Raw Power by Jackie Ashenden (2)

CHAPTER 2

Callie Hawthorne flung out a hand and accidentally-on-purpose overturned the glass containing the rest of her margarita all over the floor.

It was after midnight in The Globe, Boston’s newest and most exclusive nightclub, and everyone was either drunk or high, which made the accidental spilling of a drink hilarious.

Callie, who was neither drunk nor high but pretending to be both, shrieked and laughed with the rest of the large group she’d attached herself to after entering the nightclub a couple of hours earlier, then got unsteadily up from the couch, muttering something about going for a refill, and tottered toward the bar down the other end of the balcony area where she’d been sitting.

Halfway down, she stopped, glanced back at the couch where her “friends” were, then moved over to the railing that ran the length of the balcony and leaned back against it.

The group wasn’t looking at her, thank God, which meant she could have a couple of minutes to catch her breath. She did a quick survey of the rest of the balcony area to see if anyone else was looking at her—you never knew where journalists could be lurking—but she couldn’t see anyone, so she turned around and put her hands on the rail, gazing out over the heaving dance floor below her.

The club was in an old theater, the band she sneaked away to see playing on the stage, while in front of them the crowds danced. Tables and velvet couches were situated around the edges, all darkly lit and populated by shadows, while brilliant shafts of colored light strobed over the crowds, glistening over sweat-slicked skin and glancing off sequins.

The music was hard and driving, and she could feel the beat of it travel up through the soles of her feet, pulsing low in her belly, then in her chest, wrapping its rhythm around her heart. Making her forget everything but the intense rush that listening to good music always gave her.

God, she loved this. Listening to a fantastic band and feeling the energy of the crowd flow through her. It had been too long since she’d managed to escape like this. Way, way too long.

She missed live music. It reminded her of college and that brief year where her horizons had opened up and she’d realized what she’d been missing out on. Before her father had figured out exactly what it had meant to give his daughter freedom. And cut it short.

But no, she wasn’t going to think about her father, not here. Not now. The late-night charity event she’d snuck away from would cover her until at least one a.m., so she could relax a little and enjoy herself without worrying her father would discover where she’d actually gone.

Below her the crowd danced and she found her gaze snagging on a man moving through it. He was half a head taller than just about everyone on the dance floor, making him instantly noticeable, though it was the way he moved that caught her attention. He didn’t thread through the knots of people; no, the crowds simply parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses.

She’d never seen people do that for anyone who wasn’t a celebrity or important in some way. How weird. Who was he?

Tall, yes, and leanly muscular, she could tell by the fit of his dark blue jeans and black T-shirt. He had a black leather jacket pulled over it and he moved as if there weren’t hundreds of people in front of him. He moved as if he were surrounded by nothing but space.

And how he moved . . .

Stalking like a panther, fluid and graceful and somehow in time with the beat of the music, yet . . . not quite. There was a hitch to his walk, very slight if you weren’t looking for it, but now that she’d noticed it, she couldn’t look away.

He wasn’t like any of the manicured party boys in the group of people she’d been sitting with so she didn’t have to look like she was here by herself. Or the guys she’d met in college, or the preppy sons of the über-wealthy whom her father had introduced her to. And she was guessing he didn’t have anything to do with the trendy clubbing crowd that currently flooded The Globe, given that the clothes he wore were definitely not label.

She leaned her elbows on the rail, watching him. And she wasn’t the only one, judging by the heads turning in his direction.

She couldn’t quite make out his features in the dim light, but he seemed to have very short dark hair, almost a buzz cut, which made him very much not one of the in-crowd here.

The man stopped in the middle of the dance floor, taking absolutely no notice of the people dancing around him, and lifted his gaze to the balcony where she stood. And looked unerringly at her.

It felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. Hard.

His face . . . Strongly carved features, sharp and predatory, like a hawk’s. Straight black slashes of brows, deeply set eyes, and . . . scars. As if a tiger’s paw had clawed at half of his face, twisting the corner of his mouth and pulling one eye slightly upward, his brow drawn up along with it. There was white scar tissue snaking along his jaw and across his cheeks, marring the smooth olive skin.

Horrifying and yet completely mesmerizing both at once.

A dangerous face. And the look in his deep-set eyes was dangerous too, like she was a target he was locking on to.

The lights flashed, illuminating his scarred features, and she blinked, trying to find some air where there was none to be had.

Green. His eyes were green. Like fir trees and forests and jungles.

Her heartbeat echoed, suddenly loud in her head, a deep, hard rhythm like the music vibrating through the club, and something unfamiliar coiled inside her.

It felt like fear and yet wasn’t, or maybe it was somehow related to it, she couldn’t tell. Whatever, his intense gaze disturbed her on some deep level and she had to turn around and lean back against the rail just to fill her lungs.

Her breathing had quickened and she could feel her pulse going like a rocket. Jesus. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d never had a reaction like that to a man before. She’d never had a reaction like that to anyone, period.

Men hadn’t figured much in her severely curtailed life—at least men her father hadn’t thoroughly approved of, and she had a feeling he would definitely not approve of that one.

Something pulled at her, the little devil inside her that she could never quite quell, the one her father was always trying to crush. Whispering in her ear that she should go down onto the dance floor, find that tall, scarred figure, and draw him into the mass of writhing bodies. Dance with him. That this was one of the very few chances she had to break out of her usual life, do something she’d never had an opportunity to do.

No. She couldn’t. It would draw too much attention and she wasn’t here to attract attention. She was here to enjoy the music, that’s all.

She took a deep breath, her pulse slowing, and relaxed against the rail at her back. Okay, another minute and then she’d go to the bar, get another margarita that she wouldn’t drink, then maybe she’d go back to that group of people and pretend they were her friends. Pretend she was a normal twenty-two-year-old with a normal life.

Pretend that she wasn’t the only child of a future presidential candidate. A daughter with the weight of an entire dynasty on her shoulders. Who had to be worthy and do whatever her father said. And if she didn’t . . .

No. No thinking about that now. She was in the moment now. Her father didn’t know where she was and she hadn’t been discovered yet, which meant she could still enjoy herself. The consequences of tonight were future Callie’s problem.

Pushing herself away from the rail, she walked unsteadily up to the bar, keeping up her drunken act just for the hell of it, grinning at the barman and earning herself a piece of paper with his number on it as he pushed her margarita toward her.

She giggled, privately thrilled to have gotten it—her first successful flirtation!—even though she’d never follow up on it. Giving the barman a wink and a finger wave, she then turned toward the table where the group was and began to make her way back, making sure to slosh as much of the drink out of her glass as she could so she didn’t have to swallow all of it.

Then came to a dead stop.

Because the guy she’d seen on the dance floor, the scarred man who’d made her heart miss a beat, was standing at the table talking to the others.

Oh shit. What the hell was he doing up here?

Sylvia—at least Callie thought that was her name—turned and pointed toward the bar, and the man lifted his head and looked in her direction, that intense dark green gaze slamming into her once again.

The margarita glass suddenly felt slippery in her fingers and it was all she could do not to drop it. Her heartbeat, which had settled down nicely, began to pick up speed again, getting faster and faster as the man began to head in her direction, pinning her with that mesmerizing stare, moving with that strange hitching walk that was nevertheless as predatory as any panther’s.

Something cold settled down inside her, at the same time as something hot ignited. And it confused her. She didn’t know what to do, whether to drop her glass and run like hell, or stand her ground and fight.

Jesus. Who was he? And more important, why was he coming after her?

All the people she’d been sitting with were staring in her direction, watching, and it was the cold thing inside that nearly won out, that almost made her drop her glass and run like hell.

Then again, where would she run to? There was only one way off the balcony area and that was down the stairs. The stairs that he was currently blocking. There was no way out. She was trapped.

A quiver went through her.

No, she wouldn’t panic. There wasn’t any reason to. No one knew where she was and she didn’t recognize him as one of her father’s men. Why he was here and why he was coming after her was anyone’s guess, but she could handle it.

She’d handled her father. She could handle Mr. Scary Green Eyes.

Sucking in a breath, she decided to keep up the drunk act for a little extra protection, giving him a grin as he approached and wobbling on her sky-high silver stiletto sandals for effect. “Well, hello, tall, scarred, and handsome,” she slurred. “You lookin’ for me?”

He came to a stop right in front of her, hands in the pockets of his jeans, and even though she was wearing heels, she still had to tip her head back to look at him. Dear God, he was tall. And . . . big. And she really needed to stop staring.

It was just that those scars were as mesmerizing close up as they had been at a distance when she’d stared down at him from the balcony. And the glitter of his deeply set eyes from beneath thick black lashes she would have killed for herself made every thought in her head abruptly feel slippery and hard to pin down.

In fact, her own physical reaction was almost shocking. Because there was no good reason for her fascination, no good reason at all. She usually found physically big men like him intimidating. They reminded her of her father’s security and of her father himself, of the way they towered over her, using their height to make her feel small and weak. Using their arrogance to threaten her and keep her in line.

The devil in her always wanted to push them, to fight them, an urge she had to constantly suppress because if she ever wanted to eventually escape the prison her life had become she had to appear small and weak, toe the line, and not draw attention. So that one day her father’s constant vigilance would relax and she could finally leave, disappear, and never come back.

The man stared at her silently for a beat, and she had the oddest thought that what she was feeling right now, the weird quiver in her stomach, wasn’t intimidation. It was something else. Something that made that devil in her rouse and want to push, to fight. See what would happen if she did.

Pain. Anguish. Her mother clutching her wrist, accusation in her eyes . . .

“You Callie Hawthorne?” His voice was deep, interrupting her thoughts, and there was roughness to each word that made inexplicable goose bumps rise all over her body.

And she was just in the middle of processing that when she suddenly realized something: He’d used her name.

Shock pulsed down her spine, her palms sweaty, her pulse starting to rocket. How did he know who she was? Had her father somehow tracked her down? Oh God, because if he had, if he knew what she was doing, he’d take away that from her too. The way he took away everything she enjoyed doing, everything she loved. And if she didn’t have music . . .

Callie gritted her teeth, forcing away the shock and the fear. No, she wasn’t going to panic. She refused. Music was the only passion she had left and she wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from her. Including her goddamned father.

She licked her lips and fluttered her eyelashes, keeping up the drunken, flirtatious front. “Well, I guess that depends on who’s asking?”

The man’s mouth, scarred on one side, beautifully shaped on the other, twisted in what looked like a barely concealed sneer. “You should know that already, sweetheart. I’m the new bodyguard you’ve apparently been dodging all night.”

* * *

An expression of shock flashed over Callie Hawthorne’s pale, pretty face, and along with it, even more fleeting, he thought he caught a glint of fear. Which was weird. Then just as quickly though, the shock and fear disappeared, only to be replaced by the openly flirtatious, drunk-looking smile.

“Shit,” she murmured, giving him a slow blink. “Guess I didn’t do a good job of hiding, huh?”

It had taken Jack all day to track down Senator Hawthorne’s daughter after he’d landed in Boston. After a brief meeting with the senator himself, where the guy had assured him that his daughter knew of Jack’s arrival and that she’d be ready to meet with him at her little town house at ten a.m. sharp. Except no one answered the door when he knocked and still hadn’t after he’d waited a good ten minutes, making it obvious she wasn’t there. So he’d had to contact the senator’s personal assistant, and had ended up playing a game of cat and mouse through Boston, as Callie gave out times and places to meet, only to not turn up at any of them.

Jack’s mood, already grim the moment he’d arrived in Boston to find the weather pretty much as shitty as he’d expected, had turned to murderous by the time night had fallen. He’d gone from pillar to post chasing after the damn woman, who seemed hell-bent on avoiding him.

In the end Jack had decided to cut out the personal assistant and find Callie Goddamn Hawthorne himself. Easy enough to do when he had the means to track her phone.

That’s when he’d discovered something really interesting: She wasn’t at the fancy-ass charity party she was supposed to be attending. According to his tracking app, she was in some nightclub in Boston’s theater district.

Which was all a great start for a babysitting job he didn’t even want to do in the first place.

Still, he’d told Faith he was going to do it and the file had been clear: Senator Hawthorne wanted his daughter protected after receiving death threats against his family, and he’d asked for the best in the business.

Jack didn’t mind being called the best in the business. It had been a while since anyone had needed his considerable skills and he’d found he was eager to prove them.

But what he was not eager about was being messed with by some rich bitch socialite who was too busy partying to take anything seriously.

She looked the part too, a little bitty thing—five foot nothing, had to be—wearing the tightest, shortest white minidress in the history of creation, plus a pair of spike-heeled silver sandals a stripper would envy.

A wealth of tawny blond hair tumbled down her back, while her eyes were the kind of sea blue that sailors drowned in willingly, her features almost china-doll-like in their perfection. And the way she was looking at him, all wide-eyed innocence, seeming drunk and yet . . . no, he didn’t think she was drunk.

He stared harder at her, examining her pretty face, and saw it again, the very slightest flicker of fear. Why? Was it him? The death threat situation? Being caught somewhere where she shouldn’t be?

She wobbled slightly on her heels, looking up at him from underneath her lashes, the margarita glass she had in her hand tilted at an angle that made liquid splash on the floor. “Sorry . . . I guess?” she said at last. Her voice was as soft as the rest of her and slurred, and this time that glint of fear had gone.

But he remembered it. He knew it was there. And it made something kick hard inside him, a protective instinctive he’d thought he’d buried a long time ago.

No, it wasn’t. Protecting curvy little women with big blue eyes and pouty mouths, all softness and vulnerability, who looked like they would break if he even looked at them wrong, rang just about every alarm bell he had.

But he wasn’t going to turn around and give up this mission simply because he was annoyed and vaguely disturbed by her. He wasn’t that much of a pussy. He’d decided to take on this job and he’d do it.

He’d never given up on a mission yet and he wasn’t about to start now.

He examined her again, more closely this time. He’d seen her standing on the balcony just before, while he’d been on the dance floor. He’d felt that prickle on the back of his neck, an old military instinct alerting him to the fact that someone was watching him, and so he’d looked up. And there she’d been, watching him, and now that he thought about it, there’d been nothing afraid in her eyes then, nothing disgusted or shocked by the scars that marked him like some people were. No, she’d looked at him like—

Fuck, why was he thinking about that? He didn’t give a shit how she’d looked at him. She was his mission now and nothing would compromise that. Never had, never would.

“Is there somewhere quiet we can go to talk?” Jack asked, impatient now to get on with the business of being her bodyguard. “It’s taken me all goddamn day to find you, and there’s a few things I need to—”

Before he could finish, Callie took a couple of tottering steps up to him and stroked a finger down the center of his chest. The move was so sudden he had no time to anticipate or avoid it, and that finger must have been some kind of lightning rod because for some fucking reason, it felt like she’d conducted all the electricity in the entire room right down through the center of his body.

He couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. Conscious only of one single glaring fact: This was the first time anyone had touched him since he’d gotten out of the hospital. The first human contact outside of a medical exam. The first by a woman . . .

Callie fluttered her eyelashes and murmured, “Is this about the silly death threat thing? ’Cause if it is, you can tell Dad that I took some shooting lessons and I can fire my own gun.” She giggled and gave him another stroke with her finger, sending another bolt of electricity right through him. “Whoa, you’re really hard. What are you wearing underneath that T-shirt? Kevlar?”

Barely forcing back a growl, Jack whipped his hand out, circling her slender wrist and jerking her finger away from him. “You don’t get to touch me, sweetheart,” he said roughly, trying to ignore the line of fire her touch had left behind. “Not unless I ask you to. And I didn’t ask you to.”

The drunken act dropped for a second, and he could read the shock in her eyes, along with that fear, plus something else. Something complicated he couldn’t untangle.

Then she laughed again, pulling her hand from his grip and sidestepping him unsteadily. “Whatever, dude. Just tell Dad I don’t need a bodyguard. Oh, and if you could also tell him that I wasn’t here, then that would be awesome too.” Without a backward glance, she went past him, heading in the direction of the stairs.

Jack had never had much patience and since the attack that had destroyed his life, he had even less of it. His hip was sore and he was pissed at having to chase after her, pissed at the way her touch was still lingering down the middle of his chest, but, more than anything else, he was really fucking pissed at the way that flicker of fear in her eyes had somehow reached inside him and held on tight.

He hated to see fear in a woman. It called to every protective instinct in him, and even though the very last thing in the world he wanted was to have to deal with a frightened woman, he couldn’t ignore it.

Callie Hawthorne was afraid and trying to hide it. And his job was to protect her. End of story.

Scowling, Jack turned to see her go back to where her stupid friends were sitting, turning a few things over in his head.

The brief interview Jack had had with the senator on his arrival in Boston had been enough for Jack to know that a) he didn’t like the bastard and b) he didn’t trust the bastard, but since Jack had no good reason for feeling either of those things, plus, he was trying to be professional, he’d stayed quiet and obeyed the guy’s orders.

“Callie is difficult,” Senator Hawthorne had said. “She won’t want you around and she’ll protest. Convince her otherwise. That’s why I’m paying you obscene amounts of money.” Then he’d smiled thinly in a way that suggested to Jack that if Jack ran into any difficulties, he was going to have to straighten the girl out himself.

Right, so here was the first difficulty he was going to have to deal with: She very clearly didn’t want him around.

Callie had tottered back to her table, the white dress she wore molding beautifully to her gorgeous ass, golden hair gleaming over her shoulders, her hips swaying as she walked.

And that male instinct, the hungry one that had been lying dormant for at least two years, began to stir.

Jack’s mood darkened even further.

Time to give that poor little rich girl a wake-up call.

He had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it.