Major Nanny

“Why don’t you let me do that for you?” Chloe Lockhart suggested in a gentle tone that caught Harlan by surprise. He was used to sarcasm and petulance from the governor’s rebellious youngest child.

“No,” Stacy snapped, making Chloe flinch. Looking horrified by her own rudeness, Stacy immediately added, “I’m so sorry. I guess I’m still a little stressed.”

“Understandable,” Chloe answered, her voice sympathetic.

“I just have everything I’d need to get this done on my phone,” Stacy added. “Plus, I could really use the distraction.” She flashed Bailey and Chloe a faint smile and headed out the door to the courtyard outside the waiting room. Once the door closed behind her, she pulled out her phone and seemed to get right to work.

Harlan watched her, a little worried by the pallor of her face and the way her back bowed with sheer exhaustion.

What if she’d sustained an injury worse than just the scrape to her head? She could be bleeding internally, for all they knew. The EMTs had barely spared a minute to slap a bandage on her head.

“Did the police tell you anything new?” Parker McKenna’s question forced Harlan’s attention away from Stacy.

With an apologetic look at Bailey, Harlan drew Parker off to the side.

“I’ll tell her what we’re talking about later, you know,” Parker murmured.

Harlan barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. Half the guys at Corps Security and Investigation were sappy in love these days. It was becoming an epidemic—one Harlan had no intention of getting sucked into. His ex-wife had done an excellent job of immunizing him against the love bug. He might thank her one of these days, if he ever decided to speak to her again.

“Regardless, the governor’s daughters don’t need to hear us analyzing who might want to blow up their mother and why,” he said aloud to Parker. “The situation’s scary enough.”

“Tell me about it,” Parker growled. “I thought when we caught Frank Dorian, this kind of thing was over.”

“What’s the chance that Dorian had an accomplice we don’t know about?”

“Believe me, I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Parker admitted. “But it just doesn’t make sense. Dorian’s motive was so personal. It’s not like he’s going to pass on his obsession to some random bomber he found in the phone book.”

Harlan knew Parker was right. Frank Dorian had blamed Lila Lockhart for her decision not to pardon his brother, who’d been on Texas’s death row. His brother’s execution had been too much for Dorian’s brokenhearted mother, and Dorian blamed Lila for her death, as well. His decision to go after the governor had been deeply personal rather than political, and his arrest had put an end to the threats against the governor and her family.

But at least it would have been a place to start looking.

Instead, they didn’t have a clue who’d planted the two bombs at the capitol today. People had been killed. Even more had been injured, some critically.

And for what? Just because Lila Lockhart had decided she wasn’t through serving her country?

The world was a crazy, crazy place.

Harlan’s gaze drifted toward the large plate glass window looking out on the concrete courtyard, where he’d last seen Stacy Giordano. She was no longer talking on the phone, nor had she reentered the hospital waiting room. Instead, she sat on one of the three concrete benches loosely circling a large potted evergreen tree, her back to the window. Her hunched shoulders and lowered head made her look small and fragile.

Harlan’s gut tightened with concern.

“Is she okay?” Parker’s gaze had followed Harlan’s, settling on Stacy’s slender form.

“She had a scrape on her head, but the EMT didn’t seem to think it amounted to much.” Of course, in the middle of all the chaos, the paramedic hadn’t exactly spent much time checking her out. “I’ll go check on her.”

As he stepped out onto the narrow fourth floor terrace, Stacy turned to see who had disturbed her solitude. In her pale face, her eyes looked big and haunted. “Has something happened?” she asked, her voice tinged with alarm.

“No. I just wanted to check on you.” He sat on one of the adjacent benches, squelching the urge to reach out and touch her folded hands. “You look tired.”

“Long day,” she murmured with a hint of wry humor.

“Hellish day,” he agreed. “Did you manage to get all your calls made?”

“I think so.” The humor in her eyes faded. “I just wish I were home.”

“I bet your husband does, too.” Even as the words escaped his lips, Harlan knew he was fishing for information about her marital status. He gave himself a mental kick.

She grimaced. “No. No husband.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Um, sorry?”

She flashed a quick, humorless grin. “No, not sorry.”

So, another wounded warrior back from the marital battlefield? That was even more dangerous.

Her smile faded as quickly as it had risen. “Do we have a death tally from the blast yet?”

He shook his head. “I found two D.O.A. at the scene. At least two more who were in really bad shape.”

Her chin trembled and a sheen of moisture filled her dark eyes. “Damn it.”

The urge to pull her into a hug caught him off guard. He wasn’t a demonstrative guy. He didn’t do tea and sympathy. But something about Stacy Giordano’s vulnerability punched him right in the gut. He wanted to make things better for her.

And that scared the hell out of him.

“I’d better go see if Lila’s been asking for me.” Stacy pushed herself off the bench, wincing a little as if the movement caused her pain.

Harlan couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to steady her, his fingers closing around her upper arm. Her gaze shot up, a quizzical look in her eyes, and for a second, he felt as if his whole body had turned to liquid.

Heat quickly eclipsed that melting sensation. He pulled his hand back, disturbed by his reaction to her.

The door from the waiting room opened, and Parker stood in the doorway, his expression grim. “I just got a call from Wade,” he said. “Frank Dorian’s dead.”

Chapter Three

The governor stayed on the phone for most of the very early flight home from Austin the next morning, giving Stacy time to decompress from the past twenty-four hours. Staying busy arranging for the governor’s entourage to stay in Austin overnight had helped fill her afternoon, and the temporary drama of learning about Frank Dorian’s jailhouse death had occupied most of the early evening, as Bailey Lockhart’s fiancé, Parker McKenna, and his colleague Harlan McClain had stayed in constant touch with their counterparts at the Corps Security and Investigations office in Freedom, relaying information as it trickled in.

All evidence pointed to suicide—Dorian had fashioned a noose from his jail-issued shirt and hung himself from the bars of his cell—but Bart Bellows had selected the men who worked at CSI because they were thorough and resourceful. Stacy had tried not to eavesdrop on their conversations, but she’d gleaned enough to know that one of the CSI agents had a contact at the Freedom Police Department who was keeping them apprised of the department’s investigation. If there was anything strange about Dorian’s death, the agents of CSI were determined to figure out what it was and what, if anything, it had to do with the attack on the governor.

Stacy had found herself growing more and more impressed with the two CSI agents as the evening went on. She knew from Bailey that Corps Security and Investigations was made up of former military men. Parker had been an Army Captain, and it showed. He’d been a huge help in keeping everyone in the governor’s entourage calm and focused.

She wasn’t sure what branch of the military Harlan McClain had been part of. He wore his sandy brown hair short, but so did most of the other former military men she knew. He was hard-muscled, as she’d learned when she’d practically collapsed in his arms after tripping on their way out of the debris field. Clearly he’d kept himself in shape since parting company with whatever military branch he’d served in.

He smelled good, too, she thought, even when sweating out a bomb scare. He didn’t wear cologne like a lot of men, including her ex-husband, did. He smelled of good old soap and water, a light, clean scent that probably wouldn’t have smelled masculine on anyone else.

Harlan McClain was masculine to the core. It had showed in how he’d dealt with the aftermath of the bombing—taking charge, keeping things moving. He’d tended to the dead and wounded, delegated authority to others as needed, and jumped right in to help Stacy when they found the governor buried under the rubble.

Very different from her ex-husband, Anthony, who’d never met a problem he couldn’t analyze to death.