What was the truth about him?
BRENDAN WAITED, but she didn’t answer him. Could she really believe that he was a killer? Could she really believe that he had tried to kill her?
Sure, he had been furious because she’d deceived him. But he’d only been so angry because he’d let himself fall for her. He’d let himself believe that she might have fallen for him, too, when she’d actually only been using him.
He wasn’t the only one she’d used. There were the friends in boarding school she’d used as inside sources to get dirt on their famous parents. Then there was the Peterson kid in college with a violence and drug problem that the school had been willing to overlook to keep their star athlete. She’d used her friendship with the kid to blow the lid off that, too. Hell, her story had probably started all the subsequent exposés on college athletic programs. It had also caused the kid to kill himself.
“You really think that I’m the only one who might want you dead?” Josie Jessup had been many things but never naive.
She gasped as if shocked by his question. Or maybe offended. How the hell did she think he felt with her believing he was a killer?
He was tempted, as he’d been four years ago, to tell her the truth. But then he’d found out she was really a reporter after a story, and as mad as he’d been, he’d also been relieved that he hadn’t told her anything that could have blown his assignment.
Hell, it wasn’t just an assignment. It was a mission. Of justice.
She didn’t care about that, though. She cared only about exposés and Pulitzers and ratings. And her father’s approval.
But then maybe his mission of justice was all about his father, too. About finally getting his approval—postmortem.
“Who else would want me dead?” she asked.
“Whoever else might have found out that you wrote all those stories under the byline Jess Ley.” It was a play on the name of her father, Stanley Jessup. Some people thought the old man had written the stories himself.
But Brendan had been with her the night the story on her college friend had won a national press award. And he’d seen the pride and guilt flash across her face. And, finally, he’d stopped playing a fool and really checked her out, and all his fears had been confirmed.
She sucked in a breath and that same odd mixture of pride and guilt flashed across her face. “I don’t even know how you found out….”
“You gave yourself away,” he said. “And anyone close to you—close to those stories—would have figured out you’d written them, too.”
She shook her head in denial, and her silky hair skimmed along her jaw and across his cheek. No matter how much she’d changed her appearance, she was still beautiful, still appealing.
He wanted to touch her hair. To touch her face.
But he doubted she would welcome the hands of the man she thought was her would-be killer. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have helped you tonight,” he pointed out.
She glanced back at their sleeping son. “You did it for him. You know what it’s like to grow up without a mother.”
So did she. That was something that had connected them, something they’d had in common in lives that had been so disparate. They’d understood each other intimately—emotionally and physically.
He shook his head, trying to throw off those memories and the connection with her that had him wanting her despite her lies and subterfuge.
“That was sloppy tonight and dangerous,” he said, dispassionately critiquing the would-be assassins, “trying to carry off a hit in a hospital.”
His father and his enemies would have been indicted long ago if they had operated their businesses as sloppily. Whoever had hired the assassins had not gotten their money’s worth.
Neither had the U.S. Marshals. Like the local authorities, they must have been so desperate to pin something on him that they’d taken her word that he was behind the attempts on her life. They’d put her into protection and worried about finding evidence later. Like her, they had never come up with any. No reason to charge him.
If only they knew the truth …
But the people who knew it had been kept to a minimum—to protect his life and the lives of those around him. So it might not have been his fault that someone had tried to kill Josie, yet he felt responsible.
JOSIE REALIZED THAT he was right. Even if he hadn’t been with her tonight, in the line of fire on the roof and in the garage, it was possible that he had nothing to do with the attempts on her life.
Brendan O’Hannigan was never sloppy.
If he was, there would have been evidence against him and charges brought before a grand jury that would have elicited an indictment. No. Brendan O’Hannigan was anything but sloppy. He was usually ruthlessly controlled—except in bed. With her caresses and her kisses, she had made him lose control.
And that one day that had her shivering in remembrance, she’d made him lose his temper. The media hadn’t been wrong about her being spoiled. Her father had never so much as raised his voice to her. So Brendan’s cold fury had frightened her.
If only it had killed her attraction to him, as he had tried to kill her. Not tonight, though. She believed he hadn’t been behind the attempt at the hospital.
If he’d wanted her gone, he would have brought her someplace private. Someplace remote. Where no one could witness what he did to her.
Someplace like the O’Hannigan estate.
“You’re cold,” he said. As close as they were he must have felt her shiver. And the windows were also steaming up on the inside and beginning to ice on the outside. It was a cold spring, the temperature dropping low at night.
And it was late.
Too late?
“Let’s go inside,” he said.
It would be too late for her if she went inside the mansion with him. She still clutched her purse, her hand inside and still wrapped around her cell phone—the special one she used only to call Charlotte. But she released her grip on it.
It wouldn’t help her against the immediate threat he posed. She didn’t even know where Charlotte was, let alone if she could reach her in time to help.
“I’ll get CJ,” he offered as he opened the driver’s door. But she hurried out the back door, stepping between him and their sleeping son.
“No,” she said.
“He’s getting cold out here.”
Brendan tried to reach around her, but she pushed him back with her body, pressing it up against his. Her pulse leaped in reaction to his closeness.
“You can’t bring him inside,” she said, “not until you make sure it’s safe.”
He
