The Keeper

Who knew that having only one foot of five in closet space would irritate him to no end? Or that the way she ground her teeth at night would feel like psychological torture? Or that when he’d rebelled against the minimal closet space she’d thrown all of his shit out into the yard and set it on fire with charcoal starter and a flame thrower? Jack frowned.

In retrospect she’d been a little unbalanced—brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “crazy sex”—but the lesson had been learned all the same. He liked his own space. He liked his own bed. He liked making his own rules. As such, he didn’t do sleepovers. When the goal was met—typically a little mutually satisfying sex with no strings or expectations—he ultimately retreated to his own place.

And planned to always retreat to his own space.

Jack didn’t know when he’d made the conscious decision to never marry, but when his mother had concluded her I’m-so-glad-you’re-home speech with a succinct nod and a “Now you can settle down and get married,” he’d mentally recoiled at the thought.

The reaction had been jarring and, even more so, unexpected.

In all truth, he’d never really given much thought to the idea of marriage. He’d been busy building a career he loved, distilling the values he’d always appreciated—courage, honor, love of country, being a man who didn’t just give his word, but kept it, one who followed through and always got the job done. He worked hard on the battlefield and played hard off it.

Life, full friggin’ throttle, unencumbered by any other ties.

And he’d liked it that way.

He hadn’t realized exactly how much until after the accident, when everything in his world had shifted.

Losing Fulmer and Johnson had certainly changed him—death had a way of doing that to a person—and the hearing loss had ultimately cost him a career he’d loved, but he’d be damned before he’d give up the only part of himself he’d managed to hold on to. He was still Jackson Oak Martin and, though this life was a stark departure from the one he left behind, he’d figure out a way to make it work.

Because that’s what he did.

And the alternative was simply unacceptable.

And, friend of Ranger Security or not, this Mariette person was just going to have to deal with it because he had a damned butter thief to find.

PAYNE WATCHED THEIR newest recruit leave the boardroom and then turned to his partners and quirked a brow. “That went better than I expected,” he said. “A lesser man might have balked at catching a butter bandit.”

Guy pushed up from the leather recliner he’d been slouched in and grabbed a pool stick. He carefully lined up his shot and sent the number three into the corner pocket. “He’s certainly the most determined man we’ve ever brought on board, I’ll say that.” He frowned thoughtfully. “And not twitchy, but … barely contained.”

Payne had noted that, as well. Jack Martin didn’t shift in his seat, avoid eye contact, tap his fingers or his feet—didn’t fidget at all, actually—and yet, like a thoroughbred waiting behind the gate, the energy was there. Banked anticipation. Bridled action.

Having joined Guy, Jamie took a shot at the nine and missed. He swore and absently chalked his cue. “Charlie said that the only thing that made leaving the military bearable for him was the job he knew would be waiting here.”

Payne could definitely see where that would be the case and Colonel Carl Garrett had seconded Charlie’s opinion. According to the Colonel, before the incident in Baghdad, Jack Martin had been rapidly rising through the ranks, on the verge of lieutenant-colonel status. He was well-favored, determined and dedicated. He was a man who had been in love with his career and, though he could have stayed on in another capacity within the military, he couldn’t have continued along the same path.

It said a lot about his character that he was willing to blaze a new one.

“You can barely see the hearing aid,” Jamie remarked. “I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if I hadn’t been looking for it.”

The blast that had killed two of his men and injured two others had shattered Jack’s eardrum so thoroughly that he’d needed multiple surgeries to repair it. As injuries went, he was damned lucky, but it had to have been an adjustment, all the same.

“Has Charlie found out why he’s taking the lip-reading classes yet?” Guy asked.

“No.” And he wished their curious, master hacker would leave that well enough alone. Everyone was entitled to a few secrets and, for whatever reason, Payne got the impression that the one Jack was trying to keep was as painful as it was significant.

Charlie digging around in something her brother had decided was private wasn’t going to endear her to him if he found out. Of course, Jack probably knew Charlie well enough to know that she couldn’t resist a mystery and considered very little privileged information sacred. He almost grinned.

It was part of the reason they’d hired her, after all.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Jamie chimed in. “He can hear. Why would he need to know how to read lips?”

Payne shrugged. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Jamie took another pull from his drink and settled a hip against the pool table. “I just hope that Mariette doesn’t make things too difficult for him. We’re helping her, for heaven’s sake.” He shook his head. “Why is being grateful a concept women struggle with?”

Payne felt his lips twist. “She didn’t ask for our help.”

Jamie blinked. “That’s my point exactly. She didn’t have to ask.”

“I don’t think it’s the help that she objects to, per se,” Guy remarked, his lips sliding into a smile. “It’s the us not leaving her a choice that’s got her back up.”

“Charlie said we could have handled it better,” Jamie said. He paused thoughtfully and grimaced. “Actually, what she really said is that we were all a bunch of high-handed, knuckle-dragging idiots with the tact of a herd of stampeding elephants. Or something like that.”

Payne chuckled. That sounded about right. And he’d never met a woman who liked being told what to do. He frowned thoughtfully.

Mariette certainly wasn’t going to be the exception there.

He hoped Jack realized that sooner rather than later.

2

MARIETTE LEVINE WAS IN the process of pulling a red-velvet cupcake from the display case when she heard the bell over the door jingle and saw a pair of impossibly long, jeans-clad legs come into view. They sidled forward in a walk that was so blatantly sexy and loose hipped that she momentarily forgot what she was doing.

A flash of pure sexual heat instantly blazed through her, the sensation so unexpected and shocking she felt her eyes round and her breath catch.

Instead of standing up—which would have been the logical thing to do—for reasons that escaped her, Mariette dropped into a deeper crouch so that she could get a better look at the rest of him. She was not hiding, Mariette told herself. She had no reason to hide, even if she would admit to being curiously … alarmed.

How singularly odd.

She had no reason to be alarmed, either, and yet something about the stranger—whose face she hadn’t even seen yet—triggered an imminent sense of danger. Not of the axe-murderer variety, but something else … something much more personal. Her racing heart stupidly skipped a beat and her mouth went dry.

Intrigued, her gaze drifted up over his crotch—it had to, dammit, to get to the rest of him—and took a more thorough inventory. He wore an oatmeal-colored cable-knit sweater—oh, how she loved a cable-knit sweater on a man—and a leather bomber jacket that had seen better days. His hands were stuffed into the pockets, his broad shoulders still a bit hunched beneath the cold. He was impossibly … big. Not apish or fat, but tall and lean hipped and muscled in all the right places.

And if his architecture was magnificent, it was nothing compared to the perfect harmony of his face.

Sweet heaven …

High cheekbones, intriguing hollows, an especially angular, squared-off jaw. His nose was perfectly proportioned and straight, his mouth a little wide and over full. Sleek brows winged over a pair of heavy-lidded, sleepy-looking light eyes—either green or blue, she couldn’t tell from this distance, though instinct told her blue.

His hair was a pale golden-blond, parted to the side, almost all one length and hung to just above his collar. He exuded confidence, fearlessness and moved with a casual deliberateness that suggested he was a man who was well aware of his own strength and ability. He didn’t merely inhabit a space—he owned it.

And she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Several of her patrons had stopped to look at him—mouths hanging open, forks suspended in midair—and a quick look to her right revealed that her helper, Livvie, had gone stock-still.

“Wow,” she heard Livvie breathe, her eyes rounded in wonder. “You’re tall. Like the corn man, but not green.”

Charlie Martin Weatherford, her assigned daytime bodyguard working under the guise of helping out, exited the kitchen and her step momentarily faltered, then a brilliant smile bloomed over her mouth. “‘Bout time you got here,” she said to the mystery man with a good-natured snort of impatience. “You get lost, big brother?”

Big brother? Mariette felt her eyes widen and the original irrational panic that had sent her pulse racing only a minute before was minimal to the arrhythmia that had set in now. This was Charlie’s brother? This air-breathing Greek god in a bomber jacket was the man who was going to be spending the night with her until this ignorant dairy thief was caught?