DONOVAN: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Read Online Free PDF Page B

her now—something that had been missing back when we were teens—that called to something deep inside of me that I’d thought I’d successfully destroyed when I left town.
    “Stop staring at me,” she said, as she gathered the rest of her stuff.
    “Just watching over my target.”
    “Do you stare at all your female clients that way?”
    “Sometimes.”
    The blush I’d noticed earlier was more profound now. She glanced at me and quickly looked away as she drew her bottom lip between her teeth. I’d forgotten about that, about how she chewed her lip when there was something, or someone, she was thinking about having for herself.
    Interesting.
    “Ash said that they were putting cameras in my house.”
    “They did.”
    “And that you’d have to stay in my house with me until this is over.”
    “Yes.”
    “I hope you don’t expect me to play hostess to you. My fridge is empty, and I don’t even know if there are sheets that fit the bed in my spare bedroom.”
    “I can take care of those things.”
    “Can you?”
    “I’ve done this a few times before, Kate.”
    She nodded as she stood and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’m sure you have. But this is the first time I’ve had a bodyguard following me around, so excuse me if I’m not quite sure how it works.”
    “Just think of me as an old friend come for a visit.”
    She snorted again. “As if I’d have you in my house if Daddy hadn’t insisted.”
    She started for the door, but she sort of swayed, as if she’d been hit by a sudden wave of dizziness. I moved up behind her and grabbed her upper arms, pulled her back against me so she had something to lean on. I felt her knees start to buckle and felt her push back into me, but then her spine stiffened and she straightened up again.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Let go of me,” she said, jerking away from me.
    “Kate…”
    “Let’s go.”
    With that, she was out the door, strutting down the hall as if nothing had happened.
    Daniel was waiting, sitting on the edge of the same bench he and I had shared. Veronica was gone, a relief for everyone, I’m sure.
    “Promise me you won’t let anything happen to her,” Daniel said more to the floor than to me.
    “I promise.”
    It wasn’t a promise I made lightly. But it was one I meant to keep.
    ***
    She wasn’t thrilled to learn her car was still in the parking lot at the bank and that it would remain there until this issue was resolved. She also wasn’t thrilled to get into the black SUV Ash had left for us. She stared out the window all the way to her house. I followed the GPS coordinates Ash had programmed into the system, glancing at her from time to time just to make sure she was still there. There was a knot in my stomach that was tight and uncomfortable, a sort of nervousness that I’d thought boot camp had beat out of me. Women don’t make me nervous. I usually know where I stand with any woman—no matter the circumstances. But this one? She was my personal dynamite, and I wasn’t ever sure when she would go off.
    “Your dad still has his law firm?” I asked in an attempt to kill the silence.
    She shrugged.
    I knew the answer, of course. I kept tabs on the family over the years despite the fact that I never intended to contact them again. I wanted to know they were doing well, that life was treating them better than it had in the last five years I’d known them. First Louise, Joshua and Kate’s mother, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at thirty-five. It was a quick and ruthless illness that turned her into a ghost long before death finally came. And then, less than four years later, just as they were putting their lives back together and looking forward to the future, Joshua was killed. They deserved happiness, and it offered me a small condolence to know that they did have it, in a small way.
    I hadn’t known that Daniel remarried. But I followed the cases his firm handled these last ten years, some quite notorious cases