Dangerous Promise (The Protector) Read online

  “Right.” He laughed, and she was glad he understood that she’d been teasing, not trying to make fun of him. “I could teach you, if you want.”

  She kicked at a rock that shot off over the edge of the cliff and clattered down the mountainside. “How to appreciate specialty flatware?”

  “Brand names, too. Specifically fashion apparel.” He slanted a grin toward her uniform.

  Nina frowned, feigning offense. “Are you implying I need some more fashionable attire?”

  “No, no, not at all,” Ewan said. “I mean, far be it from me to suggest you might look nice in something a little less . . . authoritative and utilitarian.”

  She laughed out loud, unable to keep up the pretense of being offended. “Sure. Let me get right on that. Because stilettos and a dress would absolutely be practical in my line of work. Not that I wouldn’t totally look bombtastic in an outfit like that, mind you. Because I would. But you know, running, kicking, jumping, and all that would be sort of hard.”

  She caught him giving her a weird look. “What?”

  “Picturing you in stilettos and a dress. That’s all.”

  She met his gaze, assessing his expression. The hike had left him sweaty, his dark hair spiking off his forehead instead of hanging over his eyes the way it usually did. He stretched, and the hem of his slim-fitting tank top inched up to bare a belly that showed no signs of overindulgences, despite his earlier complaints. The tuft of hair peeking from the waistband of his pants, dark as that on his head, snagged her attention before she looked back out over the valley in front of them.

  “And what are you imagining?” she asked finally, when he didn’t say more than that.

  “A party. Your hair down, maybe a few curls falling around your face. A red dress. Red shoes. You’d look fierce,” Ewan said. “You’d turn every head.”

  Pleased but not sure she wanted him to know it, she quirked a smile and looked at him. “Uh-huh. Red, huh?”

  “Red,” he repeated without so much as a hint of a smile.

  She held his gaze a bit longer before turning to look out again across the tops of the trees to the clouds and sky beyond. “How close are we to this waterfall?”

  “Not much farther, from what I remember. I mean, I could be way off. We could be miles away. I figured you’d have mapped out the whole route somehow. Making sure there weren’t any bears or something along the way.”

  The hint of teasing in his voice gave him away. “You realize I don’t have a built-in GPS, right? You can’t just input me with coordinates. And I could totally fight off a bear, by the way.”

  She demonstrated a quick flurry of fight moves, none of which would have done anything to a bear but irritate it.

  Ewan chuckled and shook his head. “Right. I know. Don’t worry, I know where I’m going. I think.”

  “If we get lost out here and have to survive on wild berries and tree bark, fair warning, I am going to be really, really cranky very, verrrrry quickly.”

  He gave her a look of mock innocence. “What, you mean you need to be fed at regular intervals? With real, actual food? That’s insane.”

  “Don’t try to find out,” she warned with a wag of her finger, following him as he turned away from the edge of the cliff and started back toward the trees. “It won’t go well for you.”

  “I have no doubt,” he said over his shoulder.

  They hiked in silence after that for a while. Nina drew in long, deep breaths, one after another, letting the clean, cool air fill her lungs and the sun warm her face. She relished the stretch and pull of her muscles working in ways they hadn’t been used in some time, because no matter how hard or often she worked out, it couldn’t compare with the physical exertion of actually using her body as it was meant to work. To climb, run, jump. Not just fight.

  It was meant to make love, too, she thought as she eyed Ewan’s round, firm ass beneath his clinging trousers. That would be a whole different kind of workout. One she was not likely to ever get to try and one she needed to stop thinking about, Nina reminded herself. She was only making herself crazy and annoyed and riled up, and there was no good reason for it. Ewan was far from the first handsome, sexy, billionaire client she’d taken care of, and she hadn’t had any trouble resisting any of them.

  “Almost there. It’s just ahead.” Ewan sounded a little winded, but the grin he shot over his shoulder was wide.

  It was that grin that set him apart from the others. The teasing sense of humor. The glints of kindness and generosity she’d seen in him. He was more than a hot ass. Also more than a smartass.

  I promise you, Nina, the last thing in the world you’d be able to do is break my heart.

  She didn’t want to break his heart. Nina had done that too many times, to so many people. Watching him take the trail ahead of her, though, Nina had to admit to herself that Ewan’s vehement denial that she could ever possibly mean anything to him—that denial itched and burned inside her like an allergic reaction.

  She ought to have let him take her to bed. It would have been fun. Even if he was a selfish lover, a possibility based on whatever she’d gleaned about his past relationships, the sex would have been good. The tech guaranteed her body’s responses, voluntary and involuntary, all worked at their peak, every time.

  Thinking of it now, a slow pulse of friction tickled between her legs. Nina, irritated with herself, forced away the arousal. She focused instead on the trail and the faint sound of rushing water.

  “I can hear it,” she said.

  They rounded a bend in the trail after a minute or so and came out into a clearing full of the rush and crash of falling water. The falls themselves weren’t that high, but they fell in pretty patterns over a natural setting of rocks and boulders to splash into a frothy greenish-black pool at the bottom. Nina moved next to Ewan to look it over.

  “Gorgeous,” she said and turned to see him looking at her. She raised her eyebrows. “What?”

  “I haven’t been here in years and years, that’s all. But you’re right. It all looks the same as I remember it.”

  She tilted her head to study him, wondering what he was about. “You missed it.”

  “Yes. More than I thought I might.”

  But there was something else, more of those shadows in his gaze, so she asked again, this time with a small, impatient gesture. “You’re still staring. What?”

  “I never wanted to bring anyone else to see this place.”

  She frowned, mostly at his tone, which was a little sharp-edged. “Do you wish you hadn’t brought me here?”

  “No,” Ewan said. “That’s the thing, Nina. The moment we began talking about this plan, I had no hesitation about bringing you here. I wanted you to see it. I knew you’d appreciate it in a way that very few other people in my life would have.”

  “Sounds like you need to reconsider the sorts of people you surround yourself with,” she said after a moment or so, wishing she could take his words as the compliment she thought he meant them to be, without putting more meaning behind them. “I’m not sure how anyone wouldn’t be able to enjoy this.”

  Ewan shrugged and set down the small backpack he’d stocked with snacks for the hike. Then the water bottle from his belt. He worked the buttons on his shirt, one at a time. Her eyebrows rose again, watching him.

  “You know how it is these days. People take virtual vacations, rigged up to machinery the makes them feel as though they’re doing exciting, exotic things while they never leave the safety and comfort of the sensory deprivation tank. They’re building domes over parks to keep the kids from having to deal with real sunshine, real air. We rely on technology to improve our lives without ever considering what it’s taking away.”

  She looked at the pool of water churning and swirling. His rant wasn’t far off the mark, and he hadn’t said anything about the enhancement tech, but it felt uncomfortably close to a judgment about it. She watched from the corner of her eye as Ewan shrugged out of his shirt. His body was l