Guardian in Disguise

Sitting on the edge of the bed, pistol still in hand, he waited for the adrenaline to wash away. Nightmares. He’d had a few of them in his time.

Dimly he remembered some of it. They’d found him. Yes, that was it. They’d found him. They surrounded him and threatened him and kept demanding his real name.

He hadn’t been able to remember it. And each time he failed, they hit him again. It may have been a dream, but his head and stomach felt as if those blows had been real.

And Liza. She’d been there, too, demanding his identity.

As if he had one anymore.

Crap. He thumbed the safety on again and put the pistol on the table. Now he felt cold from the sweat drenching. He needed a shower, but didn’t feel safe enough to take one. Not yet.

That damn reporter was going to be a problem. He had to get rid of her somehow.

This might look like a game to her, but for him it was life or death.

Chapter 2

By morning, Liza’s curiosity had only grown. Max McKenny had indeed graduated from the University of Michigan and Stetson College of Law, both with high honors. Beyond that, she hadn’t found a thing, even when she searched Michigan newspapers for his name, thinking he might have been on a case that had gotten some publicity.

But responding cops seldom made the news unless something spectacular came down. Unless a cop was involved in a shoot-out or something equally serious, only the Public Information Officer talked to the press, rarely mentioning the specific cops involved. Very often the names of the first responders never rose to the surface of awareness. So Max might just have had a dull career.

The lack of information wasn’t terribly surprising, except that there was no record at all of any Maxwell McKennys in Michigan. It wasn’t a common name, and that should have made her job easier. Instead, her search was giving her a blank wall.

The American Bar Association had proved opaque. If it had a public membership directory, it wasn’t available online. Checking state licensing boards, as she’d learned long ago, was a total wash if you didn’t get the name exactly right. Maxwell McKenny, if listed as Maxwell D. McKenny, would never show up in a search.

Ah, well.

She tried to force her attention back to the day’s work ahead and forget she’d awakened from a dream that morning about a gorgeous hunk of manhood who resembled Max. Not entirely, but close enough that she couldn’t fool her waking brain into thinking it had just been a generalized dream.

Maybe part of her problem was that it had been way too long since she’d had a boyfriend, something which had everything to do with her former career. There were just so many times you could break a date before a guy went looking elsewhere. Which pretty much meant she had to date other reporters who would understand her schedule, except most of the single men in her newsroom just hadn’t appealed to her. There had been one guy—but she cut that thought off with a scythe. She was not going there.

So maybe she was just focusing on Max because a hunk had walked into view. Maybe this was all some kind of female reaction and not her nose for news at all.

A Harley roared by her as she strode down the sidewalk toward campus, and even from the back she could see it was Max, helmet notwithstanding. Of course. He would have a Harley, big and black, a machine that throbbed with energy and a deep-throated roar. It fit.

Hadn’t she read somewhere that motorcycle cops had thrown fits in some state when officials had wanted to replace their Harleys with something less expensive? Apparently other motorcycles just didn’t sound as good.

Or something. That had been a long time ago, and she couldn’t even remember where she’d read it. Maybe Max had been a motorcycle cop. That would have made his life more boring than most, though handing out traffic tickets was one of the most dangerous jobs cops faced. Even so, most motorcycle cops never ran into any real trouble.

And almost none of them made the news.

She shook her head at herself, deciding she was probably making a mountain out of a molehill. It wasn’t as if her instincts were infallible. She could be very wrong about this.

Much to her amazement, the Harley stopped at the corner and pulled a U-turn, coming back to idle beside her. “Want a lift?” Max asked as he raised the smoky visor that concealed his face.

She was tempted to tell him no, that she enjoyed walking on such a lovely morning, and that would have been true. But equally true was the fact that she hadn’t been on a motorcycle since her college days, and she’d liked it back then. It was tempting.

Even more tempting was wrapping her arms around his waist and discovering if his stomach was as hard and flat as it had looked in that T-shirt. Having her legs extended around his.

Was she losing her mind? Common sense reared. “Thanks,” she said, “but no helmet.”

He flipped open a steel compartment on the side of the hog and pulled one out. “I always carry an extra.” Reaching out, he strapped it to her head, securing it beneath her chin. “You done this before?”

“A long, long time ago.” Part of her wanted to rebel at the way he was taking charge, but another, stronger part of her really wanted to ride behind him on that bike.

So he guided her onto the seat behind him, warning her about the exhaust pipes, and helped her place her feet properly.

“Lean with me,” he reminded her, and then she was sailing toward the school with her arms and legs wrapped around him, thinking how envious all those young girls were going to be when they saw this.

The thought startled her, it was so juvenile, and she laughed out loud at herself.

“It’s fun, isn’t it,” his muffled voice said, misunderstanding the source of her laughter. There was certainly no reason to tell him the truth.

Well, she could now testify that his stomach was hard and flat beneath the leather jacket, and the thighs she was pressed against were every bit as hard. Being wrapped around him this way was causing a deep throbbing in her center.

Oh, man, she had it bad. The bug had bitten. Knowing not one thing about him, really, she wanted to have sex with him. Shouldn’t she have outgrown that a long time ago?

All too soon he pulled them into a faculty parking slot, and seconds later the engine’s roar choked off.

“Wow,” she said. “I haven’t done that in so long.”

“Maybe one Saturday before the weather turns cold I’ll take her out on the mountain roads,” he said easily. “I’ll bet it’s beautiful up there.”

“Right now especially.”

He twisted, offering one arm to help her lever herself off the bike. She was honestly sorry when her feet hit firm ground again. Reluctantly, she reached up to unsnap the helmet.

“That was awesome,” she admitted as she handed the helmet back, then watched him stow it. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He pulled his own helmet off and hesitated. “Maybe, if you want, you could take that mountain ride with me.”

It was her turn to hesitate. The ride sounded like incredible fun, but she still couldn’t escape that strange feeling about him. “I don’t know anything about you,” she said finally.

His polar-ice eyes narrowed a hair, then he surprised her by laughing. “Of course you don’t. We just met. Do you want my fingerprints and birth certificate first?”

All of a sudden she felt foolish for her suspicions. “No, of course not.”

He leaned toward her a little, his teeth still gleaming in a smile. “Getting to know each other takes time, Liza. Don’t you think?”

Then he hopped off the bike, waved and headed to his class.

She stood there feeling utterly flat-footed. How had he done that? He’d told her exactly not one thing more about himself yet had managed to make her feel foolish for even wondering.

Yet, she argued with herself, he was right. It took time to get to know someone personally. But she was still annoyed by the feeling that he was deflecting her.

Why should he? Surely the college wouldn’t have hired someone with a criminal record. They did background checks as well she knew. So why couldn’t she be satisfied with just knowing that he was another instructor like her? Exactly like her.

Because something about him seemed different? Because something didn’t feel quite right?