Shotgun Daddy

“Because of a man named Leo Roswell. Your ex-lover let him get his throat cut, honey.” He glanced at her. “It was a Recoveries International situation that went real bad, real fast, but I was the negotiator on the spot. I should have guessed Larry might think it was a good idea to pull the plug.”

“A man got his throat—” She didn’t finish the sentence. He heard her indrawn breath. “That’s horrible.”

Gabe didn’t know why he’d put it so bluntly. He didn’t even know why he was talking to her about it. “Yeah, it was horrible. So did you walk in on Larry with Jink, or whatever her name was?”

“Jinx. I don’t want to discuss it.” The frosty tone was back in full force. Gabe took the hint, and for the better part of the next hour there was nothing but silence between them—a silence that was finally broken by Caro herself when his arm accidentally brushed against hers as he reached for the stick shift. She stiffened. “How long before we get to Aspen?”

The lady might as well have posted No Trespassing signs, Gabe thought. It was obvious not only that she wasn’t interested in having a conversation, but that she was having second thoughts about being in his company at all. To be fair, he couldn’t really blame her for her show of nerves just now. He had a pretty good idea of what she saw when she looked at him—a big man with straight black hair that should have been cut two weeks ago and an outdoor-worker’s tan deepening his natural copper, wearing faded jeans and a thin cotton shirt. Not at all what she’d been expecting when she’d made the snap decision to hop into his waiting vehicle outside the chalet.

And if she wasn’t enthralled with having him as a travelling companion, he thought wryly, she was going to be real thrilled about bunking in with him tonight.

“Change of plans,” he said, narrowing his gaze against the heavy snow and wondering if he’d already passed the place he was looking for. “We’re not making Aspen—not till morning, at least. This blizzard’s getting worse. We’re going to have to find somewhere to hole up for the night.”

Her gaze was arctic. “Stay the night with a man I met an hour ago? If that’s supposed to be a joke, I don’t see the humor—and if it isn’t, you’ve made a big mistake, Mr. Riggs. The driving can’t be that bad. We’ll keep going.”

Ignoring her peremptory order, Gabe saw the lane-way he’d noticed earlier in the day when he’d been heading the other way. He eased his foot onto the brake, thought for a tense moment that the vehicle was going to lose it on the patch of glare ice that appeared suddenly in his headlights, and then made the turn. Gravel crunched under the tires as they took a slight incline to the darkened building ahead.

“A weekend lodge like this, they’ve probably got an alarm system.” He brought the four-wheel drive to a stop, looked at her stiff figure and took the keys from the ignition. “Trust me, we wouldn’t have made it, and if it’s your reputation you’re worrying about, don’t. I’m going to disable the security, so even if the cops could get here in these conditions, they won’t have a need to.”

Her eyes lasered through him. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to spend the night with you. My father’s William Moore, and if that name doesn’t mean anything to you, it should. Turn this car around right now.”

It had been a long day—hell, a long week, Gabe reflected tightly. Even when he’d been busy throwing Larry over the banister he hadn’t allowed himself to lose the numbness that had surrounded him since he’d seen Leo Roswell’s dead body. He’d known that a single spark of emotion would be enough to blaze down the flimsy barriers holding back his emotions.

Caro Moore had just lit that spark. He tried to count to ten, gave up at seven, and got out of the car. He went around to her door and opened it.

“Drop the lady-of-the-manor act, honey, and pronto. I’m not your chauffeur. I’m getting real tired of you treating me like one. Get out of the car.”

“Didn’t you hear what I just—”

The rest of her sentence was lost in a gasp as he lifted her from the car seat and deposited her unceremoniously into one of the snowdrifts beside the vehicle. He looked down at her.

“Let’s get things straight, princess. You’re a rich bitch. I’m some version of hired muscle. You obviously think that means I can’t wait to have my crude way with you, but at the risk of shattering your illusions, I’m not interested.” He forced an evenness into his tone. “I’ll help you up.”

“I don’t need your help,” she retorted, her heeled boots choosing that moment to slip on a patch of ice.

He reached down and hauled her to her feet—too roughly, he realized as he became momentarily unbalanced.

Only the fact that his vehicle was behind him saved them both from losing their footing. Furious blue eyes met his from a distance of only a few inches as Caro slammed against him.

“You’re the one with the illusions, Mr. Riggs—” Her lips, pale pink and way too close, bit off the words. “Am I supposed to believe this wasn’t planned, either? Let go of me.”

“My pleasure.” He released his grip on her, hoping that nothing of what was going through his mind showed in his face.

The breathlessness he’d felt when he’d first seen her was back worse than ever, he thought hollowly, and it didn’t matter that she was too rich, too arrogant and too damn spoiled. Just for an instant he imagined how she’d look beneath him, that pale hair spread out on the snow, those pale lips parted—

He turned away quickly, his fists clenched at his sides. “Wait here. This shouldn’t take long.”

Whoever the lodge’s owners were, they were like Kanin; their security system had all the bells and whistles. But one snip through a wire made it useless. It was the same with the dead bolt on their front door. Gabe jimmied it open and walked back to the car, but by the time he’d locked the vehicle, he saw her slim figure, her back ramrod straight under the fur coat she’d slipped into again, entering the house.

He leaned against the four-by-four and dragged his hand across his mouth.

What the hell was the matter with him? Caro Moore was no different from any of the wealthy socialites with whom he’d come into contact in his job. She expected to snap her fingers and have someone jump. She’d never worked for a living, had never had to worry about the rent, had never ventured out of her shallow little circle of similarly wealthy friends and acquaintances.

She didn’t live in his world. He had no desire to live in hers. How hard could it be not to let the woman get to him?

Hard enough, he admitted grimly as he entered the house and saw her standing in front of an empty fireplace. She gave no indication that she was aware of his presence, and he squelched the flicker of irritation that rose in him.

“There’s a woodpile at the side of the house,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could muster. “I’d better bring some in to keep us going if we lose the electricity.”

She didn’t turn around. “The phone doesn’t work. You did something to it when you sabotaged the security, didn’t you.”

He’d tried, dammit, Gabe thought, not even bothering to count to ten this time. He’d cut her all the slack he had available, but now he’d come to the end of the line.

With two strides he closed the space between them. He spun her around to face him, and saw surprise replace some of the icy hauteur in her gaze.

“How’d you guess, honey?” he said through clenched teeth. “Yeah, it’s all part of my big bad plan—the weather, the phones, finding this place and breaking in. So how about it? You and me, the snow princess and the hired hand—wanna get it on? Hey, I’m not your fiancé, but that’s probably a plus right now, as far as you’re concerned.”

He saw a small white-gloved hand blurring toward his face. He caught her wrist just as her palm kissed his cheek.

“No, sweetheart,” he said, his smile crooked. “I don’t play rough with women, and I don’t let them play rough with me. Let’s both stop with the games, okay?”

He lowered her hand without releasing her wrist, regret already setting in. “I shouldn’t have yanked your chain like I did just now. We’re stuck with each other for the night, so why don’t we call a truce? I’m willing if you are.”

Her gaze locked on his, as if she were determining whether she could trust him. Those silky dark lashes didn’t have mascara on them, he noted. In fact, she wasn’t wearing any kind of makeup that he could see. Her skin was naturally creamy. Her lips were naturally a pale pink shade. Her eyes were naturally a deep, heartbreaking blue that could make a man’s mouth go dry and his knees buckle beneath—

“You really stopped because the road was getting too dangerous?” Her uncertain question broke through his musings.

“Yeah, princess, I did. On a job a few years ago I was forced to ride shotgun on a Jeep carrying a load of dynamite through the jungle, and believe me, I felt safer then than I did tonight trying to avoid those patches of black ice.” He felt tension seep out of her. “So are we good here?”

Her eyes still on his, she gave the tiniest of nods. He relaxed his hold on her wrist.

The next moment he rocked back on his heels as her palm connected solidly with his cheek.

“Are we good here? After you made that crack about how I must feel toward the man I was going to marry?” Her glare was blue fire. “This evening I walked in on Larry while he and another woman were indulging in a variation of ‘getting it on,’ as you’d probably put it. When he realized he’d been caught, he told me that if I’d ever shown any interest in performing that particular act on him, he wouldn’t have had to cheat on me. Do you have any idea how humiliating tonight was for me? Do you think I like knowing that when I get back to Albuquerque, everyone’s going to be whispering about what Larry’s prude of a fiancée does and doesn’t do in the bedroom?”

Pain flashed behind her eyes. She blinked it away. “So, no, we’re not good here. I’d sooner spend the night in the car than another minute with you.”

She began to push past him. Instinctively Gabe put out a hand to stop her, nudging the fur coat from her shoulders as he did. He grasped her lightly, his fingers spread wide on the soft whiteness of her sweater.

“You’re right, I was way out of line.” Her lips tightened at his words, but he saw past the dismissive gesture to the tightly wound tension she’d hidden so well.

Or perhaps Caro Moore hadn’t had to hide it that well, he told himself slowly. Maybe he’d been so preoccupied with his failure to save a hostage that he hadn’t wanted to notice the woman behind the icy facade.

Sure, she had attitude. She had it in spades. But pampered princess or not, she hadn’t deserved to learn the way she had what a jerk Kanin was.

“If anyone’s bunking in the car tonight, I am,” he said. “I owe you that, at least, and I’m used to sleeping rough.”

He let his hands slide from her shoulders. Even as he did he saw the twin smears of black grease they left against the pristine white of her cashmere sweater. Caro’s eyes widened in appalled disbelief as she saw them, too.