Wicked Attraction (The Protector) Read online

  “I have one of the most stressful jobs in the world,” Nina said sourly. “And this hasn’t happened before now.”

  Leona grinned. “So, blame it on Mr. Ewan Donahue. Want me to add a hazard surcharge to his bill?”

  “That won’t make this go away,” Nina said, but laughed, because she knew Leona was hyper serious and would do it.

  “It might not, but it will make you feel better about it.”

  Nina shook her head. “I have enough money. Anyway, I’ll figure it out.”

  “I wish you’d go get another checkup, at least. And we can bill that to Donahue for sure.”

  “Yeah. I’ll make an appointment.” Nina didn’t think another physical was going to make a difference, but it was unlikely to cause a problem. For now, she was going to keep paying attention and making notes about what was going on. She changed the subject to divert her boss. “What’s up in your world?”

  They chatted a few minutes longer before Leona signed off. Nina considered starting another workout. Her body would manage it, but her mind was less than interested. Too much exercise could be boring. Still, she hadn’t yet managed to get her blood pressure to spike again, and she wanted to keep trying.

  At the sound of footsteps in the doorway, Nina tensed with an internal chuckle. Maybe Leona was right, at least a little bit, about Ewan being part of the cause. Her heart had certainly started beating a little faster all on its own.

  “Hey,” he said quietly when she didn’t turn to face him.

  Their eyes met in the reflection of the mirrored wall. He looked good, all tousle-haired and lean in his low-slung pajama bottoms, feet and chest bare. He would always look good to her, she thought. No matter what had happened between them. No matter what still might happen.

  “What’s up?” she asked him when he said nothing more.

  Ewan held up his comm. “Wanda Crosson is petitioning for an early release.”

  “She won’t get it, will she?”

  He shook his head and slipped the comm into the pocket of his bottoms. “I don’t think so. Nobody seems to care very much about her anymore.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “No. Not really.” He cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good. Fine. Shiny fine,” she added for clarification.

  “No more . . . ?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  She didn’t mention to him that she’d been trying to push her body into recreating the glitch. Her working out wouldn’t seem unusual to him, and he didn’t need to know how hard she’d been pushing herself. Ewan moved farther into the room. Nina waited for him to mention last night, the way she’d slipped in and out of his bed without a word. When he didn’t, she pushed some hair out of her eyes and studied him.

  If he’d crossed the room and taken her in his arms, if he had kissed her, she would have let him, she thought. Ewan stopped more than an arm’s reach away from her. The yearning ache she’d admitted to the day before rose again inside her, biting her more fiercely than she’d ever bitten him.

  “If you change your mind about me calling my doc, let me know,” Ewan said finally. “I can make you an appointment.”

  Nina smiled, thinking of Leona’s declaration that they’d make Ewan pay her medical bills. “I can call one for myself, if I want one.”

  “I know that.” He paused. “It would be easier for you. He’d come to the house. Unless you’re planning to leave.”

  She studied him. “I have an open-ended contract.”

  “That means you’re as free to leave at any time as I am to relieve you,” Ewan pointed out.

  “With Wanda Crosson petitioning for early release, there might be some new fresh dangers for you,” Nina answered after a few seconds. “It’s probably best that I stay, at least for now.”

  Ewan nodded, face solemn, although she thought perhaps she’d caught a glint of amusement and relief in his gaze. “Are you done working out?”

  She bounced on her toes, jabbing at the air. “Depends. Want to spar with me?”

  Ewan snorted under his breath. “What, and give you the chance to punch me in the face? Admittedly, I deserve it, but that doesn’t mean I’d like it.”

  “I wouldn’t really try to hurt you,” Nina said.

  Ewan looked at her, saying nothing, memories of the times when she had hurt him clear in his gaze. Heat rose in her throat and tried to flush her cheeks, but she kept herself from showing any visible reaction. She couldn’t stop herself from recalling how his skin felt under her fingertips when she dug her nails into him, or how he moaned when she did. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it, but she could definitely keep herself from showing that it affected her. Ewan could not, but she could just as easily ignore the hitch in his breath as she could fake her dispassion.

  “Something came up on the security screens,” Ewan said finally.

  Nina frowned, moving toward the door at once. “You should have said that right away.”

  Behind her, he followed. “It didn’t seem to be anything important. A bump in the motion detection, that’s all. It could be the wind. A rabbit. Anything.”

  “Your security here isn’t anywhere close to what it was at Woodhaven. And there are no rabbits left here,” Nina said over her shoulder as she went at once to her room and grabbed her shockgun from the harness she hadn’t been wearing because it hadn’t seemed necessary before.

  She regretted that decision now. No matter what Ewan’s sec team had said, no matter what the reports declared, she’d already seen the lengths people would go to in order to harm him. It wasn’t out of the question to think someone new might have built up a grudge.

  “You know I have people to check out stuff like this. They can be here within minutes,” Ewan said from the doorway.

  “If you’re mine, you are mine all the way,” she told him without thinking, the words slipping off her tongue too quickly for her to bite them back.

  “I remember that,” Ewan said. “But I didn’t think I was yours anymore.”

  The sound of the front doorbell ringing stopped them both. Ewan took a step toward the noise, but Nina moved in front of him. She shook her head.

  “Nobody should be ringing that bell without notifying you in advance they were going to be there,” she told him. “You let me go first.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The alert had pinged to Ewan’s personal comm from the sec team, remotely monitoring his house. He’d gone to the workout room to talk to Nina about it not because he was truly worried, but as an excuse to find her after waking up alone. He’d overheard her talking to someone and waited until she was finished. At no time had another ping come through alerting him to someone actually gaining access to the property, yet the front bell had rung twice, now.

  “Probably someone selling cookies,” he said lightly, watching her.

  She’d gone into protection mode, and even if he’d been concerned that someone really was trying to get to him, the sight of her so fierce, so strong, so beautiful—it made his heart stutter. He did believe she would keep him safe, which was a big part of why he wasn’t worried. The other part was, as she’d pointed out, he had people who were monitoring the area and no true threats had been reported.

  The doorbell rang once more.

  Nina gave him a wry smile. “Sure. Because that still happens.”

  “You never know. Maybe door-to-door cookie selling is experiencing a nostalgic comeback. Could be a vacuum salesman,” Ewan added to see if he could earn a giggle from her. “Maybe encyclopedias?”

  “Oh, yes, the new, revised version, downloaded directly into your brain.” Nina pursed her lips. “Or it could be someone ready to murder you because of something you said in a viddy interview. How about we go with that possibility, just to be on the safe side?”

  He held up his personal comm. “No more alerts. I pinged my team. They ran scans.”

  “And yet, someone is ringing that bell. Which means they bypa