Tycoon Protector

A pang of regret hit Ysabel square in the chest. “You and I both know Jackson rides life in the fast lane. He doesn’t slow down long enough to notice anything but the business.”

“He took enough time to get engaged.”

“Only because it was on his scheduled time line of ‘things to do before I die.’ I penciled that in on his goals sheet when he wasn’t looking one day. The man wouldn’t have bothered if I hadn’t.” He’d totally missed the point, too. Ysabel could still feel the pain of watching him court woman after woman to find one who could provide the right corporate-wife image. He’d thought he’d found it in Jenna Nilsson. The witch. He’d even had Ysabel order an engagement ring for the woman. Wow. She shook her head. The memory still made her chest ache.

“Still, he did get engaged,” Delia offered, wincing when Ysabel glared at her.

“For what it was worth!” Ysabel threw her arms in the air. “She was cheating on him from day one with an old boyfriend.”

“You knew?”

Heat filled her cheeks. “Yeah, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. The man is clueless when it comes to women. He deserved her.”

“Wow, and here I thought you were in love with the guy.”

“Emphasis on past tense.” Ysabel tossed her long, straight hair behind her shoulder. “I’m so over him.”

“Right, that’s why we’ve been talking about him for the past…” Delia glanced at her wristwatch, “thirty minutes.”

Anger surged in Ysabel’s chest. “Of all people, I thought you’d understand.” She grabbed her purse and keys. “I’m going back to my place.”

“You mean you’re going back to the office, don’t you?” Delia stood and followed Ysabel toward the door. “I don’t know why you bother to keep an apartment, you practically live at the office. What are you going to do when you aren’t working there anymore?”

“I don’t live at the office and I am going to my apartment,” Ysabel lied. She’d thought of a few things she’d wanted to straighten in Jackson’s office before he showed up bright and early tomorrow.

Delia rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

As she reached for the door, her BlackBerry phone sang out the tune to Mission Impossible, the one she’d assigned to Jackson Champion’s phone number. Her heart leaped into her throat, threatening to choke off her air. Ysabel dug in her purse for the device. “Where is that damned thing?”

“Calm down. He’ll just keep ringing until you answer.”

“I am calm!” Her fingers curled around the smooth black rectangle and she jerked it from her purse. For a moment she stared down at the name displayed across the miniature screen. Jackson Champion. Her breath caught in her throat and her fingers froze.

“Tell him, Ysabel. Tell him he’s going to be a father.”

“No, I can’t. I have to quit first.”

“You owe him that much.”

Ysabel’s hands shook. “I can’t.”

“At least answer the phone.” Delia reached over her sister’s shoulder and punched the Talk button. Then she leaned back against the wall, her brows rising up her smooth forehead in challenge.

“Ysabel? Ysabel! Are you there?” Jackson’s voice barked out from the phone, jerking Ysabel out of her stupor.

Her hands shook as she pressed the phone to her ear. “Yes, I’m here.”

“I need you down on the Bayport Terminal ASAP.”

“Tell him,” Delia whispered.

With Delia staring at her like her gaze could bore a hole into her conscience and Jackson’s voice sending goose bumps across her skin, Ysabel shook her head. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Jackson asked. “I need you here now! And set up a meeting with the Aggie Four—Flint McKade and Akeem Abdul—for first thing in the morning. We’ve got big problems.”

Ysabel resisted the urge to pull out a pen and jot down his instructions on the handy notepad she kept in her purse. She took a deep breath and straightened. It was now or never. “I quit.”

“You what?” Jackson shouted.

Ysabel held the phone away from her ear until Jackson stopped yelling. “You heard me. I quit.”

“That’s what I thought you said. I don’t know what’s going on, but quitting at this point in time is not an option. Get down to the terminal now!”

It was just like the man to ignore her when she wanted something. Ysabel’s stubborn streak set in with a vengeance. “Maybe you didn’t understand what I just said.”

“I understood just fine. I also have an employment contract that requires you give me two weeks notice.” Jackson paused, breathing heavily in the phone. “Look, I’ve had a lousy voyage with a man gone overboard. You sent me a trainee when I just got back in town, a crate full of what I thought were Rasnovian saddles just exploded in front of me, I have a dead man lying at my feet and the police are trying to arrest me for murder. Either you get down here now or I’ll sue you for breach of contract!”

Chapter Two

“I tell you, as far as I knew, the box contained hand-crafted Rasnovian saddles, not explosives.” Jackson held his temper in check. Now was not the time for letting loose. Not with a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth detective ready to accuse him of God knew what.

Detective Brody Green nodded toward the area surrounded in yellow crime scene ribbon, a snarling sneer lifting his upper lip. “Obviously, the box wasn’t full of saddles. Our crime scene experts are leaning toward explosive detonators. Would you care to explain that?”

Jackson’s back teeth ground together. “Champion Shipping doesn’t transport explosives or detonators. Nowhere on my manifests was this indicated or I would have put a stop to it before it left the port of embarkation.”

Brody’s lips twisted into a mirthless smile. “Right. Still, I’ll need to question you and all your employees involved in the loading and unloading of this particular ship. And I’ll bet the Department of Homeland Security will want to talk with you as well.”

“Fine. I have nothing to hide.” Jackson ran a hand through his hair and looked around for the hundredth time. Where was Ysabel?

As if reading his mind, Tom, the executive rotation trainee, stared down at his watch. “She said she’d be here in twenty minutes. That was…twenty minutes ago.” He looked across the container yard and grinned. “Just like clockwork. How does she do it?”

The skin on the back of Jackson’s neck tingled. He didn’t need Tom’s words to tell him Ysabel was behind him. The day of reckoning had arrived and Jackson was no more prepared for it than he’d been two months ago. Face the music, Champion. Face it and lose her.

Sucking in a deep breath, he slowly turned.

Ysabel Sanchez strode across the heated concrete, her heels clicking, her long straight hair swaying around her shoulders in a curtain of light. Her full hips mesmerized him in the glare of the overhead lights.

Jackson’s mouth went dry and his groin tightened. Two months should have erased all physical yearnings he might have had for his executive assistant. It worked for all the other women he’d dated since he’d escaped puberty.

Ysabel wasn’t like the other women. She carried herself as if she were a Spanish queen, poker-straight, a haughty tilt to her chin, all business and no nonsense. Yes, that was the Ysabel he wanted to remember, but he had the other Ysabel branded in his mind and every nerve ending in his body since that night he’d spent in her arms.

Jackson had witnessed the softness and tenderness beneath the hard-core front she put on for Champion Shipping. Her Spanish heritage showed in the full curve of her breasts, the light olive tone of her skin and the rounded swell of her hips. Soft, moss-green eyes saw through his soul to the man he’d hidden beneath the rough exterior since his first day in the foster care system. The woman had a knack for reading minds. If Jackson believed in magic, Ysabel Sanchez was most definitely a witch.

His hands ached for the straight, light brown hair that sifted through his fingers like strands of the finest silk. Beneath that cool, professional exterior lurked a fiery passion he hadn’t seen before. The urge to pull her into his arms and pick up where they’d left off that night in his bed nearly blew away his icy reserve. Damn the woman to hell!

Jackson suppressed a moan and struggled to keep his hands in his pockets and maintain a professional face in front of the detective and the kid. Neither of them had a need to know of his transgression or his secret lust for his executive assistant. That was his cross to bear.

Without a “Hello” or a “Good to see you” after two months out of the office, Jackson skipped the niceties and went straight for dealing with the more immediate problem. “Detective Brody, Ysabel Sanchez.”