Major Nanny

“You were there to keep us safe. You didn’t owe us anything else. We appreciate it.”

So formal, he thought. “That’s not all it was, and you know it. Don’t you?”

The pained look in her eyes showed her reluctance to have this conversation. But ignoring the attraction between them hadn’t seemed to work very well so far. Maybe getting it out in the open and putting it to rest was the only solution. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m not a good bet for happily ever after. Been there, done that, got burned.”

Her lips curved slightly. “Same here.”

“But that doesn’t mean I’m not still a grown man.”

“With grown man needs?”

He nodded.

“Is this some sort of proposition?”

Major Nanny

Paula Graves

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For my editor, Allison, who trusted me enough to ask me to take on this project. And for my fellow Daddy Corps authors, who helped make this experience so much fun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alabama native Paula Graves wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America.

Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Stacy Giordano —A single mom to a child with Asperger’s syndrome as well as the Texas governor’s aide-de-camp, the last thing Stacy needs to deal with is another threat to the governor’s life—especially when it puts her and her young son in the line of fire.

Harlan McClain —The governor taps the Corps Security and Investigations agent to head security for an upcoming fundraiser—and work side by side with Stacy. Can he keep the governor and her pretty aide safe from a ruthless assassin?

Zachary Giordano —Stacy’s young son is struggling to fit into a world that makes no sense to him. But does he have a vital clue to the mystery of who’s stalking his mother locked in his mind?

Lila Lockhart —The Texas governor’s announced intention to run for president was greeted by a deadly bomb blast. Is she crazy to hold another fundraiser within a couple of weeks of the assassination attempt?

Bart Bellows —Lila’s dear friend owns Corps Security and Investigations. Did he make a mistake assigning Harlan McClain to the governor’s security staff?

Greg Merritt —Governor Lockhart’s new campaign manager is a political shark. Can Stacy trust him to have the governor’s best interests at heart?

Trevor Lewis —The young stable groom has taken a liking to Stacy and her young son, Zachary. But what are his true motives for befriending them?

Jeff Appleton —The Freedom, Texas, deputy is leading the investigation into some very personal threats against Stacy. But is he looking in the wrong direction?

Planet Justice —The anarchistic antiglobalization group is determined to hold a peaceful protest outside the governor’s fundraiser. But are there elements within the group whose intentions are anything but peaceful?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Chapter One

The bomb went off, and for a minute, Harlan McClain was back on a dusty road in Iraq, his ears ringing. Everything around him moved in slow motion—debris flying, people falling.

There were screams. Always screams. The training never prevented the screaming.

You’re not in Iraq. You’re in Austin, Texas, and a bomb just went off. Get your backside in gear.

Over a decade of Marine Corps training taking over as chaos unfolded around him, he scanned the area for a quick damage assessment. Car bomb. Not a huge one—the blast radius wasn’t anywhere near the size of something like Oklahoma City—but the dais where Governor Lila Lockhart had stood moments earlier was a ruin, reduced to jagged metal and splintered wood.

Was the governor buried somewhere under the debris?

The crowd surrounding the platform had already begun to disperse in panic, leaving behind some of the fallen. Many were still moving, trying to drag themselves to safety. Others lay motionless in the grass in front of the dais.

Triage, he thought, pulling out his cell phone to call 911. His call was one of many, he discovered. To his relief, the dispatcher told him units were already responding. But he couldn’t sit tight waiting for the cavalry to arrive—some of these people might not survive the wait.

As he hurried toward the first fallen victim, a slim, dark-haired woman raced across his path, heading toward the collapsed platform. Blood stained the side of her face without obscuring her delicate profile. Pretty, he thought. Scared as hell. She looked familiar.

“Governor!” she cried, trying to pull away a piece of metal from the pile.

Harlan raced forward to stop her. The wrong move could bring the rest of the debris falling down on top of anyone buried underneath. And the last time he’d seen his boss, Bart Bellows had been only a few feet from Lila Lockhart.

“Don’t try to move anything,” he barked, his voice coming out more gruff than he’d intended.

She turned a fierce glare his way. “The governor is under there.”

“And if you do the wrong thing, you could bring the rest of this mess crashing in on her.”

Her nostrils flared. “You were with Bart.”

“Harlan McClain.” He nodded, remembering where he’d seen her before. “You’re the governor’s aide, right?”

“Stacy Giordano.” She pressed her fingertips to the side of her head. When she drew them away, they were bloody. Her face went even paler. “What happened? Was it a bomb?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

She shook her head, looking stunned and scared. “But Frank Dorian is in jail.”

He’d had the same thought. Even Bart, who was a suspicious old cuss, had thought that stopping Frank Dorian solved Governor Lockhart’s problem. Dorian had come damned close to killing the governor before Wade Coltrane had stopped him, but once he was in custody, everyone at Corps Security Investigations had thought the trouble was over.

Harlan should have known better. Trouble never went away for long.

“We need to help the injured.” He caught her arm, making her gasp. He loosened his grip, tried to soften his voice. She looked shell-shocked and he didn’t need to spook her any further. “Go find as many able-bodied people as you can. We need to start some sort of triage—”

She straightened, as if she’d found her core of steel. “Okay.” Her chin lifted and her eyes flashed with determination as she headed out in search of help.

He wasn’t surprised when she returned a few minutes later with several people in tow. Most had clearly survived the blast themselves, their clothing covered with grime and fine debris. Some, like Stacy, had cuts and scrapes, but they all seemed relieved to have a purpose—something to take their minds off witnessing their world upended.

Sometimes, Harlan knew, finding something useful to do was the only thing that kept you sane in a crazy world.

He sent Stacy Giordano and her army in search of people who were moving around, while he checked on the ones who weren’t moving. Unlike his civilian helpers, he had plenty of experience in dealing with mortality. Too much experience.

He found two D.O.A.s and a couple more who might not make it. As he moved to the next body—a man in a state trooper uniform lying near the mangled remains of the dais—he heard sirens approaching at a clip.

“It’s Chip!” Stacy Giordano rushed past him toward the state trooper. “He’s part of the governor’s security detail.”

Harlan raced to catch up, not sure what she’d find when she reached the trooper’s still body.

Stacy crouched next to the man, her fingers on his carotid. “He’s alive,” she said briskly. Her hands moved over his body, searching for injuries. She moved with a sureness that caught Harlan by surprise.

“You a nurse or something?”

She glanced at him. “No. Search and rescue medic training. There’s a lump here at the back of his head. Skull feels intact, but it may be a concussion.” She checked the man’s eyes with a small penlight attached to a keychain. “Pupils reactive. Good sign.”

The man made a low groaning sound.

“EMTs are arriving. We should back off, let them work,” Harlan suggested.

“There aren’t going to be enough for everybody. Not yet—”

He caught her arm and tugged her to a standing position. “We’ll be in the way. And we don’t know that we’ve seen the last of the blasts.”

Her eyes widened. “You think there could be more coming?”

“It’s possible,” he admitted. “Sometimes there’s a secondary device—”

“To hit the first responders.” Stacy’s jaw squared. “Then we’d better find the governor and get her out of here.” She started toward the back of the dais before he could stop her.

He jogged to catch up.

“She was standing back here,” Stacy called over her shoulder, “so if she dropped with the dais—”

Harlan spotted a flash of pale blue under the tangle of metal piping and wooden slats that had once constituted the bunting-draped platform where Lila Lockhart had declared her intention to run for higher office. Lila had been wearing a light blue suit, hadn’t she?

“Lila!” Stacy dashed forward. “Lila, can you hear me?”

“I’m stuck under this damned mess!” Lila called out, her voice surprisingly strong. “I must’ve bumped my head—I was out a few seconds—”

“Hold still—you don’t want to cause yourself more injury,” Harlan warned. “Did you see what happened to Bart?”

“He was right behind me—”

“I’m over here.” A man’s voice, weak and strained, came from somewhere behind Harlan.

Harlan turned to see a large chunk of the dais had broken off and flown backward in the blast, landing sideways in a shallow rill in the capitol grounds. “Bart?”

“Knocked me clean on my backside!” Bart called out, his voice a little stronger. “But I can’t get my chair up.”

“Keep her from moving,” Harlan ordered Stacy before he hurried to the second debris site. To his relief, Bart had been thrown clear of the twisted tangle of wood and metal, but the old man and his wheelchair both lay on their sides in the grass beyond the rill.

“I’m afraid this is probably a goner,” Harlan said as he picked up the wheelchair, pushing it away from Bart’s useless legs to free them. He grimaced as his scarred right hand twinged where he gripped the chair handle.

“Is Lila okay?” Bart asked.

“She’s alive. She’s trapped under the debris, but she sounds good. The paramedics are on the way.”

“Who did this? Frank Dorian’s in jail.”

“I don’t know.” Harlan ran his hands over Bart’s body, looking for injuries. He didn’t feel any obvious broken bones, and the old man seemed bright-eyed and lucid. “Do you have any pain anywhere?”

Bart shook his head. “The explosion flung me like a rag doll, but I reckon I landed that way, too. Probably saved me a broken bone or two.” He clapped his hand on one useless leg. “Not that I’d have noticed.”

Harlan looked again at the wheelchair. The control panel had been damaged by the impact, but the wheels and frame looked surprisingly sturdy. “Let’s get you into the chair and see if we can’t do this the old-fashioned way.”

He picked up Bart and set him in the wheelchair, taking another chance to look him over. Bart’s well-seamed face was scraped and dirty, but he didn’t seem to have any worrisome injuries, to Harlan’s relief.

“Quit lookin’ at me like I’m about to keel over any minute,” Bart groused.

Harlan bit back a grin. “Let’s go check on Lila.”

The wheelchair wasn’t easy to push over the uneven, grassy terrain, especially with Harlan’s hand starting to ache as if he’d taken the shrapnel injury moments earlier rather than months ago. But Harlan was so relieved Bart seemed to be okay that he barely felt the pain.

When they reached the edge of the debris pile, Stacy was crouched outside near the governor, peering through the maze of steel and splintered wood. “It looks as if the main thing trapping her is that crossbeam,” Stacy told Harlan as he hunkered down beside her. She pointed to a large steel support bar that once had been one of the stabilizing structures for the dais. It didn’t look particularly heavy, but the way the bar was wedged between the ground and clumps of the fallen platform, it wouldn’t budge. Lila was effectively pinned in place, unable to move more than a couple of inches in any direction.

“You’re a big, strappin’ fellow. Can’t you move it?” Lila asked.

Harlan smiled. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid it’s probably going to have to be cut apart to get you out.” Especially with his hand being half-useless.

“What about coming at it from the back side?” Stacy asked. “Lila can’t turn around because of the debris blocking her, but if I could crawl in and move some of the looser pieces out of the way—”

“No way I’m letting you go under there,” Harlan said.

“Now you’ve done it,” Lila murmured.

“Letting me?” Stacy stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “Not your call, Mr. McClain. If there’s even a chance there’s a secondary explosive device—”

“There probably isn’t.”

“But if there is, and someone timed it to go off when it would do the most damage, the governor needs to be out from under there now.” Stacy moved away, peering through the remains of the dais—no doubt in search of the best place to enter the maze of rubble. Harlan didn’t know whether she was as crazy as a loon or incredibly brave.

“If I go in here and crawl through that narrow breach over there, I can reach the debris blocking the governor from behind,” she said, sparing him a quick look.

He bit back his opinion that she was nuts to even try going into that mess, taking a look at what she was proposing instead. She was right about one thing—the path she’d pointed out definitely appeared to be the best angle of attack, and nobody any bigger than Stacy would be able to navigate the tight space.

But the plan was as risky as hell.

“Stacy, you don’t need to take foolish chances here,” Lila called, drawing her aide’s attention back to her. “They’ll get to me sooner or later,” the governor added with a wry smile. “One of the perks of the job, you know.”

Stacy bent down by the opening to make eye contact with the governor. “Waiting could be dangerous, Lila. We need to get you out of there.”

“Think about Zachary, honey.”

For a second, Stacy’s face seemed to melt, her dark eyes liquid and soft, making Harlan wonder who the hell Zachary was. Then her shoulders squared, her chin jutted forward and she met Harlan’s curious gaze.

“I can do this. The structure isn’t going to get any more stable if we wait, and I probably have more close-quarters rescue training than any of these first responders.”

Before Harlan could respond, an emergency medical technician rounded the corner and spotted them. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the governor buried under the debris, and he squatted next to Stacy.

“I’m not badly hurt, I don’t believe,” Lila said in a firm, strong voice that seemed to relieve the EMT. “I’m just stuck.”

“I have a plan to get to her,” Stacy said. She told the EMT what she had in mind.

Harlan hoped the man would tell her she’d lost her mind—maybe she’d listen to him. But the EMT nodded. “That’ll probably work, as long as you don’t dislodge anything supporting the pile. I can get you a hard hat and some protective gear—”

“I’ll take the hat, but the gear will be too bulky to let me get through there.”

“Be right back.” The EMT hurried away.

“I thought he was going to tell you to stay out of his way and let him do his job,” Harlan murmured.

“He knows me. I gave a cave extraction seminar for the Austin Fire Department a couple of months ago.”

Harlan shook his head. “Who are you?”

Stacy shot him a faint smile. “I’m the daughter of an Ozark Mountain search and rescue coordinator. I was helping pull people out of caves before I started high school.”

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Harlan asked.

“Yes.” Stacy looked scared but determined. “And we’d better get to it, fast,” she added, her gaze sliding past him.

Harlan turned, following her gaze to find a convoy of news vehicles approaching the capitol grounds.

“Get your game face on,” Stacy muttered. “We’re about to be TV stars.” She spotted the EMT returning with a hard hat and hurried to meet him, clearly eager to get to work.

Harlan dragged his attention away from her to watch the approach of the news crews. This whole mess was about to get a thousand times messier.

Right now, he thought, I’d rather be in Iraq.

You can do this, Stacy. It’s just like a cave.

If a cave were made of twisted steel poles and splintered slabs of wood, that was. And if she were really executing a cave rescue, the hard hat on her head would have a carbide lamp attached, enabling her to see more than three or four feet ahead of her. Instead, it just pinched the scrape on her temple that the EMT had patched up for her before she entered the remains of the dais.

“You okay in there?” Harlan McClain’s gravelly drawl sounded as if he were standing a quarter mile away, even though she’d crawled no more than a few yards into the debris field.

“So far,” she called back, wincing as her palm pressed down onto something sharp—a piece of metal, she saw, bent out of shape and unrecognizable.

Of course, those adjectives could describe almost everything that lay in crumpled heaps around her. If she hadn’t seen the dais in all its bunting-draped glory beforehand, she’d never have recognized what it was in the aftermath of the bomb.

Carefully moving aside several twisted pieces of metal frame blocking her path forward, she called out to Lila. “Still hanging in there with me, Governor?”

“You bet, sugar!”

Stacy smiled. “I’m about ten yards from your position, Governor. You just get ready for your close-up.”

“Damn, I left my lipstick in my other purse.”

Atta girl, Stacy thought. That’s the woman who’s going to be the next President of the United States.

Carefully, she carved a twisting path for herself through the debris, keeping a mental map in her head. Forward about four yards, then left another three. That should put her in reach of the large chunk of tangled metal pinning Lila in position. If she could clear enough of that mess to free the governor to move around, she could get her out to safety.

“I need a little more line,” she called to the EMT holding the safety rope biting into her waist. The line slackened and she moved gingerly forward. Finally, she spotted the governor’s wavy blond hair, now ashy from the dust and debris caused by the bomb’s destruction.

“I see you, Governor.”

“I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

Stacy chuckled. “Never.” She edged around a pole that leaned at a precarious angle, barely holding up a large piece of the stage that could crash down on top of them at any moment. She cleared the hazard and took a sharp left as planned.

Then she froze.

Strapped to the large chunk of steel that formed the obstacle between her and the governor, an electronic device blinked ominously, its smooth facade attached by colorful wires to what looked like pumpkin-colored bricks.

“Governor, don’t move. Not one inch.”

“What is it?” Lila asked.

Stacy spotted movement outside the fallen dais, jeans-clad legs moving toward the governor’s position. Harlan McClain’s rugged face came into view as he hunkered down to get a better look at what was happening. His dark eyes met hers. “Is something wrong?”

Stacy licked her lips. By now, she knew, there must be scores of reporters outside. Whatever she said next could create chaos if she let her rising panic show.

Lowering her voice, keeping the tone as calm as possible, she said, “I think there’s a second explosive device. And it looks big. You need to start clearing the area. Now. But try not to start a panic.”

Harlan moved quickly, disappearing from her sight. A few seconds later, she saw a rush of movement outside the steel-and-lumber cocoon as the EMTs and bystanders responded to whatever Harlan had told them.

“You need to get out of here,” Lila urged, her voice low and serious. “Zachary needs you a hell of a lot more than I do.”

“I can’t go, Governor,” Stacy answered, wishing it weren’t true. Lila was right. Zachary needed her, even more than most kids his age. She was his biggest advocate and his most devoted fan. But what she wanted didn’t change the facts on the ground. “The bomb squad is going to need me.”

“Now you’re an explosives expert?” Lila retorted tartly. “Any other hidden talents I should know about?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Stacy answered bleakly. “There’s a support beam between here and there that’s about thirty degrees shy of falling over and bringing this whole pile of junk raining down on us. I was barely able to get around it without jarring it out of place.”

“What are you saying?” It was Harlan McClain’s voice, not Lila’s, that answered her. Stacy looked up and found him staring at her with wide, worried eyes.

“I’m saying that maybe the governor and I are small enough to crawl out of here without bringing this pile of junk down, but I don’t think a man could make it through safely—certainly not wearing a bomb-resistant suit.” She tamped down the panic rising in her throat. “I don’t think there’s going to be any way to disarm this bomb without me.”

Chapter Two

Stacy Giordano was right about one thing, Harlan decided, peering up at the slab of wood and steel propped up precariously by the tilting support beam Stacy had described. There was no way anyone bigger than a medium-size woman would ever get through the narrow gap between the beam and another pile of teetering debris without bringing everything crashing down on top of the whole pile.

She appeared in the space ahead of him, considerably grimier than she’d looked when she entered. As she reached him, she held out her cell phone. There was a photo called up on the phone’s small display window. “This is the device.”

He took care not to touch the teetering support pole as he took the phone from her and looked at the image on the display window. He tried not to react as he saw the orange bricklike cakes of material attached to the bomb. “Semtex,” he said aloud. “Industrial grade—not that it makes much difference.”