Silent Warrior: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

here.”
    “I’m already here. I can put in a few calls and get that going and work on this end too. I still think you’d be better off underground for a while.”
    Temper flashed in her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry but I don’t agree. We’re playing this my way. I want your help but I won’t be shoved aside.”
    He found himself lifting a piece of hair away from her damp cheek. She pulled back in surprise. He frowned and stepped away. He curled his hands into loose fists to keep from following his instincts. Instincts that all but screamed at him to pull her into his arms, to do whatever it took to keep her safe.
    He did the next best thing.
    “Does your father know you are bouncing around the world with hit men on your trail?”
    “No. And he won’t know anything about this, either.” Her eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare.”
    “Cali, don’t you think he should—”
    “I think Ambassador Stanfield should be left alone to do his job. His daughter is a grown woman who can run her own life.”
    “That life is in jeopardy. Don’t you think he has a right to know that?”
    “You don’t play fair, McShane.” She blew out a sigh and pushed her hair off her forehead. She paced to the sink, then turned to face him again. “It took me a whole bunch of years to get out from under my father’s rather oppressive protection. The way I met you and Nathan is as good an example as anything. You know firsthand what he’s like when he wants something done.”
    John most certainly did. Cali had been snatched from a multinational dinner she’d been hostessing for her father in an increasingly unstable part of the Middle East. In fact, the dinner had been a kind of peace-seeking summit, in hopes of easing some of the tension. John remembered quite well the way Ambassador Stanfield, a former navy admiral, had bulled in and taken charge of the rescue effort. John and Nathan had led the Blue Circle recovery team.
    They’d been shorthanded at the time, and John had pulled Nathan in from his usual “truck” position monitoring surveillance information. In the end it had been Nathan who’d gone in and rescued her from the hotel the terrorists had her stashed in, while John had reduced their number by a handful.
    They hadn’t even gotten her out of the country before she and Nathan had discovered their mutual obsession with advanced computer technology. Any doubts John held regarding love, the first-sight variety or any other, dissolved over the following months at the ongoing spectacle of the new couple’s obvious feelings for each other.
    Unfortunately, John’s understanding was not the result of observation alone. It came from personal experience.
    “It’s also a good example that his concerns over your welfare were well-founded,” John interjected.
    “One incident in my entire life does not excuse his obsessive need to control.” She continued when he would have interrupted. “I know, I know. It was a very bad situation. In that case, he had every right.”
    “You’re all he has.” Her mother’s death from breast cancer when Cali was fifteen had been well documented by the media at the time. And John understood overprotective parents better than she knew. His father had been a high-ranking military officer when John had made his surprise entrance into the world late in the man’s life. He understood Cali’s need to be totally independent. For her it had been a means to escape her father’s dominance, and later a way to overcome the helpless feelings spawned by her tragic losses.
    “You don’t know him like I do. He has always been as much a controller as a leader. His whole life was geared to suit his own needs. And he wasn’t aboveusing my mother’s death to emotionally manipulate me into being a follower.”
    “It says a lot about your ability to be your own leader that you broke away and worked for the government. In high-security matters, no less.”
    “It was the hardest thing I’d ever