Reese was exhausted.

Wake-up call at six—with all of the emotional charge of being named to take over Stagecoach. Then the crash of thinking she was being bounced back out. On the road by eight, and hitting New York City by noon.

Harvey had sent a list of five stores, two restaurants, and a Broadway theater right on Times Square.

She’d dropped Jim at each place, where he and Malcolm had been met by an agent from the New York office familiar with the locale. While he’d been doing site familiarization, she’d scouted approach and getaway routes, driven in and out of garages until she knew the best access to each exit, including where to go to ground if they had to abandon the vehicle.

There was an odd congruency of knowing that Jim and Malcolm were doing exactly the same thing on the other side of the walls. Now that they were separated, they finally made sense together—working as a team to ensure their protectees’ safety.

They certainly hadn’t made any sense on the drive up. She supposed she’d gotten what she’d asked for. After unearthing her past, he’d been kind enough to finally leave her alone. Leave her alone to wallow in the pain of events she’d spent the last two years trying to forget.

At the end of the evening, they’d sat together in the car watching the patterns of movement as the Broadway show let out. How the crowd dispersed under normal conditions. Where the limos lined up. How many cabs sat in the queue.

Just on spec, they poked through the local bars and found one that seemed likely if the ladies wanted a drink afterward. The Rum House was a few blocks back from Times Square and didn’t have the hard-packed, post-theater draw of Sardi’s or Carmine’s right on the Square.

“Can I buy you a round?” It was the first non-business thing Jim had said since Wilmington, Delaware.

“As long as the place has food,” she’d had a knockwurst with sauerkraut from a street vendor about a thousand hours ago. The only one who’d eaten regularly had been Malcolm. It was nice watching how thoroughly Jim took care of his dog.

“Actually,” he was studying the menu mounted by the door, “it does. Not much, but I’m past caring.” It was the first hint he’d given that he wasn’t utterly tireless in the pursuit of his duty.

He held the door for her, an unexpected politeness, then whispered as she passed close beside him.

“Watch this. It’s always fun how these crowds react.”

So Reese stepped in and waited. Jim indicated a small table by the window that would let them both sit with their backs to the wall: one facing into the bar, the other facing the window where they could keep an eye on the street.

He nodded for her to go grab the table. Only when she was seated and watching him did he start moving. But he didn’t head straight for her. Instead, he guided Malcolm on a curving route that took him much more deeply into the crowded bar. It was quiet with the warm buzz of friendly conversations over soft, piped-in jazz.

While she watched, she decided that this place was a good choice. The Rum House felt upscale Old West. Worn hardwood flooring, heavy on the walnut and mahogany woods for décor, along with benches covered in dark leather and comfortable seats. The old-timey feel was achieved without being all phony about it. Hurricane-style lamps and circular styling of the woodwork simply evoked the era without getting cliché.

It took her a moment to see what was happening with Jim and Malcolm. Urban hipster couples would glance at the dog. Then look away. Then look back and up to see the tall, broad-chested handler. Some would go back to their meals. If it was a group of women however, their gaze intently followed Jim.

Had she really not noticed how handsome he was? And in this crowd, his good-old-boy attitude really stood out. Mr. Tall and Easy-going in his dark blue jacket with USSS emblazoned across its back in six-inch yellow letters. She’d never managed easy-going for a single second of her life, yet he looked as if he’d never been anything else. She could almost admire that.

Reese recalled their one actual contact, when she’d run into his back outside the West Wing Secret Service Ready Room. When he’d felt so impossibly solid and real. His long silences on the drive up had been uncomfortable at first, but by the end of it, she’d started to take on a little of his silence as her own. She wasn’t used to that and couldn’t decide if it was all bad or not.

Was the reaction of the women what Jim wanted her to see? Mr. Guy showing off how male he was?

Then he got a new reaction from a couple laughing over drinks.

Dog—turn away—Jim—turn away…

Then a double take so hard that the couple almost fell out of their chairs. The instant Jim was past them, they jolted to their feet without finishing their drinks. The man threw some bills on the table as if they burned him and then the couple raced for the door.

Jim didn’t turn to follow their hurried exit; instead he shot her a big smile with a silent laugh behind it. At the far end of his wandering loop, he turned for her, continuing his wandering way through the crowded tables.

A group of three guys at a nearby table had the same massive double take-and-bolt reaction the moment they spotted Jim. No, the moment they spotted Malcolm.

This time they were close enough that she could see their faces go sheet white before they ran. One of them, while dumping bills on the table, accidentally tossed down a baggie of white powder. He looked at it in horror, then at Jim’s back. He almost snatched it up, then, thinking again, he left the baggie on the table and ran out the door as if all the hounds of hell were after him rather than a sweet little springer spaniel who hadn’t even looked at him twice.

Jim dropped into the chair beside her and Malcolm sat by his side. Jim wasn’t laughing out loud, but he looked awfully pleased with himself.

Reese couldn’t help herself and let the laugh out. After all the craziness and stress of the day, it was great watching people who didn’t know that an explosives-sniffing dog wasn’t trained to react to illegal drugs.

She laughed until it grew all out of proportion. It was like a release of so much she’d been keeping under hard control. She was going to be chauffeuring the three leading ladies of the current administration, and these people were freaking out about whether they’d be caught for having a couple hundred bucks of cocaine in their pockets.

Jim didn’t look worried, he just waited her out until she could catch her breath.

Jim couldn’t catch his own breath. He’d never imagined that the impossibly serious Reese Carver of the Presidential Protection Detail could laugh—and definitely not like that.

She was undone, and a shockingly beautiful woman emerged into clear view, no longer hidden by the serious, kick-ass heroine that would do just fine facing down Batman or Superman…or both at once. A stunning, black Wonder Woman in US Secret Service armor. All she needed was a sword and golden lasso of truth to complete the image.

Had he, with his little dance about the room, made her laugh like that? It did sound as if she was laughing with him and not at him, which struck him as encouraging—even if it was all out of proportion with the joke. He rubbed Malcolm’s head to give her a moment.

Reese wiped at her eyes with a napkin and took quick sips from a glass of water that a waiter had rushed over.

Good service, another important aspect of choosing a locale to bring the First Lady’s party tomorrow night. He’d also liked that the bartender working nearest the door was built like a bouncer and had traded a quiet nod of acknowledgement with Jim when he’d spotted the USSS on Jim’s jacket. Subtle but watchful. Jim looked over at him while Reese finished her recovery. The bartender offered him a quick smile, clearly appreciating the joke as well.

A waitress cleared the abandoned tables, looking pleased at the generous payments dumped on each table. She delivered the baggie of powder to the bartender to deal with. The man grimaced, glanced one last time at Jim for saddling him with how to explain it to the police, then turned back to his other business.

“Thanks,” Reese’s voice was rough with the laughter, as if there had been pain behind it as well. “I guess I needed that.”

“If you had told me before that you could laugh like that, I’d have no more believed you than a bright purple pinto horse.”

“If I had told me I could laugh like that, I’d have called me a liar. Been a long time.”

“Want to talk some about it?”

“Definitely not.”

He ordered an Oklahoma Tropical Twister and she ordered a North Carolina Rum Cherry Bounce. The waitress was good; she didn’t blink once at the two strange requests that had nothing to do with the big bad city. A pair of grilled Gruyère cheese sandwiches and a couple of sliders for Malcolm, without the buns or condiments, completed their order, and then they were alone again.

Still she wasn’t talking, but he didn’t want to let the moment go. It had been the first crack in the ice wall.

“Strange day,” he started.

Reese offered a shrug of agreement.

He needed a new topic, without sounding like he was fishing. But he wasn’t having much luck finding it.

“How did you get into dogs?” Jim could only blink in surprise at the sudden opening. All day, dark shades had hidden her eyes and her thoughts. Now the dim lighting of the bar seemed to do the same. Unable to read why she’d asked, he was still glad for the opening—surprisingly glad for it. It was clear that she was something special and, without him noticing, the brush-off had hurt. He knew he was good at what he did, but not being good enough for Reese Carver hurt.

“Mom gave me a German shepherd pup for my tenth birthday. I had to train him fast if I wanted to ride with Dad during the summers.” He scratched Malcolm’s head where it rested on Jim’s knee.

“Ride with Dad?” Reese’s tone could have been for a job interview. Very matter-of-fact and to the point. Maybe that was just the way she rode.

“He’s an over-the-road owner-operator.”

“You say those words as if they mean something,” Reese said it deadpan with neither tease nor irritation. She was so neutral that she almost disappeared back behind her hard shell again.

“Long-haul trucker, which they call over-the-road. Owner-operator means that he’s an independent who owns his own rig. Actually he owns nine of them. Now that us kids are all grown, Mom runs the business from the passenger seat—though she drives some too. My brother, sister, and two first cousins all drive for him.”

“But not you?”

“Did local delivery during high school summers and long-haul a couple years after, once I was old enough to get my commercial ticket.” Those had been good years. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t gone back to them. Mom and Dad had found a lifestyle on the road that fit them, but he hadn’t.

He told her how they stayed in touch despite the entire family’s mobile lifestyle. He’d get a call every time someone in the family had a run that hit DC and they’d get together for a meal. Just last June, everyone had runs that hit Roanoke, Virginia. He and Malcolm had gone over for a couple days and they’d made a reunion out of mini-golf, BBQ, and some tall cold ones.

“Then the dogs,” Reese interrupted his memories.

“Then the Army. Drove HETS—that’s Heavy Equipment Transport System.”

“Don’t know those either.”

“Big trucks. Seriously big,” he liked sitting with her as if they did this all the time.

“You’re a trucker kind of guy,” Reese concluded and went silent as if the interview was now over.

“Was. Now I’m a dog kind of guy.”

“Makes you the black sheep of the family,” she nodded once to herself. She now had him well pigeonholed. He didn’t know if that was comforting or irritating.

“Black dog—or brown-and-white in Malcolm’s case—but yeah. How about you?”

How about her? Reese’s past was a complete train wreck compared to Jim’s ever-so-happy trucking family—all for one and one for all.

The waitress’ delivery of their drinks bought Reese a few moments. The waitress guaranteed herself a nice tip by bringing out a water bowl for Malcolm.

Sipping the sweet rum cocktail that tasted a lot like home bought her a few more moments.

Like home.

That was all gone. Charlotte. The Motor Speedway. Her family.

“That was one dark thought,” Jim was seeing past her armor once again.

She felt the automatic brush-off shrug ripple across her shoulders…and didn’t like it. What was it about herself that she couldn’t just talk to someone? She’d never known how to do that when she was a racer and she hadn’t become any better at it in the Secret Service. Always a loner, just a highly skilled one.

For once, she was sitting next to someone who she wasn’t in competition with. He was a nice guy, a dog handler, and wasn’t after the same job she was.

“Okay, fine!”

“Fine?”

“I meant that for myself. I drove NASCAR.”

“Already figured that.” But he said it nicely.

“Made it to second row starting position. My dad had the fastest qualifying time for the race, so it was hard to feel bad about not getting the lead on the start. We started our last race at the head of the field; Number One and Two in a field of forty-three.” She couldn’t look up at Jim, instead seeing the heat shimmering off the Motor Speedway. A one-and-a-half-mile oval, it was going to be fast with the warm track giving the tires good traction. Turn 4 was in the shade of the grandstands. It would be slicker just at the moment that they transitioned from blinding afternoon sun coming out of Turn 3, plunging into the relative darkness of the shadowed Turn 4.

Every driver knew, and they were ready. That was where the accidents were going to be happening that day.

“I watched—”

Reese had never told anyone about this moment. Not the reporters, not the Secret Service interviewers.

“We were still running one and two after fifty laps. I was a car-length back when Pop lapped someone, or tried to. They banged fenders. A nothing contact. Such a little bump. But it was just enough to break his front end loose going into Turn 4.”

She’d been drafting so close that she could see his face as the car spun a one-eighty. For just an instant he was traveling backward into the turn at a hundred and eighty miles an hour—nose to nose with her car. NASCAR racers rode the ragged edge of aerodynamically stable when they were nose into the wind.

“The wind caught the tail of his car. One moment he was right there in front of me,” Reese looked out into the bar but all she could see was the track. “The next, he was tossed twenty or thirty feet into the air, slamming into the high fence. Flipping and spinning like a toy even worse than Richard Petty’s historic crash.”

A warm, strong arm across her shoulders was all that let her speak. All that let her breathe. She was caught up in the retelling and couldn’t find any way out of it other than through.

“They have safety flaps in the roof that are supposed to break up the effect, but a weakened hinge broke and it didn’t break up the unwanted lift. I got away clean, ducking under the wreck while it killed my father.”

She sat up abruptly and faced Jim.

“I kept it cool. I ran safe and clean. Even when the pit boss came on the radio to tell me he hadn’t survived, I held my line and raced. Some idea that I was going to win it for Pop.”

“Did you?” His voice was a close whisper of sympathy.

She shook her head. “Blew an oil ring with ten laps to go. Engine tossed a rod and I was out. It happens.”

Jim held her close. It felt so good to be able to turn into his shoulder and just be held.

Thankfully she’d buried the worst thing from that day so deep it didn’t come out.

“My baby brother, always a little wild, died in the Argentine desert during the Dakar Rally. Pop died on the Charlotte Motor Speedway—his home track. I decided that I wasn’t going to die there.”

“What about your mom?”

When she tried to knock back her entire drink, Jim slipped it out of her hand and set it back on the table next to his own. Didn’t matter. She drank so little that even half a drink had gone straight to her head, or why would she be telling a jerk of a stranger all that she was telling him?

“She was the smart one of the family. She left when I was three. Pop said she married a schoolteacher in Oregon. Didn’t even call for the funeral.”

Jim Fischer waited while alcohol, shame, and chagrin washed through her system like a bad fishtail. Waited while she stared at the tabletop as her heart threatened to throw a rod through her chest and end her. Finally she just stared at her fisted hands on the table.

Something bumped against her thigh a couple times on the side away from Jim, then a weight settled there. She looked down in surprise to see Malcolm looking up at her with sympathetic doggie eyes. Reese rubbed his head and felt a tiny bit better.

“He seems to like me.”

“He has good taste in women.”

Reese looked at him with surprise in her eyes.

“Not me,” he held up his hands. “I have terrible taste in women. I always end up with the ‘just friends’ type.” Now why had he paid her a compliment? She’d been hard-edged and pushing him away all day. And here he was handing her some cheap line. Except it didn’t feel like a cheap line. She was an amazing woman, just not the type he ever landed.

“Just friends,” she sounded thankful for the change of topic.

“Sure. Not a one of them has ever knit me a sweater.”

Reese just blinked at him.

He took a bite of his sandwich, which had arrived at some point without his quite noticing. He looked down at the floor and saw that Malcolm had polished off his sliders before going to console Reese. He picked up the empty plate and slid it under his.

Reese Carver. She’d seen some seriously harsh times. Alone in the world, no wonder she’d brushed him off. He’d be scared to death of getting close to anyone again—the loss must have been horrific. Well, he might not understand how hard she’d brushed him off, but at least it explained things a bit.

He nudged her plate toward her. She nodded at it, but didn’t take a bite.

“Ma always said that you could tell if a girl was serious if she knit you a sweater.”

“I don’t knit,” Reese finally reached for her late dinner, keeping a hand on Malcolm’s head.

“Ma either, but she swears it’s true.”

“So, I guess we’re never going to be serious.”

“Guess not.” He knew he was out of the running, but he did wonder if Malcolm was going to get lucky tonight. He knew from experience that sad doggie eyes earned him a portion of almost any woman’s dinner. Margarite had had no willpower where Malcolm was concerned. Jim had to admit that even being a long-time dog person, Malcolm could almost get by his own guard with that act.

Reese took a bite of her sandwich, then set it back on her plate without offering any to Malcolm.

He heaved out a doggie sigh and looked across her lap at him for aid in his nefarious plans. Jim simply shook his head, which earned him another doggie sigh.

He wasn’t sure where to take the conversation from here.

He’d painted himself into a corner by bringing up relationships, which would be more likely with one of the people still streaming by on the sidewalk—despite the late hour—than with Reese Carver.

She was clearly done with the topic of her life after her cathartic upheaval. No tears. Not her. Never her.

“When did you learn to be so strong?”

That earned him a bark of laughter sharp enough to startle Malcolm.

“What?”

Reese opened her mouth, closed it again, and turned back to her sandwich. Malcolm did eventually get the tail end of a crust with a little cheese on it, but far less than his normal take. Reese was made of sterner stuff than most.

The crowd inside still wasn’t thinning. The waitress swept up their empty plates and set down a dessert menu. Neither of them was more than half through their drink, so she slipped off to thirstier clients. Nearing midnight, it really was the city that never slept. Most of his New York trips had been to one loading dock or another. The tourist center of Manhattan wasn’t a place he’d ever had to run an eighty-foot full-box rig, and riding shotgun with Reese all day had convinced him that he’d never want to try.

Tomorrow was going to be a long hard day. By unspoken mutual consent, they both clambered to their feet and shrugged on their jackets. He paid the bill and they drove across town to the hotel near the UN. A location team from the New York office was already on patrol there and nothing remained except to check in and ride up in the elevator.

At the door to her room, she stopped him before he could lead Malcolm to the next room down the hall.

“You know that you’re pissing me off, Fischer?”

“Kind of hard to miss that.”

She shook her head and her long hair was lustrous beneath the soft lighting of the long corridor.

He waited.

“You’re making me think. I don’t like thinking.”

“What do you like?”

“Winning,” she didn’t hesitate a single moment. Then her voice went much softer. “That’s what I’ve always been good at anyway.”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”

“No… But it’s a pretty damn lonely thing. Pop was dead—and I raced. You say it’s strong, but you make me wonder if maybe I’ve turned hard. A stock car has to have a certain softness in the suspension or the tires break free of the track too easily. There has to be a give. You make me wonder if I have any give left in my suspension.”

“So, what? You walked away from NASCAR three years ago and have focused solely on becoming the new Number One driver in the Secret Service?”

She shook her head. “Nothing else.”

“Damn, woman. You need to get a life.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

Jim looked up and down the hall. Past midnight, it had the silence of a hotel—a well sound-insulated, luxury one. It was just the three of them, the burgundy carpet, and the sconce lighting of the flowered wallpaper. He’d always been more of a Holiday Inn Express kind of guy when he couldn’t sleep in his rig.

“Jim?” Reese voice was a soft suggestion, barely audible in the long hall.

He looked at her, really looked at her. The sadness in her eyes would put Malcolm to shame—except with Reese he knew that it was neither a shame nor a genetic predisposition as it was with Malcolm. Today had taught him that it was completely against her nature to look that way.

He had no resistance. There wasn’t even thought as he reached out and pulled her against him. He’d had the good fortune to have hugged plenty of women over the years, but holding Reese was the first time he’d ever hugged steel. Even as she leaned into him, her back was ramrod straight. When her arms came up around his shoulders, he could feel the impossible power of a woman who worked out for an hour every morning before starting her day—she wasn’t Pilates fit, she was United States Secret Service fit.

Unable to help himself, he buried his face in her luxuriant fall of hair as they held each other.

She didn’t ease into him, slowly relaxing until their bodies were melded together.

Reese Carver broke in a single slide of lost traction. One moment the woman of steel. The next pressed so tightly against him that he wondered if he’d ever been really held by a woman before.

It didn’t last but a moment, but she showed him a window to a whole new world he’d never imagined.

Reese stepped into her room and turned on the light as the door snicked shut behind her. It was a small room, made to feel bigger with a large mirror above the dresser and mini fridge.

She looked at herself and studied the woman there.

Was that really her?

Suits had defined her since she’d been a kid. Her father had given her a full-body racing suit just like his when she was eight and she’d worn it with pride. The kids at school had teased her, but she hadn’t cared, not really. Because it had her name above her left breast and Carver Family Racing across the back. By the time she’d donned her own Nomex racing suit and climbed into a car, it had fit like a second skin.

Three years in the Secret Service had done the same. Open-collar button-down shirt, dark blue or gray suit, polished black rubber-soled shoes, current issue lapel pin identifying her as part of the Presidential Detail at a glance. She slipped out of her suit coat and revealed the nylon webbing of her shoulder holster to the mirror’s eye. That and the FN Five-seveN sidearm were a part of her as well.

But for just a moment in the hallway, she’d been a woman in a man’s arms.

Even after an entire day of putting up with her bullshit attitudes and weird silences, he’d still held her as if she wasn’t the disaster area that she knew herself to be. It was when he’d buried his face in her hair that it had undone her. She’d always thought of her hair as a shield—herself on one side and all of the bullies, assholes, and even the lovers carefully kept on the other.

Jim had taken no advantage of her. He’d somehow seen that for even a single moment, she’d just needed to be held.

The woman in the mirror looked back at her in confusion. If he’d grabbed her ass, or anywhere else, she’d have known what to do with him. A hot steamy kiss from an undeniably handsome guy pressed back against a hotel room door, that too was familiar.

But to simply be held. As he’d done at the bar when she’d told him the story of her father. The first time she’d ever told anyone that story in full.

And when they’d kissed, when she’d finally let him slip fully through the shield of her hair, it had been like pounding into Turn One.

Coming off the downshift.

Feeding the power toward Turn Two with the tires glued into the groove despite the g-force dragging her head sideways.

Not there yet, but feeling the anticipation of the upshift and hammer-down launch onto the backstretch.

Jim’s kiss had been like a blast of nitromethane in a top-fuel dragster, firing off nerve endings she didn’t even know she had. It was an adrenaline rush she hadn’t felt since…

Her image scowled at her.

…since running one and two with her pop at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Yet when she’d tried to pull him into her room and find that high-octane finish, he’d refused.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Reese,” he’d looked right at her so there was no way to doubt his sincerity. “Don’t know as I’ve ever wanted anything more. But as much as I’d enjoy tonight, I’m guessin’ that you wouldn’t be enjoying tomorrow morning much more than a cottontail rabbit on a highway—pissed off and feeling run over.”

The fact that he was probably right didn’t make her feel any better at the moment. Even as she tucked her sidearm under her pillow and undressed, she could still feel the suits that had defined her life.

How strange that some blind spot of Jim Fischer’s didn’t see her armor at all.