Dangerous Lover Read Free

eventually, however long it took. He had the rest of his life to do it in, and he certainly wasn’t hurting for money.
    Just one look, and he’d disappear forever.
    In the end, he didn’t have to track her down, though. The taxi driver in from the airport knew where she was.
    Here. Right here, where she’d been all along. In Summerville.
    Single.
    Jack had been planning on checking into a hotel, cleaning up, having a nice meal in a restaurant, then sleeping for twenty-four hours. He’d been in a firefight, and he’d been traveling for two days straight. He was exhausted.
    It was Christmas Eve. Everything would be closed on Christmas Day and the next day, Sunday. On Monday, he planned to start his search for Caroline.
    But then the taxi driver said Caroline Lake— his Caroline Lake—was still in Summerville and ran a small bookshop, and so there was no question where he’d go.
    Straight to her.
    Quick, light footsteps on the hardwood floor and shit , before he was ready, there she was.
    “Oh!” Caroline Lake stopped suddenly, the welcoming smile dying on her face as she saw him. “He-hello.”
    He knew what she saw.
    She saw a tall, heavily muscled man with long black hair tied back carelessly, dressed in cheap, rough, dirty, crumpled clothes. He hadn’t showered or shaved in three days, and he knew that lines of exhaustion creased his stubbled face.
    He knew what she felt, too.
    Scared.
    She was alone with him. He had unusually sharp hearing,and he heard no other human sounds in the small shop. The icy sleet storm outside was so severe that the streets outside were deserted, as well. If he turned out to be violent, there would be no one to hear her cries for help.
    There was nothing he could do about the way he looked—dangerous. The truth was, he was every inch as dangerous as he looked.
    Though Caroline couldn’t possibly see the Glock in the shoulder holster, or the tactical folder in the boot or the .22 in the ankle holster, an armed man carries himself differently than an unarmed man. He’d killed four men two days and two continents ago. At some subliminal level, she was picking up on this.
    She was standing very still, nostrils slightly flared, instinctively pulling in oxygen in case she had to run. She wouldn’t know that was what she was doing, but he did.
    He was an expert on human prey and how it reacted to danger.
    First, defuse her fears.
    He stood utterly still, watching her carefully. He would rather rip his own throat out than hurt her in any way, but she couldn’t know that. All she knew was she was all alone with a big, potentially violent man.
    “Good evening.” He kept his voice low and without inflection. Calm. He kept his body language utterly nonthreatening, moving only his lungs to breathe. Not smiling, not frowning.
    It was the only way he knew to reassure her. Words wouldn’t do it. Stillness would. If he were crazy, he couldn’t stay so still. Agitated minds make for agitated bodies.
    It worked. She relaxed slightly, nodded, smiled.
    He couldn’t smile back. For a second, he couldn’t breathe.
    Christ, she is so fucking beautiful. She’d somehow become even more beautiful than his memory. How could that be?
    Slender yet curvy. Not tall, yet long-limbed. Her hair was the richest color he’d ever seen—a wild mix of reds and golds, with pale champagne streaks running through it. Her coloring was so vivid the eye naturally gravitated to where she was. Jack couldn’t imagine looking at another woman while Caroline was in the room.
    She stepped back slightly.
    He was staring at her. Worse, he was scaring her.
    “Terrible weather,” he rumbled. His voice was deep, unusually so, but he kept his tone even and low.
    It took a huge effort, one of the hardest things he’d ever done in a hard life, but he took his eyes off her. Hungry as he was for the sight of her, he couldn’t keep staring, or she’d freak.
    So he looked around him, at what she’d created.
    It was a pretty