The Heart of a Renegade

Jessica had managed a harrowing escape, but the drugs had permanently damaged her brain, leaving her with horrific flashbacks and hallucinations. The hallucinations were so real that she could no longer be certain of her ability to discern reality from fiction. The Chinese government denied any involvement and she had no proof of a government cover-up. In the end, she’d been swept under the bureaucratic carpet. She’d lost her job, and she’d been left to languish in a British mental institution with severe depression, paranoia, hallucinations, labeled a schizophrenic.

But Jessica had fought back.

She knew what she’d endured in China was true, even if her own memories of the ordeal were sketchy. And now she finally had some proof. The film in her camera was going to show The Chemist really did exist and that he was here, right now, in North America, with Dragon Heads boss Xiang-Li.

“Not even the RCMP took your word that what you just saw in Chinatown wasn’t another of your well-documented hallucinations. That’s why they told you to come back with the prints, once you’d developed them. Am I right, Jess?”

She looked away.

But Luke drew her firmly against his torso as a bus passed on the road above them. His body was so incredibly solid, so warm. Big. He felt so confoundingly safe and dangerous at the same time.

A terrified and very lonely part of Jessica ached to lean into him, to have him hold her, have anyone hold her. To have someone care.

“Let me tell you something, Jess,” he said quietly. “I believe you. Those guys shooting at you in Gastown were real. That tells me that what you saw in Chinatown was real, too. And someone is prepared to kill to keep it quiet. They want the evidence in your camera and they want you dead. And now they want me, too.” He paused, watching her face intently. “That puts you and me pretty much on the same side, wouldn’t you say?”

She closed her eyes. The idea of an ally, someone who actually believed she wasn’t a total nut job, was so heady and alluring it hurt. After being alone and confused for so many years she’d come to a point where she’d actually believed she was crazy, where she honestly didn’t know whether she could trust her own mind. The doubt still whispered, even now.

Tears burned under her lids as she struggled to hold back the painful surge of emotion. “Why are you doing this for me, Luke?”

The question punched at him in a way Luke couldn’t explain. This woman got to him. He’d seen her file. He knew her background. He knew what she’d endured and he understood her kind of solitude. And while she was afraid and vulnerable, she was also brave. Never mind utterly physically compelling.

He exhaled heavily.

He didn’t want anything to get to him. He didn’t want to understand her. Hell, he didn’t even want to like her.

He didn’t want to like anybody.

“I’m not doing it for you, Jess.” His voice was suddenly blunt and he knew it but couldn’t help it. “It’s my job. I work for the Force du Sablé, a private military company that offers close protection to politically sensitive targets, among other things.” He paused, angry again that this mission had been thrust on him by FDS boss Jacques Sauvage.

“Politically sensitive targets?” she whispered.

“The FDS was contracted by the CIA to find you and to bring you in. I’m your bodyguard until I hand you and the film over.” Which he hoped to hell would happen within the next few hours.

Panic sparked in her eyes. “How does the CIA know about my film? How do you know about it? How do you even know about Giles?”

“Later, Jess. Right now I need to get you someplace you can sleep for the night.” He took her arm and guided her up the narrow gangplank. He’d wasted enough time. It wasn’t his job to explain anything. This mission had come on such short notice Luke wasn’t the hell sure what he could tell her.

The only reason he was on this dock right now was because Jacques Sauvage had informed him that Jessica Chan would die tonight without his immediate intervention.

The FDS had stationed Luke in Vancouver to gather intelligence on Asian organized crime syndicates that operated out of the Pacific Northwest, particularly gangs rumored to be colluding with known terrorist organizations—like the Dragon Heads.

The FDS was finding increased client demand for this sort of intelligence and Luke’s brief had been to establish a small intelligence office in the city.

This had positioned him as the only operative the FDS could dispatch to Jessica in time. In spite of his contract.

Now he was saddled with a job he could neither refuse nor fully embrace. He cursed silently. Jacques was going to pay for this.

“Where?” she asked.

“Where what?”

“You said you were going to take me someplace I could sleep for the night.”

“Right. I guess that would be…my place.” Luke swore to himself again.

Yeah, Jacques was going to pay big-time, especially if he didn’t get this woman off his hands within the next few hours.

The cab was warm and it relaxed his principal—which was how Luke was determined to think of Jessica Chan from this point on. He put his arm around her in an effort to appear a casual couple, while he clamped down on his emotions. She was exhausted and within minutes she’d fallen asleep nestled right into the crook of his arm. Reluctantly he realized she fit perfectly.

Too perfectly.

She felt too damn good.

Old protective instincts began to rustle uncomfortably. Being a bodyguard had come as naturally to him as beating up the bully who’d picked on the smaller kids in the schoolyard. And it had brought him just as much trouble.

Luke had simply been born to protect, especially when he perceived injustice. But for the last four years, he’d managed to hold those instincts at bay, for his own survival. Now, holding Jessica in his arms, he could feel the echo whispering through him again, pulsing louder and stronger with every beat of his heart. Luke swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat.

The taxi bumped over a speed hump and the soft weight of Jessica’s—his principal’s—breast pressed into his chest, awakening something in quite another part of Luke’s body.

He closed his eyes, grudgingly unable to stop savoring the sweet sexual sensation stirring low in his gut. Luke realized with mild shock that he didn’t actually want to block it out. It felt good to have a woman in his arms again, to feel his blood and body roused again. His pulse quickened and his throat turned even drier.

The cab pulled up in front of the West Vancouver address Luke had given the driver, and not a moment too soon. “Wake up,” he said, gently nudging her.

Her almond-shaped eyes fluttered open, sultry with sleep, then widened in shock at the sudden realization of where she was.

“It’s okay, we’re here.”

Luke settled the fare, helped her from the car and, without a word, pulled her against his body and covered her mouth with his own as he watched the red brake lights of the cab retreat down the hill from the corner of his eye.

Jessica stiffened, trying to pull away, but Luke tightened his hold. “Easy, Jess,” he murmured over her lips as he watched the taxi round a corner. “A loving couple is the only thing that driver must remember.”

She stilled in his arms, but he could feel her heartbeat increasing rapidly against his chest. To his shock, she opened her mouth tentatively under his.

Heat rocketed through Luke, exciting something savage and hard in him. Before he could stop, knowing full well the taxi had long gone, he deepened his kiss and his tongue met hers. He felt her welcoming him, her body softening against his as she angled her mouth, allowing him to taste her own hot, sweet need.

Luke couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes, allowing his iron grip on control to ease for the first time in years, simply giving himself over to sensation, tasting her deep, hungrily, not bothering to fight the mounting pressure of his arousal against her belly, which he knew she had to feel.

At the same time his brain was screaming that this was so wrong, for more reasons than he cared to count. She was his principal. And vulnerable. And she was opening to him for all the wrong reasons.

Luke managed to pull back, breathing hard. They locked gazes for a moment, words defying them. And he could see just as much dark turbulence and confusion in those exquisite amber eyes of hers as he felt in his heart.

He wanted to explain why he’d done this. But he didn’t know the answer himself.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “We should go.”

She simply nodded.

Luke escorted her to his innocuous dark blue SUV parked along the curb, taking exaggerated care not to touch her again as he beeped the alarm, opened the passenger door and let her in.