“Another of his games.” Kell’s jaw tightened in anger.
“Our main objective is keeping the senator and his daughter alive,” Reno said then. “Secondary objectives are catching Diego and/or his spy. I want that fucking spy. Bad. The son of a bitch has been betraying agents right and left in the past year. We lost two Homeland Security agents in California at the first of the year. One in D.C. and three more across the nation. Added to that are four agents outside the U.S.”
“He’s obviously someone in a position of trust within the government,” Clint stated. “Someone with access to our Defense Department and missions around the globe. He could be an elected official, or a private contractor.”
“He could be anyone,” Kell snarled.
“But he’ll be someone at this party tonight.” Macey grinned. “This line, ‘watch your six while hobnobbing because others are watching it as well.’ We’re partying tonight, my friends. Right?”
Kell stared at the electronic wizard with narrowed eyes. Macey should have been a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. He was tall, wide, and mean. Instead, his long, broad fingers moved over the keyboard of the laptop with the grace and ease of much smaller fingers.
“Here’s our guest list.” He pulled up the file the senator had supplied days before. “I have these names running through several programs at the moment. It will take time, but there’s a chance we could get a hit and a direction to go in.”
“Before the party?” Kell asked.
Macey grimaced. “Not hardly.”
Kell turned to Reno. “Give me Ian to back me up with Emily.”
Reno nodded slowly, though his gaze was piercing.
“Kell, is this getting too personal? Don’t risk her life because you have too much on the line here.”
Kell stared back at Reno coldly, feeling the hard edge of determination rising inside him.
“She’s mine,” he stated clearly. “Would anyone else protect Raven for you? Or Morganna for Clint?”
Raven, his wife, was also Clint’s sister. A black-haired little minx who drove her husband crazy more often than not. But she still wasn’t the handful of dynamite that Reno’s sister and Clint’s fiancée, Morganna, had turned out to be.
Both men grimaced at the question.
“Ian, keep an eye on his ass.” Reno sighed.
“I have it, Commander.” Ian leaned back against the wall, watching them all intently, his brown eyes somber, his brow lowered broodingly.
“The senator is arriving at the Dunmores’ later than his daughter,” Reno announced then. “He has a meeting on Capitol Hill before he can leave. That means you’ll be shy of backup other than the two Secret Service agents who will be assigned outside the mansion grounds. I’ll contact you as we head toward the Dunmore mansion. You’re still undercover. We’ve not changed the mission parameters on this. Not that I think you’ll have a problem with that.”
Kell let a grin tug at his lips as the others snickered. As his gaze met Ian’s, though, he noticed the somber acknowledgment in the other man’s gaze. There were few men who knew the full details of his past. Ian was one of those men.
The other man nodded slowly. A promise. A vow to help Kell protect what meant the most to him.
“The limo is taking Emily, Kell, and Ian to the party. We’ll be in the senator’s secured SUV when we arrive. Let’s keep this short and tight, men, and see if we can ID our spy and make this mission short, sweet, and without complications.” Reno’s gaze swept the room. “Any questions?”
They shook their heads in reply.
“Good. We’ll be heading out with the senator within the hour. I believe he currently has his daughter corralled in the office discussing her recent strip-joint venture and the chances of it happening again. Are we taking bets on who wins this one?”
Clint, Reno, Macey, and Ian put their money on the senator. A former SEAL. A man who had kept his daughter in line, one way or the other, for twenty-five years.
When all eyes turned to Kell he pulled his wallet from his jeans pocket, extracted the required twenty and handed it over to Macey. “My money’s on the lady,” he drawled. “You don’t tame a vixen, you just travel in her wake.”
EMILY STARED AROUND HER FATHER’S office. The pictures of her mother that sat in a place of honor on the mantel. The painting he had commissioned, just after Emily’s birth, of her and her mother hung across from his desk.
She looked like her mother, Emily thought. The same vibrant auburn hair, blue eyes, and inquisitive features. She had never paid much attention to it over the years. Her own looks rarely concerned her much. But as she stared at the portrait and waited for her father, she saw it now.
Her mother had been more delicate. Fine boned, slender, and graceful. Her hair was longer, hanging nearly to her waist, where Emily kept hers cut to her shoulders.
Her mother had loved parties. Emily preferred adventure. She wanted to go mountain climbing, skydiving, and playing war games in the mountains.
Her mother had lived for fashion. And Emily preferred jeans to silk, but she understood the need for the silk.
She hadn’t known her mother long enough, she thought. She hadn’t had a chance to hear her laughter often enough; she could barely remember the songs her father said her mother sang to her each night before bedtime.
“She loved you with all her heart,” her father said behind her as he came into the office. “She used to say you had the best parts of both of us. I’ve always agreed with her.”
“Weakness?” she asked as she turned to face him. “I hadn’t heard either of you were very weak, Dad.”
“Is that how you see it? The need to be careful? My need to protect you? That you’re weak to allow me to protect you?”
“To foist your candidates for a son-in-law on me? To tie me up with so many strings of guilt and love that half the time I didn’t know what living was?” she countered.
He grimaced at her questions.
“I made you a list of the cost of groceries, utilities, and boarding for your little boys during the past seven years.” She nodded to the paper he held in his hand. “I realize it’s pretty extensive and may require a few weeks to sort through, but the final amount is really rather low for the trouble I was forced to put up with. I’d appreciate being reimbursed.”
“Take it out of the interest that’s acquired on the account your mother and I set up for you,” he suggested.
“Sorry, Dad, that money’s being saved for a reason. It’s the nest egg I’m saving for any children I might one day have myself. Just cut me a check when you have time and send it to me.”
His eyes glittered with irritation then. “Why now? You’ve never said anything before.”
“Because you always deposited far more than I required. I don’t want more than you owe me, Dad. That’s what you’ve never understood. I want your respect. Your trust. Not your charity.”
“So you thought you’d earn my trust by traipsing through strip joints, bars, and dark alleys after that nonsensical research you harp about? I have yet to see a book, Emily Paige. All I do is hear about it.”
She breathed in carefully. She wasn’t going to argue with him. “Dad, cut the crap, and while you’re at it, just go ahead and cut my check so I can deposit it when I return home.”
A frown furrowed his wide forehead. “What crap?”
“The crap where you deliberately start a fight, I get upset and storm out of the office. You know, the crap where you ensure you win whatever fight we’re engaged in.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and stared back at him in determination. “It’s not happening this time.”
“Because you’re sleeping with Krieger? Tell me, are you at least going to marry him?” he snarled.
Her brow lifted. “Marriage hasn’t been discussed. Why are you so upset? Isn’t that the reason you keep sending your top picks to play bodyguard? Hoping one of them will end up in my bed?”
“With a wedding ring would have been nice,” he growle
d. “I should have known when he demanded to be added to your rescue team what the hell was going on. At least tell me he’s wearing a condom? The last thing I need is to see you knocked up and dead like the last girl he fell in love with.”
Knocked up and dead!
Emily stared back at her father for long, frozen moments, feeling something chill in her soul.
“What are you talking about?”
“He didn’t tell you about his first wife and child?” he asked her then, something undefined flashing in his eyes, something almost akin to regret.
“I never knew—” she whispered past numb lips.
“Then ask him about it,” he snapped. “And make sure you know what you’re doing—”
“Don’t you dare lecture me about him.” Emily felt her hand raise, her finger pointing back at her father imperiously, as rage began to seethe inside her. “You’ve been sending men to my bed for years. I finally decided to accept one of them, and you have to try to destroy it?”
“Potential husbands, girl,” he snapped back. “They knew better than to step within so much as a foot of your bed without an engagement ring. I didn’t send Krieger to you as a potential husband, he was protection. He came with the team.”
“And he’s the one I chose, instead of you handpicking him?” She sneered. “For God’s sake, where the hell do you get your nerve?”
“The same place he got his.” His chin lifted proudly. “The Navy.”
Emily snorted rudely at that. “For some reason, I don’t think so. Cut my damned check now. You’ve dropped your little bomb and you can head to your precious Capitol Hill and make whatever trouble you decide to make today. But your interference with my life is finished. Do you understand me?”
“Like hell.” His voice lowered. “Tell me, Emily, do you think he’s going to give you free rein? That he’s going to let you have all this freedom you crave? He lost his wife and child when he was working as a snitch with the police in New Orleans. He wasn’t even eighteen. Do you think he doesn’t remember every moment of it? Every fucking detail of their deaths? You think I try to wrap you up in cotton and protect you? Just wait until he gets his ring on your finger and a baby by you. He’ll never give you a moment’s peace.”
In the past, the dangerous lowering of his voice had always indicated that the last measure of his patience had been exhausted. Emily had always walked lightly in response to it, not really understanding what that dangerous undertone meant, but not wanting to find out either.
Now, she really didn’t give a damn.
“Do you understand me?” she screamed back then, feeling the tears edge into her eyes, the pain blooming in her chest as she ignored the revelations about her lover’s past. “Write the fucking check. And so help me God, you send another man to my home and I’ll have him arrested.”
He was the one staring back in shock then.
“Emily—” He stepped toward her, his gaze becoming wary. “This is getting out of hand.” He rubbed his hand over his face, his expression twisting with indecision then.
“I’ve never asked you for anything,” she said then, forcing the words past her lips, feeling the pain claw at her stomach.
Kell had been married before? He had lost a wife and a child and she hadn’t even known. She hadn’t wanted to know. She had deliberately kept her distance from him, holding him back even as she tempted the passion that was so much a part of him.
“You’ve never asked me for anything,” he agreed. “And maybe that’s been the problem. You don’t seem to need me at all.”
“Oh, I needed you,” she bit out. “When I tried to tell you I didn’t want to stop mountain climbing. That I wanted to train in the mountains again. When I tried to tell you I wanted to join the Navy. I needed you, Dad. You just refused to hear any of it.”
“It was too dangerous.” He shook his head with a sharp jerk. “You weren’t a child anymore. You wouldn’t see there were limits. You were always pushing for more, going higher.”
“Trying to live. Trying to be something other than daddy’s little girl?” she asked mockingly. “Forgive me, Father, maybe I should have just bowed to your wishes, married the first jerk you brought home and had all those grandbabies you wanted. Maybe I should have found a way to screw my life up worse than I did when I tried to compromise with you instead.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair, a grimace contorting his features as he tried to figure out how to deal with her.
“Don’t bother looking for an edge on this one, Senator Stanton,” she told him roughly. “I’ll tell you what. You keep your damned money. When this deal with Fuentes is over, we’ll call it even. And I’ll make damned certain I live my life then, and you can live yours.”
“You don’t mean that.” He caught her arm as she turned away from him to stalk to the door. “Emily. You wouldn’t just walk away from me like that.”
She stared at the portrait of her and her mother. Across from his desk, where he could see it. Where he could remember.
“Unlike you, Father, I don’t need to control everything and everyone in my life,” she said as she turned slowly back to him. “And I don’t want to ever face living solely in the past. I’m not your little girl anymore. I’m your adult child. Your daughter. If you could accept that, maybe you could get a life yourself.”
She pulled her arm from his grip, turned her back on the pain that flared in his eyes, and stalked to the doors. As she pulled one open she stared back at him.
“Don’t interfere with my life again. You won’t like the consequences.”
She stalked out, coming face-to-face with five hardened SEALs, whose expressions—except for one—were blank, watchful. The exception was a dark emerald green, rife with shadows and dark pain, as he watched her closely.
“I have things to do before the party tonight,” she said sharply. “I’ll meet you down here at precisely five o’clock. See if you can’t at least give me the time I need to get ready before we have to have our little blow-up, hmm? Because, honest to God, if I have to deal with another stubborn, intractable SEAL for one more minute, I might shoot one of you with your own gun.”
With that, she brushed past the five men, refusing to look back, refusing to let the tears that filled her eyes fall.
It was her own fault if she had gone to bed with a man she didn’t know. Her own fault if she had allowed her father to have the ammunition he needed to strike back at her.
Her father hated losing a fight with her. He always had. It was one of the reasons she rarely let a confrontation evolve between them, because she was always the one who came away from it hurt.
Sixteen
AT PRECISELY FIVE O’CLOCK, KELL was waiting in the foyer, wearing his dress blues, and watching the stairs with a sense of unreality as Emily descended them.
She was a living flame. Incandescent, radiant. The long emerald gown should have been modest. On her, it was a statement of sensuality. Fragile silk cupped her full breasts before slender straps moved over her shoulders.
The high waist only hinted at her shapely body, but made it seem all the more desirable. Silk smoothed over her stomach and hips, then dropped in a fall of shimmering color to her feet, which were shod in matching heels that added at least three inches to her height.
A shimmering wrap trailed over one shoulder, flowing to the floor behind her as she moved down the stairs as regally as a queen.
Her auburn hair was upswept. Emeralds twinkled in the banked flames and artfully arranged curls, and her makeup gave her face an even more an exotic cast.
He could feel his cock thickening beneath his slacks. His heart raced in his chest.
She was the most beautiful creature alive.
Her blue eyes were shielded by her lashes, refusing to let him glimpse the emotions he knew must be raging inside her.
He had heard the argument from outside the office doors. He had heard the information her father had given her about his past. Information that even
his commander hadn’t been fully aware of.
She knew so little, yet it was enough to send a prickle of dread down his spine. She knew just enough to demand more later.
Hell, how had this happened so quickly? It seemed from one moment to the next his life had changed. He had gone from existing to living.
The senator had been wrong on one count though. Emily would have her freedom. Kell couldn’t afford to try to hide her; to restrain her, in that direction lay madness. To begin with, she would never accept such a life with the man she loved. She would never love a man who tried to enforce it. For another, Kell would never be able to function knowing that his wife, possibly his children, would have no means of protection.
“Wilma Dunmore has done an excellent job putting this party together,” she commented as she stepped into the marble foyer. “I’ll need to spend a few minutes going over the details with her when we arrive, meeting with the caterers and so forth.” She checked her purse as she spoke. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t make the same mistake my father’s past bodyguards made and glower at everyone. It makes them uncomfortable.”
“Yes, ma’am. No glowering.” He nodded, restraining his smile.
She was ready for battle. He could see it in her, but even if he had been blind as a bat he would have felt it. It poured off her in waves.
The vixen was finding her claws and God help any man who tempted her to unsheathe them anytime soon.
“Why are you carrying that pack?” Her gaze went to the strap that dangled from his hand.
“Preparation’s everything, sugar.” He shrugged.
“Preparation. That reminds me.” She opened her slender evening purse again and pulled free a folded piece of paper. “I was talking to Wilma last night about the security she has in place for the party. I marked a few weak areas here.”
He accepted the paper slowly.
“What sort of weak areas?”
“I intend to discuss them with Wilma before the guests begin arriving,” she stated. “But I didn’t pinpoint the areas until I was looking at this earlier. There are several entrances and exits onto the grounds through a series of what were once deep gullies. James Dunmore’s father, Winchester, had cement tiles installed in them and had them covered over when I was a child. I used to play in them with the Dunmores’ children when I visited there.”