A Very Special Delivery

“You’re determined to take this job?”

Her chin came up. “I’m an adult, Mick. I make my own decisions.”

“I respect that, but it doesn’t make me worry less. Will you do me a favor?”

“What kind of a favor?”

“Ease my mind. Let me at least see you to and from work. Let me stop in to check up on you now and then.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“You’d let me suffer when I don’t have to?”

She grinned. “That’s low, Mick.”

He grinned back. “You bet it is, but it’s also the truth. I’m not asking for the world.”

She gazed down at her hands, which were resting in her lap. He was helpless not to look beyond her fingertips to that long bare stretch of legs. Mick took a deep breath and concentrated on the shiny crest of her hair.

“Laura?” he urged.

She brought her head up, her long hair swishing over her shoulders. “You stayed with me for hours. You didn’t ask for anything, really, but letting you stand guard over me seems so…nineteenth century. I can take care of myself.”

“Are your brothers capable of taking care of themselves?”

“Of course. They’re grown men.”

“Don’t you worry about them now and then?”

“Every day. Especially Luke. I don’t even know where he is.”

“So it’s okay to worry even if you trust them to be capable men.”

She smiled at him and stood up, walking toward him. Her smile was both innocent and yet terribly dangerous to him. He wanted to reach out and touch, maybe even to grab. He forced himself to hold his hands still.

“You’re too smart for your own good, Mick Hannon.”

He shrugged. “That’s not an answer.”

“I don’t see how letting you do something else for me would help in repaying you in any way.”

“It would soothe me. It would help me concentrate. It’s very important to concentrate when you’re working with heavy machinery.”

“Mick,” she drawled. “Don’t make me worry, too.”

He got to his feet. He reached out and indulged himself by running one long finger down the smoothness of her cheek. “I’m a desperate man, Laura. I’m genuinely worried.”

She nearly gasped at his touch, and a slight blush turned her cheeks an enticing, desirable rose. Skin made for nibbling on. Mick did his best to resist.

She frowned. “You shouldn’t be worrying about me. That will only attract my brother’s attention and then Rafe will be pacing the floor. You won’t approach him?”

“Afraid it’s too late. He approached me several days ago.”

Laura frowned. “What did he want? No, don’t tell me what he wanted. He didn’t ask you if you—”

The rose of her cheeks had deepened. Mick couldn’t resist. He leaned forward and touched his lips to her cheek, nibbled his way to her ear. “He asked me if I’d actually seen you naked.”

She jumped, and he brought his arms up to catch her in case she should fall.

“What—what did you tell him?” she asked, and he knew that he’d be kissing her lips soon if he didn’t step away. That wouldn’t be a wise course for either of them, but especially for her. She was at a vulnerable stage of her life. He wasn’t a man made for vulnerable women.

But he very definitely wanted to touch her again. He wanted to kiss more than just her cheek. And he wanted to do it in the dark in a bedroom.

He hesitated, then stepped away. “I told Rafe that the only thing I remember was your eyes. I was staring into your eyes the whole time.”

She gazed up into his eyes then, and the room melted away.

“You were,” she said, her voice low and soft and so terribly sexy that it was killing him. “I remember.”

So did he. All too well.

“You’ll let me be your temporary bodyguard, Laura?”

“Do you really think it’s necessary?”

“Very necessary.” It was a good thing she hadn’t asked him if it was wise, because he knew for certain that getting too close to her wasn’t wise at all. She made him feel big and protective, but he knew that wasn’t a feeling that lasted with the men in his family. Inevitably they failed the women they had sworn to protect.

“What time do you start work?” he asked.

“I’m just part-time. They’re letting me bring Meggie, of course. I begin at three and work until six.”

“This late in the year, it’ll be dark by the time you leave, then.”

She nodded, so close that her swishing hair became trapped against his shoulder. He brushed his fingers through the soft silk and slid the strands back over her shoulder.

“Will you have any trouble getting off work to come pick me up?”

“It won’t be any problem,” he promised. “I have a very understanding supervisor.” He did, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Mick was determined to do whatever it took to protect Laura Maitland from whatever threatened her.

But as he took his leave and her soft scent wafted around him, he knew there was more at risk than he’d mentioned to her.

The lady was tempting as sin, and he had just set himself the task of seeing her several times a day. It was going to be one hell of a task to maintain some distance between Laura Maitland’s lips and his own.

She definitely needed to do something about Mick Hannon, Laura thought a week later when Mick picked her up for work for the first time. It was all well and good to say that you were going to be assertive and independent, but with a man like Mick, a woman had to work very hard to stay a step ahead of him. He was a strong, stubborn man and he seemed to have a thing about protecting women.

“You really don’t have to do this,” she began, as Mick opened the door of his truck and fastened Meggie’s carrier into the back seat.

He studied her for several seconds, a note of concern in his eyes. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” he finally asked.

She stared up at him, feeling small and delicate, even though her body still bore some of the evidence of her recent pregnancy.

Was he making her uncomfortable?

Definitely. The word stuck in her mind. What woman wouldn’t feel uncomfortable gazing up at a man who was a walking ad for how the human male should fill out his jeans? But the truth was that, nervous though that thought made her, there was also a certain comfort, a certain satisfaction in just being near the man.

An unexpected smile lifted her lips. “I feel just fine,” she told him, lifting her chin in defiance.

A grin spread across his face, exposing even white teeth that contrasted sharply with his tanned skin. “That’s good then, sunshine. Ready to ride?”

That low, sexy voice slid right under every womanly defense she’d spent months building.

Please don’t let me be turning into my mother, she couldn’t help thinking. Because Veronica Maitland had loved her husband even after he’d deserted her. Through all the long years after that, of working in bars and dating men with no future and trying her best to be a good mother, she’d still held out hope that Robert would return to her. If he whistled for her, she ran to him in a pant. If he called on the phone, she dropped everything. She was a sad, lonely woman, unable to enjoy life or even to enjoy her children that much, and Laura didn’t ever intend to be like that. She’d allowed herself the mistake of hoping her father would love her. She’d even forgiven herself for thinking Greg was something he wasn’t. But no more. She’d made her last big mistake with a man.

“This isn’t going to work, you know,” she said suddenly. “You escorting me to work doesn’t count in the big book of How Laura Pays Mick Back for Helping Her.”

“It works for me.”

She laughed, even though she wasn’t feeling all that amused right now. She was sitting two feet away from a man who had a shadowed jawline made for stroking and a long, strong body made for satisfying a woman’s needs.

“How can I expect Meggie to learn how to behave if I don’t even show her the right way to thank someone?” she asked, forcing her thoughts back down the right lane.

Mick’s laugh was low and seductive. “Um… Meggie would be how many days old now?”

Laura firmed her chin. “A parent should start the way they mean to go on.”

Her comment brought a thoughtful smile to Mick’s face. “You’re an admirable woman, Laura,” he said gently. “I’m sure you’ll be one of the good parents. That’s important.”

His comment triggered a question in her mind. He sounded as if he had issues with parenting. She realized how little she knew about him. Maybe if she knew more, she’d know the right thing to do to demonstrate her gratitude. As it was, all she really knew was that he was handsome and that he was gallant. Well, okay, she did know that he worked in construction and was only here for the short term, but—

“Didn’t you say you were just in from out of town?” she asked suddenly.

Instantly Mick’s expression turned serious. He studied her carefully as if trying to decide what she was up to with this sudden change of subject. “Just in,” he agreed quietly.

“Just here to do a job?”

“I’m here to do a job,” he said.

Laura drummed her fingers lightly on the dashboard. The seeds of a plan—okay, the seeds of a very small plan—were building. Nothing great, but maybe more would come later.

“So…what do you usually do for supper?”

Mick turned curious eyes her way before looking back to the road. Suddenly he smiled.

“I usually eat,” he teased.

“Where?”

He shrugged. “Fast food, a local diner, that kind of thing. Why?”

“No special reason. Just that you’re away from home. Maybe you’d like food that was prepared just for you. Mrs. Parker has given me kitchen privileges if I want to have a guest rather than eat with all the other boarders. I could cook something for you. We could have a meal in my room, unless…”

“Unless?”

She felt her face burning. “I never thought. You don’t have a wife who would get upset about another woman making you a meal, do you?”

In the silence that followed, the sound of the truck’s engine filled her ears. Loudly.

“No wife,” he finally said. “I’m not exactly marriage material.”

His statement called for a question, but his tone told her he wasn’t interested in answering questions.

“So would you be open to letting me work off my debt to you with food?”

“You don’t have a debt.”

She shook her head. “I have a bodyguard. I don’t think most bodyguards work for free. Or at least they shouldn’t.”

Mick pulled up in front of the clinic. He cut the engine and turned dark, intense eyes her way, his arm looped over the steering wheel. Now that he wasn’t driving, Laura was even more aware that he was an attractive, unmarried man…and that he was very close.

As if to punctuate that point, Mick leaned even closer. “Laura,” he said softly. “I don’t know how to say this tactfully, but I’m not sure it’s wise for us to spend too much time alone in your room.”

She sat there quietly chewing on her bottom lip, horribly embarrassed that he must have known what she had been thinking.

A low groan slipped from his lips. “Don’t do that,” he whispered, brushing her lip with his fingertips. And at that point of contact, she knew that he was right. It would be very dangerous for her to bring him into the private confines of her room at the boardinghouse. She’d be in much more danger than she probably ever would be in at the clinic, even with some sort of criminal harassing the Maitlands.

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