Marrying Mccabe

‘‘You’re getting protection. It’ll be discreet.’’

Discreet? Roma reined in her disbelief. After the scare just two days ago, her family had rallied around her like a bunch of hens around their only chick. As much as she loved them all, she’d had enough of all the concentrated attention and concern.

She knew she had to accept a certain level of security, but she hadn’t bargained on a bodyguard. Unfortunately, her only alternative was to catch the next flight home, and there were two very good reasons why she wasn’t going to do that. The first one was walking beside her. Any more of Gray’s security precautions and she would go crazy. The second reason was that she’d given Evan diVaggio her promise to help months ago, and she wasn’t backing out on him at the last minute.

Normally she didn’t go near high-profile social events, because she hated the media attention, but Evan’s crusade to fund a children’s cancer ward was a special case. He was a long-time friend of the family, and she’d shared in his grief when his small nephew had died of an inoperable brain tumour. ‘‘Evan’s not going to be happy.’’

Massive understatement.

Evan was artistic and temperamental; a successful fashion designer with his own exclusive house. He was a lot of fun—when he got his own way.

‘‘The hell with Evan. Your safety’s more important than his damn fashion show.’’

Gray gripped her elbow, guiding her through the thickening knots of people waiting to collect their bags. Roma did a slow, silent count to three, then disengaged Gray’s hold with a practised twist of her arm. Her brothers had always treated her like a piece of delicate bone china, despite the fact that she’d been a tomboy ever since she was old enough to lace up a pair of sneakers and tag along after them. She’d never quite figured out their logic. They remembered she was female—usually at inconvenient times—but they seemed to forget that she had camped out with them, that she could outshoot the lot of them at pool, and that she had the meanest pitching arm in Lombard history. ‘‘My safety hasn’t been directly threatened. And I gave Evan my promise months ago. I’m not letting some suit prevent me from meeting my commitments.’’

The set of Gray’s jaw didn’t alter. He’d been as upset as anyone about the loss of Evan’s nephew, but she knew that, for Gray, his own family’s safety was paramount. ‘‘We’ve already had this argument, honey. You’re getting protection.’’ His mouth quirked, the first sign of humour she’d seen in him for days. ‘‘I promise I haven’t got you a G-man this time. Come on, let’s find your bag. I don’t want to miss my flight out.’’

Roma’s eyes narrowed, her suspicions aroused by his comment. ‘‘Is he old?’’

‘‘Does it matter?’’

‘‘How old?’’

‘‘Old enough.’’

Roma drew a measured breath. The last bodyguard she’d had had been forty going on eighty. He’d been so dour and humourless that, by the time his employment had come to an end, she’d decided the only person who had ever been in any danger had been him—from her.

If she had to practically live with someone, she wanted to have some control over who that person was. She knew, though, that Gray hadn’t had time to let her pick and choose. When she’d refused to back out of the trip, he’d had to make arrangements in a hurry.

Gray’s mouth kicked up at one corner. ‘‘Don’t try it with this guy.’’

‘‘Try what?’’ she muttered, knowing exactly what he meant. She’d been an unruly teenager and hell-on-wheels to watch—a reaction against the years her family had endured tight security. At times the pressure had been intolerable, and she’d lashed out against it in ways her family hadn’t always appreciated. Despite the fact that she hadn’t pulled a practical joke in years, that reputation for trouble had stuck.

‘‘Don’t try whatever plan is hatching in that serpentine mind of yours.’’

‘‘I’m twenty-four, hardly a baby. And this is New Zealand, not some back alley in Beirut.’’

‘‘You’re a Lombard. For some people, that’s enough.’’ He gave her an irritated glance. ‘‘And what would you know about back alleys in Beirut?’’

Roma’s mouth curled lazily, delight filling her that she’d actually put a nick in Gray’s rock-solid control. She adored Gray, but sometimes he was too serious, too controlling. To Roma’s way of thinking, her teasing was necessary; he needed someone to poke fun at him and temper all that omnipotent efficiency. Of course, he now had his wife, Sam, to fulfil that role. Since Gray had married and become a father, he had loosened up considerably. ‘‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’’ she murmured.

Gray gave her an exasperated look that was all big brother. ‘‘Hell,’’ he muttered. ‘‘That’s precisely why you need a minder.’’

A familiar case appeared on the conveyor belt. Roma cut in front of Gray and snagged it before he could, blandly ignoring his irritation. He liked to be in charge, but she didn’t exactly like being pushed aside, either. The result was occasionally an undignified tussle, but not without humour. It was a family thing.

Gray’s mouth twitched. To pay her back, he gripped her elbow again as he urged her toward customs.

‘‘I’m not an old lady,’’ she grumbled.

‘‘No,’’ he agreed. ‘‘You’re a smartass.’’

Minutes later, they approached the Arrivals lounge, and, humour and squabbling aside, Roma was glad for Gray’s solid presence beside her, even if he’d sneakily taken charge of the trolley while she’d dug in her holdall for her passport.

It was busy in the terminal, filled with noise and people, a baby crying, laughter. The acoustics amplified the sounds so that they built like a slow breaking wave. Tension gripped her as they took the final turn into the large open area. She put the tension down to a temporary paranoia that had developed since Lewis’s shooting—a knee-jerk reaction that sneaked up on her every time she was in a public place, which lately, between hospital visits and airport terminals, seemed to be most of the time.

She pulled in a deep breath, then another, willing the ridiculous, wimpy feeling of exposure to disappear, but her heart was still pounding as she searched the busy lounge, trying to pick the bodyguard out of the shifting mass of people. With the neat, dark suits they invariably wore, the military-short haircuts, cold, watchful eyes, and the discreet bulge of shoulder-holstered weapons, they might as well have been in uniform.

No one fitted the description. Roma’s knees actually went wobbly with relief. The magnitude of her relief was in itself alarming. Over the years she’d become aware that, for her, the severely suited bodyguards had become the symbol of her family’s vulnerability, but she’d never reacted so violently to the thought of having an armed escort before.

But then, you’ve never been shot at before.

Instantly she rejected the thought. The shooting appeared to be a random one, the fact that Lewis had been shot while he was with her pure coincidence. If she’d been the target, the shooter had had plenty of time to take aim and fire while she’d knelt over Lewis waiting for the ambulance, but there hadn’t been a second shot. She’d been surrounded by armed policemen and helped into the cover of a service lane where an ambulance was parked. A shirt had been magically produced and draped around her, enveloping her from neck to knee. Minutes later Lewis had been loaded into the back of the ambulance on a stretcher, and they had both been taken to the nearest hospital.

The police hadn’t found any trace of the gunman, or any reason for Lewis to be shot. The investigation was still ongoing, but with no suspect, motive, or weapon, there wasn’t much hope that the perpetrator would ever be caught, let alone his reason for shooting into a crowd ever discovered.

Roma’s gaze settled on a big, rough-looking guy who somehow managed to dominate the swirling sea of people. Maybe because he was tall, six-foot-two at least, and dark, with the kind of big, sleek build that would always catch the feminine eye. He looked like a man who would be at home in any era, just as capable of defending his loved ones with a club or a sword as with his bare fists.

In tight, faded jeans and a T-shirt that looked as if it had survived a refugee parcel, no way did this guy look like a bodyguard.

A wave of longing swept her, not for the man specifically, but for what he represented—an ordinary life with ordinary goals such as family and children, and deciding whether to have chicken or steak for dinner, of being able to have an ordinary nine-to-five job, live in a house without sophisticated security on every window and door, and go where she wanted, when she felt like it. Of being able to love those closest to her without fear they would be hurt or taken from her.

Unexpected tears burned her eyes. She blinked, pushing back the attack of the blues with a wave of grumpiness. So, okay, she was a mess—her life was a mess. Her head felt odd and floaty, because she had barely slept since the shooting. The headache that had no right to exist was getting worse. She was hungry. If anyone walked past her with food, she would probably attack them. And her brother was siccing a bodyguard on her.

Someone was going to pay for this.

‘‘I don’t want whatever suit you’ve picked out for me,’’ she stated as Gray continued to forge a path across the lounge in the general direction of the tall, rough guy. ‘‘I want him.’’

Gray spared her a glance. His black gaze gleamed with amusement. ‘‘Want me to get him for you?’’

Roma went still inside. That was not the answer she was expecting. Neither of her brothers was in the habit of ‘‘getting’’ men for her; they were more inclined to get rid of them. If they had their way, she would die a virgin. They were what she euphemistically termed overprotective.

She could count the boyfriends she’d had on two hands, the ones who’d been brave enough to come home with her on one. If they weren’t intimidated by her family’s sheer wealth or the stringent security, her brothers usually managed to scare them off. There was nothing sophisticated about Gray and Blade’s methods. Cold eye contact was always good for starters. A few pointed questions usually followed, and when neither of those strategies worked, her brothers resorted to blunt warnings that bordered on rudeness. Occasionally, if they happened to be out by the pool, there was a show of raw muscle—caveman tactics all the way.

Roma watched with growing suspicion as the tall stranger turned with an abrupt impatience that denoted someone who didn’t want to be where he was and hated being kept waiting, and she saw his face clearly for the first time. Her stomach sank. Suddenly the stranger didn’t look reassuring at all. He looked familiar.

He was tanned and muscular, black-haired, olive-skinned, all clean angles and blades, with a square jaw and deep-set eyes beneath straight brows. Not pretty-boy handsome, but with the kind of strong good looks that, coupled with his size and build, would make most women go weak at the knees about two seconds before they went soft in the head.

His jaw was darkly stubbled, as if he hadn’t been near a razor for a couple of days, and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes as if he, too, hadn’t had a lot of sleep lately. But the one detail that fixed her attention was the scar that sliced across one cheekbone. Whoever had sewn the wound closed hadn’t made a good job of it, and the scar tissue skimming his tanned skin made him look more than just casually dangerous. She’d seen that scar before in photos, and woven more than a few fantasies about that hard masculine face.

Ben McCabe. One of Gray and Blade’s Special Air Service cronies—possibly the only SAS agent she hadn’t yet met in the flesh.

His head came up as if he’d suddenly registered her concentrated attention. His eyes were dark, slitted with irritation, and something more. His gaze in that first moment was frankly, sharply male. It was the lightning perusal of a man who knew women intimately, not lingering so that she became uncomfortable, but making her instantly aware of how male he was. And how female she was.

The abrupt awareness of her own sex startled Roma. Her family’s wealth and status usually provided a shield against this kind of overt attention, and she seldom went out on dates. She was completely unprepared for the flood of heat that swept her. The barrage of sensation was as overwhelming as it was intrusive, and she fought back the only way she knew how, by desperately trying to blank out all emotion.

A group of teenagers in sports uniforms cut across their path, momentarily blocking the man from view.

Roma’s stomach lurched when the stranger’s gaze locked on her again. Now that she was closer, she could see that his eyes were a pure, intense dark blue, wolf-cold and uncompromising. The jolting awareness escalated, and with it came a solid dose of irritation.