Protecting a murder witness...

A brand-new Bachelor Bodyguards novel

Former vice cop Clint Quarters is haunted by the memory of an informant he couldn’t save. And the victim’s devastated sister, Rosie Mendez, hasn’t forgiven him, either. But when the bodyguard must protect murder witness Rosie, the danger they face is only rivaled by the red-hot electricity between them. Can Clint keep Rosie safe, or will her testimony lead to certain death—for them both?

Ever since LISA CHILDS read her first romance novel (a Mills & Boon story, of course) at age eleven, all she wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Mills & Boon, Lisa is living her dream. She is an award-winning, bestselling romance author. Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, through her website, lisachilds.com, or her snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.

Also by Lisa Childs

Bachelor Bodyguards

His Christmas Assignment

Bodyguard Daddy

Bodyguard’s Baby Surprise

Beauty and the Bodyguard

Nanny Bodyguard

Single Mom’s Bodyguard

In the Bodyguard’s Arms

Soldier Bodyguard

Guarding His Witness

The Coltons of Red Ridge

Colton’s Cinderella Bride

Top Secret Deliveries

The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise

The Coltons of Shadow Creek

The Colton Marine

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Guarding His Witness

Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09365-1

GUARDING HIS WITNESS

© 2019 Lisa Childs

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Clint would have laughed at her overreaction if it hadn’t depressed him. No matter how much he tried, he would never be able to get her to stop hating him.

“Nobody working for Luther will think it’s us walking through the lot if we’re acting like lovers,” he explained to her. “Everybody knows how much you hate me.”

Most of all him.

Maybe she took that as a challenge, because she suddenly slid her arm around his waist and snuggled against his side. He tensed now, but not with revulsion. He tensed because his body was reacting to the closeness of hers.

Rosie lifted her face to his and fluttered her lashes. “You’re right,” she said. “Everybody knows how much I hate you. They’d never believe I’d be doing this…” Then she reached out and ran her fingertips along his jaw as she leaned even closer to him.

* * *

Be sure to check out the previous books in the exciting Bachelor Bodyguards miniseries.

Dear Reader,

I am so excited to share with you more stories about the Payne Protection Agency from my Bachelor Bodyguards series. If you haven’t read any of the series yet, I’ll quickly bring you up to speed.

Lawman Logan Payne left his job as a detective at the River City Police Department to start his own security business. His twin, Parker Payne, left his job as a vice cop to join Logan, and when he returned from the marines, their younger brother, Cooper, joined them. Cooper and Parker recently started their own branches of the agency. Cooper’s team consists of all former marines, as well as their sister, Nikki Payne. Parker’s team consists of all former vice cops, which is why Parker’s stepfather—the new River City PD police chief—hired Parker’s team to make sure a drug lord, Luther Mills, goes to trial. Mills has threatened everyone associated with his upcoming trial.

Parker hopes his team’s first big assignment doesn’t wind up being their last. Clint Quarters has the toughest bodyguard assignment: protecting the sole witness to a murder Luther personally carried out. The assignment is tough because not only is Luther determined to make sure Rosie Mendez doesn’t testify against him, but also Rosie blames Clint as much as she does Luther for her brother’s murder.

Hope you enjoy these new stories about the Payne Protection Agency as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

Happy reading!

Lisa Childs

For my parents, Jack and Mary Lou Childs, who would have been married seventy years this month. Although Mom has been gone a few years now, I know their love is as strong as it ever was. Their love story continues to inspire me.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Feeling like he’d been called to the principal’s office, Parker Payne settled nervously onto the chair in front of the desk of the new chief of the River City Police Department. The fact that Woodrow Lynch was also his new stepfather didn’t help his anxiety.

Even though it had been some years since he’d been in school, Parker remembered all too well the feeling of being called to the principal’s office. The anxiety that gathered low in his stomach, twisting it into knots.

He’d spent a lot of time in this office, too, when he’d worked for the River City PD’s vice unit. But he’d quit the job a long time ago when his twin, Logan Payne, had resigned from being a detective in order to launch the Payne Protection Agency. Now Parker had his own franchise of the family business. He was a boss. But something about Woodrow Lynch and this office made him feel like the troublemaking kid he’d once been. Or at least like the rule-breaking vice cop he’d been.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to meet me here,” Woodrow began. The guy was family now, but the former FBI bureau chief was still intimidating as hell with his big build, iron-gray hair and stone face that revealed none of what he was thinking or feeling.

Parker, who was usually never without words, just nodded in response.

“It’s because I want to hire you.”

Parker’s jaw dropped. “But I already have a job.” His own damn business, actually—one that he loved and wasn’t about to abandon to go back to a place with too many rules.

Woodrow’s lips curved into a slight smile. “I know. That’s what I meant. I want to hire your agency.”

Panic struck Parker’s heart. “Why? Is Mom in danger? Are you?” His mom, widowed for nearly two decades, had just found happiness again. Parker hated the thought of anyone putting her life or her newfound happiness at risk.

“No, not at all,” Woodrow assured him. “She’s fine. This is strictly business.”

Parker narrowed his eyes and futilely tried to read his stepfather’s unreadable face. “Why me?” he asked. “Why my agency?”

His brothers, Cooper and Logan, had their own agencies. And Logan’s agency employed two of Woodrow’s former special agents, one of whom, Gage Huxton, was now his son-in-law.

“It’s business for me,” Woodrow said. “It might be personal for you.”

A chill chased down Parker’s spine. He hated when things got personal, which happened all too often with the Payne Protection Agency. “How’s that?”

“Luther Mills.”

That was all Parker had to hear, and the heat of anger and frustration burned away that chill of foreboding. For years he’d tried to bring down the biggest drug dealer in River City—maybe in Michigan—but he’d never succeeded. Fortunately, some members of his team, before they’d left the River City PD to become bodyguards, had been more successful. Or so he’d thought. “What about him?”

“He’s going to trial soon.”

Parker nodded again. He knew the story; it was how one of his bodyguards had finally left the force to join his agency. Clint Quarters had quit the vice unit after Luther Mills personally killed Clint’s informant. While Luther was responsible for many, many deaths in River City, he usually didn’t do his own dirty work, but he’d wanted to send a message.

“Some of his phone calls from jail indicate that he’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” the chief said.

“How?”

“He’s put a plan into motion to take out everyone involved with the prosecution, from the eyewitness to the CSI tech and even the judge’s daughter.”

“How does he know...?”

“There’s a mole somewhere,” Woodrow replied with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if it’s in my department or the district attorney’s office. But because I can’t trust anyone in the department, I need the help of you and your team.”

“But that hit list could include some members of my team,” Parker pointed out. Probably Clint...

But Clint wasn’t the one who’d arrested Luther. A detective had had that honor.

Woodrow shrugged. “I don’t know. He must have found another way to communicate. We just know that he wants the witness taken out first and then the rest of the people associated with the trial. There could be others...”

Parker had taken longer than his brothers to assemble his team. He’d known whom he wanted because he’d worked with them before—in the vice unit. But he’d had to work at convincing them to leave the River City PD. He didn’t want to lose any of them. But if he took this assignment, he was very afraid that he would.

Luther Mills was the most dangerous criminal Parker had ever crossed paths with. And that was something, considering the number of criminals he’d dealt with in his lifetime.

Because of that, he knew he couldn’t say no to the chief. Luther Mills could not get away with murder again. He had to be stopped.

* * *

He will not be stopped. Your life is in danger...

Rosie Mendez shivered as she read the message someone had slipped under the door of her apartment. She didn’t need the warning to know she was in danger. But she appreciated that one of Javier’s old friends must have risked his safety to deliver the message to her.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one who missed her brother. Sometimes she felt as if she was. She felt so alone now that he was gone. Too soon at just twenty years old.

Eight years older than he was, Rosie had felt more like his mother than his sister most of their lives. But that hadn’t been just because of the age difference. It had been because she’d been more of a mother than their mother had ever been capable of being—to either of them. So when Javier had died, she’d felt like she had lost a part of herself. The best part...

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She’d already wept herself out over Javier’s death. All the crying in the world wouldn’t bring him back. But he deserved justice. So Luther Mills wasn’t going to scare her off.

And maybe that was what the note was. Maybe it wasn’t a well-meant warning at all. Maybe it was a threat intended to get her to run. Or at least to tell the prosecutor that she would not testify. But there was no chance in hell that she was going to let her brother’s killer go free.

He wasn’t the only one responsible for Javier’s death. If only that other man could be brought to justice, too...

But he was even more untouchable than Luther Mills.

She glanced at the note again. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d come home from work, and she would have walked right over it when she’d entered the apartment. The white slip of paper stood out against the dark hardwood floor. That was how she’d seen it when she stepped out of the kitchen. Someone must have slipped it beneath her door when she’d been getting a snack from the galley kitchen of her tiny apartment.

A breeze wafted through the open living room window. But it was eerily quiet for a night in this building. Where was the rumble of voices from the alley that window overlooked? People were usually hanging out back there. She couldn’t even hear voices or movement from the other apartments, and the walls were paper thin.

Where was everyone? She walked up to the door and peered through the peephole—at an empty hallway.

Where was the young officer who’d escorted her home from her second shift at the hospital? Usually he was posted at her door until another officer took his place in the morning. Had he seen whoever had left that note and chased after him?

That left her completely unprotected. Not that one officer was much protection against the army that worked for Luther Mills. The drug lord could probably have had her taken out any time that he’d wanted.

What was he waiting for?

The trial was due to start soon. She wasn’t the only witness, though. If she had been, the prosecutor wouldn’t have even brought the case against Mills. Eyewitness testimony was too often discounted as unreliable.

Rosie would never forget what she’d seen, how her brother had been gunned down in cold blood right in front of her. Even as she’d screamed and dropped to her knees next to his bleeding body, she’d braced herself for the bullets she’d been certain would be fired into her body as well.

Instead of killing her, Luther had leaned close and whispered into her ear, “You have Clint Quarters to thank for this...”

Thank him? She’d wanted to kill him—just like she’d wanted to kill Luther. Like the drug lord had said, Quarters was almost as responsible as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. He’d certainly been the one who’d put the target on Javier. Yet there were no repercussions for him.

He hadn’t lost anything—while Rosie had lost everything. She had nothing else to lose now but her life.

She shivered again.

Where had that officer gone?

Had he been injured?

As a nurse, it was her duty to try to treat him if he was. The peephole offered only a limited view of the hallway, with its dirty beige walls and dim lights. Maybe the officer was lying on the worn vinyl floor, bleeding out just like Javier had. Despite her training as an ER nurse, she hadn’t been able to save her brother. He had died in her arms.

She blinked against another rush of tears. The last thing Javier had done before he’d died was reach up and wipe away her tears. “Don’t cry for me, Rosie,” he’d told her.

But that wasn’t all he’d said.

She couldn’t think about the rest of it, though—not without getting furious. He’d wasted his dying breath on Clint Quarters. She hated the man for that almost as much as she hated him for causing her brother’s death.

Despite her efforts, that fury rushed back, and the sheer force of it quashed her fears. She was not going to cower in her apartment while someone might be hurt and in need of her help. Her hand trembled slightly as she fumbled with the row of dead bolts on her battered door, but she managed to turn them all. Then she grasped the knob and pulled open the door.

And she gasped as she stared up into the unfairly good-looking face of the man she hated most—even more than she hated Luther Mills. Was she just imagining him there? Surely after she’d thrown him out of her brother’s funeral he wouldn’t have had the guts to seek her out again.

Would he?

The man certainly looked like Clint Quarters with his golden-blond hair and square jaw with stubble a few shades darker than his hair. He stared down at her with those deep green eyes of his.

And she trembled with the fury rushing through her body. That was all it was. After what he’d done to Javier, she couldn’t feel anything else for him but anger and hatred. Her first instinct was to slam the door in his face, but before she could swing it shut he caught it and no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t move the door or him. Maybe he was made of granite.

She’d thought that before—that he couldn’t be human. That he had no heart. No soul.

* * *

This is a bad idea. Clint had told Parker that the minute he’d given him this assignment. But yet he hadn’t turned down his boss. Clint knew no one else would protect Rosie Mendez like he would. The only thing he’d been worried about was that she would refuse to let him protect her.

He hadn’t been worried about himself. But maybe he should have been, since she was trying really hard to slam the door in his face.

Then she shoved at his chest, trying to push him back from her door. But he didn’t budge. And it wasn’t just because he had an assignment to carry out.

He’d made her brother a promise a long time ago. And if anything happened to her, he would be breaking that promise. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first promise he’d broken that he’d made to Javier.

“Go away!” she screamed at him, and her curly brown hair tangled around her flushed face. “Get the hell out of here!”

He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. “Not without you...”

“Have you lost your mind?” she asked, her brown eyes wide with shock. “I am not going anywhere with you. Ever!”

“You’re going to die if you don’t,” he warned her.

“Are you threatening me?” She stepped out of her apartment and looked around him, calling out, “Officer! Officer!”

The hallway was empty but for him. The building felt empty—which only confirmed what Clint had heard.

“What did you do with him?” she demanded to know. “Where is he?”

“Who?” he asked.

“The police officer who brought me home from the hospital,” she replied. She was wearing her scrubs still. They were a deep blue that complemented her naturally tan skin. But hell, Rosie Mendez would look beautiful in anything. She had—even in the somber black dress she’d worn for her brother’s funeral.

“Where is he?” she asked again.

Clint shrugged. But he felt a niggling sensation between his shoulder blades. Had something happened to the police officer? Or had Luther Mills gotten to him, paying him off to look the other way or worse?

Parker had warned Clint and the other members of their team that they could trust no one but one another. The River City PD and the DA’s office had been compromised. Because they weren’t sure who the moles were, they couldn’t place confidence in anyone.

That wasn’t hard. Clint trusted few people. The hard part would be getting Rosie to trust him. Hell, that wouldn’t just be hard; it would probably prove impossible.

But he wouldn’t let that stop him from keeping his last promise to her brother. The buzz on the street and from the jail was that something was going down tonight to get rid of the witness.

Javier hadn’t been Clint’s only informant. But he’d been his best.

“We need to get out of here,” Clint said, and he reached for her arm.

She jerked back. “Don’t touch me!” she said, her voice shaky with fury or maybe fear.

He would never hurt her. At least, not physically. He couldn’t help how he’d already hurt her. It was too late to change that, though.

Javier was gone.

She would not be next.

“Come on,” he said, his patience with her wearing thin.

She had to know that she was in danger, especially since her police detail had mysteriously disappeared.

“We need to get out of here!”

The eerie silence had been broken by the sound of footsteps—a lot of footsteps—heading up the stairwell at the end of the hall. That niggling sensation he’d had turned to a cold sweat that chilled his skin and his blood. He didn’t need Parker Payne’s mom’s notorious sixth sense to know that something bad was about to happen.

“I’d rather die than go anywhere with you!” she told him. And just as she said the words, gunfire began to ring out in the hallway behind Clint.

He shoved her inside the apartment with such force that he knocked her to the floor. Then he dived in behind her, slamming the door shut.

No matter how the hell many dead bolts she had on it, turning them wasn’t going to keep out the firepower coming after her. He turned only a couple before he dragged her up from the floor and tugged her toward the window.

And as bullets began to strike and penetrate the old wooden door, he wrapped his arms around her and hurled them both through that open window.

He knew it was their only hope of escape—if they could survive the fall...

Chapter 2

Luther Mills took the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a long moment. He couldn’t have heard what he thought he had. The phone was a drop cell one of the guards had picked up for him. Everybody had a price.

Well, almost everybody.

“What the hell did you say?” he asked his caller to repeat himself.

“Clint Quarters showed up at her apartment first,” the guy replied.

This was a new member of Luther’s crew, someone he’d hired specifically to make sure this trial never took place. But he wasn’t certain he could trust the man. But hell, Javier Mendez had proved to him that he couldn’t trust anyone. And then when he’d put bullets in the kid, Luther had proved that anyone who dared to cross him would die.

Too bad Javier’s stubborn sister hadn’t learned that lesson yet. But she would. It would be the last thing Rosie ever learned.

“And before we could get to her,” the guy continued, “they jumped out a window.”

Clint Quarters.

He was one of those damn people who had no price. Like Rosie...

Maybe his guys had it wrong. Maybe she’d shoved Quarters out the window.

Did it matter? All that mattered to Luther was that she not testify against him. He didn’t care why. And he certainly didn’t care if Clint Quarters had died with her. Actually he would prefer that Clint died.

And not Rosie.

He’d always had a soft spot for her since they’d been kids in grade school together. Rosie had always been so sweet and serious and smart. That soft spot was why he’d waited so long to put out the hit on her. But running his business from jail was getting old. That was why he’d put the plan into motion to eliminate the eyewitness. It was past time that he get out again.

And there was no way in hell he was ever going to prison.

* * *

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Rosie shrieked at the crazy man driving erratically through the streets of River City. Of course, that erratic driving might have had something to do with the wound to his shoulder. Blood streaked down the leather sleeve of his torn jacket. She didn’t know if he’d been shot or if he’d hurt it when he’d hurtled them both through her apartment window.

She couldn’t stop shaking as fear and adrenaline continued to course through her. Her fingers trembled too much for her to even pull the safety belt across her lap. But she needed to—as he careened around a corner and her body slammed against the passenger’s door. “Are you trying to kill us?”

She’d thought for certain that she was going to die when they’d catapulted through that window of her third-floor apartment. But there had been a dumpster beneath it, and somehow Clint had turned so that she fell on top of him. He was the one who’d hit whatever had been in the dumpster. She suspected he’d also hit the edge of the rusted metal bin.

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t get killed,” he told her through gritted teeth.

Was he gritting his teeth because he was in pain?

She should have been happy that he was, after all the pain he’d put her through. But instead she felt concern. Maybe that was just because she’d been a nurse for so long. She couldn’t not react to someone who was hurt, no matter who that person was.

She glanced behind them. “Nobody’s following us.” She couldn’t imagine how they could with the way he was driving. “Pull over.”

“I am not letting you out of this vehicle,” he told her—again through gritted teeth.

“What?” She didn’t want out. She didn’t even know where the hell they were. But his telling her that she couldn’t...

Suddenly made her want out very badly.

“Are you kidnapping me?” she asked as even more adrenaline rushed through her.

“I’m protecting you,” he said.

She shook her head. “You’re not a policeman anymore.”

He’d quit—right after Javier’s murder. The detective who’d arrested Luther Mills had told her. She’d been surprised that Clint hadn’t wanted Luther’s arrest for himself since he’d sacrificed her brother to get it. But then she’d refused to give her eyewitness account to him. She’d refused to talk to him at all until he’d had the gall to show up at the funeral. Then she’d said plenty.

“No, I’m not a cop anymore,” Clint admitted. “I’m a bodyguard.”

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t hire you to protect me,” she said. Even if she could have afforded private security, she would not have paid for his services.

“The police chief hired the agency I work for now,” he replied. “The Payne Protection Agency.”

“The police chief?” she asked skeptically. He had a whole police force at his disposal. Why would he hire a private security company?

Clint shrugged and a grimace contorted his handsome face. He was definitely hurt. “Luther has information he shouldn’t. He’s gotten to people in the police department and the DA’s office,” he said.

Panic had her gasping. “The police officer who was protecting me?” What the hell was his name? Officer Maynard. She remembered now, because she’d thought Javier would have teased him about his name. And he couldn’t be much older than her brother.

“Maybe,” he said. “I didn’t see who was shooting at us. But even if it was him, he wasn’t the only one shooting. You can’t trust anyone.”

No. She couldn’t. But she couldn’t wrap her mind around that young officer trying to kill her.

“But he could have taken me out any time.” A chill chased down her spine, making her tremble even more than she had been. “Why...”

“Luther gave the order that it was to happen tonight,” he said.

That was why Clint had shown up at her door when he had. She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“What’s not to understand?” he asked. “He doesn’t want you to testify.”

“But if he has me killed, he’ll do time for my murder,” she pointed out. “Either way, he winds up in prison.”

Clint shook his head now. “He’s smarter than that. He’s been careful with what he’s said. Nothing would be admissible in court.”

“Then how can you be sure?” she asked.

He took his gaze from the street to stare at her for a moment. “After the shooting, how can you ask that?”

“Maybe they were shooting at you,” she suggested. “I’m sure you have more enemies than I do.”

“Nope,” he said. “Just you.”

She glared at him, but he was focused on the road again and probably missed it. “I highly doubt that.” He had to have made a lot of arrests in his years as a vice cop. “Luther could have ordered a hit on you.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t be upset if I got hit in the cross fire,” Clint agreed.

“Were you?” she asked. “You need to pull over, so I can look at your shoulder.”

He glanced down at it as if he hadn’t realized he was bleeding. “We’re almost there.”

“Where?” she asked. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the Payne Protection Agency,” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t want a bodyguard,” she said.

“You need one.”

After the shooting, she really couldn’t argue with him, especially if the officer really had been one of the people shooting at her. But there was one thing she could refuse. “I don’t want you.”

* * *

I don’t want you.

Clint wasn’t surprised. He knew she hated him—that she blamed him for her brother’s death. She wasn’t the only one who held him responsible. He did, too.

I don’t want you.

Those words hung in the air between them in the SUV. She didn’t want him, but he wanted her. He had since the first moment he’d seen her. She was beautiful in a way that went deeper than her golden skin. But even back then, when they’d first met, she hadn’t liked him. She’d known—before Javier died—that working with Clint would get him killed.

Regret and remorse hung heavy on his shoulders, hurting more than the wound he hadn’t noticed until she’d mentioned it. He was surprised she wanted to check it. But true to her word, once he pulled the SUV into the parking lot of Payne Protection, she was reaching over the console.

But when she peeled away the edges of the torn jacket and shirt, he flinched, and a curse slipped out between his gritted teeth. “Pouring salt in it?” he asked.

Her full lips curved slightly. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any with me.”

She touched it again, and pain radiated down his arm. He asked, “Are you sure?”

“I didn’t have time to grab the shaker before you tossed me out the window,” she reminded him. “The blood is starting to clot. But you’re going to need some stitches so you don’t have a jagged scar. And some antibiotics. You must have hit it on the edge of the dumpster, because I don’t see a bullet.”

“Bullet probably would have hurt less.” The minute the words left his lips, he regretted it—especially when he saw the smile slide away from her lips, turning them down into a grimace.

She pulled her hand away from his shoulder. “Javier probably wouldn’t agree with you—if he had survived.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. But he knew the apology, which he’d uttered many times, would never be enough for her. It wouldn’t bring back her little brother, and that was the only way she would ever forgive him.

But even if he couldn’t gain her forgiveness, he needed her trust. “We’re here,” he said, and gestured toward the building. Lights glowed through the windows in the brick walls.

She glanced at the building. “Good.” When she reached for the door handle, Clint caught her shoulder to hold her back.

“You can’t get out yet.”

She turned toward him with her dark eyes narrowed. “You can’t keep me—”

He already knew that. “I have to make sure it’s safe,” he explained.

“Nobody could have followed us here,” she said, “not with the crazy way you were driving.”

He glanced around the parking lot, which was brightly lit with streetlamps. “Not followed,” he agreed. “But they could be here.”

“How?”

“You don’t think any of Luther’s shooters would recognize me?” he asked. He’d worked vice so long that most of them had to know who he was. “You don’t think Luther knows where I work now?”

She shivered as she looked out the windows, too. “Then you shouldn’t have brought me here, either.”

He sighed because he couldn’t argue with her. “I probably shouldn’t have. But the chief is here. He wants to talk to all of you.”

“The chief?”

“Police Chief Woodrow Lynch.”

“The former FBI guy.” She shivered again.

Lynch was intimidating, which was probably one reason why Parker hadn’t refused the assignment. Another was that Parker felt like Clint did—like they all did—about Luther Mills. He had to be stopped.

“And who is all of us?”

“Everybody Luther threatened in those phone calls. The CSI tech, the prosecutor, the judge’s daughter, the arresting officer...” All of Luther’s victims in one place.

It had been stupid to bring her here, to bring any of them here. A wave of nausea washed over him at the thought that he might have put her in more danger.

“Are you okay?” Rosie asked as she turned fully toward him again. She reached out and pressed her hand to his face.

Clint braced himself, but her touch affected him, making his pulse quicken and his breath catch in his lungs.

“You’re really warm,” she said. “Have you had a tetanus shot lately? You could be getting an infection from the metal that cut your shoulder.”

He was getting hot, but that was more from her touch than anything else. Her hand was cool against his face, but her soft skin made his tingle.

“When was your last tetanus shot?” she persisted.

From Javier singing her praises and from what Clint himself heard around the hospital about her, he already knew that she was a good nurse. But now he knew how good, that she could put aside her hatred of him for concern for his health.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“We need to get you to the ER,” she said. “You need stitches and a tetanus shot.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

He wasn’t worried about himself. He was worried about her, that he might have put her in more danger by bringing her here. He’d made a promise to her brother, and this one he would not break.

But when he noticed shadows near the building, he realized that the choice might not be left up to him. There were people out there moving within those shadows.

He had made damn certain the shooters from her apartment hadn’t followed them. But they wouldn’t have had to follow them. They could have followed any one of the other bodyguards back here from collecting the person he or she had been assigned to protect. Other Payne Protection SUVs were already parked in the lot.

Luther hadn’t ordered a hit on everyone for tonight. Just Rosie.

But Luther was such a control freak that he would probably have some of his people watching his other potential victims, so he would know where they were when he was ready to take them out. And if Luther had learned the Payne Protection Agency was guarding them, he could have figured out where they would all meet up.

And if he had figured it out, he had to be laughing his ass off that they’d made it so easy for him to take out all his victims in one place.

Maybe he was just being paranoid and giving Luther way too much credit. But he knew the drug dealer too well to ever underestimate him again. Luther Mills was always at least one step ahead of everyone else. Usually more. That was how he had avoided prosecution for so many years.

No. Clint would not make the mistake of underestimating him ever again. The last time he had, someone had died. Rosie’s brother.

A curse slipped out, and Clint reached for the keys still dangling from the ignition.

“What?” Rosie asked, her eyes widening with fear. “What’s wrong?”

Just as Clint started up the SUV again, those shadows moved away from the building toward his vehicle. He could drive over one or two of them—but not all of them.

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he reached for his weapon as he pushed Rosie below the windows. “Get down!” he told her.

He would do his best to protect her. But the guilt that always weighed on his shoulders now reminded him that his best had not been good enough for Javier.

Chapter 3

“Put down the gun!” Parker shouted as he pulled open the driver’s door of the SUV. He was not going to get shot in front of his own damn agency. And definitely not by a member of his team.

“Damn it!” Clint cursed him. “I nearly shot you. Why the hell were you all sneaking up on me?”

Parker was not alone. “You were sitting out here for a while,” he said. And he and some of the other guards—ones he’d borrowed from his brothers’ agencies to secure the perimeter during their meeting—had grown concerned. And maybe with good reason. “We thought something was wrong.”

As Clint slid his weapon back into his holster, a grimace crossed his face with the movement. He was hurt.

“What the hell happened?” Parker asked.

Clint had warned him that he was the last man the witness would want to protect her. Apparently, Parker should have listened to him.

The witness answered before Clint could. “He threw us out a third-story window,” she said.

Maybe Clint was the one Parker should have been worried about. “What?” he asked.

She had to be lying, maybe trying to get her bodyguard in trouble.

“We were being shot at,” Clint explained. “When you all started creeping up on us, I thought the shooters might have followed us here.”

“Not with the way you were driving,” the brunette remarked. From her disparaging tone, it was clear that Clint had not exaggerated how Rosie Mendez felt about him.

“Are you hurt?” Parker asked her.

She shook her head. “No. But he needs stitches and a tetanus shot.” Despite her hostility toward her bodyguard, there was concern in her voice. There was also knowledge; the hospital badge dangling from the pocket of her scrubs identified her as a registered emergency medicine nurse.

“I’m fine,” Clint said, but as he slid out from beneath the steering wheel, he flinched again. He was not fine. But he was clearly focused on protecting the witness regardless of his injury and her resentment of him. He pushed past Parker and the other bodyguards to open the passenger’s door.

“You need to go to the hospital,” she told him, and she stayed seated as if she intended to go with him.

“The chief of the River City Police Department is waiting to talk to you and the others,” Parker said. And he felt a rush of pride that that man was his stepfather. His mother had married a good man this time. “I’ll have someone else take Clint to the ER.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Clint stated albeit through gritted teeth. “I am fine. I can do my job.”

Parker sighed. “I can’t argue that—not after you saved her from getting shot and made sure you weren’t followed getting here.”

Yes. He had chosen his team well. Too well to lose any of them. And one of them was already hurt, no matter how damn fine he swore he was.

He’d known when he’d accepted this assignment from the chief that it would be dangerous. But he’d had no idea that the danger would start almost immediately.

* * *

Heat rushed to Rosie’s face. She must have sounded ungrateful to the bodyguards who’d gathered around the SUV. Clint Quarters had saved her from getting shot, and instead of thanking him, all she’d done was complain.

But it was easier for Rosie to complain about Clint than to be grateful to him. She just couldn’t do it.

Not after what he’d cost her. And no matter how many times he might save her life, he could never bring back the life lost because of him.

Javier...

She had no intention of going along with his being her bodyguard. That was the reason she walked into the Payne Protection Agency with him and the others. She intended to tell the chief of police exactly what he could do with his protection.

Not that she could deny that she needed it. What had happened to that young officer who’d escorted her home? Had Luther really gotten to him? Either paying or threatening him? Or had the shooters taken him out first before Clint came to her rescue?

And he had rescued her. But that didn’t mean he had to be the one to protect her until she testified. It looked as though the Payne Protection Agency had many other bodyguards. Several patrolled the parking lot and the outside of the brick building while many more stood inside the doors.

She should have felt safe seeing all those armed and trained bodyguards. But the danger became even more real than when those shots had rung out. That had been so surreal and Clint had reacted so quickly that she was almost able to believe that it hadn’t happened at all.

But then he stepped around her, and she could see his shoulder in the bright interior light. His jacket and shirt were torn and so was his skin, the edges of the wound ragged and oozing blood yet.

It had definitely happened. They had come under attack and nearly been killed.

“You really need medical attention,” she persisted.

He shrugged off her concern. “I’m fine.”

“You’re stubborn,” she said with frustration, that he wouldn’t listen to her. He might know about being a cop and a bodyguard. But she, as an ER nurse, knew about injuries like his.

It couldn’t go untreated.

“You have no idea,” another man murmured. It was the one who’d pulled open Clint’s door. He was tall with dark hair and blue eyes. “I’m Parker Payne,” he introduced himself.

And she realized he was the boss.

He led her toward another room, a conference room, and when that door opened, she saw who was really running the show. At least this show...

Chief Woodrow Lynch. She’d met him before. He’d come to Javier’s funeral to express his condolences. Unlike Clint, he hadn’t been thrown out. He’d seemed sincere and determined to make certain that her brother’s killer was finally brought to justice.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Ms. Mendez,” he greeted her. “We were getting worried about you.”

“You weren’t the only one,” she murmured.

“Clint thwarted an attempt on her life,” Parker said.

Jocelyn Gerber, the assistant district attorney, jumped up from her chair. She was tall and thin with pin-straight black hair.

Rosie envied all of that—the height, the weight and the straight hair. Rosie wasn’t much over five feet tall. And if not for her busy schedule at the hospital, she would probably be carrying more than a few extra pounds. And even a straightener couldn’t get rid of her stubborn curls.

“Are you all right?” Ms. Gerber asked.

Rosie wasn’t certain if the woman was concerned about her or just about her case against Luther Mills. The young ADA was blatantly ambitious.

Rosie nodded but turned back toward the chief. “What about your officer?” she asked. “The one you had protecting me?”

The chief looked over her head at Clint. “There was no one at her door when I arrived at her apartment,” Clint informed him. “I’m not sure what happened to the officer.”

“I’ll find out,” someone said before the chief could. The detective who’d arrested Luther made the offer as he jumped up from his chair at the long conference table.

Rosie felt sick with concern that the officer could have been hurt because of her.

Like Clint had been hurt...

“You’re not going anywhere,” the chief told Detective Dubridge.

“But you heard them—there’s been a shooting,” he said. “I need to investigate.”

“Someone else is taking that case. You’re not the only detective with River City PD. But you are the only one with a hit out on you. You need to sit back down,” the chief said, and his tone brooked no argument.

The detective must have sensed that as well because the tall, dark-haired man sat back down next to a small blonde woman.

The chief turned back to Rosie. “Please, take a seat as well,” he directed her. He didn’t wait for her to comply before he stepped back from the conference table, took his cell from his pocket and made a call.

Despite his injured shoulder, Clint pulled out a chair for her. Her knees shaking suddenly, she sank onto it and glanced around the long table.

Jocelyn Gerber and Detective Dubridge were not the only people Rosie recognized. Judge Holmes sat at the table, too. He looked a lot like the chief, with iron-gray hair and an expressionless face. She couldn’t imagine anyone threatening that intimidating man. But then she remembered that Clint had said the person in danger was his daughter. She must have been the girl sitting between him and a burly bearded man. Despite the late hour, the young blonde looked as though she’d just stepped off the runway of a fashion show. In a sparkling evening gown, she was supermodel-status glamorous.

Which made Rosie feel tired and dirty in the scrubs she’d worn for a double shift. They hadn’t been very clean even before she’d wound up in the dumpster.

At least one of the other women around the table was dressed as if she’d already been in bed for the night—and alone, as Rosie had intended to be. She wore loose yoga pants and an oversize T-shirt. Her short red hair was tousled around a face devoid of makeup—of any color at all but for a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She was still prettier than Rosie felt, though.

Not that she had anyone she wanted to impress. But for some reason, as that thought entered her mind, she glanced over at Clint, who’d taken the chair next to her. She wasn’t concerned about his opinion of her. But unfortunately, she was concerned about him. His handsome face contorted with another grimace and it was clear to see he was in pain. That might have had something to do with his boss, who touched his shoulder.

“Are you sure there isn’t a bullet in it?” Parker asked him.

“Bullet?” the woman in the pajamas asked, and there was something like eagerness in her voice. “Were you shot?”

“No,” Clint replied. “So don’t start trying to dig a bullet out of me for evidence.”

Apparently, she was the evidence tech who’d been threatened.

So they were all here—all the people Luther Mills intended to kill. Maybe Rosie should have felt better knowing that she was not the only one. But she couldn’t feel good about other people being in danger.

The chief clicked off his cell and stepped back to the table. His brow was furrowed, and it looked as though he had more lines in his face than she remembered him having.

“Is the officer...” Dead? She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say that word. She’d already said it too many times.

The chief shook his head. “No. He’s alive. But he had been knocked out.”

“Really? He wasn’t in the hall when I arrived,” Clint said. “And he never should have left her door.” He sounded suspicious. He seemed convinced that Luther had already gotten to the officer.

But he was so young, so like Javier, that Rosie didn’t want to believe it. “Maybe he heard something and went to investigate,” she said.

“The detective didn’t say where he’d been found,” the chief said.

Rosie didn’t care. “Is he okay?” she asked. Concussions were serious.

She glanced back at Clint. Had he hit his head as well as his shoulder? She wanted to reach out and run her fingers through his soft-looking golden hair. But just to look for a bump or a cut—that was the only reason. She resisted the urge despite her fingers twitching. When she requested a different bodyguard, she would insist he go to the ER.

Realizing that the chief had hesitated a long time before answering her question, she turned back to him. “Is Officer Maynard okay?”

She remembered his name because he’d reminded her of Javier. But she couldn’t remember the names of all the other officers who’d guarded her since Javier’s murder. There had been too many.

Chief Lynch nodded. “He’ll be fine.”

“Could he be the leak?” Detective Dubridge asked. He must have picked up on Clint’s suspicion.

The chief shook his head. “He doesn’t have access to everything that Luther found out about the upcoming trial. No one in the police department does.”

The detective and the chief turned to the assistant district attorney. Jocelyn Gerber’s pale face flushed. “You’re saying there’s a leak in my department?” She sounded deeply insulted.

“If the leak is there, why do we need a private security company?” The crime scene tech asked the question Rosie had opened her mouth to ask as well. “Why can’t we just have officers protect us?”

“Because the officer at Rosie’s was so effective?” Clint asked the question. “She had no protection when I arrived. She would have been killed for certain.”

She shivered as she realized how true that was—with all those bullets flying, there was no way she would have survived. Despite all the locks on the door, they would have gotten inside her apartment—they would have gotten to her.

Luther Mills had no intention of letting her testify against him.

“I think the private security firm is a great idea,” Jocelyn said. “Because I don’t think the leak is in the DA’s office. A higher-ranking police officer or a detective would be able to get information about the trial.”

Dubridge glared at her. “Are you accusing me of helping out Luther Mills?”

“Not at all,” she assured him. “But you’re not the only detective with the River City PD.”

“He just thinks he is,” the blonde sitting next to him murmured.

Rosie felt like an extreme outsider in this meeting. All these people appeared to know one another much better than she knew any of them except Clint Quarters. And her animosity and resentment for him wasn’t the only animosity and resentment in the room.

Jocelyn ignored the comments and continued, “I just think the witness is the only one we need to worry about protecting at the moment.”

Detective Dubridge nodded in agreement of that. “She’s right. The only assassination attempt was made on the witness.”

The witness. That was all she was to them. Suddenly very cold, she shivered.

The chief shook his head. “You were all threatened,” he said. “You will all have a bodyguard.”

The room erupted with protests, everyone arguing. Even the judge. He argued with his daughter, who clearly didn’t want a bodyguard either.

Detective Dubridge’s deep voice was the loudest. “How the hell is Bodyguard Barbie going to protect me?” he asked disdainfully.

And the blonde sitting next to him bristled with anger over his chauvinism.

Rosie would have preferred the blonde to Clint Quarters. She would have preferred anyone to Clint Quarters. But she doubted her protests would be heard above all the others. So she stood up and turned toward the chief. “May I speak to you alone?”

“Ms. Mendez needs a bodyguard more than anyone else,” Jocelyn Gerber said. “As the eyewitness to the murder, she needs to make it to trial.”

That was all the prosecutor cared about, apparently—getting a conviction. Rosie cared about more than that; she wanted justice for her brother and she wanted Luther Mills to never be able to hurt anyone else. Being in jail wasn’t preventing that, though.

Would being in prison? She hoped so.

“She’s the only one who really needs protection,” Detective Dubridge added. “The rest of us have lives to live, work to do.”

“And I don’t?” she asked, her temper snapping.

He’d been so nice to her when Javier had been shot. But maybe, like Jocelyn Gerber wanted that conviction, he’d only wanted that arrest. Getting Luther was all they seemed to care about.

But she had patients and a job she cared about as well. The hospital was short-staffed. If she didn’t show up to work, people could die. Or she could lose her job. Then how would she support herself after the trial? How would she pay her rent and her bills?

The chief stepped forward and took her elbow. “Of course you may speak to me,” he said as he escorted her from the noisy conference room. “But Parker Payne will join us.”

She didn’t care who joined them as long as it wasn’t Clint Quarters. But he’d stood up when she had, as if he’d needed to shield her from bullets inside the protection agency. She grabbed the chief’s arm. “Not him. I don’t want him to join us.”

Even though he had saved her life, she didn’t want Clint Quarters anywhere near her. Maybe it was partially because he had saved her life that she didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want her feelings for him to change out of gratitude. She wanted to keep hating him. She needed to keep hating him.

* * *

Clint was hurting like hell. And it wasn’t just his shoulder. His entire body ached from hitting whatever the hell had been inside that dumpster. But he’d already been hurting, even before he’d jumped out that window.

Since Javier died, he’d been aching with guilt and regret and loss. He’d really cared about that kid. He couldn’t imagine how badly Rosie hurt.

And he didn’t want her to hurt anymore. He had to be the one to protect her.

“I need to be in that meeting, too,” he said as he followed Parker, the chief and Rosie out into the hallway.

“No!” she protested sharply. “I don’t want him.”

That was no doubt what she was going to tell Parker and the chief. That would she would be okay with any other bodyguard but him.

He’d already warned Parker that was how she would feel, that she would not want him protecting her. But even if for some reason Parker took him off the case, he wouldn’t stop guarding her.

He intended to keep at least that promise he’d made to Javier. He would make sure nothing happened to his sister, even if protecting her caused him more pain.

Even if it cost him his life.

But as he watched her walk away from him, looking so beautiful even as exhausted as she was, it wasn’t just his life he was worried about.

He was worried about his heart, too. He could easily fall for Rosie and not just into a dumpster.

Chapter 4

Just before the door to Parker Payne’s office closed, Rosie caught a glimpse of Clint Quarters’s handsome face. And the look on it jolted her.

There was such an intensity in his deep green eyes. And something else, something she almost suspected was fear.

But she doubted Clint Quarters would care that he got removed from the assignment as her bodyguard. She couldn’t imagine he would choose to protect her, not when he knew how much she hated him.

Maybe he was afraid that his boss wouldn’t remove him and that he would be hurt even more than he’d already been. Rosie had that fear, too.

Parker Payne closed the door, though, and broke the contact between Rosie and Clint. She wished she could put him as easily from her mind. But she thought about him entirely too much. Javier had idolized the former vice cop. His idol had gotten him killed.

She blinked back the tears that stung her eyes at the thought of her brother’s death. That was the only reason she thought about Clint Quarters too much—because she thought about Javier so often.

“Are you okay?” Chief Lynch asked, his deep voice warm with fatherly concern.

Not that she knew much about fathers. She couldn’t remember hers. And Javier’s hadn’t stuck around for long, either, not that she could blame them with the mess her mother had been.

“Were you injured at all during that attempt on your life?” the chief asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t. She was shaken, and not just because she’d been shot at. She was shaken because of Clint Quarters, because he’d been the one who’d saved her.

“Clint Quarters is the one who needs to go to the ER,” she insisted.

Parker nodded his dark head in agreement. “I’ll make sure he goes.”

“So you’ll give me another bodyguard?” she asked. Maybe it would be easier than she’d thought it would be to get rid of Clint.

Parker sighed. But before he could say anything, she spoke again.

“Actually I don’t want any bodyguard,” Rosie insisted. “I have a job.” One that she loved. “I have to go to work. I can’t put my life on hold for this trial.”

The chief uttered a weary-sounding sigh. “You have to,” he told her, “if you want your brother’s killer to be brought to justice.”

Her eyes stung again, so she blinked harder. “Of course I want that. I have every intention of testifying against Luther Mills.”

“You won’t be able to if you’re dead,” Parker said.

She flinched at his brutal honesty.

“Parker,” the chief admonished him. “You don’t need to be so blunt.”

“It’s the truth,” Parker said. “And she needs to hear it. She cannot refuse protection.”

“Protection, fine,” she agreed. “Just any bodyguard but Clint Quarters.”

Parker sighed. “Clint said you wouldn’t want him as your bodyguard.”

He must have already tried to pass off the assignment to someone else. She felt a twinge at that, but it couldn’t have been disappointment. She was relieved that he had, because it bolstered her argument against his being her bodyguard. “He knows I hate him.”

“Why do you hate him?” the chief asked, his brow furrowed with confusion. “Clint Quarters was a highly decorated police officer with an exemplary record before Parker stole him from the force for his team.”

She snorted. Exemplary record. She wouldn’t call it that, not when a twenty-year-old had lost his life because of him. That should have put a hell of a black mark on his exemplary record.

“How do you even know each other?” the chief asked. “Did you have a personal relationship?”

Did he think she was a jilted lover or something?

“No!” she hotly denied. “He’s the one who got my brother killed.”

The chief shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Javier Mendez was Clint’s informant on Luther Mills’s organization,” Parker explained to the chief.

“He forced him to become an informant,” Rosie said. “He arrested my brother and planted drugs on him and threatened to have him sent to prison for years if he didn’t help him get Luther Mills.”

Parker’s brow furrowed now. “Is that what your brother told you?” he asked. “Because there’s no way in hell that Clint Quarters framed anyone for anything! He was one of the best damn officers I ever worked with.”

“His record is exemplary.” The chief repeated his earlier praise.

And Rosie’s face heated as her temper boiled over. “My brother was no drug dealer!” Especially not for Luther Mills. She’d worked too hard to keep Javier away from him. “So Clint had to have framed him.”

“Did your brother tell you that?” Parker persisted.

Rosie had to shake her head. “No. But he idolized Clint Quarters. He wouldn’t have said a bad word about him.”

“He wouldn’t have idolized a man who framed him and forced him to do something he hadn’t wanted to do,” the chief said, and again his voice was all warm and fatherly.

Or at least what she figured a father probably sounded like. But she understood why her and Javier’s fathers hadn’t stuck around after getting their mom pregnant. Their mother, a drug addict, had been a difficult person to love. That was why Javier wouldn’t have started selling drugs for anyone—least of all Luther.

He wouldn’t have wanted to help anyone become what their mother had. He wouldn’t have.

She blinked hard again, fighting against a new rush of tears.

“You know the truth,” Parker told her, but more gently now, his voice almost sounding fatherly as well. “About your brother and about Clint. You just can’t face it.”

“No...” she murmured.

“And you know no one else will protect you like Clint will,” Parker continued. “He feels guilty as hell over what happened to Javier. That’s why he quit the force and finally joined my team.”

“Is that why?” the chief asked. “I would have thought he’d want that arrest for himself.”

Parker stared at Rosie as he replied, “If arresting Mills was all he cared about, he definitely would have.”

Her head felt light, making her dizzy as she realized that Parker was right, maybe about everything. But that wasn’t possible.

That could not be possible.

* * *

He was off the assignment. Clint knew it even before the door opened to Parker’s private office. He’d warned his boss. There was no way Rosie would let him protect her. So if she’d given them an ultimatum—no protection or another bodyguard—they would have had to choose to assign her another bodyguard.

They had no choice, really.

It was clear from how Jocelyn Gerber had acted that her case, and a conviction of Luther Mills, hinged on Rosie’s eyewitness testimony. Without it and her, the killer would walk to kill again.

Clint didn’t want that any more than the others did. But he didn’t believe any other bodyguard in that room would protect Rosie like he would. Sure, they were all good.

Even Bodyguard Barbie, as Spencer Dubridge had dubbed Keeli Abbott, was damn good. She’d held her own in the vice unit. She was far tougher than she looked. But none of the other bodyguards had the incentive Clint had to make sure Rosie stayed safe.

They hadn’t made a promise to her brother like he had.

That was his only incentive.

It wasn’t because he had personal feelings for Rosie. Hell, if he did—if he really did—that might prove more a hindrance than a help. A distraction and a detriment over an incentive.

No. He did not. He could not have feelings for Rosie Mendez. Sure, she was beautiful—inside and out. And strong and brave and smart.

But she was also stubborn and hateful and...

The door opened, and she stepped out into the hall. And all his negative thoughts left as he gasped again at her beauty. Even the dark circles beneath her big brown eyes didn’t detract from her appearance. She was exhausted but beautiful.

Maybe that exhaustion was why Parker told him, “Take her to the safe house now.”

She must have been too tired to fight hard enough to get him fired. That wasn’t like her. She was so strong, such a fighter.

And now he looked at her with concern. When he’d jumped out that window with her in his arms, he’d been careful so that he would take the brunt of the fall. And his throbbing shoulder attested to the fact that he had.

But had she been hurt as well? Despite his efforts?

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

She nodded, but she didn’t look at him. Then she brushed past him as she headed toward the exit. Clearly, she was ready to leave.

She definitely had to be exhausted.

But before Clint could head out with her, Parker caught his arm.

He suppressed a wince as the movement jarred his injured shoulder and turned toward his boss.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Parker asked.

And Clint knew the other man wasn’t talking about his shoulder. He was talking about Rosie.

No doubt she’d made it very clear to him, and to the chief who was studying him as well, how much she hated Clint. They confirmed this when Parker said, “Luther Mills might not be the only one you’re in danger from.”

If Rosie really wanted him dead, she would have killed him when he’d shown up for Javier’s funeral. And she certainly wouldn’t have been as concerned as she’d been in the SUV about his injury. No, Rosie Mendez was no killer.

And Clint had to make certain she didn’t become the next victim of one.

“I’m fine,” he assured his boss and the chief. “I’ve got this.”

But because she’d already made it across the lobby to the front doors, he had to rush after her. Not that any of the perimeter guards would have let her step outside without protection.

Hell, they followed both of them to the SUV. While he opened the passenger door for her, one of Cooper Payne’s team had already opened the driver’s door and checked inside and underneath the vehicle. Cooper’s guys were all highly trained former Marines.

They knew to check for explosives and other potential deadly threats. Luther Mills was probably quite a bit like the terrorists they’d faced on their missions. Crazy and determined with no conscience.

So it was good the former Marines were his backup. But as soon as he closed the driver’s door, Rosie turned toward him and asked, “Can you lose them?”

“Who?” He glanced around the lot. Had someone followed him or the others? Was the area not as secure as he thought?

“Those guards,” she said. “They’re going to follow us, right?”

Given how everyone had been the most concerned about her—and after the shooting attempt, with good reason—Clint had no doubt the Marines were his reinforcements. “Probably.”

“Then can you lose them?” she asked.

“If I wanted to,” he said, and he wasn’t trying to impress her, he was just stating a fact when he added, “I could.” But he didn’t want to. He wasn’t exactly a hundred percent after diving out that window into the dumpster.

“If you really want to protect me, you need to,” she advised him.

“Why?” he asked as he started the SUV and shifted into drive. “Don’t you trust them?”

Had she recognized one of them from Luther’s crew? Clint didn’t know any of the ex-Marines very well. He didn’t even know if they were from River City or not. They could have once worked for Luther. Pretty much everyone in her neighborhood had except for Rosie.

Luther didn’t give his workers any choice. Just like he hadn’t given Javier a choice.

But the young man had made one of his own. He’d chosen to stop the dangerous drug dealer. But that choice had cost him his life.

“I don’t trust you,” she said.

He flinched even though this wasn’t news to him. Of course she didn’t trust him, not after what had happened to her brother.

“I’m going to keep you safe,” he promised as he drove the SUV out of the parking lot of the Payne Protection Agency.

“How?” she asked. “If that shoulder wound doesn’t get treated, you’re going to develop an infection or you’ll just eventually bleed out. You need medical attention.”

She was probably right—after all, she was the one with the medical experience. And Clint couldn’t deny that he felt like hell.

But he shook his head. “I need to take you to the safe house first.” Just like Parker had ordered. “Then I’ll go once I know you’ll be okay.”

“You’ll spend hours waiting to get seen at the ER,” she said. “Unless I go with you.”

He narrowed his eyes and glanced across at her face. Was she up to something? Did she intend to shake off his protection at the hospital?

She wouldn’t lose him as easily as Clint had lost those shooters, as easily as he could lose the Marines if he chose to. “Why can’t they come along?” he asked with a jerk of his head toward the SUV following them.

“Because I don’t want everyone at the hospital to know that I’m in danger,” she said.

“Don’t they know about the trial?” he asked. “That you’re going to testify against your brother’s killer?”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t told anyone.”

That had probably been a damn good idea, given that anyone could be affiliated with Luther and his crew. Rosie hadn’t survived growing up in her neighborhood by luck. She was street-smart.

But as smart as she’d been to keep everything to herself, it must have been lonely as well. Had she had no one to support her through the loss of her brother?

“You didn’t tell anyone?” he asked. “Not a friend? Or a boyfriend?”

She snorted. “With the hours I work I barely have time to sleep, let alone have a relationship of any kind.”

So she needed the people she worked with to be her friends, like Clint felt the people he worked with were his. But unlike him, she felt like she couldn’t trust her coworkers.

Clint glanced into his rearview mirror, at the lights shining in it. Parker would give him hell if he purposely lost his backup.

But Rosie was right. If she walked in with an entourage, everyone would know that something was wrong, that she was in danger. But even if she walked in with him...

“How are you going to explain me?” he asked.

Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Guess you’ll have to claim I’m your boyfriend,” he told her.

A gasp slipped through her lips, and he didn’t think it was because he suddenly jerked the wheel to the right. The tires squealed at the sharp turn.

And Rosie’s dark eyes widened even more. But she didn’t protest claiming him as hers.

Clint glanced away from her to study the rearview mirror. The lights were gone. The driver of the Payne agency SUV that had been following them hadn’t expected Clint’s sharp and sudden turn, so he missed it.

Clint made a few more hairpin turns in the circuitous route he traveled to the hospital. He hadn’t tried really hard to lose his tail, though—just to make it look as though he had to Rosie.

For some reason she hadn’t forced Parker to remove him from this assignment. And for that reason, he didn’t want to piss her off. So he would go along with what she wanted.

He just hoped like hell that complying with her wishes wouldn’t get them both killed.

* * *

Luther stared down at the cell phone in his hand, willing it to ring. Where the hell was she? She couldn’t have just disappeared, and his crew had looked all around her building for her body.

For hers and Clint Quarters’s.

They were both gone.

Damn Quarters!

The former vice cop hadn’t killed her when he’d tossed her out that window. He’d saved her. How the hell was that man so damn lucky?

How could they have fallen three stories and not been hurt? They had to be at the hospital. At least that was what Luther was counting on...

Chapter 5

“I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone,” Anita Cruz remarked as she rubbed her shoulder against Rosie’s as they stood together at the nurses’ station.

Despite her reluctance, Rosie had had to claim that Clint was her boyfriend in order to get him moved to the top of the long waiting list in the ER. Her coworkers often pulled favors like that, but she never had.

Until now.

Until Clint Quarters.

So it was only natural that everyone would be curious about him. About them.

But after getting shot at, she was a little paranoid. Maybe that was why she thought Anita sounded more suspicious than surprised. Anita, who was a little older than her, often called in favors for friends who Rosie suspected worked for Luther Mills—because their wounds were even more questionable-looking than Clint’s.

She forced a smile. “It’s pretty new,” she said. “That’s why I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.” Even if she had been seeing someone, she probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone, though.

She liked keeping work and her personal life separate. Not that she’d ever had much of a personal life.

Anita nodded. “Or do you just want to keep him all to yourself? He’s pretty damn hot.”

He was—especially as he sat, shirtless, on the stretcher just feet away from them in the emergency room. Golden hair covered some of the golden skin of his heavily muscled chest. His arms were heavy with muscles, too—his biceps bulging even though they weren’t flexed.

Yes, he was pretty damn hot. That was the problem. Clint Quarters was too damn good-looking.

“So how’d he get hurt?” Anita persisted.

And goose bumps rose on Rosie’s skin as a chill passed through her. Had Luther put out the word? Was he looking for her after she and Clint had escaped his gunmen? Was he that determined to finish the job?

The trial wasn’t set to begin for a few weeks yet. But he’d been in a jail for a while already. Maybe he was getting impatient to get out. And if the eyewitness was dead, the district attorney’s office might be forced to drop the charges against him.

Of course Jocelyn Gerber seemed so determined to nail him that she might persist in trying him even without Rosie. She hoped the prosecutor did, just in case Rosie didn’t survive the next attempt Luther made on her life.

And she knew he would try again.

That was why she hadn’t fought Parker Payne as hard as she should have to replace Clint as her bodyguard—because she hadn’t been able to argue with his results. He had saved her life once already.

She had to trust that he would again. But trusting Clint Quarters...

She shivered.

“Was it that bad?” Anita asked. “I only got a quick glance at his shoulder.” Before she’d come out of the exam area to interrogate Rosie.

Clint was still visible from the nurse’s station, though, since he’d pulled back the curtain the young resident had tried to pull around him. He hadn’t done it so that she could see him, though. He’d done it so that he could see her. Even though he hadn’t been a bodyguard very long, he obviously took his new job very seriously.

Rosie shook her head. “He—uh—wiped out on his motorcycle.”

Anita peered across at Clint. “Doesn’t look like road rash.”

“Oh, he didn’t fall,” Rosie said.

No. He had jumped—and taken her along with him. But she’d escaped unscathed, thanks to him.

She continued, “He banged into something.” Like a dumpster...or whatever had been inside it.

“Were you with him?” Anita asked with what sounded like genuine concern.

Guilt flashed through Rosie that she’d doubted the woman. She also regretted having to lie to her. “No. He was alone. Driving too fast.”

“He doesn’t seem like the careless type,” Anita said. “He seems really intense.” And now she shivered.

He wasn’t just watching Rosie; he was staring at her coworker as well. Anita’s curiosity must have made him suspicious, too.

Rosie lifted her hand and waved at him while forcing a smile. She wanted him to know he was overreacting. Anita was just nosy.

He lifted his hand, waving her over to him.

Anita released a lustful sigh. “I wish he was waving me over to him. That is one fine-looking man, Rosie. You done good, girl.”

But Rosie hesitated before stepping away from the nurses’ station. She felt safe there; she didn’t feel safe with Clint, and it wasn’t because of Luther Mills’s threat.

Anita bumped her shoulder again. “Don’t keep him waiting, honey. Someone else might scoop him up.”

Did he have a girlfriend?

Javier had told her that he didn’t, but how much had her brother really known about his idol? Obviously not that he would get him killed someday.

Or had he known?

Even before he’d been shot, Javier had said some things to her—things that had made her think he might have been concerned. But more about her than himself...

Her brother had been such a sweetheart.

Clint Quarters was not. He waved at her again, beckoning her to come to him. He probably would have come to her if he’d been able, but it looked as though the resident was stitching up his shoulder.

“He must want you to hold his hand,” Anita remarked with a lustful grin. “I’m surprised you weren’t by his side this whole time.”

He had wanted her there, but Rosie had insisted he should have his privacy and she’d assured him that she wouldn’t go far from him. He’d looked at her with even more suspicion than when he’d been staring at Anita. And she had no doubt that if she’d walked any farther away than the nurse’s station, he would have come after her. Had he thought she’d convinced him to come here so that she could give him the slip?

Sure, she would rather not have him as her bodyguard. But after the shooting, she knew she needed one. Probably more than one. Maybe she shouldn’t have had him lose the Payne Protection SUV that had been following them.

Before Clint could beckon for her again, she walked over to the stretcher on which he was sitting. The resident glanced over at her. “Where’d you find this guy, Rosie?”

“What—why?” she stammered. She hadn’t found him; he had found her. Well, first he’d found Javier. While he’d taken her out of danger, he’d put her brother in it.

And no matter how damn good-looking he was, she couldn’t forget or forgive that.

“He’s some kind of superman,” the young doctor remarked in awe. “He refused to take any kind of painkiller, just a local anesthetic. There’s no way his shoulder is even numb yet, but he insisted I start stitching him up because he’s in a hurry to get out of here.”

“Can’t you see why?” Clint asked him as he grinned at Rosie.

And her traitorous heart skipped a beat as her pulse began to race. Damn him for being so good-looking...

The resident’s face flushed, and he stammered now. “Uh, yeah.”

“So that looks good enough, Doc,” Clint said, even though the resident was still suturing.

“You need a few more to close up the wound completely,” the resident insisted.

But Clint was already pulling away.

“Let him finish,” she told him through the smile she forced herself to hang on to.

“But sweetheart,” Clint said, “we have plans, and we don’t want to keep our friends waiting.”

“Friends...” Who the hell was he talking about?

He was looking beyond her now. Had those other bodyguards followed them after all? She glanced behind her and noticed a couple of teenagers. They were definitely not Payne Protection bodyguards.

Why was Clint staring at them? Did he think they were some of Luther’s crew?

He must have, because he used his free hand to tug her into the space with him. Then he told her, “Pull that curtain, honey.”

The resident glanced nervously from one to the other of them. “Really, Mr. Quarters—”

“Clint.” He corrected him as if he’d done it before. “And really, this is good enough.” But he didn’t wait for the young doctor to finish. Using his right hand, he grabbed the scissors from the suture tray and clipped off the thread and needle himself.

“And I don’t suppose you want a prescription for painkillers?” the resident asked.

“No thanks,” Clint told him.

The young doctor sighed and murmured. “Badass.”

Why was it that Clint Quarters inspired such hero worship in young men? What was it about him? That he was tough? That he was fearless?

But he wasn’t really. She’d seen fear on his face right before she’d walked into that room with Parker Payne and the chief of police.

And she saw it now as he reached for his shirt. “We need to get out of here.”

“Have fun,” the resident said as he slipped away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Those guys out there...”

“The teenagers?”

“They work for Luther.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Or are you just being paranoid?” Like she’d been when Anita had questioned her.

“I’m being realistic,” Clint said. “And it’s time that you were, too. Did you really think Luther Mills would let you live to testify against him when he has never let anyone else?”

That was why he’d killed Javier—because her brother had been going to testify that Luther Mills was a major drug dealer.

Clint shook his head. “I’m surprised it took him this long to go after you.”

She knew Luther had always had a thing for her, since they were kids in elementary school. Maybe that was why no one had ever hassled her growing up. But that had all changed now that he’d ordered the hit on her.

She glanced around the edge of the curtain. Neither of those teenagers looked hurt. They had no reason for being in the ER—except that they were probably looking for her.

“We need to get out of here,” Clint said.

And this time she didn’t argue with him. She knew she was in danger. And because of her, they had no backup.

* * *

Clint was glad he’d finally gotten through to Rosie. She took him the back way out of the ER, through the employees’ locker room. Once inside the stark white-tiled room, he riffled in some of the open lockers, taking only the things that would aid in their escape.

“You can’t do that!” she cried out in protest of his petty thefts as she glanced nervously at the door.

“I can guarantee that Luther sent more than a couple of teenagers out to look for you,” he said. “We need to disguise ourselves in case more of his crew is waiting outside the hospital for you.”

She opened her mouth, as if to argue some more. But he unbuttoned his jeans and dropped them.

And all she did was gasp.

It wasn’t like he’d stripped down entirely in front of her. He wore boxers beneath his jeans. He stepped into the scrub pants and pulled them up, tying them low on his waist. They were too loose for him to tuck his weapon into the back of them, like he usually did with his jeans.

But he hadn’t smuggled his Glock into the hospital that way. He’d carried it in a pocket of his leather bomber jacket. But in case any of the shooters from her apartment were here, he needed to change his look. He needed to ditch his torn jacket. He grabbed a white doctor’s coat from another open locker and dropped his gun into the deep pocket of that before pulling it over the scrub shirt he already wore. A nurse, not Rosie, had had to cut off his torn and bloodied T-shirt.

“You can’t—” she began again in protest.

“I have to,” he interrupted.

Then he found her a parka with a fur-trimmed hood. Before they opened the back door that led out to the parking lot, he pulled the hood over her head. While he kept one hand in the deep pocket of that white jacket, wrapped around his weapon, he slid his other arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side.

She tensed against him and whispered, “What the hell are you doing?”

“My job,” he said. But he might have been enjoying her closeness a little too much. She smelled good—like vanilla and some other spice.

“What?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear as she peered around them. “Do you see someone out here?”

The employee parking lot was dimly lit, so Clint couldn’t see much. “No,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not out here, watching us.”

She looked up into his face, and her dark eyes were narrowed.

“If they’re looking for you,” he said, and he sincerely believed that they had been, “they’re going to be checking out the employee parking lot.”

She tried to wriggle out from beneath his arm. “But until we see someone, we don’t need to act like...”

“Like lovers,” he finished for her.

And she shuddered, probably in revulsion.

He would have laughed at her overreaction if it hadn’t depressed him. No matter how much he tried, he would never be able to get her to stop hating him.

“Nobody working for Luther will think it’s us walking through the lot if we’re acting like lovers,” he explained to her. “Everybody knows how much you hate me.”

Most of all him.

Maybe she’d taken that as a challenge, because she suddenly slid her arm around his waist and snuggled against his side. He tensed now, but not with revulsion. He tensed because his body was reacting to the closeness of hers.

She lifted her face to his and fluttered her lashes. “You’re right,” she said. “Everybody knows how much I hate you. They would never believe I’d be doing this...” Then she reached out and ran her fingertips along his jaw as she leaned even closer to him.

Now she was challenging him. And Clint had never turned away from a challenge before. He leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers.

She gasped in reaction.

And he deepened the kiss, pressing his lips against her silky soft ones. He nipped and nibbled at the fullness before sliding his tongue inside her mouth. She tasted so damn sweet, like that vanilla he smelled on her, and she was so hot.

His body tensed even more as desire gripped him. He wanted her, but the only thing he should want was to protect her. With passion overwhelming him, he was too distracted—too unaware of what and who might be around them.

His brilliant plan to elude Luther’s crew had backfired. Instead of putting her in less danger, he’d put her and himself in more.

And not just in danger of being attacked.

He was in danger of wanting what he could never have: Rosie Mendez.

Parker cursed and barked into the phone. “How the hell did you lose him?”

“I didn’t know he was going to try to shake us,” the other man replied. “I thought he was probably taking a different route to the safe house.”

“But he’s not there,” Parker surmised.

“He hasn’t shown up yet.”

Where the hell could he have gone? He’d refused to go to the ER. And there was no way in hell he would have taken the witness back to her place, not after the two of them had nearly been killed at her apartment.

It must have been that close call and Clint saving her from getting shot that had had Ms. Mendez changing her mind about his being her bodyguard. And Parker had thought he’d gotten through to her as well. But maybe he hadn’t...

Maybe she had only agreed to have Clint as her bodyguard because she’d intended to ditch him and the security detail altogether the minute she had the chance.

Had she escaped Clint?

“Damn it,” Parker murmured.

He couldn’t have failed already in the assignment his stepfather had asked him to do. He couldn’t have lost the eyewitness who would have finally put Luther Mills behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.

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