not! He would take her hostage, as well!
“You let go of whatever you have a hold of in there first,” he said quietly, and the calm of his tone abated her panic slightly. Her fingers seemed to loosen their hold on the Mace of their own accord, and he let go of her wrist immediately.
“Now put your hand where I can see it.”
The authority with which he spoke gave Brooke the very awful feeling he had done things like this before.
Though he had not for a moment looked tense, she saw that he relaxed subtly when she withdrew her hand from her purse and let it drop to her side.
Even after he had let go, she felt the imprint of his hand on her wrist and felt the leashed power of his grip and his personality. Kolina, on the other hand, was oblivious to his threat. From her new station on the floor, she had coiled her arms around his legs and was peeking out from behind his knee.
“Of all the nerve!” Brooke sputtered.
“What have you got in there, a gun?” He spat out a word that was not at all appropriate in front of Kolina, then took a deep breath as though he was gathering patience. He seemed a little confused about who was the suspicious party here!
“It is none of your business what I have in my purse!” She resisted a temptation to rub her wrist.
“This is not exactly L.A.,” he told her. “And guns and kids don’t mix. I can’t even believe you’d think of pulling one while I was holding two babies.”
“Not a baby,” Kolina informed him with a piqued pull on the leg of his jeans.
In spite of her indignation, Brooke registered the slim comfort that he actually seemed concerned about the children’s welfare.
“How do you know where I’m from?” she demanded.
“You already told me you work for the movie star. We don’t have a big film industry here in Creston, B.C. Besides, if the road crew is in the same place they were in yesterday, you’ve walked less than two miles and you look like you have survived a two-year trek across an unmapped wilderness. We make Canadian girls a little tougher than that.”
His gaze moved to her torn panty hose, which fluttered in the wind, and she felt a strange but not completely unfamiliar twist in her tummy.
Her worst enemy, attraction to the opposite sex.
No wonder she was so determined to believe he was a villain!
So she could be glad that she looked terrible. More than glad. She should be deliriously happy. But, oh no, Brooke-who-dances-with-temptation was shattered by the appraisal of the cool stranger before her.
Insanely, even if he was a notorious criminal, she had a purely feminine desire to be found irresistibly attractive by him.
Survival, she told herself. A little attraction might sway the power a bit in her direction if need be.
Besides, she liked basking briefly in male attention until they either found out who she worked for or Shauna appeared in person. Though reasonably attractive, Brooke could not compete with the stunning otherworldly beauty of her employer and had long since given up trying.
But this stranger seemed indifferent to Brooke’s female allure even without Shauna’s presence outshining the sun.
He continued his assessment of her in a flat tone. “Your hair color is fake and your tan is real.”
“Canadian girls don’t dye their hair?” she asked sourly.
“They don’t have that golden-girl look about them,” he said. “You do.”
He did not say it as if it were a compliment, and, unfortunately, when Brooke thought of golden girls she thought of Bette White and Bea Arthur.
“That’s an awful lot to know about a person in a glance,” she said, irritated at having been found superficial and inadequate without a fair trial. By a potential criminal.
And he wasn’t finished with her yet!
He ignored the challenge in her statement and went on, his voice low and level. “Don’t ever touch a gun unless you are prepared to use it. And you know what? I can tell from looking at you, you don’t have what it takes to use it.”
She stared at him in confusion. She should be delighting in the fact that an outlaw who had just taken over a house and kidnapped children would hardly be giving lessons on gun safety. On the other hand, he obviously had an unsettling personal knowledge of weapons and how to use them.
She felt a little finger of fury. How could he tell, in the length of a thirty-second meeting, whether or not she had what it takes? She itched to give him a little taste of the Mace.
“I do so have what it takes!” she said and realized it was a pathetic thing to say in the presence of a man who so obviously possessed the real thing in astounding abundance.
She wondered if she really could use Mace on him. She’d seen how quick his reflexes were. He could probably wrestle her weapon away from her before she’d figured out how to discharge the spray. And then, he’d be in the position to use it on her. She could feel the blood drain from her face at the thought.
“Exactly,” he said and, looking directly into his piercing gaze, she had the disconcerting sensation that he had just read her mind.
For just a second, the briefest spark of humor flickered to life in the depths of those eyes. If anything, it only made him look more dangerous. And more attractive. And more sexy. She felt that traitorous little twitch of her heart.
She could almost see Shauna rolling her eyes and saying with sweet southern sarcasm, “Brooke, you sure know how to pick ’em.”
“It isn’t a gun, anyway,” Brooke defended herself. “It’s Mace. And Lexandra wouldn’t have been hurt had I used it. I would have been very careful with my aim. Besides, there’s quite a bit of padding between me and her skin.”
“And for what reason exactly were you feeling a need to defend yourself?”
“I don’t know who you are! Or what you are doing in my employer’s home. With her children tucked under your arms. You haven’t exactly been forthcoming.”
“Ah. And straight from the embrace of Hollywood, you figured a plot was being hatched.” His voice, edged with sarcasm, was even sexier than when it was not. “Let me guess, your boss is filming suspense and terror, and all of you become so immersed that you see it everywhere. An easy leap to assume I have taken the children and their dear granny hostage.”
She disliked being so transparent, and, as a matter of fact, Shauna was filming a suspense thriller.
“Have you?” she said.
He snorted derisively. “Is it that easy to come up with a plot?”
“You are still not answering the question! You are being evasive, a quality I cannot stand in men.”
The smile died. He looked at her intently before saying, with disconcerting softness, “I think I hear
