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  He ducked out the door, grabbing a ladder-back chair from beside the table behind him and shoving it under the doorknob. He’d barely gotten it tightly wedged when she began jiggling it.

  “Hey! You can’t do this! Let me out of here!” She banged on the heavy wooden door.

  “You’re wasting time,” he called back, then grabbed a few more bags and went in search of her room.

  A loud thwack behind him indicated she’d kicked the door. The following string of curse words trailed him up the stairs.

  Where in the hell had she learned to swear like that?

  His grimace faded. What replaced it couldn’t be called a smile. Reese Braedon never smiled.

  But he had to admit he wasn’t bored anymore.

  Bored. It was disconcerting to realize that until that moment, he hadn’t been able to put his finger on what his problem had been of late. It had been almost a year since he’d thrown in the federal towel and opened up a private security agency with Cole Sinclair, another agent he’d occasionally worked with in his past life.

  Bored. Eighteen months ago, he’d craved boredom like a man who’d spent far too many years living on the edge of his wits. Like the man he was. Had been. Private security allowed him the luxury of picking his own jobs. And more importantly, being his own boss. He’d never again find himself in the position of having to answer to someone else, particularly when people’s lives were on the line.

  Reese shoved aside the dark memories of his past. He elbowed his way into the first room at the top of the stairs. The steel shutters made the room dark, so he flipped the light switch. It was a bedroom, but it wasn’t hers. Too neat and tidy, with an air of expectancy, like it was just waiting for an aunt or a cousin to drop in for a brief stay.

  But not a mother, he thought with a wry twist of his lips. Without giving any details, Regina Ravensworth had made it very clear that she and her daughter were not close. In fact, the one promise she’d wrung from him was that he not tell Jillian why he’d been hired—or that he’d been hired at all.

  He’d agreed to the condition, knowing Jillian would probably assume he was part of the evacuation effort. Which he had been earlier that week down in the Keys, where he and Sinclair lived and headquartered their business.

  However, at this point, he didn’t see where keeping her mother’s role out of it had made the job a whole helluva lot easier.

  He flipped off the guest room light and moved down the hall. One bathroom, another guest room, one linen closet. He paused long enough to grab a few sheets, some towels, and a blanket, then moved to the next door … And stopped cold on the threshold.

  This was her room.

  It wasn’t just the large double bed covered with the jumble of lemon-yellow sheets that gave it away. He stepped inside, feeling strangely like the intruder he was. He never gave his methods much thought, just doing what had to be done in the most efficient manner possible to obtain his goal. And this was far from the first time he’d found himself in the bedroom of a woman he’d just met. Of course, he’d usually been invited. He shrugged off the odd feeling and looked around.

  The room wasn’t feminine. Bare hardwood floors, a bed, one nightstand, and a wooden dresser. The only adornment was a watercolor of a marsh scene hanging over the dresser and a wooden lamp carved in the shape of a leaping dolphin on the nightstand. No pictures or well-thumbed paperbacks lay on the nightstand, no watches or jewelry littered the scarred surface of the dresser.

  Picturing her small plain features, slim boyish body clad in a shapeless T-shirt and jeans and her job working with animals, he supposed it shouldn’t surprise him that there weren’t the requisite bottles, tubes, and pots of makeup and cologne cluttering every available surface.

  Although there was a faint fresh scent in the air, sort of woodsy. Odd for a woman, he thought, then admitted that it somehow suited her. A disconcerting notion considering he barely knew her. Didn’t want to know her. She was just another job. So what if she intrigued him? She was a puzzle he didn’t have time to solve. The problem, he acknowledged with a frown, was getting rid of the inclination.

  It occurred to him with a start that he was wasting precious time, standing there literally sniffing around. He bent down and grabbed two pairs of worn sneakers from the floor by the door and dumped them into the trash bag, then turned back to the dresser opposite her bed.

  He tugged at the top drawer but it held tight, probably warped from the constant humidity. He yanked harder. The drawer sprang open past its tracks, upending her underwear in a heap on the floor.

  “God—” Reese bit off the curse, set the drawer down and knelt, careful to favor his thigh. He hadn’t given a thought to her lingerie—she was hardly the type to inspire heated fantasies—but the basic white cotton bras and undies spilling from his hands didn’t provide any surprises.

  He stuffed a handful of each, along with some white crew socks in the bag. He reached for the second drawer and pulled out several pairs of faded blue jeans. Shorts, T-shirts, and a few old sweatshirts followed as he searched the other drawers.

  He scooped up the remaining pile of underwear and dumped it back in the warped drawer. The sound of something hard and metallic stilled his actions for a moment, then he shoved a hand into the jumble and rooted around until his fingers closed over what felt like a picture frame.

  He pulled out the small, gilt-edged frame and flipped it over. It was a photo of a man seated next to a woman with a small child in her lap. Judging by the not-quite-true colors and clothing, the photo had been taken some time ago.

  He recognized the woman immediately as Regina Ravensworth, although from what he knew of her background, he doubted that had been her last name back then. Reese wasn’t surprised to see she’d been even more stunning as a young woman. She was leaning against the shoulder of a big, brawny, blond man who was looking off to his left, away from Regina and the child she held in her lap. Regina’s expression was plainly adoring, almost painfully so.

  Reese’s gaze dropped to the child cradled loosely in her lap. She looked about three or four and had a mop of dark curls. Jillian, he presumed. What kept his attention riveted to the photo was the expression on the child’s face. Her small head was tilted back, and she was staring up at her mother. The unconditional love stamped on her tiny features wasn’t surprising. Nor was it what made Reese’s heart feel strangely tight. It was the intense yearning in those bright gray eyes. Innocently unconcealed, unafraid of possible discovery, as only the young could afford to risk.

  What in the world would make a young girl look at her own mother that way? And if Regina had looked down in the instant after the photo was snapped, would Jillian have received reassurance that she, too, was adored? Or would she receive rejection?

  Or worse yet, would she encounter the same thing Reese had repeatedly found as a small boy, before he’d learned not to go looking anymore. Would she look up into the eyes of a mother who wouldn’t recognize the need was there at all?

  The wind snapped a branch against the side of the house, bringing Reese sharply, thankfully, back to the present. He started to shove the photo back into the drawer, then changed his mind. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out one of her sweatshirts and carefully bundled the old frame before tucking it in with the rest of her clothes.

  Not wanting to put a reason to his motives, he stood, the ache in his thigh a welcome piece of reality to hang on to. He jimmied the drawer back into place and moved to the small bathroom. He quickly emptied the contents of her medicine chest into another bag and knotted it.

  It wasn’t until he turned back to face her bedroom that it hit him. The reason he’d frozen on the doorstep when he’d first stepped into her room, the reason he’d felt so odd as he’d stood there, cataloguing her personal effects, or more precisely, the lack thereof.

  The reason it all felt so strange was because it was familiar. Very familiar. Too familiar.

  Her bedroom was distant, no connections to anyone here, no
thing tying her to past memories, past dreams, fulfilled or otherwise. Except an old photo hidden away in a dresser drawer.

  Reese pictured the small, isolated bungalow he lived in on Vaca Key. Every room in that house looked amazingly just like this one. Full of furniture, empty of soul.

  Which suited him perfectly. So perfectly he’d never even noticed anything lacking.

  Until now, a tiny voice whispered inside his brain.

  He ruthlessly snuffed it out. Irritated, and not at all happy about the reasons for it, Reese hefted the two bags toward the hall.

  He had to turn sideways to fit the bags and himself through the narrow doorway, then was forced to balance the whole pile on one knee so he could reach back inside to flip the switch. Unfortunately, he forgot about his thigh injury and he wobbled precariously for a split second.

  A half second later, the hard muzzle of a gun—his if he wasn’t mistaken—pressed into his lower back.

  “What in the bloody hell are you—?”

  “Freeze!”

  TWO

  Reese hung his head. “Christ almighty.” He continued swearing under his breath as he dropped the bags of clothes and slowly raised his hands. This would be funny if it weren’t so damn frustrating. First the alligator. Now he was being held at gunpoint with his own gun, by the woman whose life he was trying to save. Sinclair would laugh his ass off if he ever found out. Which Reese would make damn sure he never did.

  No job was worth this sort of aggravation. Reese considered telling her he knew a dozen ways to easily disarm her, most of them painful, then discarded that idea as too time-consuming. He had to admit it though, she had pluck.

  He hated pluck.

  “I want you to put your hands on your head and walk slowly to the stairs. Then I want you to go down them and straight out the back door and off my property.”

  He didn’t have time for this. Correction. They didn’t have time for this. “You’ve been watching too many cop shows.” As he said this, he twisted suddenly and brought his bad leg up, knee bent, knocking the gun from her hand, allowing him to grab her arms and pin her to the wall across the narrow hallway.

  He pressed against her narrow frame, hot daggers needling his wound where it had—of course—come into direct contact with the butt of his gun. If it wasn’t for the humiliation factor of the explanation he’d have to give, he’d demand Mrs. Ravensworth pay him double time for this one.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said quietly, her soft voice neither pleading nor demanding.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Reese shot back, but he relaxed his hold and moved back a fraction of an inch, his frustration more self-directed than aimed at her. Again his gaze tangled with hers. Wide gray eyes, looking enormous in her small face, stared warily back at him. Her short hair was plastered to her head, her T-shirt wet and clinging …

  Wait a minute. She was soaked.

  “How did you get out?”

  “Climbed through the office window onto the porch. I hadn’t gotten that one covered yet.”

  “It’s started to rain,” he said, more to himself. “Ivan’s closing in. We’ve got to get outta here.”

  Holding one wrist, he bent down, pulling her awkwardly with him, and grabbed his gun. He thrust one bag at her, which she grasped automatically, then scooped up the other one. “Did you pack the one I gave you?”

  “No, because—”

  He was already pulling her toward the stairs. “Tough luck then, your time’s run out.”

  “But—”

  He heaved a sigh, silently cursing his sore thigh and her in no particular order. “No buts. What is it you Yanks say? No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

  She tugged hard but to no avail. “You call this nice?”

  He glared at her over his shoulder. “I call this keeping you alive.” He stalked to the back door. “No time for utilities. Probably won’t be anything left anyway.”

  “I’m not—”

  He turned swiftly and closed the distance between her face and his, stopping her speech as effectively as if he’d covered her mouth with his hand. Or his mouth.

  Now where had that come from? Reese tore his gaze from her soft lips and pointed it back at her eyes. “You can thank me for saving your life later. Right now, we’ve got to get back over the bridge, across Sanibel and over that bridge as well. My truck is right outside the front gate.”

  “Great. Have a safe trip.” Her voice was as flat as her eyes.

  Her posture made it clear her survival skills were well honed. Unfortunately she’d pegged him as the threat instead of the storm. “Listen, the rain has started, that means—”

  “I know what it means. It means that thanks to you, I’m going to get pummeled by the rain while covering up that last window, and I still have other precautions to take.”

  “To hell with the window! The way the wind is going, we’ll be lucky to keep the truck on the road.”

  “Then go already!” She pushed her face right up into his. “I’m not stopping you.”

  “You’re right.” Knowing his thigh would pay dearly for this, he scooped her up and put her over his shoulder. It was either that or give in to the entirely ridiculous urge to kiss her into submission. He felt her hands grab at the back of his jacket and lift it up, so he quickly shifted his gun to the front of his jeans.

  He headed out the back door with both trash bags in one hand, her thighs clamped in the other. And he refused to even think about that tight little piece of her anatomy bouncing next to his ear. The heightened wind and pelting rain was no match for the curses she was hurling at him. He heard every one of them. Quiet and reserved, huh? Regina had apparently been estranged from her daughter for a very long time.

  While half of his mind worked to ignore Jillian’s protests and the feel of supple muscle flexing under his hands as she thrashed, the other half kept a lookout for Cleo. The driving rain made scanning the grounds difficult, but he saw no sign of the creature. He only hoped Cleo’s vision was as impaired as his.

  The skies had darkened considerably, not a good sign. The hurricane warning had been posted early that morning and the report he’d heard right before he’d left his truck predicted they had roughly ten hours before it ripped up the lower western coastline. The way things looked now, they’d be lucky to get half that.

  He had to bend low to force himself forward, covering little ground with each staggering step. He reached the gate in the high wire mesh fence that lined her property. Shoving with one shoulder, he was able to get it open wide enough to squeeze through, the wind slamming it shut behind him.

  Pressing the bags between his hip and the side of his black pickup truck, he opened the driver’s door, tossed the bags in the storage area behind the seat then bent down to deposit her on the bench seat. He grunted at the pain the motion caused, gritting his teeth when her booted toe caught him square in the center of the gash.

  “Slide over.”

  His answer was a steely-eyed glare. He climbed in and forced her to move or be sat on. She scrambled over the gear shift, and he grabbed at the rear belt loop of her jeans just as her hand hit the passenger side door handle.

  He pulled her back and reached across her, yanking the seat belt across her lap with a bit more force than necessary. Then he turned to her so their faces almost touched. “Do I have to tie you to the dashboard?”

  His question met with stony silence.

  “Fine, have it your way.” He reached behind him and grappled around until he found a length of rope.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warned.

  “And let you jump out the minute I start the truck?” He grabbed at her hands, securing them with the white cord then leaning across her to loop it through the large steering wheel. He left enough slack so he could turn the wheel without tangling the rope.

  He started the truck, vowing not to look at her, even briefly, until they were off the island. This wasn’t at all how he’d planned this, but dammit, it wasn’t like he was
willingly trying to hurt her. So there was no reason why he should feel the least bit guilty. Guilt was an emotion he’d long ago decided was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Along with trust, faith, love, and a few other human frailties that could get a man killed.

  Shoving the gearshift into reverse, he propped one arm on the seat and turned to look over his shoulder as he backed out. His gaze came to a reluctant halt when it met hers.

  “Why are you forcing me to do this? I don’t want to go.”

  If she’d pleaded with him, or cried or begged him, he would have been able to ignore her. But her solemn voice, combined with the defeat and pain etched so eloquently in her soft gray eyes gave him pause. Her look as good as said he was all but ripping her life to shreds. That she’d managed to survive all her battles, only to have him step in and toss another one at her feet. No matter the strength of her fight, that trace of what he’d seen earlier in her eyes told him she simply couldn’t handle another loss.

  Couldn’t she see that was what he was trying to avoid?

  “Because it’s my job to make sure you’re safe,” he answered, his voice for once devoid of the anger and frustration he’d aimed at her since she’d nailed him to the ground in a flying tackle.

  “Even if it’s not what I want?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that. He stared at her for a long moment, for the first time wondering if he was doing the right thing. Part of him wanted to argue with her that he was saving her life. But an even stronger urge prodded him to pull her into his lap and hold her, tell her he was sorry.

  But he wasn’t sorry he was about to save her life. He might have convinced himself she was just a job, but somewhere between accepting Regina’s offer and sitting here in the cab of his truck with her daughter, he’d gone from wanting to save Jillian’s life because he was being paid to, to needing to save her life because … Because he didn’t want her to get hurt.