At Her Service: His Baby! / Major Attraction

“You’ve got three weeks left, Jeff,” Travis said in that slow-moving speech of his, “make ‘em count, boy.”

“Ooh-rah,” Deke muttered. J.T. lifted his beer in silent salute, and Jeff reached for the phone.

The telephone rang, interrupting her thoughts, and Kelly reached for it like a drowning woman grabbing at a life preserver.

“Hello?” “Hi.”

Even if she hadn’t recognized his voice, the reaction of her body to that deep, rumbling sound would have told her that it was Jeff. Good heavens. He could do this to her even over the phone lines?

“Kelly,” he was saying, and she drew her hormones back from the brink far enough to concentrate. “You think you could get one of your brothers to baby-sit tonight?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Why? What’d you have in mind?”

“I was thinking about taking you out on a date.”

A warm flush swept over her, and her fingers curled tightly around the receiver. “A date?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, and his voice came soft and intimate in her ear. “A date.”

“Uh …” she said, stalling for some unknown reason because she knew as well as he did that she would say yes. “Okay. What time?” “I’ll pick you up at seven.” “I’ll be ready.”

Jeff hung up the phone, then picked up his beer. Lifting it high, he waited for his friends to do likewise before saying, “Target acquired.”

Nine

She should have known he’d play dirty.

Kelly steeled herself against being swayed by his tactics, but it wasn’t easy to stand firm against a man like Jeff—especially when he was determined to be romantic. Especially a man you were already halfway in love with.

And he’d pulled out all the stops for their “date.”

Moonlight poured down from a star-filled sky and danced across the surface of the ocean. A soft wind ruffled the sand and lifted her hair from the collar of her turquoise cowl-necked sweater. As Jeff refilled her champagne glass, she glanced around the tiny cove and told herself he’d chosen his spot well.

This was their beach. The spot where he’d saved her life eighteen months ago. The place where this had all started.

In a couple of months, the beach would be crowded, even at night, with scores of teenagers. But now, this early in the season, it was deserted. The rock walls of the cove surrounded them on three sides, and high above, perched on a cliff, was a five-star restaurant. The soft strains of piano music drifted down to them and seemed to melt into the sigh of the outgoing tide.

“More champagne?” Jeff asked, ending her thoughts and bringing her back to the moment at hand.

“Sure,” she said, though an inner voice was warning her to stay alert. He already had everything going for him here. The romantic setting was perfect. A tablecloth spread out on the sand, candles set in hurricane globes, their flames bobbing and shifting in the breeze, iced champagne and a caterer’s tray of snacks. Moonlight glinted in his blue eyes and a shaft of pure, unadulterated lust shot through her, and Kelly knew she was in big trouble.

She had to keep her wits about her. He was using the big guns on her tonight, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself pillaged and captured. And right now, that didn’t even sound like a bad idea.

Oh, boy.

She lifted her glass and took a sip, letting the icy bubbles slide down her throat. When she was sure her voice would work without quavering, she spoke up. “You really went to a lot of trouble tonight, Jeff.”

“No trouble,” he insisted, pouring himself more of the expensive wine.

She laughed and shook her head. “You set all this up, and even posted a guard on it while you came to get me.” She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man Jeff had waved off as they’d arrived, but he’d had the bearing of a Marine.

“That was Travis,” he said, taking a drink of champagne. “Travis Hawks. He’s a member of my team.”

Safe territory, she thought and snatched at the subject. “Tell me about them,” she said. “Your team.”

He looked at her for a long minute, and Kelly knew that he knew what she was up to. But it didn’t seem to matter. He shrugged and started talking. “There are three of them. Travis, Deke and J.T. We’ve been together for a long time. Long enough that we can each tell what the others are thinking.”

“You’re good friends,” she said, judging more from the warmth in his tone than his words.

“The best,” he agreed, giving her a soft smile. “But it’s more than that. We’re family.”

Family. He said the single word as if it was sacred, and she knew how much that meant to him. The last time they were together, he hadn’t talked much about his childhood, but he’d said enough for her to know it hadn’t been an easy one. She knew he’d grown up mostly in an orphanage before being placed in a foster home when he was in his late teens. But by then, it was too late for him to forge any kind of a bond with a family situation.

He was too much his own man. Even then. Kelly had no trouble at all imagining what he’d been like at sixteeen. Tall, good-looking, with shadows in his eyes and a way of holding himself apart from everyone around him.

Which pretty much described him as he was now. Except with her. And Emily.

And the realization of that hit her hard. Family was all-important to Kelly, and she’d grown up in the loving arms of four overbearing brothers.

Though their parents were gone now, killed in a traffic accident five years ago, the five of them remained close. If family meant so much to her, what would it mean to a man who’d never really known it before?

“We’ve been in some hairy situations,” he was saying, and Kelly forced herself to pay attention. To keep her mind from wandering down dangerous paths. “But each of us knows the others are there to watch his back.”

“Tell me,” she said, wanting him to keep talking, loving the sound of his voice and knowing that as long as he was talking about work, the conversation wouldn’t go places she wasn’t ready for. “Tell me about a typical mission.”

He choked out a laugh. “There’s no such thing as a typical mission. Every one is different.” His gaze shuttered. “And I can’t really talk about what I do, anyway.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked. “Both, I guess,” he said, trying to be as honest as possible. “I wouldn’t want to, even if I could. But most of what we do is secret. You know the old joke, ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”’

“Charming,” she said, and took another sip of wine.

“It’s not an easy job,” he continued, locking his gaze with hers. “But it’s an important one. And I’m good at it.”

“I believe you are,” she murmured, watching him. Even at rest, his body was tight, as if some inner core of him were coiled, ready to spring loose into action. She had no trouble at all imagining him stealing covertly into danger and Kelly knew one thing for sure. If she were ever in trouble, hoping for rescue, she’d want a man like Jeff Hunter to be sent in after her.

“But I don’t want to talk about the job tonight,” he said. “You talk for a while.”

“About what?” She didn’t have anything exciting to say. No great adventures to share. She lived an ordinary life.

“About you. Emily. Your brothers.” She laughed at the tightness in his voice there at the end. “Believe it or not, they’re pretty great, for brothers,” she added as a caveat. “We were always a close family, but since our folks died a few years ago, we’ve gotten even tighter. Except for those occasions when I have to fight tooth and nail to remind them that I’m all grown up and can take care of myself.” He gave her a slow smile. “It’s nice, though,” she said thoughtfully, “having them there to count on. Our mom always told us, ‘Family comes first,’ and she was right. Come hell or high water, even when they irritate me beyond belief—” she paused and shook her head gently “—they’re there when I need them. Just as I am for them. And that’s a gift.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice even tighter now. “It is.”

There was something else here. Something beyond wanting to listen to her talk about her family. She just wasn’t sure what exactly it was. So, trying to lighten the moment, she said, “Boy, you must be desperate for me to talk if you’re even willing to talk about them.”

He gave her a half smile and lifted one shoulder in a quick shrug. “We didn’t exactly get off to a great start, your brothers and me. But I understand where they’re coming from.” “You do, huh?”

“You bet,” he said, sitting up again and resting one forearm on his upraised knee. “If some clown comes dancing around Emily and leaves her alone and pregnant—” he shook his head at the thought, and the grim set of his mouth told Kelly how he’d finish that statement before he spoke and confirmed it “—I’ll hunt him down like a dog.”