Dangerous Promise (The Protector) Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE Assess the situation. Protect the client. Eliminate the threat. —Nina Bronson Ewan Donahue looked like the worst kind of trouble. And, despite those broad shoulders, the sleekly perfect slope of his jaw as he turned to glare at her, and that habit he had of tossing his slightly overlong dark hair out of his flashing hazel eyes, he was not the sort of trouble Nina Bronson was going to let herself get into. Not because he was her boss, since technically he was just the guy paying for her services and not the person in charge of her. No, Nina had a lot of other reasons for putting distance between herself and one of the world’s most eligible billionaires, and Donahue himself had already made it clear precisely what he thought about her. He’d looked her dead in the eyes but gripped her hand a few seconds too briefly to keep their greeting polite. As though her skin had burned him. Like there was something distasteful about touching her. She couldn’t be surprised at his reaction

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO He should fire her and demand his money back—it had been an obscene amount of money, even for Ewan, who hadn’t bothered to ask the price of an item or service in at least a decade. The cost of keeping him alive hadn’t mattered to him, but he hadn’t realized the services would come along with such a load of bullshit. Selective sight and hearing, she’d said, as though this was news to him. What Nina didn’t know was that Ewan had funded the research that allowed for those functions in the first place, along with most of the others she could brag about. More than funded; he’d invented and programmed the original tech and enhancement software that had transformed her from a normal, human woman into some kind of super soldier. Not a cyborg, he reminded himself as he used the toilet, his back facing her but with full awareness that she stood close enough to grab him if she wanted to, or that all she had to do was lean in a little bit to see everything nature had blessed him with.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE Donahue had ordered a special tech crew to come in and clean his bathroom of any residual gas as well as test to see what kind it had been, and he hadn’t resisted at all when Nina had given each of the crew members a complete pat down, one at a time, before she’d let any of them over the front door threshold. They’d come in with their gear and been gone in an hour or so, promising results as soon as possible. Donahue had been very quiet for the rest of the morning, at least with her. The medicinal gel on Nina’s eyes was gooey and disgusting, but it had thoroughly rinsed them free of whatever gas had been coming out of that tube. She’d be coughing a bit for the next few days as her lungs recovered, but she’d refused the inhaler Donahue’s personal doc had offered. Irritated lungs weren’t going to slow her down. If anything, Nina was glad that the first attack had happened so fast and had been so easy to neutralize. She was no stranger to hand-to-hand combat or weaponry enga

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR It had been a long time since there’d been anyone in Ewan’s life who’d felt free enough to give him a hard time the way Nina seemed to feel so free doing. He didn’t count the journalists or social media commentators who viewed him as fair game and tore him apart for everything from his politics to his choice of socks. Or, of course, the various self-appointed social justice groups like the League of Humanity that had made it their goal to wipe him off the face of the earth. He meant just regular people. Like . . . friends. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d been able to trust anyone enough to consider them any more than an acquaintance. Even Dominic Rodriguez, the CFO of Donahue Enterprises, was more of a business associate. Ewan had been to the man’s wedding, sent him gifts at the birth of all his children, set aside money in trust funds for them, even. Still, Ewan couldn’t think of a time when he and Rodriguez had ever joked around or simply hung out socially, not a

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE “We could go ten miles in any direction and never reach the end of your property,” Nina said as they both stepped off the grand front porch of Donahue’s faux Victorian-style mansion and onto the circular gravel driveway. “You really want to run ten miles?” he asked. “I could. No sweat, and by that I mean pretty much literally. The question is, can you?” “I used to be able to, no problem. Now . . . not so sure. For I am old and no longer fit.” He put one arm across his chest to stretch his shoulder. Then the other. Lean muscles rippled. “Old, please, you’re what. Forty?” “Thirty-five,” he said with a frown that meant she’d gotten him. She knew of course exactly how old he was, but she’d wanted to poke at his vanity. He’d changed into a pair of ass-hugging shorts that could kill a girl who wasn’t careful. She thought of his accusation that she’d been flirting with him. He hadn’t been entirely wrong. He probably thought she actually wanted him, though, Nina thought as she eye

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX Ewan knew, of course, all about Nina’s capabilities. He’d been the one to design them, after all. The automatic biofeedback that allowed her to shift more energy into muscles being used for fighting or fleeing. Her body’s ability to slow her breathing while gaining more oxygen from each breath. The way she would be able to go faster, higher, harder just by a few simple shifts in her neurological responses. He hadn’t realized how irritating it would be when she used those enhancements on him. Or how sexy. She’d dropped him like it had meant nothing at all. He’d been on the ground watching her make that super jump into the sky before he had time to blink. Flat on his back with his cock aching and rigid in his shorts. Thank the universe for the tight briefs he wore that had kept his erection in its place. He’d never reacted that way to a threat before. If he were mad or scared or upset about something, the very last thing in the world on his mind was getting laid. Hell, he’d n

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN Donahue had been quiet since yesterday, which was all right with Nina because she didn’t have much to say to him. Nina had used sexual tension as a way to keep clients in line before, but it had always been nothing more than surface. What happened in the garden, her reaction to him in those tense moments after the drone attack, had left her unnerved. Something deep and dark had uncoiled inside her, triggered by his scent and the faint thunder of his heartbeat, the warm brush of his body heat. She was always aroused after the danger had passed, all of her enhanced senses firing on high until the tech returned her to normal, but this had felt different. Undefinable, but undeniable. It rankled a bit that he seemed to be outright ignoring her as though she were no more than a piece of furniture. When her personal comm pinged, she glanced toward him to see if the noise had caught his attention, but he was concentrating on his computer and didn’t even glance her way. Nina stood

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT Having Nina as his constant shadow made it a little harder for Ewan to set up the dinner he’d planned. But what had she said about fighting without her weapons in top shape? Difficult but not impossible? Ewan didn’t have weapons in his arsenal. He had skills, one of which was making things happen. Not that arranging a meal in his own home was anything close to hand-to-hand combat, but he still felt accomplished at pulling it off without her finding out until he took her into the dining room. Her words had stayed with him long after she’d said them. No matter how hard he tried to shove them away, he couldn’t shake the idea that somehow, she was right. That the tech had somehow stolen even more from her than he’d thought possible. Ewan had spent a number of hours going over old records, the ones nobody else had access to after Gray Tuesday. The tech had never been meant to suppress emotions. He could find nothing in his original specs that indicated anything like that had b

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE The blond man in the ridiculously trendy outfit was trying not to show i