It was only early evening in the California Sierras. The clean mountain air felt good in his lungs. For the first time in a long while, Colin felt virtually alone—like he didn’t have five sets of eyes watching his every move. But then he turned right on Fifteenth Street into the Keys and it happened. His antenna went up. A black SUV slowly drove by as if it were looking for a specific address.
Shit.
He glanced down at the GPS map. The place was a freaking maze of canals and waterways and houses. She was just ahead off Venice. In order not to look conspicuous, he kept a regular speed. As the address came into view, the hair on the back of Colin’s neck stood straight up. The houses on the street were quiet, no cars in the driveways, no occupants in the yards, the interior windows covered. The only exception was the car parked across from the house that backed up to the water—the house that Sophia Gilletti was supposed to be in. Colin slowed and turned into the driveway of a house four lots down and out of view of the car. He wished he’d had time to buy a gun, but his gut told him to get to Sophia ASAP. He slipped around the back of the houses, which were connected by a long floating dock. He hurried down the dock to the back of Sophia’s house.
It was hooked up to an alarm system. He opened the fuse box to shut off the electricity, but it looked like someone had beat him to it. Shit. Colin tried the back door. Unlocked. Fuck.
He entered the dark ground floor and listened. Silence. But the alluring scent of a woman caught his attention. She was here. He moved up the wooden stairway and was almost to the top when he heard a sound, not from behind him but in front of him.
Sophia slammed the lamp over the intruder’s head. Not waiting to see if she knocked him out, she ran for her life. Straight into a hard chest. Terrified this was it, that her husband’s goon had found her, she screamed. A big hand clamped across her face. He yanked her hard against him, pulling her down the stairway.
“I won’t hurt you,” a deep masculine voice whispered against her ear. She scratched his hand and bit it at the same time.
“Jesus Christ!” he hissed. “I said, I won’t hurt you.”
She twisted and kicked him in the balls. He grunted in pain, loosening his hold. She only caught sight of shocking blue eyes before she pushed past him and ran down the stairs to the back door. There was a Jet Ski at the end of the dock ... If she could just get there ...
As she ran out the door, a hard body tackled her from behind. They went rolling down the slope onto the deck and into the shallow water.
Sophia sputtered as she tried to get away from the blue-eyed monster. Bullets pinged in the water around them.
He grabbed her by her hair and pulled her under the dock. “Get the hell out of his line of fire,” he cursed, dragging her farther down the dock.
Footsteps thudded on the planks above them. Terrified, Sophia looked at the man who held her against his chest. She almost fainted from shock. It ... couldn’t be . . . His eyes warned her to keep quiet. Her teeth chattered so loudly she was sure the entire lake community could hear.
Ever so slowly, he moved them down the dock away from the footsteps thudding in the opposite direction. After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the end. “Stay put,” he commanded. Too terrified to move, Sophia nodded. He slipped from the water. Her instinct told her to stay, but she trusted no one. He might be there to save her for the moment, but like everyone else, he wanted something from her, something that would get her killed. Sophia moved back down the dock to the next house. The sun was beginning to set, so if she could just slip away . . .
“I told you to stay put, damn it.”
She turned around, her teeth still chattering and her body shivering so badly in the cold lake water she couldn’t even tell him to go to hell. He grabbed her arms and pulled her back to the end of the dock. Carefully, he helped her from the frigid water and into a small SUV.
Moments later, they were on Emerald Bay Boulevard, heading south.
Even in the freezing cold, and with the passing of sixteen years, Sophia recognized the man driving the SUV. Looking at him now, hearing the deep timbre of his voice, she knew without a doubt it was the same man she had fantasized about each time Angelo had touched her. Colin Daniels. Her body began to shake again, but not from the cold this time. She had been a naïve sophomore; he an experienced senior, the ultimate bad boy and the fantasy of every girl, and she was sure most of the nuns, at St. John’s Prep.
Sophia shivered hard as she remembered the intensity of his lovemaking. The way his fingers stroked her skin to fire. Her nipples hardened and she squirmed in her wet clothes.
He glanced at her with an indescribably complex look. Like he was supposed to know her, but couldn’t quite figure out why. Anger sparked. The Lothario had no idea who she was, but he had to know she was the wife of a crime boss. The whole world knew. And just like the whole world, he was there because he wanted something from her. Just another commodity. Beginning with her parents, every person in her life had sold her out. Why not this guy too?
Sophia’s eyes narrowed. He had shattered her world that night sixteen years ago, and he didn’t even recognize her! Had she been so inconsequential? Just another one of his many? But she’d known that going in. It had been her choice to seduce him. Not the other way around. She’d picked him and him only for one specific purpose: to take her virginity before her parents sold her into domestic slavery to the Gilletti family.
At least Colin had done his job—quite well—and asked for nothing in return. That he had never, not once, tried to call her after she seduced him, irked her more than it should. Judging from his distant demeanor, she’d bet her life, which wasn’t worth much at the moment, that if she reminded him of their all-too-brief but oh-so-hot interlude, he still wouldn’t recognize her. So she’d pretend like she didn’t recognize him.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “And what were you doing at my house?” Would he tell the truth?
“I’m part of a task force sent to bring you in to testify against your husband.”
Sophia’s heart plummeted to her lap. Angelo was a brutal man. She had run from him—the ultimate slap in the face to a man like him. Running had hurt more than his pride. If a man could not control his wife, then he could not control his business. He would not rest until she was dead. Or worse: his prisoner again. She swallowed hard. Testifying against him was the last thing she would do. “Pull over and let me out.”
“We can protect you.”
Panic shimmered through her digestive track. She was going to throw up. “Like the feds protected my cousin, Nicole Santi?”
“I don’t know about your cousin’s case, but I do know we can protect you.”
Sophia wrapped her arms around her shaking body. “Please, let me go.”
Colin reached over and touched her shoulder.
She flinched away.
“I told you, I won’t hurt you,” he said softly. Then reminded her, “If I hadn’t shown up, you’d be dead right now.”
Sophia looked straight ahead, her focus on her bleak future. She was so tired of being afraid, of wondering what new game Angelo was up to. Of running. “I’m going to be dead regardless, so why prolong it?” It was true. She held out no hope. If Angelo had found her in Tahoe, there was nowhere in the world she was safe.
Colin slowed the vehicle and turned right onto a side street, drove for a few hundred yards, then pulled down a long empty driveway before he stopped. “Hey,” he said, turning toward her. She refused to look at him. But she couldn’t help it. Those cobalt blue eyes of his were riveted on her. Sophia swallowed hard. She remembered the fire in them when he told her how he was going to send her to the moon. He had been one cocky senior. The same fire burned in his eyes now. But not for her. For justice.
“You cops are all the same. You don’t care what price we have to pay so long as you get what you want.”
He shook his head. “I care what happens to you, Sophia.” Her name slid off his lips like fresh honey
dripping down a beehive. Her body shivered. He smiled that smile that had done her in all those years ago. It almost worked again.
“Is kidnapping part of your repertoire?”
His smile widened as he upped his charm, her damn body warmed despite her cold wet clothing. “Consider yourself in my protective custody.”
“Let me see your ID.”
He leaned toward her and dug his soggy wallet out of his back pocket and handed it to her.
She took it and opened it. A New York City driver’s license with his physical stats and the name Jacob Black. Her body shivered, this time in fear. He was not who he said he was.
She handed it back to him. “I’m cold, wet, and hungry.” And the next time they stopped, she would be gone.
He slid the wallet back into his hip pocket and backed out of the driveway. “So am I but you don’t hear me complaining.”
Sophia crossed her arms and sat back in the seat. She smirked when he turned the heat on and directed the vents on her.
“So solicitous.”
“I aim to please.”
They drove for almost an hour in complete silence. Sophia kept coming back to the same conclusion: If he was really a cop, he would have told her his real name. Which meant he wasn’t a cop. So, who did he work for and what did he really want with her? He pulled off into Placerville and stopped at a rental car company. “We need to switch out cars. We’ve been seen in this one.”
“Why not kidnap one?”
“I would but that’s against the law.” He winked at her and Sophia felt her belly warm. Damn it.
He came around to her side of the car and opened the door. When he extended his hand, she glared at him, then looked back to his big hand. Long thick fingers with neatly trimmed nails beckoned her. She closed her eyes, remembering how they expertly stroked her. Sixteen years may have dragged by, but she remembered their one night together as if it were yesterday.
“Come on, Sophia, we don’t have all night.”
She shoved past him and followed him into the rental office. A few moments later after Jacob gave the proprietor some hush money, they drove off in a white Honda.
“Did you know that man in Tahoe?” he asked her once they were back on the road.
She had never seen him before, but that didn’t mean he didn’t work for her husband. She shrugged.
“Do you know where your husband is?”
She didn’t, but he was going to get nothing out of her.
“Are we going to play games?”
Games? She wanted to call him out, show her hand, but she held back. Instead, she took a long, hard look at him. He looked good. More serious than he had in high school. But then, so did she. He was skyscraper tall, big boned, lean muscled, and crammed behind the steering wheel. He walked with the grace of a big cat and the arrogance of a stud. Colin Daniels was the orphaned Irish heartthrob from the wrong side of the tracks that the nuns let get away with murder, the priests slapped on the back, and the highbrow parents wagged their fingers at. He was all-state in football, baseball, and hockey. Then, he was all boy and all bad. Now he was a bad, bad man. And God help her, but even now, with her life on the line, Sophia’s body was salivating. She’d die a content woman if Colin Daniels took her to the moon one more time.
She sighed like a schoolgirl.
He scowled at her, trying to read her. Tiny stress lines etched the corners of his deep blue eyes, framed by black lashes that were just shy of being too long. His nose was straight, his lips full and—she shivered—soft and could wreck shop like nobody’s business. His black hair was stylishly cut but longer than she would have guessed for the cop he professed to be. His threads were fitted and looked good, soggy as they were. He snapped his fingers under her nose, jarring her out of fantasyland. Oh, hell. What had they been talking about?
“Games?” She scoffed, collecting herself. “Let’s start with you telling me who you really are.”
“I showed you my ID. Do you want my blood type too?”
“It could be fake.”
He shot her a wounded look that speared straight to her womb. “It could be. If it is, it’s fake for a reason.”
“Oh.”
He grinned at her and shrugged.
There was a part of Sophia that wanted to please this man on every level. That terrified her. She had tried hard in the beginning with Angelo—to please him. But nothing she wore, said, or did in or out of bed made him happy. Over time, he had turned sadistic. When she had stopped crying and begging him to stop, had turned hard and cold, had stared at him with emotionless eyes as he hurt her, he finally left her alone. But he had not broken her. She knew how it could be between a man and a woman, and for showing her that, Sophia would be eternally grateful to Colin Daniels.
“I didn’t know that man in the Tahoe house, and I don’t know where Angelo is.”
“When we get back to New York, we’ll draw him out.”
“Not with me as your bait. I’m never going back to New York.”
“Yeah, you are. Only you can put that piece of shit you married behind bars for the rest of his life.”
“By risking mine?”
He shot her a glance then turned back to the road. “I told you, we can protect you.”
“I don’t want your protection. I want you to pull over in the next town and let me go.”
“Do you have ID? Cash? A way to survive?”
“I’m a resourceful girl when I have to be, Mr. Black. It’s what has kept me alive all these years.”
He cracked a smile despite the seriousness of the conversation. His gaze raked her face, then dropped lower to her chest. She caught the excited gleam in his eyes in the dashboard lights. “I bet you are resourceful.”
She stiffened at his implication. “Do you know what my husband did to me when he heard me laugh at a joke our chef made?” She didn’t give him the opportunity to answer. “He cut me, then slit Roberto’s throat and made me clean up the mess. So, please, do not think for one moment, I have used my body to make my life easier.”
“That’s not what I—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think of me, Mr. Black. I’m not going to New York under any circumstances, and I’m sure as hell not going to give you or any other person information on my husband.” She leaned closer and poked his hard biceps. “If you know anything about my husband at all, you know that just the fact I am alone in this car with you has put a price on your head. Anyone who aids me is dead. Anyone I speak to is dead. Now, please, let me off at the next town.”
His lips tightened. When he looked at her this time, his eyes snapped. “I’m not letting you out in the next town or the one after that. Your testimony is vital. So is your life.” He looked back at the road. “I have a very special skill set that when applied takes no prisoners. I will protect you, with my own life if necessary.”
Sophia swallowed hard. He sounded so sure. She was glad he was on her side. But that didn’t change anything. “I’m not driving to New York with you.”
He let out a frustrated breath. “My original plan was to fly back tonight, but with no ID, you’ll never make it through airport security, so we’re going to drive.” Glancing at her he said, “I’ll make a deal with you, if I can’t convince you to turn state’s evidence by the time we get to Pennsylvania, then I’ll give you the rest of my cash and you’re free to go.”
Sophia contemplated his offer. That was at least a four- to fiveday drive if they turned east right now. At least ninety-six hours to slip away. She didn’t hesitate. “Deal.”
He reached over and extended his hand. Sophia took it this time. When his fingers wrapped around her, they both felt the jolt of electricity that zapped between them.
He released her hand, cursing under his breath.
Sophia was too much of a lady to put into words how she felt.
Just as the sun began to rise, they pulled off Highway 5 into a small rural town, and drove east for several miles, until he finally pul
led into an obscure hotel parking lot off the main drag.
“Oh, great, a roach motel.”
“It’s better than floating in Lake Tahoe.”
Touché.
Colin dragged her in behind him when he registered for a room, requesting one in the far back, away from the casual observer. He wasn’t taking any chances that the rental manager in Placerville would keep his mouth shut if Gilletti’s men spotted his SUV and came knocking on his door. He’d told the guy to put it in the small fleet garage. For everyone’s sake, Colin prayed he had. Because if he hadn’t, Colin knew once they got the info out of rental guy, they’d whack him.
The woman at the counter gave Colin a slow, thorough once-over, completely ignoring the fact that Sophia was standing right beside him. As she slid the key card across the counter, she smiled and said, “If you need anything at all, Mr. Black, come see me. I’m here ’til noon.”
Colin winked at her. Sophia gaped at the woman’s audacity.
Once they were in the cramped one bedroom, he turned the dead bolts and then chained the lock. He turned to her and nodded toward the bathroom. “We have three hours tops before we have to move. Now strip and give me your clothes. I’m going to make that cougar at the front desk an offer she can’t refuse.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Sophia said, then looked at the pitiful queen-sized bed that looked like a half-pipe, the center was so caved in, then looked back to Colin. “I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to put you up at her place for the night.”
“Probably safer there, all things considered. But you’re stuck with me right there in that bed for the duration.”