Talia’s apartment had been tossed. Someone was clearly looking for her treatment formula and her information on recreating it. Paintings had been pulled off the walls and even the mattress in her bedroom had been removed from the bed as part of the search.
Shane had to admit he was impressed with her hiding place. He didn’t call her his little brainiac for no reason. Now they had the satchel with her disks, flash drive, papers, and notebook, along with one shopping bag of personal necessities.
He wanted as few things that could potentially have been bugged with a tracker as possible. The people after her were clearly determined, and he had no way of knowing whether they’d planned this in advance, in anticipation of her completion of her work.
They could grab anything else she needed once he determined where they were going. A safe house was one possibility, but he needed more details from her first.
He’d called Ian from the road, and when they arrived at the high-rise building that housed McKay-Taggart, they met up with his boss in a conference room on the same floor as the main offices.
Ian wasn’t alone. Nor was he with any of the MT crew.
“You brought the girls?” Shane asked, shocked Ian’s twins were sitting at the table, coloring, but he had a hunch the quiet wouldn’t last long. They were Taggarts, after all. Chaos would inevitably follow.
“Oh my God, they’re adorable!” Talia exclaimed, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the children. “How old are they?”
“Five.” Ian turned, and Shane realized he had his infant son strapped to a carrier attached to his chest. And there were throw-up stains on his shoulder.
“Problem?” Ian asked, cocking one eyebrow, daring him to comment. “Because if there is, you should have had your emergency during business hours.”
Shane raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “No, no problem.” Ian wouldn’t hurt him in front of his girls, but it was prudent to stay on his boss’s good side.
“Charlie’s home sick,” he said of his wife. “Now what’s the emergency and who’s the client?”
“That would be me. Talia Shaw.” She extended a hand to shake.
Ian shook his head. “I’m sticky. The girls handed me their lollipops on the way in.”
Shane held back a snort of laughter. Nothing relegated big, bad Ian Taggart to the status of normal human being like his family. Shane almost envied him, but he reminded himself he hadn’t done marriage all that well the first time.
And as long as he was in this line of business, he wouldn’t be finding a woman who could put up with the hours away from home, not to mention the danger. Amy, his ex, had been sweet but fragile, and she couldn’t deal with being married to a cop. Bodyguard was no different. Although he had coworkers who’d found their significant others despite their choice of careers, Shane didn’t believe it was in the cards for him.
He glanced at Talia, taking her in at the same time as Ian, and Shane knew what his boss saw. A petite woman, glasses giving her a smarty-pants air, he thought with a grin. She’d changed into a comfortable pair of body-hugging leggings at her place, a long, off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers.
Soft.
Delicate.
She wasn’t Amy but she was damned close. And she needed his protection, not his lust.
“Motherfucker,” Ian muttered. “It’s like that?”
“Charlie said not to let you curse in front of the girls,” Shane reminded him.
“Then don’t drool all over the client.”
Talia sucked in a surprised breath, and Shane knew his cheeks burned with embarrassment. Damn Ian and his intuition. Of course, Shane probably was all but drooling when he looked at Talia.
“Tell him what’s going on,” Shane said, changing the subject. “And now that you’re safe, you have time for more detail.”
He gestured to a chair and pulled it out for her to sit. Just as they all settled in, the girls, Kenzie and Kala, began to play tag around the table. And Ian ignored them.
Talia toyed with that locket around her neck and began to explain her job. “Basically it comes down to this. The drug can cure a congenital heart defect in utero. But that means the big drug companies lose tons of money providing patients with drugs over the course of their lifespan, whatever that might be. In my mother’s case, it wasn’t long enough,” she said, looking down at her hands.
His heart clenched at her admission. He knew her history, that she’d lost her mom at a young age. Shane was lucky enough to have both parents, still happily married. He couldn’t imagine such a loss, times two. Her father had passed away as well.
“It sounds to me like big pharmaceutical is somehow involved and they want to stop the cure from getting out there,” Ian said, interrupting Shane’s thoughts.
She nodded. “Exactly. My assistant called me in a panic, but he wasn’t at the lab. Everything is gone. I’m sure they thought they acquired the entire formula, but they only have the last third. I broke it up. Part two is with us now.”
“We stopped at her apartment to pick up the formula on the way here. The place had been ransacked. And I dropped a tail on the way here,” Shane told Ian.
“What? You did?” Talia shook her head and sighed. “I didn’t see anyone,” she muttered, sounding disappointed in herself and her detecting abilities.
“Got it. How did they miss finding the formula?” Ian asked, his gaze on his girls, whose pace around the table had picked up.
“Because it was beneath the shower in a waterproof safe with her fingerprint as the entry,” Shane said.
And Talia squared her shoulders with pride. So damned cute, he thought, cursing himself for the distraction from what was important.
Ian blinked, admiration crossing his face. One of the girls shrieked, and Ian cringed at the ear-piercing sound. “Keep it down. These guys don’t have your daddy’s ability to tune you two out,” Ian said to the screaming girls.
“Whatever you say,” one of the twins said dutifully, sounding exactly like—
“She gets her sarcasm from her mother,” Ian said too proudly, if you asked Shane. “Okay, so back to business. Where’s part one?” he asked, following both his girls and the story without missing a beat.
“My mentor. He’s the one who trained me to be careful.”
“Paranoid,” Ian said. “But damned smart.”
Talia nodded. “He started this research before he retreated to parts unknown in Oregon. I took it over. But someone stole a piece from him years ago, and he learned to take precautions.”
“So you need to get to your mentor,” Shane said. “And then?”
She swallowed hard. “His ex-wife, Sheila, is head of a pharmaceutical company. He can contact her and she’ll make sure the formula gets into the right hands.”
“You need to call him,” Shane said.
She scrunched her nose at the question. “I can’t.”
“Explain,” Ian said.
“He’s eccentric. And he trusts very few people. So I have a special way of reaching him. I go to Portland and I have to put a handwritten note, myself, no postmark, not mailed, in a post office box. He comes to town the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. I can ask him to meet with me that way. He won’t know to bring the research with him, but we can go back with him to get it.”
Shane nodded, mentally cataloguing what would happen next, as he had to get her from here to Portland safely. He glanced at Ian. “I need a decoy when we leave here. I’m thinking Simon and Chelsea for a match in looks. Meanwhile we need to thoroughly scan and check her things before we take anything with us that could be bugged.”
“Hutch!” Ian called out, and the tall, lean, bulkier now ex-hacker walked in with a piece of red licorice hanging out of his mouth.
“That was fast,” Talia said, stunned.
“I called him in, figuring you’d need him. Search and scan,” he said, pointing to Talia and her bags.
Shane rose out of his seat before anyone could blink or draw breath. “I’ll handle Talia. You take her things.”
“Motherfucker,” Ian muttered again.
The girls, who’d gotten quiet again, were on Hutch in an instant, pulling at his pants. “Candy! We want candy!”
“Charlie’s gonna kill me,” Ian muttered as Hutch, the man with a sugar addiction, reached into his pocket and supplied the already rambunctious kids with a sugar rush they didn’t need.
A little while later, Ian left, kids hanging from him as they headed home.
Hutch had handed Shane a piece of scanning equipment while he took Talia’s personal belongings back to his office to handle his end of things and call Simon and Chelsea in for backup.
“Your boss is… interesting,” Talia said, once they were alone.
That was a good word for Ian Taggart. “You okay?” he asked her, making sure she was on solid mental ground before they started off on their trip.
“A little overwhelmed but otherwise fine.” She flashed him a bright smile he thought was forced.
“Well, I need to check you over. You know, for bugs and trackers.” And there was no way in hell he’d wanted Hutch’s hands anywhere near her body. The thought made him see red.
He held up the metal wand meant to search for a standard tracking device.
She rose to her feet. “What do you want me to do?” She met his gaze, trust in her eyes.
Which was pretty damned amazing given their history. One they hadn’t yet addressed. He had to remain professional now and not cop a feel like he’d done when he was a kid. No matter how much he wanted to.
“Hands and feet spread wide,” he said through clenched teeth.
She swallowed hard and spread her legs, then raised her arms and held them out.
He knelt down, started at her feet, and swiped the wand down her outer leg, then traveled up, from foot to inner thigh, holding his breath at how close he was to her body and her sex, wishing he could pause for further exploration, cursing himself for the inappropriate thoughts.
He slid the metal over her belly and around to her back. Up and over her curvy ass. Her breasts, noticing her nipples puckering as he breathed close. He even scanned her eyeglass frames and the locket on her neck.
By the time he finished, sweat dampened the back of his neck and he was hard as stone.
“Are you finished?” she asked breathlessly.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and rose to his feet.
“Ready to get moving, kids?” Hutch strode back into the room and deposited her belongings on the table. “All clear on my end.”
“All set here, too,” Shane said.
With the details taken care of, they headed for the parking garage, where Simon and Chelsea, who’d arrived minutes before, pulled out first in a nondescript sedan. Once the decoys were on their way, Shane and Talia exited in a similar vehicle.
Each headed in opposite directions, neither one toward Portland, though Shane would eventually circle back that way when he was certain they didn’t have a tail. After they were well into the trip, he could relax a little and focus more on Talia.
* * * *
Shane didn’t talk much during the initial ride out of Dallas, and Talia respected his silence, knowing he was focused on making sure they left the city without anyone following them. She was too wired to relax, and it didn’t help when they stopped an hour into the trip to switch cars with another agent, a safeguard Shane and Hutch had prearranged.
She wondered how her lab job had turned into such a nightmare. Even if Jonah had prepared her for just this kind of eventuality, she’d never believed anyone would come after her, she thought and rubbed her arms with her hands.
“Are you cold?” Shane asked, reaching to turn down the air conditioning inside the car.
“No.” She shook her head. “Just wound tight,” she murmured.
“I can only imagine. But you’re safe. We’ve taken every possible precaution,” he said, his voice deep and reassuring.
“I know. And I appreciate you dropping everything to help me out. I mean, after all these years, I’m basically a stranger and—”
“You’re not a stranger, smarty-pants.” He met her gaze through his aviators and grinned, causing her belly to twist and a jolt of desire to travel through her veins.
“No, I guess I’m not. You’re Tate’s best friend.”
He inclined his head, eyes on the road. “Long distance aside, he’s like a brother to me.”
Did that make her like a sister? The thought didn’t sit well with her and she wasn’t surprised. When she was younger, she’d had a crush on him and had freaked out when things got too intense. Now that she was an adult, she recognized the desire he inspired in her was stronger…and not going away.
When he’d searched her earlier, the wand moving around her body parts, his face nearly between her thighs, a definite sense of arousal had pulsed through her. Her nipples had grown hard, her panties wet, and if they hadn’t been in the middle of a serious situation, she might have jumped him right there.
And from the muscle she’d seen ticking in his jaw, she assumed he’d been affected by her nearness, too. Of course, that could be wishful thinking. Either way, she didn’t want him to treat her like family or consider her a little sister. Because she definitely didn’t feel that way about him. She never had.
“But this isn’t all about Tate, is it? You’re helping me and I’m grateful.”
“It’s my pleasure. Seriously.”
She bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Okay, good.” She blew out a deep breath and stared at the dry landscape through the car window.
“So how have you been?” she asked him. “I mean, we have time to talk now, right?”
“I think we’re pretty safe,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
From his posture and general wariness, he never let his guard down, which she appreciated.
“I’ve been good,” he said. “Working at McKay-Taggart suits me.”
She could understand that. His boss was a unique man. She had a feeling the rest of the office was similarly interesting.
“But didn’t you always want to be on the police force? At least that’s what you told me back in high school.”
He frowned, but that didn’t detract from his good looks. “Back then I didn’t know what being a cop would mean.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, curling a leg beneath her. She was intrigued by the fact that something he’d been so drawn to hadn’t worked for him as an adult and was curious to know why.
“I had this case. A young girl was killed.” He gripped the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles turning white under the strain. “My partner and I, we did everything by the book. Dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. And in the end, the guy walked because the jury found reasonable doubt.”
She winced at the outcome that had obviously hurt him so badly. “I’m sorry.”
He inclined his head. “I couldn’t handle the job knowing my best wasn’t good enough. Protection means I can stop a threat before it hurts someone, or at least have the chance to. I get more satisfaction here than fighting the law in an attempt to get justice after the fact.”
“Makes sense.” She nodded, rubbing a hand along the thigh of her pants.
While she worked in a lab, she did so knowing she was trying to help people in the long run, so she understood his frustration about working within a tightly controlled system.
Time for a subject change, she decided, not that he’d like her next choice. But she couldn’t help wanting to know more about him and the man he’d become.
“So… I heard from my brother you were married.”
He shot her a surprised glance. “Yes. I was. It ended a couple of years ago. Amicably, as far as those things go. Amy wanted a husband she wouldn’t have to worry about getting shot, maybe killed in the line of duty. And she wanted one who was home at a reasonable hour. That’d never be me.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. When Tate had gone to his wedding, Talia had experienced a pang of sadness at the prospect of him being taken. Which was silly because at that point she hadn’t seen Shane in years.
“Okay, time to turn the tables,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “How are you?” he asked, his shoulders finally relaxing now that the spotlight was on her.
“Other than running for my life?” she asked, wanting to keep the mood light. “I’ve actually been good. If you consider busy good. I’ve been wrapped up with my job and working the kinks out of this formula. It’s been an exhilarating ride. Until today. And now I’d like to bring it to fruition. I want the drug to get to the public so it can help people as planned.”
“So they don’t suffer like your mother did?” he asked, his voice going soft.
She stared out the window, trying not to let sadness engulf her as it usually did when she recalled losing her mom. The slow way her body had given out along with her heart.
“Yes. So their families don’t have to go through the hardships when one parent is on disability and another has to work extra hard to afford treatment.” So the kids weren’t at loose ends because the adults’ focus was on illness and fear.
He reached over and touched her shoulder, sending a ribbon of warmth flowing through her. “I’m sorry you guys had to go through that kind of childhood.”
She sighed, knowing there was so much worse. “My parents loved us.” And she’d lost them too early, prompting her to guard her own heart zealously from hurt. “It just wasn’t all sunshine and roses. But whose life is?”
“Still pragmatic, I see.”
She grinned.
“So what about you? No marriage in your past?” he asked.
Despite the sunglasses, she could see he was getting a kick out of asking her about her personal life, and she deserved it.
“No. Like you, I work too much for any rational human being to understand. And it’s not something I can see myself giving up any time soon.”
“I guess we have that in common,” he said.
“Besides, with love comes inevitable loss. I’d like to minimize any more pain in my life,” she said, surprised she’d opened up to him that way. “I keep my relationships light.”
“Too pragmatic,” he muttered. She wasn’t about to argue. “So I take it that means no boyfriends you’re leaving behind?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and glanced at him, wondering if this was just tit for tat conversation. Or whether there was something more behind the question.
“No. My last relationship was about a year ago.” If you could call it a relationship, she mused, thinking back.
A colleague wanted details on her research and decided he’d sleep with her to work his way in. She hadn’t even been that hurt on an emotional level, just royally pissed he’d tried to piggyback on her work.
“Interesting,” he said in a gravelly voice.
Her stomach flipped in anticipation of him asking or saying something more…something that would let her know if she was the only one experiencing this desire at such an inappropriate time. But he remained silent.
A little while passed, each alone with their thoughts, when Shane spoke.
“How about lunch?” He gestured to a sign indicating an upcoming rest area.
“Yes. Feed me, please.” She pressed a hand to her empty belly.
They stopped for lunch before getting on the road again.
They talked more, revisiting some of their shared past, the tutoring she’d done with him, the fact that he’d always had a hot girl sniffing after him…but neither brought up the last time they were together. Or the kiss.
By the time they saw signs for Albuquerque, they’d been driving for over ten hours total. Her legs were cramped, her butt hurt, and she wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a warm bed.
“Are you hungry for dinner?” he asked.
“I could eat.” In truth, she was starving, but she hadn’t said anything since lunch. She didn’t want to hold them up or be a problem when they had a timetable to stick to.
He nodded. “Me, too. And we should stop someplace where we can get a room and a good night’s sleep. We’ll start fresh in the morning.”
“A room? As in one?” she blurted, immediately wishing she’d stopped the words before they’d spilled out of her mouth, because really, she didn’t want to come off as a prude.
“One room, two double beds. That’s as far as I’m willing to compromise and still be able to keep you safe.”
She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek so she didn’t speak again and say something stupid. It was bad enough she’d been an awkward teenager around him, but she was an adult now, and she didn’t want him to see her as anything but a capable woman.
A sexy woman he desired might be too much to hope for. She knew herself. She attracted brainy guys. Scientists. Not hot-as-sin bodyguards like Shane.