Shotgun Daddy
Author
Harper Allen
Reads
17.8K
Chapters
15
Chapter 1
Gabriel Riggs got out of his rented four-wheel drive and stood beside it for a moment, going over his to-do list one final time in his mind. Fly back from Nicaragua. Check. Drive to Aspen. Check. Smash through the gate cordoning off the drive leading up the mountain to Larry Kanin’s ski chalet. Check. There was only one item left on the list.
Find that bastard Larry and make him sorry he was ever—
“Your keys, sir? I’ll park your car with the others.”
Gabe frowned at the muscular young man confronting him. In the light from the Olympic-style torches lining the drive, the security guard’s fresh face contrasted with the commando-like gear he was wearing. The guard’s eyes narrowed.
“Wait a minute. Are you on the guest list?”
“No.”
Gabe headed past him toward the redwood steps ascending to the veranda. Kanin’s man grabbed his arm. “If you’re not on the list, you’re going to have to be escorted off the—”
Get past Security. Check.
Gabe crossed the veranda, not bothering to look back at the sprawled figure in the snow behind him. That was Larry all over, he thought savagely. All style and no substance, even down to the beefcake he had guarding his own property. But hell, when all someone cared about was the bottom line, maybe style was all it took. Recoveries International’s corporate clientele roster grew every time Kanin attended a function flanked by his six-and-a-half-foot blond robots.
Probably even Tech-Oil Consolidated would stay with the firm. After all, the death of one of their employees at the hands of kidnappers had saved them a bundle.
The noise hit him as he entered the chalet—a raucous mix of laughter, too-loud music and brittle voices. He’d heard about the beautiful people, Gabe thought, scanning the room and taking in the cluster of après-skiers by the fireplace, the group near a buffet table. He guessed that was who these people were, but Kanin wasn’t among them. He switched his attention to a redhead who was favoring him with an appraising glance.
“Where’s Larry?”
“Who cares?” Her hair looked as if she’d just gotten out of bed, but maybe it was supposed to look that way. “I love the silver cuff you’re wearing, handsome. It’s Apache, isn’t it?”
At the far side of the room an open set of polished wood stairs swept in a large curve to a second floor. Kanin had to be upstairs.
Gabe shook his head. “Navajo.”
It was an effort to make even that much conversation. He tried to tell himself that what he was feeling was jet lag, or exhaustion from going the past three days without sleep, but he knew it wasn’t either of those. These people and their world meant nothing to him. He was here only to settle an account.
He put his foot on the bottommost stair. He looked up and saw the woman, and for half a heartbeat all else fell away.
She was like ice and snow and crystals, he thought, his chest feeling suddenly too tight. Her eyes were the color of an alpine lake, her hair a silvery blond pulled back from the creamy oval of her face and coiled at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a white sweater, white slim-fitting ski pants, small white boots with heels. A full-length coat of some kind of white fur hung from her shoulders.
Even as she swept down the staircase toward him, Larry Kanin appeared at the top of the stairs behind her.
Oxygen slammed back into Gabe’s lungs.
“For God’s sake, Caro, you’re overreacting.” Kanin’s well-cut lips tightened. “So Jinx and I were having a little fun. It didn’t mean anything.”
The woman stopped halfway down the stairs. “This is what doesn’t mean anything anymore, Larry.”
Swiftly she removed a blazing diamond from one finger and flung it over the heads of the guests below. The ring sparkled over the buffet table and landed in a bowl of salmon mousse.
But the woman Kanin had called Caro didn’t wait to see it fall. Gabe just had time to step aside before she moved by him, her head held high and those starry eyes not registering his existence. The fur of her coat brushed coldly against his arm, the faint scent that enveloped her—it smelled like small white flowers, he thought disjointedly—touched him briefly, and then she was past. He heard the front door open and close.
Kanin had followed Caro part of the way down the stairs, and for a moment Gabe thought he meant to go after her. Then Larry shrugged, the anger in his eyes quickly concealed.
“I promised entertainment, didn’t I?” he drawled to his assembled guests. “Whichever one of you ladies finds that ring first gets to keep it.”
There was a chorus of surprised laughter from the females in his party and a general rumble of amusement from the men. The buffet table was instantly surrounded.
“Hi, Larry.”
Kanin had been watching the stampede that his announcement had started. At Gabe’s greeting, his gaze swung away from his guests.
“God—Riggs! What the hell are you doing here?”
“The same thing your woman just did.” Gabe mounted the steps that divided them. “I’m breaking up with you, Larry.”
Kanin frowned. “This isn’t the time or the place, Riggs. We’ll talk at the office on—”
“They weren’t asking much in the first place. When I reported in by phone I told you I was pretty sure we’d be able to get it down to a quarter-mill, tops.” Gabe looked over at the buffet table. “I don’t get it. You just turned close to that amount into a party favor.”
“For Christ—” Kanin’s jaw tightened. “I recommended Tech-Oil draw a line in the sand, all right? They do a lot of business in volatile regions, and if they got the reputation of being patsies for every guerrilla leader looking to fund his war chest, they’d be out of business in a month.”
“So instead of advising Tech-Oil to increase security for its people, you told them to stall on delivering the good-faith payment to the kidnappers.” Gabe nodded. “I just needed to hear you confirm it. Like I said, we’re through. And since I don’t have a diamond to throw over this banister—”
The buffet table broke Kanin’s fall before tipping completely over, and the last sight Gabe had of him was of a chafing dish of tiny meatballs upending itself over Kanin as he lay among the debris.
Outside, the baby Nazi he’d decked was nowhere to be seen. He opened the door of his rental vehicle and smelled small white flowers.
“I need a ride into Aspen.” She was sitting in the passenger seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her gaze fixed straight ahead. “I want to leave now.”
The baby Nazi might be out of the picture, Gabe thought, but any minute now, reinforcements would arrive. He didn’t have time to argue with her. He slid into the driver’s seat.
“No problem, lady,” he said tersely. “I don’t want to hang around here any longer, either.”
The spell he’d fallen under when he’d first laid eyes on her had been broken, he noted in relief. She was still beautiful, still a snow princess, and he didn’t mind helping her out by giving her a ride. But breaking off her engagement to Larry couldn’t change the fact that she belonged in his world of wealth and arrogance. The coolness behind her demand just now was proof of that.
Being able to breathe around her made things easier, he told himself as he negotiated the litter of broken wood that had once been the gate at the bottom of the slope. He turned to her when he was safely past it.
“I’ve got to turn on the heat. You might want to take off that fur.”
All he could see of her was the back of her head as she stared out of the side window at the gathering darkness. “I’m not cold.”
“I am.” He reached forward and switched on the heater, jacking the fan to full speed. “I haven’t acclimatized yet.”
She turned to frown at him before opening the coat and slipping her arms from its sleeves. “When I saw your vehicle parked and running in the drive, I assumed one of Larry’s guests was leaving early—but you weren’t at the party, were you.”
Her question sounded faintly accusatory. He kept his face expressionless.
“The name’s Gabriel Riggs. You’re right, I wasn’t invited, but I showed up anyway. You walked past me after you tossed your engagement ring into the salmon mousse. Larry landed in the same general vicinity a couple of minutes later.”
The four-wheel drive corrected itself on a curve. Gabe exchanged the high-beams for the regular headlights to cut down on the hypnotizing dazzle of the now-swirling snow.
“You threw him off the stairs? Why?”
“Because of a man named Leo Roswell. Your ex-lover let him get his throat cut, honey.” He glanced at her. “It was a Recoveries International situation that went real bad, real fast, but I was the negotiator on the spot. I should have guessed Larry might think it was a good idea to pull the plug.”
“A man got his throat—” She didn’t finish the sentence. He heard her indrawn breath. “That’s horrible.”
Gabe didn’t know why he’d put it so bluntly. He didn’t even know why he was talking to her about it. “Yeah, it was horrible. So did you walk in on Larry with Jink, or whatever her name was?”
“Jinx. I don’t want to discuss it.” The frosty tone was back in full force. Gabe took the hint, and for the better part of the next hour there was nothing but silence between them—a silence that was finally broken by Caro herself when his arm accidentally brushed against hers as he reached for the stick shift. She stiffened. “How long before we get to Aspen?”
The lady might as well have posted No Trespassing signs, Gabe thought. It was obvious not only that she wasn’t interested in having a conversation, but that she was having second thoughts about being in his company at all. To be fair, he couldn’t really blame her for her show of nerves just now. He had a pretty good idea of what she saw when she looked at him—a big man with straight black hair that should have been cut two weeks ago and an outdoor-worker’s tan deepening his natural copper, wearing faded jeans and a thin cotton shirt. Not at all what she’d been expecting when she’d made the snap decision to hop into his waiting vehicle outside the chalet.
And if she wasn’t enthralled with having him as a travelling companion, he thought wryly, she was going to be real thrilled about bunking in with him tonight.
“Change of plans,” he said, narrowing his gaze against the heavy snow and wondering if he’d already passed the place he was looking for. “We’re not making Aspen—not till morning, at least. This blizzard’s getting worse. We’re going to have to find somewhere to hole up for the night.”
Her gaze was arctic. “Stay the night with a man I met an hour ago? If that’s supposed to be a joke, I don’t see the humor—and if it isn’t, you’ve made a big mistake, Mr. Riggs. The driving can’t be that bad. We’ll keep going.”
Ignoring her peremptory order, Gabe saw the lane-way he’d noticed earlier in the day when he’d been heading the other way. He eased his foot onto the brake, thought for a tense moment that the vehicle was going to lose it on the patch of glare ice that appeared suddenly in his headlights, and then made the turn. Gravel crunched under the tires as they took a slight incline to the darkened building ahead.
“A weekend lodge like this, they’ve probably got an alarm system.” He brought the four-wheel drive to a stop, looked at her stiff figure and took the keys from the ignition. “Trust me, we wouldn’t have made it, and if it’s your reputation you’re worrying about, don’t. I’m going to disable the security, so even if the cops could get here in these conditions, they won’t have a need to.”
Her eyes lasered through him. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to spend the night with you. My father’s William Moore, and if that name doesn’t mean anything to you, it should. Turn this car around right now.”
It had been a long day—hell, a long week, Gabe reflected tightly. Even when he’d been busy throwing Larry over the banister he hadn’t allowed himself to lose the numbness that had surrounded him since he’d seen Leo Roswell’s dead body. He’d known that a single spark of emotion would be enough to blaze down the flimsy barriers holding back his emotions.
Caro Moore had just lit that spark. He tried to count to ten, gave up at seven, and got out of the car. He went around to her door and opened it.
“Drop the lady-of-the-manor act, honey, and pronto. I’m not your chauffeur. I’m getting real tired of you treating me like one. Get out of the car.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just—”
The rest of her sentence was lost in a gasp as he lifted her from the car seat and deposited her unceremoniously into one of the snowdrifts beside the vehicle. He looked down at her.
“Let’s get things straight, princess. You’re a rich bitch. I’m some version of hired muscle. You obviously think that means I can’t wait to have my crude way with you, but at the risk of shattering your illusions, I’m not interested.” He forced an evenness into his tone. “I’ll help you up.”
“I don’t need your help,” she retorted, her heeled boots choosing that moment to slip on a patch of ice.
He reached down and hauled her to her feet—too roughly, he realized as he became momentarily unbalanced.
Only the fact that his vehicle was behind him saved them both from losing their footing. Furious blue eyes met his from a distance of only a few inches as Caro slammed against him.
“You’re the one with the illusions, Mr. Riggs—” Her lips, pale pink and way too close, bit off the words. “Am I supposed to believe this wasn’t planned, either? Let go of me.”
“My pleasure.” He released his grip on her, hoping that nothing of what was going through his mind showed in his face.
The breathlessness he’d felt when he’d first seen her was back worse than ever, he thought hollowly, and it didn’t matter that she was too rich, too arrogant and too damn spoiled. Just for an instant he imagined how she’d look beneath him, that pale hair spread out on the snow, those pale lips parted—
He turned away quickly, his fists clenched at his sides. “Wait here. This shouldn’t take long.”
Whoever the lodge’s owners were, they were like Kanin; their security system had all the bells and whistles. But one snip through a wire made it useless. It was the same with the dead bolt on their front door. Gabe jimmied it open and walked back to the car, but by the time he’d locked the vehicle, he saw her slim figure, her back ramrod straight under the fur coat she’d slipped into again, entering the house.
He leaned against the four-by-four and dragged his hand across his mouth.
What the hell was the matter with him? Caro Moore was no different from any of the wealthy socialites with whom he’d come into contact in his job. She expected to snap her fingers and have someone jump. She’d never worked for a living, had never had to worry about the rent, had never ventured out of her shallow little circle of similarly wealthy friends and acquaintances.
She didn’t live in his world. He had no desire to live in hers. How hard could it be not to let the woman get to him?
Hard enough, he admitted grimly as he entered the house and saw her standing in front of an empty fireplace. She gave no indication that she was aware of his presence, and he squelched the flicker of irritation that rose in him.
“There’s a woodpile at the side of the house,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could muster. “I’d better bring some in to keep us going if we lose the electricity.”
She didn’t turn around. “The phone doesn’t work. You did something to it when you sabotaged the security, didn’t you.”
He’d tried, dammit, Gabe thought, not even bothering to count to ten this time. He’d cut her all the slack he had available, but now he’d come to the end of the line.
With two strides he closed the space between them. He spun her around to face him, and saw surprise replace some of the icy hauteur in her gaze.
“How’d you guess, honey?” he said through clenched teeth. “Yeah, it’s all part of my big bad plan—the weather, the phones, finding this place and breaking in. So how about it? You and me, the snow princess and the hired hand—wanna get it on? Hey, I’m not your fiancé, but that’s probably a plus right now, as far as you’re concerned.”
He saw a small white-gloved hand blurring toward his face. He caught her wrist just as her palm kissed his cheek.
“No, sweetheart,” he said, his smile crooked. “I don’t play rough with women, and I don’t let them play rough with me. Let’s both stop with the games, okay?”
He lowered her hand without releasing her wrist, regret already setting in. “I shouldn’t have yanked your chain like I did just now. We’re stuck with each other for the night, so why don’t we call a truce? I’m willing if you are.”
Her gaze locked on his, as if she were determining whether she could trust him. Those silky dark lashes didn’t have mascara on them, he noted. In fact, she wasn’t wearing any kind of makeup that he could see. Her skin was naturally creamy. Her lips were naturally a pale pink shade. Her eyes were naturally a deep, heartbreaking blue that could make a man’s mouth go dry and his knees buckle beneath—
“You really stopped because the road was getting too dangerous?” Her uncertain question broke through his musings.
“Yeah, princess, I did. On a job a few years ago I was forced to ride shotgun on a Jeep carrying a load of dynamite through the jungle, and believe me, I felt safer then than I did tonight trying to avoid those patches of black ice.” He felt tension seep out of her. “So are we good here?”
Her eyes still on his, she gave the tiniest of nods. He relaxed his hold on her wrist.
The next moment he rocked back on his heels as her palm connected solidly with his cheek.
“Are we good here? After you made that crack about how I must feel toward the man I was going to marry?” Her glare was blue fire. “This evening I walked in on Larry while he and another woman were indulging in a variation of ‘getting it on,’ as you’d probably put it. When he realized he’d been caught, he told me that if I’d ever shown any interest in performing that particular act on him, he wouldn’t have had to cheat on me. Do you have any idea how humiliating tonight was for me? Do you think I like knowing that when I get back to Albuquerque, everyone’s going to be whispering about what Larry’s prude of a fiancée does and doesn’t do in the bedroom?”
Pain flashed behind her eyes. She blinked it away. “So, no, we’re not good here. I’d sooner spend the night in the car than another minute with you.”
She began to push past him. Instinctively Gabe put out a hand to stop her, nudging the fur coat from her shoulders as he did. He grasped her lightly, his fingers spread wide on the soft whiteness of her sweater.
“You’re right, I was way out of line.” Her lips tightened at his words, but he saw past the dismissive gesture to the tightly wound tension she’d hidden so well.
Or perhaps Caro Moore hadn’t had to hide it that well, he told himself slowly. Maybe he’d been so preoccupied with his failure to save a hostage that he hadn’t wanted to notice the woman behind the icy facade.
Sure, she had attitude. She had it in spades. But pampered princess or not, she hadn’t deserved to learn the way she had what a jerk Kanin was.
“If anyone’s bunking in the car tonight, I am,” he said. “I owe you that, at least, and I’m used to sleeping rough.”
He let his hands slide from her shoulders. Even as he did he saw the twin smears of black grease they left against the pristine white of her cashmere sweater. Caro’s eyes widened in appalled disbelief as she saw them, too.
Sweet move, Riggs, Gabe thought, his heart sinking. Suddenly he felt he was everything she believed him to be—coarse, crude, and better suited to being in a mechanic’s bay working on her car than standing here trying to talk to her—or hell, touch her. He began to apologize, knew there was nothing she wanted to hear from him, and shrugged in defeat.
“You realize that won’t come out,” she said in a tight voice. She didn’t take her gaze off the fingerprints running from her shoulders to just above the curve of her breasts. “You realize that’s probably gone right through the fabric.”
“The alarm box was humidity-proofed with packing grease.” Without meaning to, he followed her gaze. “I must have gotten it on my hands when I was disconnecting the wires.”
He stepped away from her rigid figure, wondering if it was his imagination or if he’d suddenly become bigger, bulkier, more awkward. He still couldn’t seem to avert his eyes from the agitated rise and fall of her breasts.
“I’d better get the hell out of here before I completely mess you up,” he muttered, taking another slow step away.
With an effort he began to drag his gaze from her. Caro slipped a gloved finger under the neckline of the sweater and pulled it slightly away from her body. She let the soft wool fall back into place and looked up at him.
“I’ll probably need some kind of abrasive soap to clean it off my skin.”
Her voice was still tight, but now there seemed to be a breathiness to it, he thought in confusion. Or maybe he was projecting, he told himself. Yeah. That had to be it.
“Pumice,” he said thickly. “When I’ve been working on an engine I have to scrub my nails with pumice. But that’s probably too rough.”
“If rough works, I’ll try it.” He hadn’t imagined the breathiness. Her eyes were wide and locked on his. “I can’t go around like this, can I? I have to scrub it away somehow.”
She wasn’t talking about cleaning abrasives anymore, he realized with sudden certainty. He shook his head and tried to take another step backward. The small heels of her boots clicked against the floor as she took three steps forward and stopped in front of him.
“After tomorrow I don’t imagine I’ll ever see you again.” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Slowly she brought a fingertip to his chest and traced the rim of one of his shirt buttons, her attention seemingly focused on the small action. “You’ll drop me off in Aspen in the morning and it’ll be like tonight never happened.”
Gabe swallowed. “That’s not how it would be, princess,” he said, too hoarsely. “I don’t think you’re the type that can tell herself it didn’t happen. I think you’d remember everything, whether you wanted to or not.”
He turned away. “You’d better get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He’d never known his father, but he knew his mother had been Navajo. Stoicism. Big Dineh quality, he told himself, mentally using the Navajo term rather than the Anglo one. Hell, maybe I’ll be thankful later, but right now I can’t believe I’m walking away from her.
But he didn’t have a choice—not if he wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror tomorrow.
She wanted to prove something to herself, though she didn’t have to. Kanin had seen a vulnerability beneath that cool exterior and had aimed his jab right at the place where it would hurt the most. The bastard had made her feel it was her fault he’d gone to another woman for the sexual favor he’d wanted performed on him. Tomorrow Caro Moore would be able to see her ex-fiancé’s accusation for what it was—a cheap shot from a man who didn’t deserve her. But tonight, she was in pain and she wanted to scrub away the humiliation as harshly as possible.
And she was going to use you to do it, buddy, the small voice in Gabe’s head said firmly. You don’t wanna play stud for a spoiled little socialite, right?
The hell he didn’t. But he wasn’t going to. And that was final.
He’d almost made it to the door when her voice stopped him.
“I don’t look like I’m all ice, but I must be. That has to be why you’re turning me down—because you can tell just by looking at me that it wouldn’t be any good for you. Is that what you see, Gabe? Am I so obviously frozen?”
He turned around, and knew as soon as he had that he’d made a mistake. She’d pulled off the white sweater. Under it she was wearing a lacy white bra—of course, Gabe thought dizzily—and she’d been right, some of the lace was smudged. More dark prints stood out against the creamy swell of her breasts.
He wasn’t aware that he’d moved, but somehow he was right in front of her. “Maybe a little frozen,” he rasped. “I kind of like that, though.”
“Then, how can you walk away?” The pain in her voice was almost his undoing. “It must be me. Larry was right.”
“He was wrong.” He forced himself to keep his hands at his sides. “If you really want to know what I see when I look at you, I’ll tell you. I see that lush mouth and I wonder what it would be like to have it on me; I see that pale hair and think of it falling across your face while you call out my name. I see heat that could sear a brand onto a man. But I won’t take advantage of how you feel tonight, Caro. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did.”
“And I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if you don’t,” she whispered.
His hands were shaking, dammit. He raised his left one from his side, the heavy silver and turquoise cuff glinting coldly against the tan of his arm. He brought his palm to within a hairbreadth of that pale, smudged skin—and stopped.
Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip. Her mouth bloomed dark pink. It looked like a single rose petal floating on cream.
“I don’t care,” she said with low fierceness. “Don’t you understand? I want to see where you’ve been on me.”
Heat slammed through Gabe. He pressed his outspread hand over her breast, let his thumb slip under the chaste lace of her no-longer white bra, dragged the flimsy fabric downward.
“I shouldn’t be doing this, princess,” he said unsteadily.
As if of its own volition, his right hand slid past her hips to cup the curves of that tight, white-clad rump. He lifted her to him, one-handedly held her against him, felt the shock that ran through her as she was forced to wrap her legs around his waist to steady herself. With his other hand he pulled a clip from the coil at the nape of her neck, and as her hair fell free he spread his fingers against the back of her head. He kept them there and kissed her.
It was like falling into a world of snow, like being buried in snow, like burning in snow. The smell of white and the taste of white—white flowers and white heat—flamed across his soul.
She’d wanted his mark on her. He wanted hers on him, he thought, raw desire spilling through him.
And a few minutes later as he sank to his knees on the snowy fur, Caro Moore’s arms and legs entwined around him and her mouth under his, Gabriel Riggs surrendered himself to the cold flames and the burning ice and the woman who needed him for only one night….
