went back to scowling. “Your brother allowed that?”
“I didn’t tell him! That would have been like admitting I couldn’t handle the job, and it was an important one. He was a movie star’s son being hassled by a radical group that opposed the star’s last movie. Apparently, they didn’t understand fiction versus reality. They wanted to drive home their point by making his son miserable anytime he ventured into public. You’ll understand that it was all confidential so I can’t give names or details.”
“Sure. Tell me the part where you knocked the punk out.”
She grinned. “We’ve already surmised that I’m not physically powerful.”
He agreed by saying, “You should have quit.”
“I couldn’t. Scott chose me for the job because I was close enough in age to blend in. The boy didn’t want his friends to know he had a bodyguard. Guess it dented his macho pride or something.”
“First, he’s not a boy. At twenty-three, he’s a man. And second, I hope you dented the hell out of his pride.”
That was one of the nice things about Brand: he had a similar mindset to her and they often agreed on things. “Of course I did. We were at a club with his friends. He kept trying to force me to dance with him. I knew where that would lead with the octopus, so I refused. I could keep an eye on him from the bar, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He grabbed my wrist and wouldn’t let go.”
Expression darkening more by the moment, Brand asked, “What did you do?”
“I tripped him to the ground. That made him mad and he grabbed for me again.”
“To do what?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to find out, so I grabbed two fingers and twisted enough to break them.”
“Ouch,” Brand said with smiling satisfaction.
“He raged and decided it was time for us to go—with my wholehearted agreement. I had visions of the whole assignment going to hell, but it took an uptick when we stepped outside and the same group I was supposed to protect him from was there to mob him. That got him moving quickly to get in the car. On the way, I had to...ahem, assault a man who tried to drag my client back out of the car.”
“Assault him how?”
“With my knee.” She struck a pose, showing the knee she’d used and drawing Brand’s undivided attention to her exposed leg. “In a place where no man wants to get hit.”
Dragging his focus back to her face, Brand winced for real. “I gather that worked?”
“Like a charm.” At least that night she hadn’t shot anyone. “When Scott heard the whole story, he tore into the client and his father, and got me a bonus with an apology from the boy.”
“Man.”
“Man-boy,” she compromised. “The third assignment was just a matter of escorting a local politician to and from a speech. It went off without incident.”
“How come you never mentioned any of this before now?”
“Why would I?” She rarely discussed her background with anyone, because those stories all centered around her missing brother and left her grieving the loss anew. “My history with the agency has nothing to do with the reasons why you should sign on.”
He turned speculative. “And you’ve been all about getting my agreement.”
“Yes.” She gave that a quick thought and asked, “Does knowing my history make you more inclined to—”
“Not really.” Gaze intense, Brand slid his hands up her arms to her shoulders. “You’ve always amazed me, with or without the history report.”
As he leaned closer—to kiss her, she was sure—she said desperately, “Work for me.”
Without a smidge of regret, he said, “No,” and then his mouth was on hers, his lips pressing, his tongue touching until she opened.
The second she did, his tongue slid in and she melted against him.
God help her, it was incendiary.
*
FROM THE DAY he’d met her, Brand knew it’d be like this. Sahara Silver with her classic bone structure, her sharp wit, her beautiful blue eyes and slender body, was almost too stunning.
He meant to keep his hands on safe ground, but then, he hadn’t meant to kiss her either. Without really thinking about it, his palms slid over her shoulders and down her back, feeling the soft cashmere of her short-sleeved sweater, the firm resiliency of her flesh beneath.
She had expensive taste in fashion and always looked like a million bucks. She loved sugary pastry, but far as he could tell, she never gained a pound. No matter the company she kept, be it fighters, senators or twisted criminals, she was always comfortable.
She had no problem pampering herself, and no problem taking charge of any situation.
She tasted good, and felt even better.
But kissing her was a dumb move because Sahara wasn’t for him.
She wanted him, yes—to work for her.
She’d chased him—to get his agreement. For her, the hard-core campaign to win him over hadn’t been personal.
He couldn’t question her participation in the kiss, especially with her hands locked in his hair keeping him close, but when it came down to it she would always choose her brother’s memory, and thus the agency, first.
The sexual attraction was secondary for her, and that made it not enough for him.
If his friends Leese, Justice and Miles didn’t work for her maybe he’d take what he wanted before walking away. But that could end up complicating things for the guys who had left fighting for Body Armor, and he couldn’t do that to them.
Sahara pressed closer, her breasts to his chest, her belly to his dick, and logic nearly flew the coop.
He lowered his hands to her perfectly shaped ass, toned from the sky-high heels she favored—heels that made her long legs look even more amazing. Scooping her closer, he rubbed her against him, then stifled a groan.