sheet on a bed that took up most of her hotpink bedroom. Beneath the mess of hair, a pair of blue-violet eyes were struggling to come into focus. She blinked at him like a hungover turtle. Her mouth fell open but no sound came out. Definitely a first.
He strode forward without pause.
“What are you doing here? Get away from me!” She’d woken up in that split second it took him to reach her bed and was fairly shrieking. She was good at that—she’d been a thorn in his side since he’d moved in. She was pulling the sheet to her chin, scampering away from him, flailing in the tangled covers. “Don’t you touch me. You, you—”
He unwrapped her with one smooth move and picked her up, ignoring the pale-purple silk shorts and tank top. So Miss Clang-and-Bang had a soft side. Who knew?
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m just getting you out.”
She weighed next to nothing but still managed to be an armful. Smelled like sleep and sawdust, with a faint hint of varnish thrown in. Her odd scent appealed to him more than any coy, flowery perfume could have. Not that he was in any position to enjoy it. He tried in vain to duck the small fists pounding his shoulders and head, and gave thanks to God that her nephew, who’d been vacationing with her for the first part of summer, had gone back to wherever he’d come from. Dealing with her was all he could handle.
“Are you completely crazy?” She was actually trying to poke his eyes out. “I’m calling the police. I’m calling the police right now!”
She was possibly more than he could handle, although that macho sense of vanity that lived deep down in every man made it hard for him to admit that, even as her fingers jabbed dangerously close to his irises in some freakish self-defense move she must have seen on TV.
“You might want to hang on.” He was already out of the room. Less than ten seconds had passed since he’d seen the guy in the van. “And try to be quiet.” He stepped up to the creaking balcony railing and jumped before it could give way under their combined weight.
She screamed all the way down and then some, giving no consideration to his eardrums whatsoever. Once upon a time, he’d worked with explosives on a regular basis. He knew loud. She was it.
He swore at the pain that shot up his legs as they crashed to the ground, but he was already pushing away with her over his shoulder and running for cover in the maze of Willow Glen duplexes in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Unarmed. In the middle of freaking combat.
He didn’t feel fear—just unease. He was better than this. He’d always had a sixth sense that let him know when his enemies were closing in. It wasn’t like him to get lulled into complacency.
“Are you trying to kill us? Are you on drugs? Listen. To. Me. Try to focus.” She grabbed his chin and turned his face to hers. “I am your neighbor.”
He kept the house between him and the tangos in the van, checking for any indication of danger waiting for them ahead. No movement on the rooftops. If there was a sniper, he was lying low. Cade scanned the grass for wire trips first, then for anything he could use as a makeshift weapon. He came up with nada.
“Put me down!” She fought him as best she could, a hundred and twenty pounds of wriggling fury. “Don’t do this! Whatever you think you are doing, I know you are going to regret it.”
He did already.
“Are you crazy?”
He could get there in a hurry. He put his free hand on her shapely behind to hold her in place. Smooth skin, lean limbs, dangerous curves. He tried not to grope more than was absolutely necessary. Yeah, she could probably make him do a couple of crazy things without half trying. But they had to get out of the kill zone first.
“Let me go! Listen, let me—”
They were only a dozen or so feet from the nearest duplex when his home—and hers—finally blew.
That shut her up.
He dove forward, into the cover of the neighbor’s garden shed. They went down hard, and he rolled on top of her, protecting her from the blast, careful to keep most of his weight off. The second explosion came right on the heels of the first. It shook the whole neighborhood.
That would be the C4 he kept in the safe in his garage.
Damn.
“What—was—that?” Her blue-violet eyes stared up at him, her voice trembling, her face the color of lemon sherbet.
There were days when she looked like a garden fairy in her flyaway, flower-patterned clothes with a mess of cinnamon hair, petite but well-rounded body, big violet eyes and the cutest pixie nose he’d ever seen on a woman. She had no business being wrapped in silk in his arms, looking like a frightened sex kitten as he lay on top of her.
Her fear quickly turned to rage, unfortunately.
“What did you do?” Her tone was a good reminder that even when she did look like a fairy, she wasn’t the “flit from flower to flower” kind found in children’s books. She was more like the angry fairies in Irish folktales, the kind that throw thunderbolts from their eyes and put wicked curses on men.
Just like her to blame him for the slightest thing that went wrong around the house. She had blamed him for the molehills the week before. Supposedly, he’d used the kind of lawn fertilizer that attracted the little bastards.
“You blew up the house?” Her full mouth really did lose all attractiveness when it went tight with anger. A shame.
Okay, so he did have a small collection of explosives left over from previous missions. Not that he was going to mention the C4 to her just now. Or ever. She was about the least understanding person he knew, with a tendency to harp on people’s mistakes. His, anyway.
And he hadn’t made any mistakes here, dammit. The C4 had been secured. He was retired at a secret location—or so he thought. The last thing he’d expected was a grenade blasting through his house.
“I didn’t blow up anything. We need to get out of here.” Before everyone in the whole development rushed outside, and the cops arrived.
“I have to ask the neighbors to call the police.” She was scampering away in a tempting display of bare limbs.
Her skin was smooth and soft but barely tanned, even at the end of summer. When she wasn’t at work at the garden center, she was hammering around in her garage. Not the type to lie out on her balcony in a skimpy bikini like their neighbor across the street, and Cade gave thanks for that. There was only so much temptation a man could take.
“I’m sure that’s taken care of already.” He grabbed her slim arm, registering the velvet feel of her skin as he pulled her up. A wave of smoke and dust reached them. “Keep your mouth and your nose covered.”
The top of her head came only to his chin. Not that anyone would think of her as a fragile little thing. Her feistiness had always lent her stature. But that feistiness was nowhere to be seen now as she stared, coughing, toward what had been her home. Wood beams leaned on each other like some macabre game of pickup sticks, furniture strewn and burning all over the lawn. She looked lost, blinking more rapidly with each passing second.
Bailey
