tree trunks pressing into hers, his hair was dark with rain, his uniform splattered with mud, and his chest rose and fell in a quick, deep rhythm while he dripped on her. He was too big, too furious, too much man to be in here. “I just tracked mud all through that nice reception in the front rooms to get to you. Now, I said I had your back. I told you to stay put.”
“It’s not your job to protect me.” She shoved at the big white letters on the front of his uniform, but neither the Kevlar nor the man moved.
If anything, he was coming closer, leaning in, forcing her to tilt her head back, way back. “It’s my job to protect everyone in this city, especially when my captain gives me an order. Get you home safely.” His hazel eyes searched her face, looking for an understanding that wasn’t easy to give. And then they crinkled with concern. “Cripes, Charlotte—some unknown perp was shooting at you, and your response is to run from help?”
“I couldn’t stay out there any longer. I had to get inside.”
“I had to let that shooter go so I could run after you. You want me to cite you for driving without a license, inflicting property damage or scaring the crap out of me?”
He was scared? Huh? Her fingers drifted beneath the hard edges of his vest, needing something to hold on to to stop their trembling. She felt the abundant warmth and rapid beat of his heart beneath her fingertips and realized she wasn’t the only one shaking here. “I’ll pay for any damages. I’ll buy you a whole new truck. Where’s my backpack? I can write you a check from my trust fund right now.”
“Missing the point.” With cooler air rushing in between them, he turned away, raking his fingers through his short hair, leaving a mess of shiny wet spikes in their wake. When he faced her again, he propped his hands on his hips, assuming a posture that she guessed was supposed to make him look less threatening. He failed. “Normally I’m an easygoing man. But you are pushing my buttons right and left, lady. How was I supposed to know whether you’d been hit or not?”
With Trip standing between her and her bedroom door now, Charlotte had nowhere to go unless she made a mad dash to the bathroom. He deserved better than another door slamming in his face. Besides, after sharing that much forced contact with his thickly muscled body, she wasn’t sure her legs would carry her that far.
She hugged her arms around her middle, mentally trying to hold her ground. “I couldn’t think. I saw the man in the woods with the gun. I mean, I didn’t see his face, but I saw the flash and then the window shattered. I had to do something.”
She held her breath as he closed the distance between them again, then released it on a shaky sigh when he reached out with a single finger to unwind a lock of hair that had twirled around the temple of her glasses. The gentleness of the gesture, the husky softness of his tone, were completely at odds with the drenched warrior who’d been pushing her buttons a moment earlier. “Are you hurt?” He reached into his pocket and held up a tiny metal ball in his palm. “Thank God he was just shooting BBs.”
“BBs?”
“I picked this one up off the street. I’ll call in my team to sweep the area as soon as they’re done at Mt. Washington—see if we can find any trace of the shooter.” He looped the curl around his finger and rubbed it with his thumb. “He didn’t get to you, did he? No cuts or bruises?”
Charlotte slowly shook her head, savoring his touch on her hair almost as if it was a caress against her skin. “If he wanted to kill me, why not use real bullets?”
“You tell me.”
Her voice hushed to match his. “Someone wanted my attention.”
“Someone wanted to scare you.”
“He succeeded.” But neither of them laughed at the joke. Instead, she leaned toward the warmth of his hand near her temple. But when his fingers tunneled a little deeper and brushed against her damaged earlobe, she jerked away. “Please don’t.”
“Sorry, I thought I was reading the okay signal.”
“You were. I mean, what does that mean?”
His eyes narrowed a moment in confusion, but then he reached for that single tendril of hair again. “It means you’re interested in seeing what up close and personal is like between us. But not too close.”
She nodded. “Just don’t touch my ear.”
“Sensitive, hmm?”
More than he knew.
“Your hair’s wild.”
“It’s out of control.”
“It’s so soft.” He was inspecting the curl with an almost scientific fascination. “Yet it’s strong enough to hold on to me.”
Was this … banter? Why wasn’t he moving away? Why wasn’t she pushing him away? She thought all the rain would leave her chilled, but with him so close, she felt … feverish.
“I really am sorry about the truck. And your hat. And the stitches in your arm.” Wow. She was a freak. But he still had her hair curled around his finger, stroking it. It was a sensual, soothing gesture, an intimate one between a man and a woman. They’d argued and now they were making up. It felt so …
Normal.
Her whole body began to shake now. She so couldn’t do this.
“Trip,” she wanted to confess, “I’m not like any other woman you’re likely to meet.”
“I noticed.” His hard face turned boyish with a sly half grin. “You sure know how to keep a man on his toes.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” She reached up to straighten her glasses and to tuck the curl, still warm from his touch, behind her ear and beyond his reach. “I wasn’t always this way—with the phobias and panic attacks. But I guess it’s who I am now. I appreciate you doing the favor for Audrey and Alex, and checking in on me. But we have security here. It’s probably better if you go now, before I find some other way to ruin your—”
“Miss Mayweather?”
Charlotte clenched her toes into the carpet at the sharp rap at the open door behind Trip. She hadn’t locked up. She hadn’t barricaded herself in the way she needed to. And now she had a man in her room. Two men.
“Ma’am. Just wanted to return this.”
Bud held his cap in one hand as he rolled a toothpick with his tongue from one side of his mouth to the other and held out a cell phone. Her new cell phone. How had she forgotten, for even one moment, that the outside world wanted to hurt her? “Did you get my message?” A strange man’s laughter echoed in her memory and chilled her to the bone.
“That’s not my phone,” she lied.
“I found it in the back of the limo. Who else’s would it be?”
“I don’t want it. These are my private quarters. Please leave.”
“You need to step back into the hall, my friend.” Trip swept past her—in one stride, two.
Charlotte
