Taylor's Temptation
Suzanne Brockmann
When it came to protecting the innocent, Bobby Taylor was your man.But when his best friend, Wes, asked him to keep an eye on his little sister, Bobby desperately wanted to pass. Because to him, gorgeous redhead Colleen Skelly didn't look like anyone's kid sister. He doubted she was innocent. And he wanted to keep more than just his eye on her….After years of trying to get magnificent Navy SEAL Bobby Taylor to herself–and away from the prying eyes of her meddling brother–Colleen had finally succeeded. Bobby was hers, if only for a few days. And she had her work cut out for her. She had to prove that she was a grown woman–and that he was all she would ever need in a man….
“Go away,” Colleen told Bobby. “I don’t want another big brother.”
Bobby shook his head. “Wes asked me to—”
Damn Wes. “He probably asked you to sift through my dresser drawers, too,” she countered, lowering her voice. “Although I’m not sure what you’re going to tell him when you find my collection of black leather bustiers.”
Bobby looked at her, something unrecognizable on his face.
And as Colleen looked back at him, for a moment she lost herself in the darkness of his eyes. He looked away, clearly embarrassed, and she realized suddenly that her brother wasn’t here.
Wes wasn’t here.
Bobby was in town without Wes. And without Wes, if she played it right, the rules of this game they’d been playing for the past decade could change.
Radically.
Taylor’s Temptation
Suzanne Brockmann
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
SUZANNE BROCKMANN
lives just west of Boston in a house always filled with her friends—actors and musicians and storytellers and artists and teachers. When not writing award-winning romances about U.S. Navy SEALs, she sings in an a cappella group called Serious Fun with her husband, she sings in a band called The Dick Mac Wedding Garage Band with her daughter (shades of the Partridge Family!), manages the professional acting careers of her two teenagers, volunteers at the Appalachian Benefit Coffeehouse and always answers letters from readers. E-mail her at SuzanneBrockmann@aol.com or send an SASE to P.O. Box 5092, Wayland, MA 01778.
In loving memory of Melinda Helfer, Romantic Times reviewer—a friend of mine, and a friend of all romance.
The first time I met Melinda was at an RWA book signing years ago—right after Prince Joe and Forever Blue had come out. She rushed up to me, dropped to the floor in front of my table and proceeded to kowtow! She told me she loved those two books, and couldn’t wait for the next installment in the TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS series to be released. She was funny, enthusiastic and amazingly intelligent—a fierce and passionate fan of all romance, and a good friend.
Melinda, this one’s for you. (But then again, I think you probably knew that all my TDD books were written for you!) You will be missed.
Acknowledgments:
Special thanks to Mary Stella of the New Jersey Romance Writers, friend and fellow writer, for her help in creating a suitable match for Bobby Taylor.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Prologue
“It was amazing.” Rio Rosetti shook his head, still unable to wrap his mind around last night’s explosive events. “It was absolutely amazing.”
Mike and Thomas sat across from him at the mess hall, their ham and eggs forgotten as they waited for him to continue.
Although neither of them let it show, Rio knew they were both envious as hell that he’d been smack in the middle of all the action, pulling his weight alongside the two legendary chiefs of Alpha Squad, Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly.
“Hey, Little E., get your gear and strap on your blue-suede swim fins,” Chief Skelly had said to Rio just six hours ago. Had it really only been six hours? “Me and Uncle Bobby are gonna show you how it’s done.”
Twin sons of different mothers. That’s what Bobby and Wes were often called. Of very different mothers. The two men looked nothing alike. Chief Taylor was huge. In fact, the man was a total animal. Rio wasn’t sure, because the air got kind of hazy way up by the top of Bobby Taylor’s head, but he thought the chief stood at least six and a half feet tall, maybe even more. And he was nearly as wide. He had shoulders like a football player’s protective padding, and, also like a football player, the man was remarkably fast. It was pretty freaky, actually, that a guy that big could achieve the kind of speed he did.
His size wasn’t the only thing that set him apart from Wes Skelly, who was normal-size—about Rio’s height at five-eleven with a similar wiry build.
Bobby was at least part Native American. His heritage showed in his handsome face and in the rich color of his skin. He tanned a real nice shade of brown when he was out in the sun—a far nicer shade than Rio’s own slightly olive-tinged complexion. The chief also had long, black, straight hair that he wore pulled severely from his face in a single braid down his back, giving him a faintly mystical, mysterious air.
Wes, on the other hand, was of Irish-American descent, with a slightly reddish tint to his light brown hair and leprechaun-like mischief gleaming in his blue eyes.
No doubt about it, Wes Skelly came into a room and bounced off the walls. He was always moving—like a human pinball. And if he wasn’t moving, he was talking. He was funny and rude and loud and not entirely tactful in his impatience.
Bobby, however, was the king of laid-back cool. He was the kind of guy who could sit perfectly still, without fidgeting, just watching and listening, sometimes for hours, before he gave voice to any opinions or comments.
But as different as they seemed in looks and demeanor, Bobby and Wes shared a single brain. They knew each other so well they were completely in tune with the other’s thoughts.
Which was probably why Bobby didn’t do too much talking. He didn’t need to. Wes read his mind and spoke—incessantly—for him.
Although when the giant chief actually did speak, men listened. Even the officers listened.
Rio listened, too. He’d learned early on in SEAL training, long before he got tapped to join SEAL Team Ten’s legendary Alpha Squad, to pay particular attention to Chief Bobby Taylor’s opinions and comments.
Bobby had been doing a stint as a BUD/S instructor in Coronado, and he’d taken Rio, along with Mike Lee and Thomas King, under his extremely large wing. Which wasn’t to say he coddled them. No way. In fact, by marking them as the head of a class filled with smart, confident, determined men, he’d demanded more from them. He’d driven them harder than the others, accepted no excuses, asked nothing less than their personal best—each and every time.
They’d done all they could to deliver, and—no doubt due to Bobby’s quiet influence with Captain Joe Catalanotto—won themselves coveted spots in the best SEAL team in the Navy.
Rewind to six hours ago, to last night’s operation. SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad had been called in to assist a FInCOM/DEA task force.
A particularly nasty South American drug lord had parked his luxury yacht a very short, very cocky distance outside of U.S. waters. The Finks and the DEA agents couldn’t or maybe just didn’t want to for some reason—Rio wasn’t sure which and it didn’t really matter to him—snatch the bad dude up until he crossed that invisible line into U.S. territory.
And that was where the SEALs were to come in.
Lieutenant Lucky O’Donlon was in charge of the op—mostly because he’d come up with a particularly devious plan that had tickled Captain Joe Cat’s dark sense of humor. The lieutenant had decided that a small team of SEALs would swim out to the yacht—named Swiss Chocolate, a stupid-ass name for a boat—board it covertly, gain access to the bridge and do a little creative work on their computerized navigational system.
As in making the yacht’s captain think they were heading south when they were really heading northwest.
Bad dude would give the order to head back toward South America, and instead they’d zoom toward Miami—into the open arms of the Federal task force.
It was just too good.
Bobby and Wes had been selected by Lieutenant O’Donlon to gain covert access to the bridge of the yacht. And Rio was going along for the ride.
“I knew damn well they didn’t need me there,” he told Thomas and Mike now. “In fact, I was aware I was slowing them down.” Bobby and Wes didn’t need to talk, didn’t need to make hand signals. They barely even looked at each other—they just read each other’s minds. It was so freaky. Rio had seen them do similar stuff on a training op, but somehow out in the real world it seemed even more weird.
“So what happened, Rosetti?” Thomas King asked. The tall African-American ensign was impatient—not that he’d ever let it show on his face. Thomas was an excellent poker player. Rio knew that firsthand, having left the table with empty pockets on more than one occasion.
Most of the time Thomas’s face was unreadable, his expression completely neutral, eyelids half-closed. The combination of that almost-bland expression and his scars—one bisecting his eyebrow and the other branding one of his high cheekbones—gave him a dangerous edge that Rio wished his own far-too-average face had.
But it was Thomas’s eyes that made most people cross the street when they saw him coming. So dark-brown as to seem black, his eyes glittered with a deep intelligence—the man was Phi Beta Kappa and a member of the Mensa club. His eyes also betrayed the fact that despite his slouched demeanor, Thomas King was permanently at Defcon Five—ready to launch a deadly attack without hesitation if the need arose.
He was Thomas. Not Tommy. Not even Tom. Thomas. Not one member of Team Ten ever called him anything else.
Thomas had won the team’s respect. Unlike Rio, who somehow, despite his hope for a nickname like Panther or Hawk, had been given the handle Elvis. Or even worse, Little Elvis or Little E.
Holy Chrysler. As if Elvis wasn’t embarrassing enough.
“We took a rubber duck out toward the Swiss Chocolate,” Rio told Thomas and Mike. “Swam the rest of the way in.” The swift ride in the little inflatable boat through the darkness of the ocean had made his heart pound. Knowing they were going to board a heavily guarded yacht and gain access to her bridge without anyone seeing them had a lot to do with it. But he was also worried.
What if he blew it?
Bobby apparently could read Rio’s mind almost as easily as he read Wes Skelly’s, because he’d touched Rio’s shoulder—just a brief squeeze of reassurance—before they’d crept out of the water and onto the yacht.
“The damn thing was lit up like a Christmas tree and crawling with guards,” Rio continued. “They all dressed alike and carried these cute little Uzi’s. It was almost like their boss got off on pretending he had his own little army. But they weren’t any kind of army. Not even close. They were really just street kids in expensive uniforms. They didn’t know how to stand watch, didn’t know what to look for. I swear to God, you guys, we moved right past them. They didn’t have a clue we were there—not with all the noise they were making and the lights shining in their eyes. It was so easy it was a joke.”
“If it were a joke,” Mike Lee asked, “then what’s Chief Taylor doing in the hospital?”
Rio shook his head. “No, that part wasn’t a joke.” Someone on board the yacht had decided to move the party up from down below and go for a midnight swim. Spotlights had switched on, shining down into the ocean, and all hell had broken loose. “But up until the time we were heading back into the water, it was a piece of cake. You know that thing Bobby and Wes can do? The telepathic communication thing?”
Thomas smiled. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen them look at each other and—”
“This time they didn’t,” Rio interrupted his friend. “Look at each other, I mean. You guys, I’m telling you, this was beyond cool—watching them in action like this. There was one guard on the bridge, okay? Other than that, it was deserted and pretty dark. The captain and crew are all below deck, right? Probably getting stoned with the party girls and the guests. So anyway, the chiefs see this guard and they don’t break stride. They just take him temporarily out of the picture before he even sees us, before he can even make a sound. Both of them did it—together, like it’s some kind of choreographed move they’ve been practicing for years. I’m telling you, it was a thing of beauty.”
“They’ve been working with each other for a long time,” Mike pointed out.
“They went through BUD/S together,” Thomas reminded them. “They’ve been swim buddies from day one.”
“It was perfection.” Rio shook his head in admiration. “Sheer perfection. I stood in the guard’s place, in case anyone looked up through the window, then there’d be someone standing there, you know? Meanwhile Skelly disabled the conventional compass. And Bobby broke into the navigational computers in about four seconds.”
That was another freaky thing about Bobby Taylor. He had fingers the size of ballpark franks, but he could manipulate a computer keyboard faster than Rio would have thought humanly possible. He could scan the images that scrolled past on the screen at remarkable speeds, too.
“It took him less than three minutes to do whatever it was he had to do,” he continued, “and then we were out of there—off the bridge. Lucky and Spaceman were in the water, giving us the all-clear.” He shook his head, remembering how close they’d been to slipping silently away into the night. “And then all these babes in bikinis came running up on deck, heading straight for us. It was the absolute worst luck—if we’d been anywhere else on the vessel, the diversion would’ve been perfect. We would’ve been completely invisible. I mean, if you’re an inexperienced guard are you going to be watching to see who’s crawling around in the shadows or are you going to pay attention to the beach bunnies in the thong bikinis? But someone decided to go for a swim off the starboard side—right where we were hiding. These heavy-duty searchlights came on, probably just so the guys on board could watch the women in the water, but wham, there we were. Lit up. There was no place to hide—and nowhere to go but over the side.”
“Bobby picked me up and threw me overboard,” Rio admitted. He must not have been moving fast enough—he was still kicking himself for that. “I didn’t see what happened next, but according to Wes, Bobby stepped in front of him and blocked him from the bullets that started flying while they both went into the water. That was when Bobby caught a few—one in his shoulder, another in the top of his thigh. He was the one who was hurt, but he pulled both me and Wes down, under the water—out of sight and out of range.”
Sirens went on. Rio had been able to hear them along with the tearing sound of the guards’ assault weapons and the screams from the women, even as he was pulled underwater.
“That was when the Swiss Chocolate took off,” Rio said. He had to smile. “Right for Miami.”
They’d surfaced to watch, and Bobby had laughed along with Wes Skelly. Rio and Wes hadn’t even realized he’d been hit. Not until he spoke, in his normal, matter-of-fact manner.
“We better get moving, get back to the boat, ASAP,” Bobby had said evenly. “I’m shark bait.”
“The chief was bleeding badly,” Rio told his friends. “He was hurt worse even than he realized.” And the water hadn’t been cold enough to staunch the flow of his blood. “We did the best we could to tie off his leg, right there in the water. Lucky and Spaceman went on ahead—as fast as they could—to connect with the rubber duck and bring it back toward us.”
Bobby Taylor had been in serious pain, but he’d kept moving, slowly and steadily through the darkness. Apparently he’d been afraid if he didn’t keep moving, if he let Wes tow him back to the little rubber boat, he’d black out. And he didn’t want to do that. The sharks in these waters did pose a serious threat, and if he were unconscious, that could have put Rio and Wes into even more significant danger.
“Wes and I swam alongside Bobby. Wes was talking the entire time—I don’t know how he did it without swallowing a gallon of seawater—bitching at Bobby for playing the hero like that, making fun of him for getting shot in the ass—basically, just ragging on him to keep him alert.
“It wasn’t until Bobby finally slowed to a crawl, until he told us he wasn’t going to make it—that he needed help—that Wes stopped talking. He took Bobby in a lifeguard hold and hauled ass, focusing all his energy on getting back to the rubber duck in record time.”
Rio sat back in his seat. “When we finally connected with the boat, Lucky had already radioed for help. It wasn’t much longer before a helo came to evac Bobby to the hospital.
“He’s going to be okay,” he told both Thomas and Mike again. That was the first thing he’d said about their beloved chief’s injuries, before they’d even sat down to breakfast. “The leg wound wasn’t all that bad, and the bullet that went into his shoulder somehow managed to miss the bone. He’ll be off the active-duty list for a few weeks, maybe a month, but after that…” Rio grinned. “Chief Bobby Taylor will be back. You can count on that.”
Chapter 1
Navy SEAL Chief Bobby Taylor was in trouble.
Big trouble.
“You gotta help me, man,” Wes said. “She’s determined to go, she flippin’ hung up on me and wouldn’t pick up the phone when I called back, and I’m going wheels-up in less than twenty minutes. All I could do was send her e-mail—though fat lotta good that’ll do.”
“She” was Colleen Mary Skelly, his best friend’s little sister. No, not little sister. Younger sister. Colleen wasn’t little, not anymore. She hadn’t been little for a long, long time.
A fact that Wes didn’t seem quite able to grasp.
“If I call her,” Bobby pointed out reasonably, “she’ll just hang up on me, too.”
“I don’t want you to call her.” Wes shouldered his seabag and dropped his bomb. “I want you to go there.”
Bobby laughed. Not aloud. He would never laugh in his best friend’s face when he went into overprotective brother mode. But inside of his own head, he was rolling on the floor in hysterics.
Outside of his head, he only lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “To Boston.” It wasn’t really a question.
Wesley Skelly knew that this time he was asking an awful lot, but he squared his shoulders and looked Bobby straight in the eyes. “Yes.”
Problem was, Wes didn’t know just how much he was asking.
“You want me to take leave and go to Boston,” Bobby didn’t really enjoy making Wes squirm, but he needed his best friend to see just how absurd this sounded, “because you and Colleen got into another argument.” He still didn’t turn it into a question. He just let it quietly hang there.
“No, Bobby,” Wes said, the urgency in his voice turned up to high. “You don’t get it. She’s signed on with some kind of bleeding-heart, touchy-feely volunteer organization, and next she and her touchy-feely friends are flying out to flippin’ Tulgeria.” He said it again, louder, as if it were unprintable, then followed it up by a string of words that truly were.
Bobby could see that Wes was beyond upset. This wasn’t just another ridiculous argument. This was serious.
“She’s going to provide earthquake relief,” Wes continued. “That’s lovely. That’s wonderful, I told her. Be Mother Teresa. Be Florence Nightingale. Have your goody two-shoes permanently glued to your feet. But stay way the hell away from Tulgeria! Tulgeria—the flippin’ terrorist capital of the world!”
“Wes—”
“I tried to get leave,” Wes told him. “I was just in the captain’s office, but with you still down and H. out with food poisoning, I’m mission essential.”
“I’m there,” Bobby said. “I’m on the next flight to Boston.”
Wes was willing to give up Alpha Squad’s current assignment—something he was really looking forward to, something involving plenty of C-4 explosives—to go to Boston. That meant that Colleen wasn’t just pushing her brother’s buttons. That meant she was serious about this. That she really was planning to travel to a part of the world where Bobby himself didn’t feel safe. And he wasn’t a freshly pretty, generously endowed, long-legged—very long-legged—redheaded and extremely female second-year law student.
With a big mouth, a fiery temper and a stubborn streak. No, Colleen’s last name wasn’t Skelly for nothing.
Bobby swore softly. If she’d made up her mind to go, talking her out of it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Thank you for doing this,” Wes said, as if Bobby had already succeeded in keeping Colleen off that international flight. “Look, I gotta run. Literally.”
Wes owed Bobby for this one. But he already knew it. Bobby didn’t bother to say the words aloud.
Wes was almost out the door before he turned back. “Hey, as long as you’re going to Boston…”
Ah. Here it came. Colleen was probably dating some new guy and…Bobby was already shaking his head.
“Check out this lawyer I think Colleen’s dating, would you?” Wes asked.
“No,” Bobby said.
But Wes was already gone.
Colleen Skelly was in trouble.
Big trouble.
It wasn’t fair. The sky was far too blue today for this kind of trouble. The June air held a crisp sweetness that only a New England summer could provide.
But the men standing in front of her provided nothing sweet to the day. And nothing unique to New England, either.
Their kind of hatred, unfortunately, was universal.
She didn’t smile at them. She’d tried smiling in the past, and it hadn’t helped at all.
“Look,” she said, trying to sound as reasonable and calm as she possibly could, given that she was facing down six very big men. Ten pairs of young eyes were watching her, so she kept her temper, kept it cool and clean. “I’m well aware that you don’t like—”
“‘Don’t like’ doesn’t have anything to do with it,” the man at the front of the gang—John Morrison—cut her off. “We don’t want your center here, we don’t want you here.” He looked at the kids, who’d stopped washing Mrs. O’Brien’s car and stood watching the exchange, wide-eyed and dripping with water and suds. “You, Sean Sullivan. Does your father know you’re down here with her? With the hippie chick?”
“Keep going, guys,” Colleen told the kids, giving them what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Hippie chick. Sheesh. “Mrs. O’Brien doesn’t have all day. And there’s a line, remember. This car wash team has a rep for doing a good job—swiftly and efficiently. Let’s not lose any customers over a little distraction.”
She turned back to John Morrison and his gang. And they were a gang, despite the fact that they were all in their late thirties and early forties and led by a respectable local businessman. Well, on second thought, calling Morrison respectable was probably a little too generous.
“Yes, Mr. Sullivan does know where his son is,” she told them levelly. “The St. Margaret’s Junior High Youth Group is helping raise money for the Tulgeria Earthquake Relief Fund. All of the money from this car wash is going to help people who’ve lost their homes and nearly all of their possessions. I don’t see how even you could have a problem with that.”
Morrison bristled.
And Colleen silently berated herself. Despite her efforts, her antagonism and anger toward these Neanderthals had leaked out.
“Why don’t you go back to wherever it was you came from?” he told her harshly. “Get the hell out of our neighborhood and take your damn bleeding-heart liberal ideas and stick them up your—”
No one was going to use that language around her kids. Not while she was in charge. “Out,” she said. “Get out. Shame on you! Get off this property before I wash your mouth out with soap. And charge you for it.”
Oh, that was a big mistake. Her threat hinted at violence—something she had to be careful to avoid with this group.
Yes, she was nearly six feet tall and somewhat solidly built, but she wasn’t a Navy SEAL like her brother and his best friend, Bobby Taylor. Unlike them, she couldn’t take on all six of these guys at once, if it came down to that.
The scary thing was that this was a neighborhood in which some men didn’t particularly have a problem with hitting a woman, no matter her size. And she suspected that John Morrison was one of those men.
She imagined she saw it in his eyes—a barely tempered urge to backhand her—hard—across the face.
Usually she resented her brother’s interference. But right now she found herself wishing he and Bobby were standing right here, beside her.
God knows she’d been yelling for years about her independence, but this wasn’t exactly an independent kind of situation.
She stood her ground all alone, wishing she was holding something more effective against attack than a giant-size sponge, and then glad that she wasn’t. She was just mad enough to turn the hose on them like a pack of wild dogs, and that would only make this worse.
There were children here, and all she needed was Sean or Harry or Melissa to come leaping to her aid. And they would. These kids could be fierce.
But then again, so could she. And she would not let these children get hurt. She would do whatever she had to do, including trying again to make friends with these dirt wads.
“I apologize for losing my temper. Shantel,” she called to one of the girls, her eyes still on Morrison and his goons. “Run inside and see if Father Timothy’s coming out with more of that lemonade soon. Tell him to bring six extra paper cups for Mr. Morrison and his friends. I think we could probably all use some cooling off.”
Maybe that would work. Kill them with kindness. Drown them with lemonade.
The twelve-year-old ran swiftly for the church door.
“How about it, guys?” Colleen forced herself to smile at the men, praying that this time it would work. “Some lemonade?”
Morrison’s expression didn’t change, and she knew that this was where he was going to step forward, inform her he didn’t want any of their lemonade—expletive deleted—and challenge her to just try washing out his mouth. He’d then imply—ridiculously, and solely because of her pro bono legal work for the HIV Testing and AIDS Education Center that was struggling to establish a foothold in this narrow-minded but desperately needy corner of the city—that she was a lesbian and offer to “cure her” in fifteen unforgettable minutes in the closest back alley.
It would almost be funny. Except for the fact that Morrison was dead serious. He’d made similar disgusting threats to her before.
But now, to her surprise, John Morrison didn’t say another word. He just looked long and hard at the group of eleven-and twelve-year-olds standing behind her, then did an about face, muttering something unprintable.
It was amazing. Just like that, he and his boys were walking away.
Colleen stared after them, laughing—softly—in disbelief.
She’d done it. She’d stood her ground, and Morrison had backed down without any interference from the police or the parish priest. Although at 260 pounds, Father Timothy was a heart attack waiting to happen. His usefulness in a fist fight would be extremely limited.
Was it possible Morrison and his clowns were finally hearing what she was saying? Were they finally starting to believe that she wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated by their bogus threats and ugly comments?
Behind her the hoses were still silent, and she turned around. “Okay, you guys, let’s get back to—”
Colleen dropped her sponge.
Bobby Taylor. It was Bobby Taylor. Standing right there, behind her, in the St. Margaret’s parking lot. Somehow, some way, her brother’s best friend had materialized there, as if Colleen’s most ferverent wishes had been granted.
He stood in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, planted in a superhero pose—legs spread and massive arms crossed in front of his equally massive chest. His eyes were hard, and his face stony as he still glared in the direction John Morrison and his gang had departed. He was wearing a version of his “war face.”
He and Wes had completely cracked Colleen up on more than one occasion by practicing their “war faces” in the bathroom mirror during their far-too-infrequent visits home. She’d always thought it was silly—what did the expression on their faces matter when they went into a fight?—until now. Now she saw that that grim look on Bobby’s usually so-agreeably handsome face was startlingly effective. He looked hard and tough and even mean—as if he’d get quite a bit of enjoyment and satisfaction in tearing John Morrison and his friends limb from limb.
But then he looked at her and smiled, and warmth seeped back into his dark-brown eyes.
He had the world’s most beautiful eyes.
“Hey, Colleen,” he said in his matter-of-fact, no worries, easygoing voice. “How’s it going?”
He held out his arms to her, and in a flash she was running across the asphalt and hugging him. He smelled faintly of cigarette smoke—no doubt thanks to her brother, Mr. Just-One-More-Cigarette-Before-I-Quit—and coffee. He was warm and huge and solid and one of very few men in the world who could actually make her feel if not quite petite then pretty darn close.
As long as she’d wished him here, she should have wished for more. Like for him to have shown up with a million-dollar lottery win in his pocket. Or—better yet—a diamond ring and a promise of his undying love.
Yes, she’d had a wild crush on this man for close to ten years now. And just once she wanted him to take her into his arms like this and kiss her senseless, instead of giving her a brotherly noogie on the top of her head as he released her.
Over the past few years she’d imagined she’d seen appreciation in his eyes as he’d looked at her. And once or twice she could’ve sworn she’d actually seen heat—but only when he thought both she and Wes weren’t looking. Bobby was attracted to her. Or at the very least she wished he were. But even if he were, there was no way in hell he’d ever act on that attraction—not with Wes watching his every move and breathing down his neck.
Colleen hugged him tightly. She had only two chances each visit to get this close to him—once during hello and once during goodbye—and she always made sure to take full advantage.
But this time he winced. “Easy.”
Oh, God, he’d been hurt. She pulled back to look up at him, and she actually had to tilt her head. He was that tall.
“I’m a little sore,” he told her, releasing her completely and stepping back, away from her. “Shoulder and leg. Nothing serious. You got me in the dead perfect spot, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I’m taking some down time to get back to speed.”
“What happened—or can you not tell me?”
He shook his head, smiling apologetically. He was such a good-looking man. And that little smile…What would he look like with his thick hair loose from the single braid he wore down his back? Although, she realized, he wasn’t wearing a braid today. Instead, he wore his hair pulled back into a simple ponytail.
Every time she saw him, she expected him to have his hair cut short again. But each time it was even longer.
The first time they’d met, back when he and Wes were training to become SEALs, he’d had a crew cut.
Colleen gestured to the kids, aware they were all still watching. “Come on, gang, let’s keep going here.”
“Are you all right?” Bobby stepped closer to her, to avoid the spray from the hose. “What’s the deal with those guys?”
“You’re why they left,” she realized suddenly. And even though mere minutes ago she’d wished desperately for Bobby’s and her brother’s presence, she felt a flare of anger and frustration. Darn it! She’d wanted Morrison’s retreat to be because of her. As nice as it would be, she couldn’t walk around with a Navy SEAL by her side every minute of every day.
“What was that about, Colleen?” Bobby pressed.
“Nothing,” she said tersely.
He nodded, regarding her steadily. “It didn’t feel like ‘nothing.”’
“Nothing you have to worry about,” she countered. “I’m doing some pro bono legal work for the AIDS Education Center, and not everyone is happy about it. That’s what litigation’s all about. Where’s Wes? Parking the car?”
“Actually, he’s—”
“I know why you’re here. You came to try to talk me out of going to Tulgeria. Wes probably came to forbid me from going. Hah. As if he could.” She picked up her sponge and rinsed it in a bucket. “I’m not going to listen to either of you, so you might as well just save your breath, turn around and go back to California. I’m not fifteen anymore, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Hey, I’ve noticed,” Bobby said. He smiled. “But Wes needs a little work in that area.”
“You know, my living room is completely filled with boxes,” Colleen told him. “Donations of supplies and clothing. I don’t have any room for you guys. I mean, I guess you can throw sleeping bags on the floor of my bedroom, but I swear to God, if Wes snores, I’m kicking him out into the street.”
“No,” Bobby said. “That’s okay. I made hotel reservations. This week is kind of my vacation, and—”
“Where is Wes?” Colleen asked, shading her eyes and looking down the busy city street. “Parking the car in Kuwait?”
“Actually.” Bobby cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
She looked at him.
“Wes is out on an op,” he told her. “It’s not quite Kuwait, but…”
“He asked you to come to Boston,” Colleen realized. “For him. He asked you to play big brother and talk me out of going to Tulgeria, didn’t he? I don’t believe it. And you agreed? You jerk!”
“Colleen, come on. He’s my best friend. He’s worried about you.”
“And you don’t think I worry about him? Or you?” she countered hotly. “Do I come out to California to try to talk you out of risking your lives? Do I ever say, don’t be a SEAL? No! Because I respect you. I respect the choices and decisions you make.”
Father Timothy and Shantel emerged from the church kitchen with a huge thermos of lemonade and a stack of cups.
“Everything all right?” Father T. asked, eyeing Bobby apprehensively.
Bobby held out his hand. “I’m Bobby Taylor, a friend of Colleen’s,” he introduced himself.
“A friend of my brother, Wes’s,” she corrected him as the two men shook hands. “He’s here as a surrogate brother. Father, plug your ears. I’m about to be extremely rude to him.”
Timothy laughed. “I’ll see if the other children want lemonade.”
“Go away,” Colleen told Bobby. “Go home. I don’t want another big brother. I don’t need one. I’ve got plenty already.”
Bobby shook his head. “Wes asked me to—”
Damn Wes. “He probably also asked you to sift through my dresser drawers, too,” she countered, lowering her voice. “Although I’m not sure what you’re going to tell him when you find my collection of whips and chains, my black leather bustier and matching crotchless panties.”
Bobby looked at her, something unrecognizable on his face.
And as Colleen looked back at him, for a moment she spun out, losing herself in the outer-space darkness of his eyes. She’d never imagined outer space could be so very warm.
He looked away, clearly embarrassed, and she realized suddenly that her brother wasn’t here.
Wes wasn’t here.
Bobby was in town without Wes. And without Wes, if she played it right, the rules of this game they’d been playing for the past decade could change.
Radically.
Oh, my goodness.
“Look.” She cleared her throat. “You’re here, so…let’s make the best of this. When’s your return flight?”
He smiled ruefully. “I figured I’d need the full week to talk you out of going.”
He was here for a whole week. Thank you, Lord. “You’re not going to talk me out of anything, but you cling to that thought if it helps you,” she told him.
“I will.” He laughed. “It’s good to see you, Colleen.”
“It’s good to see you, too. Look, as long as there’s only one of you, I can probably make room in my apartment—”
He laughed again. “Thanks, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
“Why waste good money on a hotel room?” she asked. “After all, you’re practically my brother.”
“No,” Bobby said emphatically. “I’m not.”
There was something in his tone that made her bold. Colleen looked at him then in a way she’d never dared let herself look at him before. She let her gaze move down his broad chest, taking in the outline of his muscles, admiring the trim line of his waist and hips. She looked all the way down his long legs and then all the way back up again. She lingered a moment on his beautiful mouth, on his full, gracefully shaped lips, before gazing back into his eyes.
She’d shocked him with that obvious once-over. Well, good. It was the Skelly family motto: everyone needs a good shocking every now and then.
She gave him a decidedly nonsisterly smile. “Glad we got that established. About time, huh?”
He laughed, clearly nervous. “Um…”
“Grab a sponge,” she told him. “We’ve got some cars to wash.”
Chapter 2
Wes would kill him if he found out.
No doubt about it.
If Wes knew even half the thoughts that were steamrolling through Bobby’s head about his sister, Colleen, Bobby would be a dead man.
Lord have mercy on his soul, the woman was hot. She was also funny and smart. Smart enough to have figured out the ultimate way to get back at him for showing up here as her brother’s mouthpiece.
If she were planning to go anywhere besides Tulgeria, Bobby would have turned around. He would have headed for the airport and caught the next flight out of Boston.
Because Colleen was right. He and Wes had absolutely no business telling her what she should and shouldn’t do. She was twenty-three years old—old enough to make her own decisions.
Except both Bobby and Wes had been to Tulgeria, and Colleen hadn’t. No doubt she’d heard stories about the warring factions of terrorists that roamed the dirt-poor countryside. But she hadn’t heard Bobby and Wes’s stories. She didn’t know what they’d seen, with their own eyes.
At least not yet.
But she would before the week was out.
And he’d take the opportunity to find out what that run-in with the local chapter of the KKK had been about, too.
Apparently, like her brother, Wes, trouble followed Colleen Skelly around. And no doubt, also like Wes, when it didn’t follow her, she went out and flagged it down.
But as for right now, Bobby desperately needed to regroup. He had to go to his hotel and take an icy-cold shower. He had to lock himself in his room and away—far away—from Colleen.
Lord save him, somehow he’d given himself away. Somehow she’d figured out that the last thing that came to mind when he looked at her was brotherly love.
He could hear her laughter, rich and thick, from the far end of the parking lot, where she stood talking to a woman in a beat-up station wagon, who’d come to pick up the last of the junior-size car washers.
The late-afternoon sunlight made Colleen’s hair gleam. With the work done, she’d changed into a summer dress and taken down her ponytail, and her hair hung in shimmering red-gold waves around her face.
She was almost unbearably beautiful.
Some people might not agree. And taken individually, most of the features of her face were far from perfect. Her mouth was too wide, her cheeks too full, her nose too small, her face too round, her skin too freckled and prone to sunburn.
Put it all together, though, and the effect was amazing.
And add those heartstoppingly gorgeous eyes…
Colleen’s eyes were sometimes blue, sometimes green, and always dancing with light and life. When she smiled—which was most of the time—her eyes actually twinkled. It was corny but true. Being around Colleen Skelly was like being in the middle of a continuous, joyful, always-in-full-swing party.
And as for her body…
Ouch.
The woman was beyond hot. She wasn’t one of those anemic little bony anorexic girls who were plastered all over TV and magazines, looking more like malnourished 12-year-old boys. No, Colleen Skelly was a woman—with a capital W. She was the kind of woman that a real man could wrap his arms around and really get a grip on. She actually had hips and breasts—and not only was that the understatement of the century, but it was the thought that would send him to hell, directly to hell. ‘Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars,’ do not live another minute longer.
If Wes ever found out that Bobby spent any amount of time at all thinking about Colleen’s breasts, well, that would be it. The end. Game over.
But right now Wes—being more than three thousand miles away—wasn’t Bobby’s problem.
No, Bobby’s problem was that somehow Colleen had realized that he was spending far too much time thinking about her breasts.
She’d figured out that he was completely and mindlessly in lust with her.
And Wesley wasn’t around to save him. Or beat him senseless.
Of course, it was possible that she was just toying with him, just messing with his mind. Look at what you can’t have, you big loser.
After all, she was dating some lawyer. Wasn’t that what Wes had said? And these days, wasn’t dating just a euphemism for in a relationship with? And that was really just a polite way of saying that they were sleeping together, lucky son of a bitch.
Colleen glanced up from her conversation with the station-wagon mom and caught him looking at her butt.
Help.
He’d known that this was going to be a mistake back in California—the second the plea for help had left Wes’s lips. Bobby should have admitted it, right there and then. Don’t send me to Boston, man. I’ve got a crippling jones for your sister. The temptation may be too much for me to handle, and then you’ll kill me.
“I’ve gotta go,” Bobby heard Colleen say as she straightened up. “I’ve got a million things to do before I leave.” She waved to the kids in the back. “Thanks again, guys. You did a terrific job today. I probably won’t see you until I get back, so…”
There was an outcry from the back seat, something Bobby couldn’t make out, but Colleen laughed.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll deliver your letters to Analena and the other kids. And I’ll bring my camera and take pictures. I promise.”
She waved as the station wagon drove away, and then she was walking toward him. As she approached, as she gazed at him, there was a funny little smile on her face.
Bobby was familiar with the full arsenal of devious Skelly smiles, and it was all he could do not to back away from this one.
“I have an errand to run, but after, we could get dinner. Are you hungry?” she asked.
No, he was terrified. He sidled back a bit, but she came right up to him, close enough for him to put his arms around. Close enough to pull her in for a kiss.
He couldn’t kiss her. Don’t you dare, he ordered himself.
He’d wanted to kiss her for years.
“I know this great Chinese place,” she continued, twinkling her eyes at him. “Great food, great atmosphere, too. Very dark and cool and mysterious.”
Oh, no. No, no. Atmosphere was the dead-last thing he wanted or needed. Standing here on the blazing-hot asphalt in broad daylight was bad enough. He had to clench his fists to keep from reaching for her. No way was he trusting himself around Colleen Skelly someplace dark and cool and mysterious.
She touched him, reaching up to brush something off his sleeve, and he jumped about a mile straight up.
Colleen laughed. “Whoa. What’s with you?”
I want to sink back with you on your brightly colored bedspread, undress you with my teeth and lose myself in your laughter, your eyes and the sweet heat of your body.
Not necessarily in that order.
Bobby shrugged, forced a smile. “Sorry.”
“So how ’bout it? You want to get Chinese?”
“Oh,” he said, stepping back a bit and shifting around to pick up his seabag and swing it over his shoulder, glad he had something with which to occupy his hands. “I don’t know. I should probably go try to find my hotel. It’s the Sheraton, just outside of Harvard Square?”
“You’re sure I can’t talk you into spending the night with me?”
It was possible that she had no idea how suggestive it was when she asked a question like that, combined with a smile like that.
On the other hand, she probably knew damn well what she was doing to him. She was, after all, a Skelly.
He laughed. It was either that or cry. Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu. “Why don’t we just plan to have lunch tomorrow?”
Lunch was good. Lunch was safe. It was businesslike and well lit.
“Hmm. I’m working straight through lunch tomorrow,” she told him. “I’m going to be driving the truck all day, picking up donations to take to Tulgeria. But I’d love to have breakfast with you.”
This time it wasn’t so much the words but the way she said it, lowering her voice and smiling slightly.
Bobby could picture her at breakfast—still in bed, her hair sexily mussed, her gorgeous eyes heavy-lidded. Her mouth curving up into a sleepy smile, her breasts soft and full against the almost-transparent cotton of that innocent little nightgown he’d once seen hanging in her bathroom….
Everything about her body language was screaming for him to kiss her. Unless he was seriously mistaken, everything she was saying and doing was one great big, giant green light.
God help him, why did she have to be Wes Skelly’s little sister?
Traffic was heavy through the Back Bay and out toward Cambridge.
For once, Colleen didn’t mind. This was probably the last time for a while that she’d make this drive up Comm. Ave. and over the BU bridge. It was certainly the last time she’d do it in this car.
She refused to feel remorse, refused even to acknowledge the twinge of regret that tightened her throat every time she thought about signing over the title. She’d done too much pro bono work this past year. It was her fault entirely, and the only way to make ends meet now was to sell her car. It was a shame, but she had to do it.
At least this final ride was a memorable one.
She glanced at Bobby Taylor, sitting there beside her, looking like the perfect accessory for a lipstick-red 1969 Ford Mustang, with his long hair and exotic cheekbones and those melted-chocolate eyes.
Yeah, he was another very solid reason why she didn’t mind at all about the traffic.
For the first time she could remember, she had Bobby Taylor alone in her car, and the longer it took to reach Harvard Square, the better. She needed all the time she could to figure out a way to keep him from getting out when they arrived at his hotel.
She’d been pretty obvious so far, and she wondered just how blatant she was going to have to be. She laughed aloud as she imagined herself laying it all on the table, bringing it down to the barest bottom line, asking him if he wanted to get with her, using the rudest, least-elegant language she knew.
“So…what are you going to do tonight?” she asked him instead.
He glanced at her warily, as if he were somehow able to read her mind and knew what she really wanted to ask him.
“Your hair’s getting really long,” she interrupted him before he could even start to answer. “Do you ever wear it down?”
“Not too often,” he told her.
Say it. Just say it. “Not even in bed?”
He hesitated only briefly. “No, I usually sleep with it braided or at least pulled back. Otherwise it takes forever to untangle in the morning.”
She hadn’t meant while he slept. She knew from the way he wasn’t looking at her that he was well aware of what she had meant.
“I guess from your hair that you’re still doing the covert stuff, huh?” she asked. “Oops, sorry. Don’t answer that.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that you would.”
Bobby laughed. He had a great laugh, a low-pitched rumble that was always accompanied by the most gorgeous smile and extremely attractive laughter lines around his eyes. “I think it’s fine if I say yes,” he told her. “And you’re right—the long hair makes it kind of obvious, anyway.”
“So is Wes out on a training op or is it the real thing this time?” she asked.
“I don’t know that myself,” he admitted. “Really,” he added as she shot him a skeptical glance.
The traffic light was red, and she chewed her lip as she braked to a stop and stared at the taillights of the cars in front of them. “It worries me that he’s out there without you.”
When she looked at him again, he was watching her. And he actually held her gaze for the first time since they’d gotten into her car. “He’s good at what he does, Colleen,” he told her gently. She loved the way he said her name.
“I know. It’s just…Well, I don’t worry so much when he’s with you.” She forced a smile. “And I don’t worry so much about you when you’re with him.”
Bobby didn’t smile. He didn’t do much of anything but look into her eyes. No, when he looked at her like that, he wasn’t just looking into her eyes. He was looking into her mind, into her soul. Colleen found herself holding her breath, hypnotized, praying that he would like what he saw. Wishing that he would kiss her.
How could he look at her like that—and the way he’d looked at her in the church parking lot, too—and then not kiss her?
The car behind her honked, and she realized that the light had changed. The line of traffic had already moved. She fumbled with the stick shift, suddenly afraid she was making a huge fool of herself.
One of Wes’s recent e-mails had mentioned that Bobby had finally ended his on-again, off-again relationship with a woman he’d met in Arizona or New Mexico or someplace else equally unlikely, considering the man spent most of his waking hours in the ocean.
Of course, that so-called recent e-mail from her brother had arrived nearly two months ago. A lot might’ve happened in the past two months. Bobby could well have hooked up with someone new. Or gotten back together with what’s-her-name. Kyra Something.
“Wes told me you and Kyra called it quits.” There was absolutely no point in sitting here wondering. So what if she came across as obvious? She was tired of guessing. Did she have a chance here, or didn’t she? Inquiring minds wanted to know.
“Um,” Bobby said. “Yeah, well…She, uh, found someone who wasn’t gone all the time. She’s actually getting married in October.”
“Oh, yikes.” Colleen made a face at him. “The M word.” Wes always sounded as if he were on the verge of a panic attack when that word came up.
But Bobby just smiled. “Yeah, I think she called to tell me about it because she was looking for a counteroffer, but I just couldn’t do it. We had a lot of fun, but…” He shook his head. “I wasn’t about to leave the teams for her, you know, and that’s what she wanted.” He was quiet for a moment. “She deserved way more than I could give her, anyway.”
“And you deserve more than someone who’ll ask you to change your whole life for them,” Colleen countered.
He looked startled at that, as if he’d never considered such a thing, as if he’d viewed himself as the bad guy in the relationship—the primary reason for its failure.
Kyra Whomever was an idiot.
“How about you?” he asked. “Wes said you were dating some lawyer.”
Oh, my God. Was it possible that Bobby was doing a little fishing of his own?
“No,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Nope. That’s funny, but…Oh, I know what he was thinking. I told him I went to Connecticut with Charlie Johannsen. Wes must’ve thought…” She had to laugh. “Charlie’s longtime companion is an actor. He just got cast in a new musical at Goodspeed-at-Chester.”
“Ah,” Bobby said. “Wes will be relieved.”
“Wes never wants me to have any fun,” she countered. “How about you?” She used Bobby’s own words. “Are you seeing someone new?”
“Nope. And Wes isn’t, either.”
Okay. She would talk about Wes. She’d gotten the info she’d wanted.
“Is he still carrying the torch for—” What was her name? “Laura?”
Bobby shook his head. “You’ll have to ask him about that.”
Yeah, like Wes would talk to her about this. “Lana,” she remembered. “He once wrote me this really long e-mail all about her. I think he was drunk when he wrote it.”
“I’m sure he was.” Bobby shook his head. “When you talk to him, Colleen, it’s probably better not to mention her.”
“Oh, my God, is she dead?”
“No. Do you mind if we talk about something else?”
He was the one who’d brought up Wes in the first place. “Not at all.”
Silence.
Colleen waited for him to start a new topic of conversation—anything that wasn’t about Wes—but he just sat there, distracted by the sight of the river out the window.
“Do you want to go see a movie later?” she finally asked. “Or we could rent a video. I’ve got an appointment at six-thirty with a guy who wants to buy my car. If everything goes right, I’ll be done by seven-thirty, easy.”
That got his attention, just the way she knew it would. “You’re selling your car? This car?”
When she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, this Mustang was all she could talk about. But people’s priorities changed. It wasn’t going to be easy to sell it, but she refused to let it be the end of her world—a world that was so much wider now, extending all the way to Tulgeria and beyond.
She made herself smile at him. “I am. Law school’s expensive.”
“Colleen, if you need a loan—”
“I’ve got a loan. Believe me I’ve got many loans. I’ve got loans to pay off loans. I’ve got—”
“It took you five years to rebuild this car. To find authentic parts and—”
“And now someone’s going to pay top dollar for a very shiny, very well-maintained vintage Mustang that handles remarkably badly in the snow. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I don’t need a car—especially not one that skids if you so much as whisper the word ice. My apartment’s two minutes from the T, and frankly, I have better things to spend my money on than parking tickets and gasoline.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I have an idea. I’ve got some money saved. I’ll lend you what you need—interest free—and we can take the next week and drive this car back to your parents’ house in Oklahoma, garage it there. Then in a few years when you graduate—”
“Nice try,” Colleen told him. “But my travel itinerary has me going to Tulgeria next Thursday. Oklahoma’s not exactly in the flight path.”
“Think about it this way—if you don’t go to Tulgeria, you get to keep your car and have an interest-free loan.”
She took advantage of another red light to turn and look at him. “Are you attempting to bribe me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
She had to laugh. “You really want me to stay home? It’s gonna cost you. A million dollars, babe. I’ll accept nothing less.”
He rolled his eyes. “Colleen—”
“Put up or shut up.”
“Seriously, Colleen, I’ve been to Tulgeria and—”
“I’m dead serious, Robert. And if you want to lecture me about the dangers of Tulgeria, you’ve got to buy me dinner. But first you’ve got to come with me while I sell my car—make sure the buyer’s really a buyer and not some psycho killer who answers vintage car ads in the Boston Globe.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course I’ll come with you.”
Jackpot. “Great,” Colleen said. “We’ll go take care of business, then drop your stuff at your hotel before we grab some dinner. Is that a plan?”
He looked at her. “I never really stood a chance here, did I?”
She smiled at him happily. “Nope.”
Bobby nodded, then turned to look out the window. He murmured something that Colleen wasn’t quite sure she caught, but it sounded an awful lot like, “I’m a dead man.”
Chapter 3
Dark, cool and mysterious.
Somehow, despite his best intentions, Bobby had ended up sitting across from Colleen in a restaurant that was decidedly dark, cool and mysterious.
The food was great. Colleen had been right about that, too.
Although she didn’t seem to be eating too much.
The meeting with the buyer had gone well. The man had accepted her price for the car—no haggling.
It turned out that that meeting had been held in the well-lit office of a reputable escrow agent, complete with security guard. Colleen had known damn well there was absolutely no danger from psycho killers or anyone else.
Still, Bobby had been glad that he was there while the buyer handed over a certified check and she handed over the title and keys to the Mustang.
She’d smiled and even laughed, but it was brittle, and he’d wanted to touch her. But he hadn’t. He knew that he couldn’t. Even just a hand on her shoulder would have been too intimate. And if she’d leaned back into him, he would have put his arms around her. And if he’d done that there in the office, he would have done it again, later, when they were alone, and there was no telling where that might lead.
No, strike that. Bobby knew damn well it would lead to him kissing her. And that could and would lead to a full meltdown, a complete and utter dissolving of his defenses and resolve.
It made him feel like a total skeeve. What kind of friend could he be to Colleen if he couldn’t even offer her the most basic form of comfort as a hand on her shoulder? Was he really so weak that he couldn’t control himself around her?
Yes.
The answer was a resounding, unchallenged yes.
No doubt about it—he was scum.
After leaving the escrow office, they’d taken the T into Harvard Square. Colleen had kept up a fairly steady stream of conversation. About law school. About her roommate—a woman named Ashley who’d gone back to Scarsdale for the summer to work in her father’s law office, but who still sent monthly checks for her share of the rent, who didn’t have the nerve to tell her father that, like Colleen, she’d far rather be a public defender and a pro bono civil litigant than a highly paid corporate tax attorney.
Bobby had checked into his hotel and given his bag and a tip to the bellhop. He didn’t dare take it up to his room himself—not with Colleen trailing behind, no way. That transaction only took a few minutes, and then they were back out in the warm summer night.
The restaurant was only a short walk into Harvard Square. As he sat down across from Colleen, as he gazed at her pretty face in the dim candlelight, he’d ordered a cola. He was dying for a beer, but there was no way he’d trust himself to have even one. If he was going to survive this, he needed all of his wits about him.
They talked about the menu, about food—a nice safe topic—for a while. And then their order came, and Bobby ate while Colleen pushed the food around on her plate.
She was quiet by then, too. It was unusual to be around a Skelly who wasn’t constantly talking.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She looked up at him, and he realized that there were tears in her eyes. She shook her head. But then she forced a smile. “I’m just being stupid,” she said before the smile wavered and disappeared. “I’m sorry.”
She pushed herself out of the booth and would have rushed past him, toward the rest rooms at the back of the restaurant, if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her hand. He slid out of the bench seat, too, still holding on to her. It took him only a second to pull more than enough dollars to cover the bill out of his pocket and toss it onto the table.
This place had a rear exit. He’d automatically noted it when they’d first came in—years of practice in preparing an escape route—and he led her to it now, pushing open the door.
They had to go up a few steps, but then they were outside, on a side street. It was just a stone’s throw to Brattle Street, but they were still far enough from the circus-like atmosphere of Harvard Square on a summer night to have a sense of distance and seclusion from the crowds.
“I’m sorry,” Colleen said again, trying to wipe away her tears before they even fell. “I’m stupid—it’s just a stupid car.”
Bobby had something very close to an out-of-body experience. He saw himself standing there, in the shadows, next to her. Helplessly, with a sense of total doom, he watched himself reach for her, pull her close and enfold her in his arms.
Oh, dear Lord, she was so soft. And she held him tightly, her arms around his waist, her face buried in his shoulder as she quietly tried not to cry.
Don’t do this. Get away from her. You’re asking for trouble.
He must’ve made some kind of awful strangled sound because Colleen lifted her head and looked up at him. “Oh, no, am I hurting you?”
“No,” he said. No, she was killing him. And count on Colleen to worry about someone else during a moment when most people wouldn’t have been thinking of anyone but themselves.
Tears glistened on her cheeks and sparkled in her eyelashes, and the tip of her nose was red. Bozo the Clown, he and Wes had teased her whenever she’d cried back when she was thirteen.
She wasn’t thirteen anymore.
Don’t kiss her. Don’t do it.
Bobby clenched his teeth and thought about Wes. He pictured the look on his best friend’s face as he tried to explain. See, she was right there, man, in my arms, and her mouth looked so soft and beautiful, and her body was so warm and lush and…
She put her head back against his shoulder with a sigh, and Bobby realized he was running his fingers through the silk of her hair. She had hair like a baby’s, soft and fine.
He knew he should make himself stop, but he couldn’t. He’d wanted to touch her hair for more than four years now.
Besides, she really seemed to like it.
“You must think I’m a loser,” she murmured.
“No.”
She laughed softly. “Yeah, well, I am. Crying over a car. How dumb can I be?” She sighed. “It’s just…When I was seventeen, I’d imagined I’d have that car forever—you know, hand it down to my grandchildren? I say it now, and it sounds stupid, but it didn’t feel stupid back then.”
The deal she’d just made gave her twenty-four hours to change her mind.
“It’s not too late,” he reminded her. He reminded himself, too. He could gently release her, take one step back, then two. He could—without touching her again—lead her back to the lights and crowd in Harvard Square. And then he’d never even have to mention anything to Wes. Because nothing would have happened.
But he didn’t move. He told himself he would be okay, that he could handle this—as long as he didn’t look into her eyes.
“No, I’m selling it,” she told him, pulling back slightly to look up at him, wiping her nose on a tissue she’d taken from her shoulder pack. “I’ve made up my mind. I need this money. I loved that car, but I love going to law school, too. I love the work I do, I love being able to make a difference.”
She was looking at him so earnestly he forgot about not looking into her eyes until it was too late. Until the earnest look morphed into something else, something loaded with longing and spiked with desire.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and her lips parted slightly, and when she looked once again into his eyes, he knew. She wanted to kiss him nearly as much as he wanted to kiss her.
Don’t do this. Don’t…
He could feel his heart pounding, hear the roar of his blood surging through his body, drowning out the sounds of the city night, blocking out all reason and harsh reality.
He couldn’t not kiss her. How could he keep from kissing her when he needed to kiss her as much as he needed to fill his lungs with air?
But she didn’t give him a chance to lean down toward her. She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth across his in a kiss that was so achingly sweet that he thought for one paralyzingly weak-kneed moment he just might faint.
But she stepped back just a little to look at him again, to smile hesitantly into his eyes before reaching up, her hand cool against the too-hot back of his neck as she pulled his head down to kiss him again.
Her lips were so soft, so cool, so sweetly uncertain, such a contrast to the way his heart was hammering and to the tight, hot sensation in his rib cage—as if his entire chest were about to burst.
He was afraid to move. He was afraid to kiss her back, for fear he’d scare her to death with his hunger for her. He didn’t even know how to kiss like this—with such delicate tenderness.
But he liked it. Lord, he liked it an awful lot. He’d had his share of women who’d given him deep, wet, soul kisses, sucking his tongue into their mouths in a decidedly unsubtle imitation of what they wanted to do with him later, in private.
But those kisses hadn’t been even a fraction as sexy as what Colleen was doing to him right now.
She kissed his mouth, his chin and then his mouth again, her own lips slightly parted. She barely touched him. In fact, she touched him more with her breath—soft, unsteady puffs of air that caressed him enticingly.
He tried to kiss her the same way, tried to touch her without really touching her, skimming his hands down her back, his palms tingling from the almost-contact. It made him dizzy with anticipation.
Incredible anticipation.
She touched his lips with her tongue—just the very tiniest tip of her tongue—and pleasure crashed through him. It was so intense that for one blindingly unsteady moment he was afraid he might actually have embarrassed himself beyond recovery.
From just a kiss.
But he hadn’t. Not yet, anyway. Still, he couldn’t take it anymore, not another second longer, and he crushed her to him, filling his hands with the softness of her body, sweeping his tongue into her mouth.
She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her pack fell to the ground, and she kissed him back enthusiastically, welcoming the ferocity of his kisses, winding her arms around his neck, pressing herself even more tightly against him.
It was the heaven he’d dreamed of all these years.
Bobby kissed her, again and again—deep, explosively hungry kisses that she fired right back at him. She opened herself to him, wrapping one of her legs around his, moaning her pleasure as he filled his hand with her breast.
He caught himself glancing up, scanning a nearby narrow alleyway between two buildings, estimating whether it was dark enough for them to slip inside, dark enough for him to unzip his shorts and pull up her skirt, dark enough for him to take her, right there, beneath someone’s kitchen window, with her legs around his waist and her back against the roughness of the brick wall.
He’d pulled her halfway into the alley before reality came screaming through.
Wes’s sister. This was Wes’s sister.
He had his tongue in Wes’s sister’s mouth. One hand was filled with the softness of Wes’s sister’s derriere as he pressed her hips hard against his arousal. His other hand was up Wes’s sister’s shirt.
Had he completely lost his mind?
Yes.
Bobby pulled back, breathing hard.
That was almost worse, because now he had to look at her. She was breathing hard, too, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, her nipples taut and clearly outlined beneath her shirt, her face flushed, her lips swollen and moist from his kisses.
But it was her eyes that almost killed him. They were smoky with desire, brimming with fire and unresolved passion.
“Let’s go to my apartment,” she whispered, her voice even huskier than usual.
Oh, God.
“I can’t.” His voice cracked, making him sound even more pathetic.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I’m—” she shook her head “—I’m sorry, I thought…You said you weren’t seeing anyone.”
“No.” He shook his head, tried to catch his breath. “It’s not that.”
“Then why stop?”
He couldn’t respond. What could he possibly say? But shaking his head again wasn’t a good enough response for Colleen.
“You really don’t want to come back to my place and—”
“I can’t. I just can’t.” He cut her off, unable to bear finding out just which words she would use to describe what they’d do if he did go home with her tonight. Whether she called it making love or something more crudely to the point, however she couched it, it would be a total turn-on.
And he was already way too turned on.
She took a step toward him, and he took a step back.
“You’re serious,” she said. “You really don’t want to?”
He couldn’t let her think that. “I want to,” he told her. “God, I want to. More than you could possibly know. I just…I can’t.”
“What, have you taken some kind of vow of abstinence?”
Somehow he managed to smile at her. “Sort of.”
Just like that she understood. He saw the realization dawn in her eyes and flare rapidly into anger. “Wesley,” she said. “This is about my brother, isn’t it?”
Bobby knew enough not to lie to her. “He’s my best friend.”
She was furious. “What did he do? Warn you to stay away from me? Did he tell you not to touch me? Did he tell you not to—”
“No. He warned me not even to think about it.” Wes had said it jokingly, one night on liberty when they’d each had five or six too many beers. Wes hadn’t really believed it was a warning he’d needed to give his best friend.
Colleen bristled. “Well, you know what? Wes can’t tell me what to think, and I’ve been thinking about it. For a long time.”
Bobby gazed at her. Suddenly it was hard to breathe again. A long time. “Really?”
She nodded, her anger subdued, as if she were suddenly shy. She looked everywhere but in his eyes. “Yeah. Wasn’t that kind of obvious from the way I jumped you?”
“I thought I jumped you.”
Colleen looked at him then, hope in her eyes. “Please come home with me. I really want you to—I want to make love to you, Bobby. You’re only here for a week—let’s not waste a minute.”
Oh, God, she’d said it. Bobby couldn’t bear to look at her, so he closed his eyes. “Colleen, I promised Wes I’d look out for you. That I’d take care of you.”
“Perfect.” She bent down to pick up her bag. “Take care of me. Please.”
Oh, man. He laughed because, despite his agony, he found her funny as hell. “I’m positive he didn’t mean it like that.”
“You know, he doesn’t need to find out.”
Bobby braced himself and met her gaze. “I can’t be that kind of friend to him.”
She sighed. “Terrific. Now I feel like a total worm.” She started toward Brattle Street. “I think, considering all things, we should skip the movie. I’m going home. If you change your mind…”
“I won’t.”
“…you know where to find me.” Bobby followed her about a dozen more steps, and she turned around. “Are you coming with me after all?”
“It’s getting late. I’ll see you home.”
“No,” Colleen said. “Thank you, but no.”
Bobby knew not to press it. That look in her eyes was one he’d seen far too many times on a completely different Skelly.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Me, too,” she told him before she walked away.
The sidewalk wasn’t as crowded as it had been just a few hours ago, so Bobby let her get a good head start before he started after her.
He followed her all the way home, making certain she was safe without letting her see him again.
And then he stood there, outside her apartment building, watching the lights go on in her apartment, angry and frustrated and dying to be up there with her, and wondering what on earth he was going to do now.
Chapter 4
Colleen had printed out the e-mail late last night, and she now held it tightly in her hand as she approached Bobby.
He was exactly where he’d said he would be when he’d called—sitting on the grassy slope along the Charles River, looking out at the water, sipping coffee through a hot cup with a plastic lid.
He saw her coming and got to his feet. “Thanks for meeting me,” he called.
He was so serious—no easygoing smile on his face. Or maybe he was nervous. It was hard to be sure. Unlike Wes, who twitched and bounced off the walls at twice his normal frenetic speed when he was nervous, Bobby showed no outward sign.
He didn’t fiddle with his coffee cup. He just held it serenely. He’d gotten them both large cups, but in his hand, large looked small.
Colleen was going to have to hold hers with both hands.
He didn’t tap his foot. He didn’t nervously clench his teeth. He didn’t chew his lip.
He just stood there and breathed as he solemnly watched her approach.
He’d called at 6:30 this morning. She’d just barely fallen asleep after a night spent mostly tossing and turning—and analyzing everything she’d done and said last night, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong.
She’d come to the conclusion that she’d done everything wrong. Starting with crying over a motor vehicle and ending with darn near throwing herself at the man.
This morning Bobby had apologized for calling so early and had told her he hadn’t been sure what time she was leaving for work today. He’d remembered that she was driving the truck, remembered their tentative plan to meet for breakfast.
Last night she’d wanted him to stay for breakfast.
But he hadn’t—because of some stupid idea that by having a relationship with her, he’d be betraying Wes.
Wes, whose life he’d most likely saved, probably countless times. Including, so it seemed, one definite time just a few short weeks ago.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you’d been shot.” Colleen didn’t bother saying good morning. She just thrust the copy of Wes’s e-mail at him.
He took it and read it quickly. It wasn’t very long. Just a short, fast, grammatically creative hello from Wes, who didn’t report where he was, who really just wanted to make sure Bobby had arrived in Boston. He mentioned almost in passing that Bobby had recently been shot while out in the real world—the SEALs’ nickname for a real mission or operation.
They had been somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, Wes reported vaguely, and due to circumstances out of their control, they’d been discovered. Men with assault weapons started shooting, and Bobby had stepped in front of Wes, taking some bullets and saving his scrawny hide.
“Be nice to him,” Wes had written to Colleen. “He nearly died. He almost got his butt shot off, and his shoulder’s still giving him pain. Treat him kindly. I’ll call as soon as I’m back in the States.”
“If he can say all that in an e-mail,” Colleen told Bobby sternly, “you could have told me at least a little about what happened. You could have told me you were shot instead of letting me think you’d hurt yourself in some normal way—like pulling a muscle playing basketball.”
He handed her the piece of paper. “I didn’t think it was useful information,” he admitted. “I mean, what good is telling you that a bunch of bad guys with guns tried to kill your brother a few weeks ago? Does knowing that really help you in any way?”
“Yes, because not knowing hurts. You don’t need to protect me from the truth,” Colleen told him fiercely. “I’m not a little girl anymore.” She rolled her eyes. “I thought we cleared that up last night.”
Last night. When some extremely passionate kisses had nearly led to getting it on right out in the open, in an alley not far from Harvard Square.
“I got coffee and muffins,” Bobby said, deftly changing the subject. “Do you have time to sit and talk?”
Colleen watched as he lowered himself back onto the grass. Gingerly. Why hadn’t she noticed that last night? She was so self-absorbed. “Yes. Great. Let’s talk. You can start by telling me how many times you were shot and exactly where.”
He glanced at her as she sat down beside him, amusement in his dark eyes. “Trust Wes to be melodramatic. I took a round in the upper leg that bled kind of heavily. It’s fine now—no problem.” He pulled up the baggy leg of his shorts to reveal a deeply tanned, enormously muscular thigh. There was a fresh pink scar up high on his leg. Where it would really hurt a whole lot to be shot. Where there were major veins—or were they arteries?—which, if opened, could easily cause a man to bleed to death very quickly.
Wes hadn’t been melodramatic at all. Colleen couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stop staring at that scar. Bobby could have died.
“It’s my shoulder that’s giving me the trouble,” Bobby continued, pulling his shorts leg back down. “I was lucky I didn’t break a bone, but it’s still pretty sore. I’ve got limited mobility right now—which is frustrating. I can’t lift my arm much higher than this.”
He demonstrated, and Colleen realized that his ponytail wasn’t a fashion statement after all. He was wearing his hair like that because he wasn’t physically able to put it back in his usual neat braid.
“I’m supposed to take it easy,” he told her. “You know, not push it for another week.”
He handed her a cup of coffee and held open a bag that contained about a half a dozen enormous muffins. She shook her head. Her appetite was gone.
“Can you do me a favor?” she asked. “Next time you or Wes get hurt, even if it’s just something really little, will you call me and let me know? Please? Otherwise I’m just going to worry about you all the time.”
Bobby shook his head. “Colleen…”
“Don’t Colleen me,” she countered. “Just promise.”
He looked at her. Sighed. “I promise. But—”
“No buts.”
He started to say something, then stopped, shaking his head instead. No doubt he’d spent enough time around Skellys to know arguing was useless. Instead he took a sip of his coffee and gazed out at the river.
“How many times have you saved Wes’s life?” she asked him, suddenly needing to know.
“I don’t know. I think I lost count somewhere between two and three million.” The laughter lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“Very funny.”
“It’s just not that big a deal,” he said.
“It is to me,” she returned. “And I’m betting it’s a pretty big deal to my brother, too.”
“It’s really only a big deal to him because I’m winning,” Bobby admitted.
At first his words didn’t make sense. And then they made too much sense. “You guys keep score?” she asked in disbelief. “You have some kind of contest going…?”
Amusement danced in his eyes. “Twelve to five and a half. My favor.”
“Five and a half?” she echoed.
“He got a half point for getting me back to the boat in one piece this last time,” he explained. “He couldn’t get a full point because it was partially his fault I needed his help in the first place.”
He was laughing at her. Oh, he wasn’t actually laughing aloud, but Colleen knew that, inside, he was silently chortling away.
“You know,” she said with a completely straight face, “it seems only fair that if you save someone’s life that many times, you ought to be able to have wild sex with that person’s sister, guilt free.”
Bobby choked on his coffee. Served him right.
“So what are you doing tonight?” Colleen asked, still in that same innocent voice.
He coughed even harder, trying to get the liquid out of his lungs.
‘“Be nice to him,’” she read aloud from Wes’s e-mail. She held it out for him to see. “See, it says it right there.”
“That’s not what Wes meant,” Bobby managed to gasp.
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
His eyes were tearing, and he still seemed to have trouble breathing. “You’re killing me.”
“Good. I’ve got to go, so—” She started to stand up.
“Wait.” He coughed again, tugging her back down beside him. “Please.” He drew in a breath, and although he managed not to cough, he had to clear his throat several times. “I really need to talk to you about what happened last night.”
“Don’t you mean what didn’t happen?” She pretended to be fascinated with her coffee cup, with folding up the little flap on the plastic lid so that she could take a sip without it bumping into her nose.
What had happened last night was that she had found out—the hard way—that Bobby Taylor didn’t want her. At least not enough to take what she’d offered. At least not as much as she wanted him. It was possible he’d only used his fear of Wes’s disapproval as an excuse to keep from going home with her. After all, it had worked, hadn’t it? It had worked very well.
This morning she could only pretend not to care. She could be flip and say outrageous things, but the truth was, she was both embarrassed and afraid of what he might want to say to her.
Of course, if ever there were a perfect time for him to confess his undying love, it would be now. She supposed it was possible that he would haltingly tell her he’d fallen in love with her years ago, that he’d worshiped her from afar for all this time and now that they’d finally kissed, he couldn’t bear to be apart from her any longer.
Bobby cleared his throat again. “Colleen, I, um…I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
Or he could say that. He could give her the “let’s stay friends” speech. She’d heard it before. It would contain the word friend at least seven more times. He would say mistake and sorry both at least twice and honest at least once. And he’d tell her that he hoped what happened last night wouldn’t change things between them. Her friendship was very important to him.
“I really care about you,” he told her. “But I have to be honest. What happened last night was, well, it was a mistake.”
Yup. She’d definitely heard it before. She could have written it out for him on a three-by-five-card. Saved him some time.
“I know that I said last night that I couldn’t…that we couldn’t…because of Wes and, well, I need you to know that there’s more to it than that.”
Yeah, she’d suspected that.
“I can’t possibly be what you really want,” he said quietly.
Now that was different. She’d never heard that before.
“I’m not…” He started to continue, but then he shook his head and got back on track. “You mean too much to me. I can’t take advantage of you, I can’t. I’m ten years older than you, and—Colleen, I knew you when you were thirteen—that’s just too weird. It would be crazy, it wouldn’t go anywhere. It couldn’t. I couldn’t. We’re too different and…” He swore softly, vehemently. “I really am sorry.”
He looked about as miserable as she was feeling. Except he probably wasn’t embarrassed to death. What had she been thinking, to throw herself at him like that last night?
She closed her eyes, feeling very young and very foolish—as well as ancient beyond her years. How could this be happening again? What was it about her that made men only want to be her friend?
She supposed she should be thankful. This time she got the “let’s stay friends” speech before she’d gone to bed with the guy. That had been the lowest of a number of low-relationship moments. Or it should have been. Despite the fact that Bobby obviously cared enough not to let it get that far, he didn’t care about her the way she wanted him to. And that hurt remarkably badly.
She stood up, brushing off the seat of her shorts. “I know you’re probably not done. You still have one more mistake and another sorry to go, but I’ll say ’em for you, okay? I’m sorry, too. The mistake was mine. Thanks for the coffee.”
Colleen held her head up as she quickly walked away. And she didn’t look back. She’d learned the hard way never to look back after the “let’s stay friends” speech. And never to cry, either. After all, smart friends didn’t cry when stupid, idiotic, completely clueless friends rejected them.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she forced them back.
God, she was such a fool.
Bobby lay back on the grass and stared up at the sky.
In theory, telling Colleen that they should stay friends instead of rip each other’s clothes off had seemed to be the least painful way of neatly dealing with something that was on the verge of turning into an emotional and physical bloodbath.
Physical—because if Wes found out that Bobby had messed with his little sister, he would have been mad enough to reach down Bobby’s throat and rip his lungs out.
Bobby had been direct with Colleen. He’d been swift and, if not quite honest, he’d certainly been sincere.
Yet somehow he’d managed to hurt her. He’d seen it in her eyes as she’d turned and walked away.
Damn. Hurting her was the dead last thing he’d wanted to do.
That entire conversation had been impossibly difficult. He’d been on the verge of telling her the truth—that he hadn’t slept at all last night, that he’d spent the night alternately congratulating himself for doing the right thing and cursing himself for being an idiot.
Last night she made it clear that she wanted him. And Lord knows that the last thing he honestly wanted was to stay mere friends with her. In truth, he wanted to get naked with her—and stay naked for the entire rest of this week.
But he knew he wasn’t the kind of man Colleen Skelly needed. She needed someone who would be there for her. Someone who came home every night without fail. Someone who could take care of her the way she deserved to be taken care of.
Someone who wanted more than a week of hot sex.
He didn’t want another long-distance relationship. He couldn’t take it. He’d just gotten out of one of those, and it wasn’t much fun.
And would be even less fun with Colleen Skelly—because after Wes found out that Bobby was playing around with his sister, Wes would come after him with his diving knife.
Well, maybe not, but certainly he and Wes would argue. And Colleen and Wes would argue. And that was an awful lot of pain, considering Bobby would spend most of his time three thousand miles away from her, him missing her with every breath he took, her missing him, too.
No, hurting Colleen was bad, but telling her the truth would hurt them both even more in the long run.
Chapter 5
Colleen had just finished picking up a load of blankets collected by a women’s church group and was on her way to a half dozen senior centers to pick up their donations when a taxi pulled up. It stopped directly in front of her, blocking her exit from the parking lot with a TV-cop-drama squealing of brakes.
Her first thought was that someone was late to their own wedding. But other than the representative from the ladies’ auxiliary who had handed over the bundles of blankets, the building had been silent and empty.
Her second thought was that someone was in a major hurry to repent their sins, probably before they sinned again. She had to laugh at that image, but her laughter faded as the absolute last person she’d expected to see here at the St. Augustus Church climbed out of the cab.
Bobby Taylor.
His hair had partially fallen out of his ponytail, and his face was covered with a sheen of perspiration, as if he’d been running. He ignored both his sweat and his hair as he came around to the passenger side of the truck’s cab. She leaned across the bench seat, unlocked the door, and he opened it.
“Thank God,” he said as if he really meant it. “I’ve been following you for an hour now.”
More than just his face was sweaty. His shirt was as soaked as if he’d been running a marathon in this heat.
Wes. Her brother was the only reason she could come up with for Bobby to search her out so desperately. Wes had to have been injured. Or—please, God, no—dead.
Colleen flashed hot and then cold. “Oh, no,” she said. “What happened? How bad is it?”
Bobby stared at her. “Then you haven’t heard? I was ready to yell at you because I thought you knew. I thought you went out to make these pickups, anyway.”
“Just tell me he’s not dead,” she begged him. She’d lived through one dead brother—it was an experience she never wanted to repeat. “I can take anything as long as he’s not dead.”
His expression became one of even more perplexity as he climbed into the air-conditioned cab and closed the door. “He?” he asked. “It was a woman who was attacked. She’s in ICU, in a coma, at Mass General.”
A woman? At Mass General Hospital…? Now it was Colleen’s turn to stare at him stupidly. “You didn’t track me down because Wes is hurt?”
“Wes?” Bobby shook his head as he leaned forward to turn the air conditioner fan to high. “No, I’m sure he’s fine. The mission was probably only a training op. He wouldn’t have been able to send e-mail if it were the real thing.”
“Then what’s going on?” Colleen’s relief was mixed with irritation. He had a lot of nerve, coming after her like this and scaring her to death.
“Andrea Barker,” he explained. “One of the chief administrators of the AIDS Education Center. She was found badly beaten—barely breathing—outside of her home in Newton. I saw it in the paper.”
Colleen nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I heard about that this morning. That’s really awful. I don’t know her that well—we talked on the phone only once. I’ve mostly met with her assistant when dealing with the center.”
“So you did know she’s in the hospital.” Something very much like anger flashed in his eyes, and his usually pleasantly relaxed mouth was back to a hard, grim line.
Bobby Taylor was mad at her. It was something Colleen had never experienced before. She hadn’t thought he was capable of getting mad—he was so laid-back. Even more mind-blowing was the fact that she truly had no clue what she’d done to get him so upset.
“The article went into some depth about the problem they’ve—you’ve—You’re part of them, providing legal services at no cost, right? The problem you’ve been having establishing a center in this one particular neighborhood in Boston. The same neighborhood where you just happened to be threatened yesterday while having a car wash…?”
And Colleen understood. She laughed in disbelief. “You really think the attack on Andrea Barker had something to do with her work for the education center?”
Bobby didn’t shout at her the way Wesley did when he got mad. He spoke quietly, evenly, his voice dangerously soft. Combined with the spark of anger in his eyes, it was far more effective than any temper tantrum Wes had ever thrown. “And you don’t?”
“No. Come on, Bobby. Don’t be so paranoid. Look, I heard that the police theory is she startled a burglar coming out of her house.”
“I heard a partial list of her injuries,” Bobby countered, still in that same quietly intense voice. She had to wonder, what would ever set him off, make him raise his voice? What—if anything—would make this man lose his cool and detonate? If it ever happened, boy, look out. It would probably be quite an impressive show.
“They weren’t the kind of injuries a woman would get from a burglar,” he continued, “whose primary goal would have been to knock her down so he could run away as quickly as possible. No, I’m sorry, Colleen. I know you want to believe otherwise, but this woman was beaten deliberately, and if I know it, then the police know it, too. The burglar story is probably just something they threw out to the press, to make the real perpetrator think he’s home-free.”
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