The Heart of a Renegade

But letting Jessica Chan in was the last thing in this world Luke was ready to do.

He had a sinking feeling the more he opened the door to this woman, the harder it would become to get her back out of his life.

Tasting her had been intoxicating, like the first heady sip of elixir for an alcoholic. Just as addictive and potentially just as lethal to him.

Hot damn, he was in trouble. Serious trouble.

Luke slammed the door shut and wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand. Jacques better have that pickup ready because he wanted to be rid of this woman before sunrise.

Luke drove over the Lions Gate Bridge, back toward the heart of downtown Vancouver, car heater cranked high, soft classical music playing, snowflakes swirling at them like asteroids in the headlights. For the first time in days Jessica felt safe—on one level.

But on another, she wasn’t so sure.

She studied him surreptitiously as orange-hued streetlights pulsed over his rugged profile, throwing a small scar that fanned from the corner of his right eye into relief.

He had another fine scar across his chin and another that ran down his neck.

He looked ruggedly handsome, scarred, dangerous.

“Are you going to tell me about Giles now?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I need to check in with my people before I can explain. This was…sort of a rush job,” he said, turning off the bridge and heading toward Granville Island, where he pulled into a parking lot near the marina and killed the engine.

“You sound pissed to be saddled with me. Are you?”

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Why don’t you just say it like it is, Luke? It’s not like I haven’t endured worse.”

His eyes flashed to hers, a hint of guilt in them. “It’s nothing personal,” he said flatly. “I’d moved out of the close-protection business.”

“Why?”

“Not my thing.”

“Great,” she muttered to herself. A reluctant bodyguard. She’d almost made the mistake of thinking he cared. Just a little. A part of her actually wanted him to care. The loneliness in Jess wanted to attach meaning to his incredible soul-searing kiss.

A dark sense of depression descended on her. She was a fool to be so needy. It made her angry.

He got out, came round to the passenger side, her camera bag in his hand, and he opened the door. “Coming?”

She closed her eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath of cold ocean air mixed with brine. “Yeah. I guess I’m flat out of choices.”

He jutted his chin toward a row of houseboats interspersed with yachts. “My place is down there, on the water.”

The snow was dumping heavily now, big fat flakes waltzing on the wind and shimmying in the halos of lights that lined the wooden boardwalk to the boathouses. It was settling fast on the yachts and the stacked rows of kayaks, but the flakes melted into blackness as they hit the glistening dark water of False Creek.

He took her arm. “Careful. The boardwalk gets slippery.”

A quiver of heat shot through Jessica as her body connected with his again. She cursed to herself, wondering if his attentiveness was chivalry or chauvinism.

Or just another aspect of a job he didn’t want.

Chapter 3

Luke strode into his living room, booted up his laptop and set his satellite phone next to it. He hooked his finger into the hem of his sweater and pulled it up over his head as he walked to the bathroom, desperate to scrub the lingering scent of booze from his skin and from his memory, knowing at the same time no matter how hard he abraded himself, he was never going to scrape deep enough to eradicate the drunken nightmares that lingered in the dark crevices of his brain.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he called back to her as he went around the corner, leaving her standing alone in the middle of his living room. He’d check in with Jacques as soon as he was done. “Make yourself at home. Take anything you want from the kitchen.”

“I might just leave!” she yelled after him, irritation snipping her voice suddenly.

He stilled, turned and stepped shirtless back around the corner, his eyes narrowing onto her. “Jess, all that stands between you and a bullet right now is me. I think you’re smart enough to see that.” He turned to go, hesitated, spun back. “But if you really want to go, please, be my guest.”

“You said it was your job to protect me,” she called out.

“Never wanted the damn job in the first place,” he muttered to himself as he kept on walking. He stepped into the bathroom, shut the door and turned the shower on scalding hot. Jacques and the FDS crew could wait. She’d be safe here. Neither the Triad nor the cops had a handle on his identity.

And he was damn sure she wasn’t going to leave. Jessica Chan’s memories might be pharmacologically cross-wired, but he doubted the rest of her brain was. The lady knew how to survive. She’d made it two days on her own with Chinese assassins after her blood. And he was impressed with how she handled tonight.

She wanted to survive.

He had to respect that. Luke knew just how easy it was to give up.

Jessica stared openmouthed at the space Luke Stone had just vacated. The man had one of the most ripped bodies she’d ever had the pleasure of personally encountering. But it was the back he’d turned on her that truly shocked.

Every little bit of exposed skin was crisscrossed with long, pale scars, as though he’d been lashed and shredded within mere inches of his life.

She began to tremble. She steadied herself by reaching out for the back of his couch.

Luke Stone understood torture.

Maybe…just maybe…this man would understand her.

She heard the shower go on and she ran her hands over her hair trying to force rational thought. Panic could bring the hallucinations on again, the doctors had told her that. She had to focus on the present. On moving forward. It was her only option. If she lost her grasp on reality now, they’d finally win.

She was never going to let them win.

She realized she still had Luke’s leather jacket on though it was warm in his home. He’d put on the gas fire and the kettle on his way through the kitchen.

She slipped out of his jacket, draped it over the couch and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his small living room. The windows looked right onto the water. He had a kayak tethered to a small deck and a bike was chained against the wall. The lights of English Bay twinkled on the opposite side of False Creek, everything muted by softly falling snow. It was a pretty place. She wondered if the yacht she’d seen moored to the side of the double-story boathouse was also his. She suspected it was.

She turned to take in the rest of his living space. It was paneled wood and purely male—the home of an outdoorsman. Touring skis and a snowboard hung from racks near the door. Technical snowshoes were propped against the wall near a hall closet that hung slightly ajar, exposing a tangle of ropes, carabiners and jackets.

Contour maps, a compass and a GPS device cluttered his dining table. Jessica walked over and examined the maps. They were of British Columbia’s backcountry. Luke Stone’s physique was honed by an obvious passion for the wilderness. He had a taste for thrill, adventure. She glanced up at the framed black-and-white photographs that covered one wall. Their evocative beauty drew her closer.

With mild shock, Jessica realized he’d taken them. He’d signed them in the bottom right corners. A shimmer of interest rippled through her as she peered closely at the haunting images. She understood photography—the artistic nuances of black-and-white in particular.

Black-and-white film was what she used. It was her sanity and she clung to it even in a digital era. Two years ago a nurse Jessica had befriended while in the psychiatric institution in England had given her an old Minolta camera. Jessica started using it to record her days, proving to herself that her day-today life was real, not imagined, that her memories of it were true. She’d become good at it. And when she’d started developing her own work, the act of watching those daily memories take literal shape in the darkroom had filled Jessica’s heart with indescribable joy. With progressive skill in the darkroom came increased mental confidence. That old Minolta had given Jessica the strength to fight back, the will to believe in herself.