Protection Detail

A seasoned cop becomes the target of a killer. And so does the woman he’s falling for.

Detective Lieutenant Thomas Watson had been off air force active duty so long, he thought he was safe. Until a gunman crashes his daughter’s wedding, reawakening the warrior inside him. He hires nurse Jane Boyle to care for his injured father so he can focus on bringing the gunman to justice. While Jane is the ideal caretaker, her dark past has landed her in witness protection. And the more she’s embraced by this family of cops, the more danger she’s in. For a shadow from Thomas’s own past might be willing to lend Jane’s stalker a helping hand…

The Precinct: Bachelors in Blue

“You’ve been shot.”

She unbuttoned his cuff and gently pushed the plaid chambray up his arm to inspect the graze across his skin.

“I’m so sorry you got hurt. I never meant—”

As she turned the wounds into the light, their heated words topped each other’s. “You could have been run down. You could have been shot. When I give you an order, I expect you to—”

“Screw your order. I won’t let anyone else get hurt. He was after me.”

“—do what I say and stay safe. He was after me.”

Jane froze as they blurted the exact same words. She tipped her chin up to see the shocked look in his eyes that she imagined mirrored her own.

“I’m a cop. Bad guys don’t like me.” Thomas spread his fingers over hers. He dipped his head to put his face in hers and demand she look him in the eye. “But why would someone want to hurt you?”

Protection Detail

Julie Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JULIE MILLER is an award-winning USA TODAY bestselling author of breathtaking romantic suspense— with a National Readers’ Choice Award and a Daphne du Maurier Award, among other prizes. She has also earned an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. For a complete list of her books, monthly newsletter and more, go to www.juliemiller.org.

For the Dixons and their Ruby, who taught our Maggie

that not all big dogs are scary.

Thanks for always saying hi to your shy neighbor.

I’ve loved all our conversations about the dogs.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Thomas Watson’s face hurt from the effort it took not to cry when he saw his daughter in her wedding gown.

“It’s okay, Dad.” Olivia Mary Watson had packed up all her tomboy clothes, her gun and her badge and put on a beaded ivory gown that made her look every inch the grown woman he reluctantly admitted she had become. She reached up to cup his cheek and smiled, reminding Thomas of the wife he’d lost to a drugged-up thief’s bullet when Olivia was a toddler. “I will always be your little girl.”

She’d stopped being his little girl the day she’d become a Kansas City cop, like him, his father and her three older brothers. But a daddy was entitled to indulge his sentimental side on a day like this. They stood in the doorway of the changing room at the church while the pre-ceremony music played, but Thomas was remembering skinned knees, annoying big brothers and broken hearts that had required his advice, his patience and a hug.

“You’re beautiful. You look so like your mother.” He fingered the veil of Irish lace his bride had worn thirty-five years earlier when he’d been a raw lieutenant stationed in the UK on his first overseas assignment. Mary Kilcannon had been a civilian working on the base. A late-night rescue from a drunk fellow officer in a bar had led to them talking until dawn, a first kiss and true love. A month later he and Mary were married, and what should have been a lifetime together began. Thomas didn’t mourn his wife anymore, but he missed her. There were a lot of life moments he wished he could have shared with Mary. Like the wedding of their youngest child and only daughter. He kissed Olivia’s cheek. “She would have loved to have been here today. I know she’s watching over us.”

“It’s been twenty years. You’ve done your duty by us. We never wanted for anything with you and Grandpa and Millie to take care of us. But Mom would want you to find someone and be happy again.”

“I date,” he insisted.

“Escorting a female work friend to the annual police officer’s ball does not constitute dating.” She straightened his red silk tie, an homage to the February 14 date that all the men in the bridal party except for the groom himself were wearing. “You’re a handsome man. You’re fit. You’re smart, a rock of dependability and caring. Maybe you could ease up on the whole alpha male of the pack thing you’ve got going on. But that’s SOP for any senior detective I know, and besides, you probably needed that to raise the four of us. You have a nice house and a good job consulting with KCPD. The right woman is out there waiting to snatch you up if you’d let her.”

Thomas laughed. “Let your old dad get through marrying off my baby girl today before you start matchmaking for me.”

“Old dad, nothing. You’re a catch.” Thomas gave her a stern look he couldn’t sustain in the glow of that bemused smile. “All right. I’ll allow you today.”

Thomas walked her to the foyer outside the church’s sanctuary. “Gabe makes you happy?”

“You know he does.”

“I’d be pitchin’ a fit if I thought you were marrying a man who didn’t love you as much as you love him.”

Olivia grinned. “You would not. You have never in your life pitched a fit.”

Thomas paused when they reached the center archway at the end of the long aisle, waiting for the music to change. He looked up the aisle as his youngest son, Keir, stepped into his place at the altar beside his firstborn, Duff, and his middle son, Niall. Being a single father hadn’t been easy. After Mary’s death, he’d needed the help of his father, Seamus, and the older woman he’d hired to run the household, Millie Leighter, to help him raise four kids.

Olivia had grown into a smart, courageous woman. And his boys, lined up as best man and groomsmen at the altar, had turned into three good men, three good cops—a streetwise detective who’d nearly given his life on one of his undercover assignments, a medical examiner with the crime lab with more brains than social acumen and a hotshot young detective who was probably going to be his boss at KCPD one day.

Thomas’s smile thinned. “I might pitch one now.” Even as adults his sons could sometimes become the Three Stooges. Duff and Keir were trading one-liners under their breaths, and Niall was caught in the middle, trying to shush them both. His middle son adjusted his glasses and said something to both his older and younger brothers that snapped them to attention. “Did you put Niall in charge of corralling Duff and Keir today?”

Olivia nodded. “You taught me to be prepared for any contingency. I figured Niall was the most reliable.”

“Smart girl.” Now that her older brothers had gotten a look at their baby sister in a wedding dress, their whole demeanor changed. Their fidgeting stopped, and Thomas saw the love and pride on their faces. Thomas was surprised to see he wasn’t the only Watson man struggling today. “Your oldest brother is crying.”

“Duff’s not as tough as he tries to be.”

“Neither am I.” As Niall slipped Duff a handkerchief, Thomas wiped away his own tear. “I love you, Olivia Mary. You know that?”

Olivia leaned against his shoulder for a moment. “I know, Dad. I love you, too.”

The organist in the balcony over their heads started the processional music and the guests filling the pews stood. Thomas pulled his shoulders back to attention, squeezing Olivia’s fingers where they rested on his arm. “Let’s do this.”

Thomas walked down the aisle, honoring his daughter and her marriage, ignoring the twinge of pain shooting through his stiff knee. Almost every bit of that leg had been blown out, torn up, scarred and rebuilt. He was lucky to still have his leg after that fiery wreck he and his partner, Al Junkert, had had in pursuit of a fugitive. That accident had taken him off the front line of law enforcement, but he’d eventually come back to earn his detective’s badge and lieutenant’s rank, working special cases and mentoring new detectives. So he was a veteran with a desk job, focusing on teaching and behind-the-scenes investigative duties now. He was still a proud man, and he’d be damned if he was going to limp down the aisle like some washed-up hero on this happy day.

When they reached the altar, Thomas winked at his future son-in-law, Gabriel Knight, and succinctly answered the minister’s question about giving his daughter away. He caught Olivia in a bear hug before stepping back, marveling again at how much she reminded him of Mary in both looks and personality. As she exchanged silent greetings with her big brothers, Thomas saw parts of his long-dead wife in each of his children—Duff’s strength of will and tender heart, Niall’s smarts, Keir’s gift of the Irish gab as well as Mary’s tenacity. He hoped they got some good stuff from him, too, and that he’d done right by them all.

Heading to his seat, Thomas traded a salute with Al, who sat a couple of rows back. Even after the accident that had taken their lives and careers down different paths, they’d remained good friends. He smiled at the silver-haired woman in the second pew. Millie Leighter was sniffling bravely into her lace hankie, losing the battle with her tears. As dear to him as a treasured aunt, Millie had been a godsend from the day he’d hired her to cook and clean and help him raise his children. Even with the kids grown and out of the house, she remained a vital part of the family. So when the next sniffle turned into a quiet sob, he leaned down and wrapped her plump frame up in a hug. Slipping her his own handkerchief, Thomas whispered, “You and I will both get through today okay. I promise.”

Millie’s tears turned into a sweet smile and she nodded. Thomas straightened and slipped into the first pew beside his father. Seamus Watson moved his cane to the other side and tapped Thomas’s leg. When he looked down, he saw his father was handing him his handkerchief. “You’re going to need one, too, son.”

Thomas arched his eyebrow, daring his father to be honest.

The white-haired man put up a hand in mock surrender, then reached inside his black jacket to pull out a second handkerchief. “I brought two.”

Thomas grinned as the minister spoke to Gabe. Yeah, they were all a bunch of tough guys.

They’d survived tragedy. Their hearts had mended. He couldn’t be prouder of following his father into a career at KCPD, or seeing his children follow him into the same job. Thomas’s family was happy. Secure. The guilt over Mary’s death was a little less sharp than it had once been, and he’d done right by her memory. He’d done right by them. Maybe Olivia had a point. Maybe it was time he stopped being a dad and a cop 24/7 and thought about finding that woman Olivia had mentioned. Man, wasn’t that a scary thought—putting himself back out there after all these years. He wasn’t even sure he knew how to be in a relationship anymore. Maybe he should just sit back and watch the ceremony, and be content surrounded by the love of his family.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Thomas smiled through teary eyes as the minister wrapped up the wedding vows.

“Love you,” Olivia whispered.

Gabe kissed her again. “Love you more.”

“I now present Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel Knight.”

* * *

THOMAS BEAMED FROM ear to ear as Gabe and Olivia walked past. He looked back toward the altar to watch Duff, Niall and Keir escort the maid of honor and bridesmaids to the center aisle. His smile vanished and his eyes narrowed when he saw their steps hesitate, saw their jaws go rigid, saw their gazes turn up to the balcony.

His own muscles clenched in that split second and he knew something was terribly wrong.

“Gun!” Niall shouted. His sons were already scrambling when Thomas heard the first shots. “Get down!”

The organ music clashed on a toxic chord and went silent.

Niall touched his arm and Thomas nodded that he was taking cover. Flying like shrapnel, wood splintered over his head as he ducked. A vase at the altar shattered. Explosions of marble dust filled the air.

Thomas’s entire world flashed between heartbeats.

Duff was pulling a gun from behind his back. “Everybody down!”

Keir was hugging his arms around Millie and his bridesmaid, tugging them down between the pews. “I’m calling SWAT.”

Gabe was shoving Olivia to the floor and shielding her with his body, even as his daughter tried to reverse positions to protect him.

Thomas hadn’t protected Mary all those years ago. He should have been the one at that convenience store when the bullets had taken down every customer and cashier in the building. He should have saved her.

People were shouting, ducking for cover, running to save loved ones, running toward the threat raining terror down on the guests in the sanctuary. His gun and badge were locked up at home. He was helpless to protect his children, to save his friends. Helpless to do anything but reach for his elderly father.

Blood spattered his cheek a split second before his father’s cane clattered against the marble tiles. Thomas caught Seamus as he fell, cradling him in his arms as he lowered his limp body to the floor.

“Niall!” He shouted for the closest doctor at hand. “Help me, son. Dad’s been shot.”

Chapter One

September

If anyone had to suffer a stroke after a traumatic brain injury like being shot in the head, Thomas hoped he or she possessed the same stubborn cussedness Seamus Watson did. There were bound to be a lot of arguments, setbacks and hurt feelings along the road to recovery, but apparently, it was the only way to survive.

He just wished there weren’t so many casualties along the way.

Thomas looked from his father’s red face to Millie’s pale, gaping expression to the retreating backside of the young speech-therapy intern who was running out the door of the Saint Luke’s Hospital rehab center in tears. Although the young woman barely looked old enough to have graduated from high school, much less college, her youthful enthusiasm, pretty face and obvious competence hadn’t spared her from Seamus’s wrathful outburst at the end of a long afternoon of medical evaluations.

While he went down on his good knee to gather up the flash cards his father had knocked to the ground, Thomas spared a glance at the fourth person in the room, the private nurse he’d hired to aid in Seamus’s recovery, Jane Boyle. How was Battle-Ax Boyle, as his three sons had secretly nicknamed her, going to handle his father’s refusal to do the speech test since she was taking point on Seamus’s health and physical rehabilitation?

Although her rigid professionalism and terse, almost-awkward personal skills had earned her the teasing, never-to-her-face nickname, Thomas had spent enough time with Jane over the past several months to have a slightly different take on the resident battle-ax. No one could question her devotion to her duty, a fact that all of them, as a three-generation family of cops, could understand and respect. As for the I’m-not-interested-in-making-friends vibe she put off? He wished he wasn’t so intrigued by a challenge like that.

Thomas Watson solved mysteries. He’d done it so well for so long that he taught other cops how to solve them. And Jane Boyle was the biggest mystery to cross his path in a long while.

The nurse’s honey-brown ponytail hung in a straight line down to the high collar of the pink mock turtleneck she wore. She stood with her arms crossed in front of her, her stance emphasizing feminine curves beneath the shapeless blue scrubs. About the only time she wasn’t wearing boxy scrubs and a jacket of one pastel hue or another was in the mornings when she went for a run before breakfast. Or late at night, when she roamed the upstairs hallway between the guest room and the shower in a sweetly sensible pair of pajamas that usually consisted of a T-shirt and cotton pants that never quite met at the waist, exposing a thin strip of bare skin that he’d glimpsed more than once as she hurried into one room or the other and closed the door.

Really? He was a grown man, crawling on the floor of a major metropolitan hospital, cleaning up after his eighty-year-old father’s tantrum and picturing the woman who worked for him in her pj’s?

Man, he needed to stop noticing details like that. It wasn’t like he could do anything about that little hum of awareness that seemed to excite his blood every time he cataloged another observation about Jane. After six months living under his roof, sharing meals and a few family evenings together, he couldn’t seem to help himself from noting the sleek arch of her hips, the flawless skin hugging the angles of her oval face, the soft pink mouth that rarely smiled. She worked for him. He needed her to focus on his father’s recovery. He needed to focus on his father’s recovery, too.

He might have a few gray hairs at the temples of his dark brown hair, but he wasn’t dead. Yet he needed to act as if all the male parts of his body were too old to care about the pretty in a woman in order to maintain the professional relationship between them.

Thomas set the cards on the table and pushed to his feet, ignoring the inevitable protest in his left leg. “Dad, you can’t talk to people that way. Stephanie was doing her job. She was trying to help you.”

Seamus’s blue eyes stared straight ahead, ignoring both Jane’s thinning mouth and his own voice of reason. He’d seen his dad bleeding and unconscious; still and pale in a hospital bed after surgery; unable to speak or use his legs and right arm; fighting to stand and pick up his feet and relearn how to hold a fork; working his lips and teeth and tongue so hard to form a coherent word that a lesser man would have given up months ago. It felt wrong to be wishing for even one moment that the old man couldn’t talk.

“I’m not doing da tupid eckertise again.” Seamus’s slurred words were articulate enough to make his frustration and fatigue clear.

Jane sat her hip on the edge of the table, facing Seamus. “Yesterday in our therapy session at home, you handled the tongue rolls and language exercises just fine.”

“I’m too tlow. Tink faster dan I talk. Make mi-takes.”

Although her words were a little less peppered than Seamus’s tirade had been, Jane’s tone seemed as reprimanding as his father had been with the intern. “Speed doesn’t matter. How many times have I told you that getting back to the man you were before the shooting isn’t going to happen overnight? You’re giving up.”

Whoa. That was going a step too far. “He’s tired. He’s been testing for two hours.”

Jane tilted her chin toward Thomas, her hazel eyes glittering with angry specks of gold that he shouldn’t have noticed, either. “Don’t you defend him. He was rude and he knows it.” She looked back to Seamus. “You have worked your butt off all month to improve your performance on this evaluation. Now, are you being lazy, or do you just enjoy making women cry?”

“Jane...” Rising to her feet, she put a hand on the middle of Thomas’s chest and stiff-armed him away from intervening between her and Seamus. Not that he couldn’t have easily overpowered her claim of authority over his own family if he wanted to seize her wrist or push against her hand. But the moment of ire quickly gave way to an ill-timed rush of awareness that heated the spot where she touched him, and Thomas retreated a step from the contact.

Nope. Definitely not dead.

“Seamus?” Jane pressed his father for a reply with the stern tone of a mother dealing with a child. “I know you can do this.”

After a few silent moments, Seamus nodded. “I chould ’pologize.”

“Yes, you should.” Although it burned in his gullet to let someone else take charge of his father, to take charge of the entire room, Thomas retreated another step as Jane turned to the silver-haired woman still clutching her hands and keeping her distance on the opposite side of the table. “Millie, would you see if you can get Stephanie to come back? Tell her Seamus is feeling more cooperative now.”

The older woman seemed relieved to have a task to perform. “Of course.”

Once the office door at the end of the room had closed behind the Watsons’ longtime housekeeper, Jane moved behind Seamus’s chair, squaring it in front of the table. She squeezed his shoulder before moving around him to straighten the therapy items on the table. “You should apologize to Millie, too, for using language like that. And your son. And me. I thought you were this infamous Irish charmer who had a way with the ladies. Did you think you were working the streets again? That Stephanie was some perp avoiding arrest you had to yell at?” Thomas propped his hands at his waist, letting his fingers settle near the gun and badge he’d worn on the belt of his jeans every day since his family had been attacked at Olivia’s wedding, even on days like this when he wasn’t teaching a seminar at the police academy or assisting with an investigation at precinct headquarters. He shook his head as Jane worked her magic on his father. She was tough, almost abrasive at times. But he had to give the woman props for earning his dad’s—and his—respect. She understood the way a family of law enforcement professionals worked, the sense of duty that ran through their veins, and often used Seamus’s career with KCPD as a motivator. “I’m not happy to have all my hard work be for nothing when we come to see Dr. Koelus.” She softened her tone as she slipped into the chair on the opposite side of the table. “I bet you’re not happy, either.”

“I walked,” Seamus reminded her. “Koelus ted I could get rid of de walker and use my cane. I did de finger eckertises. I’m better.”

“Yes, you are. And those are wonderful accomplishments you should be proud of. But if you want that peach cobbler at the restaurant for dessert, then you’re either going to have to do another half mile on the treadmill with me when we get home, or you’re going to have to apologize to Stephanie and repeat the vocal exercises one more time.”

Seamus pointed a bony finger at her. “Dat’s bwackmail.”

“Yes, it is.” Jane waited a couple of beats before smiling. “Is it working?”

The undamaged corner of Seamus’s mouth crooked up in an answering smile.

Thomas hid his own grin. That woman had his father’s number. She might challenge his own authority and rub him the wrong way at times, but she certainly knew the right mix of tough love, teasing and unflinching faith in her patient that Seamus had been responding to for months now.

A moment later, Millie returned with the speech therapist. The young woman’s eyes and nose were red from crying, but she smiled to the woman who was old enough to be her grandmother. “Thank you.”