Lover Beware Read online

  “I wasn’t in any danger, Damon,” Sarah assured him. “This rifle, in case you’re interested, has tranqs in it, not bullets. At least they weren’t trying to kill you, they wanted you alive.”

  He sighed. She was just sitting there on the ground with the sliver of moonlight spilling over her. The rifle was lying across her knees and she was smiling at him. Sarah’s smile was enough to stop a man’s heart. Damon took a good look at her clothes, at the gun still in her hand. He stiffened, swore softly. “Damn you anyway, Drake. I should have known you were too good to be true!”

  “Were you believing all the stories about me, after all, Damon?” she asked. But dread was beginning even though it shouldn’t matter what he thought of her. Or what he knew. She had a job. It shouldn’t matter, yet she felt the weight in her chest, heavy like a stone. She felt a sudden fear crawling in her stomach of losing something special before it even started.

  “Who sent you, Sarah? And don’t lie to me. Whom do you work for?”

  “Did you really think they were going to let you walk away without any kind of protection after what happened, Damon?” Sarah kept the sympathy from her voice, knowing it would only anger him further.

  He swore bitterly. “I told them I wasn’t going to be responsible for another death. Get the hell off my property, Sarah, and don’t you come back.” Something deep inside of him unexpectedly hurt like hell. He had just met her. The hope hadn’t even fully developed, only in his heart, not his mind, but he still felt it. It was a betrayal and his Sarah, mysterious Sarah with her beautiful smile and her lying eyes, had broken him before he’d even managed to find himself.

  “I can assure you, Mr. Wilder, despite the fact that I’m a woman, I’m very capable of doing my job.” Deliberately she tried to refocus the argument, putting stiff outrage in her tone.

  “I don’t care how good you are at your damned job or anything else. Get off my property before I call the sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing.” Damon slammed the window closed with a terrible finality. The light went off as if somehow that would cut all communication between them.

  Sarah sat on the ground and stared at the darkened window with a heavy heart. The sea rolled and boomed with a steadiness that never ceased. The wind tugged at her hair and the clouds drifted above her head. She drew up her knees and contemplated the fact that old prophecies should never be passed from generation to generation. That way, one could never be disappointed.

  Chapter 4

  SARAH DIDN’T BOTHER to knock politely on the locked door. Damon Wilder was hurt and angry and she didn’t really blame him. She was nearly as confused as he was. Curses on old prophecies that insisted on messing up lives. If they’d been two people meeting casually everything would have been all right. But no, the gate had to stand open in welcome. It was neither of their faults, but how was she going to explain a two-hundred-year-old foretelling? How was she going to tell him her family came from a long line of powerful women who drew power from the universe around them and that prophecies several hundreds of years old always came true?

  Sarah did the only thing any self-respecting woman would do in the middle of the night. She pulled out her small set of tools and picked the front door lock. She made a mental note to install a decent security system in his house and lecture him about at least buying a dead bolt in the interim.

  As a child she had often played in the house and she knew its layout almost as well as she knew her own. Sarah moved swiftly through the living room. She saw very little furniture although Damon had moved in well over a month earlier. No pictures were on the wall, nothing to indicate it was a home, not just a temporary place to dwell.

  Damon lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He had started out seething, but there was too much fear to sustain it. Sarah had nearly walked into an ambush. It didn’t matter that she had been sent to be his watchdog, she could have been killed. It didn’t bear thinking about. Sarah. Shrouded in mystery. How could he fixate on a woman so quickly when he rarely noticed anyone? If he closed his eyes he could see her. There was a softness about her, a femininity that appealed to him on every level. She would probably laugh if she knew he had an unreasonable and totally mad desire to protect her.

  Damon bit out another quiet oath, not certain he could force himself to pick up and leave again. Where could he go? This was the end of the earth and yet somehow they had found him after all these months. No one would be safe around him.

  “Do you always lie in the dark on your bed and swear at the ceiling?” Sarah asked quietly. “Because that could become a real issue later on in our relationship.”

  Damon opened his eyes to stare up at her. Sarah. Real. In his bedroom dressed in a skintight black suit that clung to every curve. His mouth watered and every cell in his body leapt to life in reaction. “It happens at those times I’ve been betrayed. I don’t know, really, a knee-jerk reaction I can’t seem to stop.”

  Sarah looked around for a chair, couldn’t find one, and shoved his legs over to make room on the bed. “Betrayal can be painful. In all honesty I haven’t had the experience. My sisters guard my back, so to speak.” She turned the full power of huge blue eyes on him. “Do you believe that having friends insist on your protection is a betrayal?”

  He could hear the sincerity in her voice. “You don’t understand.” How could she? How could anyone? “They had no right to hire you, Sarah. I quit my job, retired, if you want it neat and tidy. I have no intention of ever going back again. I cut all ties with that job and every branch of the military and the private sector.”

  “You tried to keep everyone around you safe by leaving.” It was a statement of fact. He would think she was crazy if she told him he carried Death with him. “What happened, Damon?”

  “Didn’t they give you a three-inch-thick file to read on me before they sent you here?” he demanded, trying to sustain his anger with her.

  Sarah simply waited, allowing the silence to lengthen and stretch between them. Sometimes silence was more eloquent than words. Damon was tense, his body rigid next to hers. His fingers were curled into a tight fist around the comforter. Sarah laid her hand gently over his.

  He could have resisted most anything, but not that silent gesture of camaraderie. He twisted his hand around until his fingers laced through hers. “They hit us about five blocks from work. Dan Treadway was with me. We planned to have dinner and go back to work. We both wanted to see if we could work out a glitch with a minor problem we were having with the project.” He chose his words carefully. He no longer worked for the government but his work had been classified.

  “They beat us both nearly unconscious before they threw us in the trunk. They didn’t even pretend to want our money. They drove to a warehouse, an old paint factory, and demanded information on a project we just couldn’t safely give them.”

  Sarah felt his hand tremble in hers. She had read the hospital report. Both men had been tortured. She knew Damon carried the scars from numerous burns on his torso. “I couldn’t give them what they wanted and poor Dan had no idea what they were even talking about.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyes as if the pressure would stop the pain. Stop the memory that never left him. “He never even worked on the project they wanted information about.”

  Sarah knew Dan Treadway had been shot in the knee and then again in the head, killing him. Damon had refused to turn over classified information that could have resulted in the deaths of several field agents. And he had steadfastly refused to give up the newest defense system. Damon started a fire with paint thinners, nearly blowing up the building. In his escape attempt he was crushed between the wall of the warehouse and the grille of a car, severely damaging his hip and leg.

  “I don’t want friends, Sarah. No one can afford to be my friend.”

  Sarah knew he spoke the truth. Death clung and searched for victims. She wouldn’t tell him, but often Death felt cheated. If that were the case, it would demand a sacrifice before it would be appeased.
“Does the company know who these people are?” Sarah prompted.

  His dark gaze was haunted. “You would know that better than I would. Enemies of our country. Mercenaries. Hell, who cares? They wanted something my brain conceived, bad enough to kill an innocent man for it. I don’t want to think up anything worth killing over again. So here I am.”

  “Did you talk to anyone, a doctor?”

  He laughed. “Of course I did. The company made certain I talked to one, especially after I announced my retirement. There were a few loose ends and they didn’t want me leaving. I didn’t much care what they wanted.” He turned his head. Edgy. Brooding. “Is it part of your job to try to get me to go back?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I don’t tell people what to do, Damon. I don’t believe in that.” Her mouth curved. “Well,” she hedged, “I guess that’s not altogether true. There is the exception of my sisters. They expect me to boss them around, though, because I’m the oldest and I’m very good at bossing.”

  “Did you want to come back here, Sarah?” The sound of the sea was soothing. It did sound like home.

  “More than anything. I’ve felt the pull of the ocean for a while now. I’ve always known I’d come back home and settle here. I just don’t know when I’m going to manage it. Damon, your house has no security whatsoever. Did it occur to you they could waltz in here and grab you again?”

  Damon tried not to read too much into that worried note in her voice. Tried not to think that it was personal. “It’s been months. I thought they would leave me alone.”

  Sarah whistled softly. “You even lie with that straight face and those angelic eyes. I’m taking notes. That one is right up there with swearing at the ceiling. You wanted them to come after you, didn’t you?” It was a shrewd guess. She hadn’t known him long enough to judge his character yet, but she’d read the files thoroughly and every word portrayed a relentless, tenacious man, focused on his goals at all times.

  “Wouldn’t you? They forced me to make a choice between information that is vital to our nation and my friend’s life. He was looking at me when they shot him, Sarah. I’ll never forget the way he looked at me.” He rubbed his throbbing temple. The vision haunted his dreams and brought him out of a sound sleep so that he sat up, heart pounding, screaming a denial to the uncaring night.

  “What kind of a plan do you have?”

  Damon felt his stomach knot up. Her tone was very interested. She expected a plan. He had the reputation of being a brain. He should have a plan. His plan had been to draw his enemies to him and dispose of them, first with his cane and then he’d call the sheriff. He doubted if Sarah would be impressed.

  She sighed. “Damon, tell me you did have a plan.”

  “Just because you walk on water doesn’t mean everyone else does,” he muttered.

  “Who told you I walked on water?” Sarah demanded, annoyed. “For heaven’s sake, I only did it once and it was just showing off. All my sisters can do the same thing.”

  He gaped at her, his eyes wide with shock. She kept a straight face, but the laughter in her eyes gave her away. Damon did the noble thing and shoved her off the bed. Sarah landed on the floor, her soft laughter inviting him to join in.

  “You so deserved that,” she said. “You really did. Walk on water. That’s a new one. Where did you hear that? And you believed it, too.”

  Damon turned on his side, propped up on one elbow to look down at her. “I started the rumor myself at Inez’s store. For a minute there I thought I was psychic.”

  “Oh, thank you so much; now all the kids will be asking me to show them. The next time you come calling I’m going to sic the dogs on you.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to come calling?” he asked curiously.

  “I never told you about the paint preservative. You’re a persistent man.” She leaned her head against the bed. “Do you have a family anywhere, Damon?”

  “I was an only child. My parents died years ago, first my father, then six months later my mother. They were wild about each other.”

  “How strange that would be, to grow up alone. I’ve had my sisters always and can’t imagine life without them.”

  His fingers crept of their own accord to find the thick mass of her hair. She was wearing it in a tight braid, but he managed to rub the silky strands between his thumb and finger. How the hell did she manage to get her hair so soft? Mysterious Sarah. He was fast beginning to think of her as his Sarah. “Do you like them all?”

  Sarah smiled there in the darkness. She loved her sisters. There was no question about that, but no one had ever thought to ask if she liked them. “Very much, Damon. You would, too. Each of them is unique and gifted in her own way. All of them have a great sense of humor. We laugh a lot at our house.” He was tugging at her hair. It didn’t hurt, in fact it was a pleasant sensation, but it was causing little butterfly wings to flutter in the pit of her stomach. “What are you doing?”

  “I snagged my watch in your braid and thought I’d just take it out,” he answered casually. He was lying and he didn’t even care that it was a lie and that she knew it was a lie. Any excuse to see her hair tumbling down in a cloud around her face.

  Sarah laughed softly. “My braid? Or your watch?” He was definitely tugging her hair out of its tight arrangement. “It took me twenty minutes to get my hair like that. I’ve never been good at hair things.”

  “A wasted twenty minutes. You have beautiful hair. There’s no need to be good at hair things.”

  Sarah was absurdly pleased that he’d noticed. It was her one call to glory. “Thank you.” She tapped her fingers on her knee, trying to find a way to get him to agree with her on his protection. “Damon, it’s important to protect your house. I could set up a good security system for you. I’ll let the sheriff know we have a problem and they’ll help us out.”

  “Us? Sarah, you need to be as far away from me as possible.” Even as he said it, his hands were tunneling in the rich wealth of her hair, a hopeless compulsion he couldn’t prevent. He wanted to feel that silky softness sliding over his skin.

  “I thought you were supposed to be brilliant, Damon. Didn’t I read in your file that you were one of the smartest men on the face of the earth? Along with your swearing issues and your hair issues, please tell me you don’t have idiot macho tendencies, too. If that’s the case, I’m going to have to seriously study this gate prophecy. I can live with the other things but idiocy might be stretching my patience.”

  He tugged on her hair to make certain she was paying attention. “One of the smartest men? Is that what that report said? I should read the file over for you and weed out the blatant lies. I’m certain I’m the smartest, not one of the smartest. You don’t have to insult me by pretending the report said otherwise. And what is the gate prophecy?”

  She waved away his inquiry. “I’ll have to tell you about the Drake history sometime, but right now, I think you might clear up the idiot macho issue for me,” she insisted. “Brainy men tend to be arrogant but they shouldn’t be stupid. I’m a security expert, Damon.”

  He sighed loudly. “So I’m supposed to tell all my friends that my lady friend is the muscle in our relationship.”

  “Do we have a relationship?” She tilted her head to look back at him. “And surely the smartest man on earth would have a strong enough ego to be fine with his lady friend being the muscle. Relationship or no.”

  “Oh, if there’s no relationship, I doubt if any man could take that big a blow to his ego, Sarah. We need to call in an expert on this subject, consult a counselor before we make a decision. And it never hurts to get a second opinion if we don’t like the first one.”

  Damon couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. It felt good to smile. She had thrown his life into complete confusion, but she made him smile. Made him want to laugh. Intrigued him. Turned him inside out. Gave him a reason to live. And the heavy weight that seemed to be pressing down on his shoulders and chest was lifted for just a
few moments.

  “You won’t have to worry on that score, Damon. We’ll have six very loud and long-winded second opinions. My sisters will have more to say than you’ll ever want to hear on the subject. For that matter, on every subject. You won’t need a counselor for anything; they’ll all be happy to oblige, absolutely free of charge.”

  Sarah glanced toward the cliff house. Through the bedroom window that should have had the drapes closed. The curtains were parted in the middle, pushed to either side by an unseen hand.

  “Sarah.” There was an ache in Damon’s voice.

  Her heart did a funny little jump in her chest and she turned her head to look at him. Her gaze collided with his. Stark hunger was in his eyes. Raw need. Desire. He reached for her, caught the nape of her neck, and slowly lowered his head to hers. His mouth fastened onto hers. They simply melted together. Merged.

  Fireworks might have burst in the air around them. Or maybe it was the stars scattering across the sky, glittering like gems. Fire raced up her skin, heat spread through her body. He claimed her. Branded her. And he did a thorough job of it. They fed on one another. Were lost in smoky desire. His mouth was perfect, hot and hungry and demanding and possessive.

  No one had ever kissed her like that. She had never thought it would be like that. She wanted to just stay there all night and kiss.

  Damon shifted his weight on the bed, deepening the kiss. He tumbled over the edge, sprawling on the floor, pulling her over so that she collapsed on top of him. Instantly his arms circled her and held her to his chest.

  Sarah could feel the laughter start deep inside him, where it started in her. They lay in a tangle of arms and legs, laughing happily. She lifted her head to look at him, to trace his wonderful mouth with her fingertip. “Sheer magic, Damon. That’s what you are. Does this happen every time you kiss a woman?”