LITMIR.BIZ

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the spot where he had parked by the curb. Luke adjusted the rearview mirror to keep an eye on her car. He didn’t put it past her to duck away from him, but maybe almost being killed a second time had really made her decide that he was her best bet.

      Luke had followed her to the hotel, then to the school. He’d seen the attacker enter through the side exit, but he had no idea where Vanessa was in the building. It had been one of the most anxious moments of his life searching for her and finally finding her in the closed classroom, struggling with her attacker.

      He couldn’t have lived with two people dying because of his mistakes—and because of Nicky. He wondered if Nicole had set Vanessa up, or if it was simple coincidence that had put Vanessa in danger. She looked enough like Nicky to have fooled him, at first. He supposed it stood to reason that if he had seen her on the airport security footage that had first clued him in to her location, someone else might have, too.

      Fate. Luke believed that he was destined to find Nicole and to make things right. Vanessa was apparently part of that journey. He’d learned, during his eastern studies, not to discount things like karma. The flow of energy, the cycles of the universe that moved everyone along in life. Everything was connected; Luke believed that. If protecting Vanessa was part of what he had to do to get to Nicky, then that’s what he’d do.

      Turning onto a dirt road not marked on his GPS, they ended up by the water, parked by an abandoned marina.

      Getting out of the car, he looked around and sensed no one in the vicinity. For a few heartbeats, he didn’t spot Vanessa and thought maybe she’d ditched him or missed the turn, but then her headlights shone on the dirt path coming at him. He walked up to the car when she parked.

      “What are we doing?” she asked.

      “We can leave your car here. In the old storage facility over there. It belongs to a guy I know. Take everything valuable, all ID, out of it.”

      She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

      “What if something happens to it? My insurance would go through the roof. I can’t afford to lose it!”

      “They’ll know you booked the rental, and they’ll look for it. You can come back and get it later. Nothing will happen to it here.”

      “Fine,” she muttered as she started the engine again and drove the car over to the storage building.

      Luke knew it was difficult. No doubt Vanessa felt out of control of her life, and he was asking her to put herself in his hands. Well, technically she had insisted...figuratively speaking, anyway. But if she wanted to see this through, she had to trust him. He’d heard his cousins talk about the immediate bond that had to be forged between a bodyguard and the client they were protecting. Usually, the principal—the person being protected—would resist it. No one liked losing control, but control was illusory, at best. Luke knew that better than anyone.

      He’d thought he had everything under control when Nicky had come into his life. He didn’t realize he’d been fooling himself until it was too late. Nicky was gone, and a man was dead.

      Vanessa wasn’t Nicky.

      He had to get that through his head. It was difficult, though. How could he look at her and not think about those times with Nicole? She’d been a wildcat in bed and out of it. The memory shot a bolt of desire through him. He’d been with some women since he was with her, of course, but none who were the same. Nothing as intense.

      Until he’d kissed Vanessa. Touched her. But that was when he thought she was Nicky, right? He switched his gaze to the city’s lights that shone over the water in the distance.

      This woman was off-limits. He had to stay focused if he was going to do this right. Nicky had to be at the center of this, somehow. Ultimately, finding her was what would make Vanessa safe again and allow him to get on with his life.

      Luke peeled the door of the storage unit open, watching Vanessa drive in and shut off the engine. Climbing out of the driver’s seat, she grabbed her few things and joined him.

      “What now?” she asked after they delivered her belongings to his car and he closed the storage unit door, bolting it.

      “We go back to my place. You can’t go to the hotel. Did you need anything there?”

      She hesitated. “I left all of the clothes I bought and my cosmetics there.”

      “I’ll get you new. Now, let’s move.”

      “Thanks for the help, Luke,” she said quietly as they returned to the main road.

      “It’s what I’m here for.”

      He needed to remember that.

      * * *

      “TAKE OFF YOUR BLOUSE,” Luke said once they were inside the door of his hotel room.

      Vanessa stood in the middle of his suite like a startled deer.

      “What?”

      Vanessa could count the times she’d been in a strange man’s hotel room on exactly one finger.

      At thirty-one, maybe that made her naive or inexperienced, but her life had been her work and her family. She’d had a few lovers, but they were usually men she’d known for a while. None of them had been spectacular or lasted for very long. She always managed to screw up the relationship somehow. She knew she maintained too much distance between herself and men. She didn’t let them in, didn’t open up. Emotionally or sexually. She didn’t know how to change that. Luke’s demand made her back up a step.

      He seemed to understand, nodding. “I only want to look at that cut. Then I can go get you what you need while you shower.”

      “I can go. You don’t know my size, or what I like,” she objected as he approached her.

      “Please, let me see how bad it is, Vanessa.”

      His green eyes were kind and focused, though exhaustion was showing in the strain in his face. It was only evident if you looked really close, like she was doing now. It reminded her that pretty much everything she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, he’d been through, too.

      Even so, she wasn’t about to take her shirt off on his command, but she did shrug off her blazer, lifting the edge of her blouse where blood had soaked through, partly drying the fabric to her skin. She jumped as she pulled gingerly at it.

      “Don’t do that. Wait,” he said and stalked off down the hall, returning with a wet towel. “This will loosen the fabric from your skin.”

      The warm, wet towel felt good against her sore side as they peeled her blouse back from the wound, and Vanessa was shocked to see how much she’d bled.

      “Oh,” she breathed out, dizzy.

      “Here.” Luke guided her to the sofa.

      She eased back, letting him investigate her injury. From a knife. That someone had wanted to use to kill her.

      Unreal.

      “It bled a lot, but it’s not bad and the bleeding has stopped. It won’t need stitches. You got lucky.”

      “Why does everyone keep telling me that?”

      Luke smiled and looked closer at the wound. “I can get some butterfly bandages, antibiotic and gauze. We’ll be able to fix you up quite easily. Will you be okay to take a shower on your own?”

      Vanessa’s heart skipped a beat. For a second, she thought he was going to offer to help her.

      What would she have said?

      He’d been a complete gentleman. There was no hint of anything suggestive or sexual since their kiss in the parking lot.

      Confusing.

      Especially as she stood here, thinking about Luke in the shower with her and not automatically dismissing the idea.

      “I’ll be fine.

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