Official Escort. Jean Barrett

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СКАЧАТЬ have agreed to come out here if she did, do you? And let’s keep it that way, please. I don’t want to risk her going on the run again. She’s already nervous enough after last night.”

      Mitch nodded as he zipped up the jacket. He remembered how Neil, after questioning Madeline Raeburn last summer, had told him that Julie apparently had never referred to him at the Phoenix by anything other than her playful nickname for him. Their private joke. Mitch also remembered how Neil, with just short of physical force, had managed to keep him from going to Matisse and Madeline Raeburn. Mad with grief, he’d wanted to tear both of them apart. He realized as he joined Neil by the door that that memory was still painful.

      “And, Mitch?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Anything happens—not that it will—you won’t let me down, will you? You’ll stick by her?”

      Mitch promised, and they went out on the porch. The cop swore. “Damn it, I told her to stay in the car.”

      Madeline stood a few yards away from the car, her back to them as she gazed off into the wooded hills.

      “Nice beginning,” Mitch muttered. “A woman with her own mind.”

      “You just treat her right,” Neil instructed him as they started toward the car. “She’s been through a lot.”

      “Hell, Neil,” Mitch said dryly, “before it’s over we’re gonna be best friends. Probably share the same toothbrush.”

      Madeline must have heard their approach. She swung to face them, looking immediately wary when she realized Neil was not alone. Mitch tried to feel no emotion as they stood there near the car, taking each other’s measure. But holding his feelings in check wasn’t possible, not with what felt like a fist slowly squeezing his insides as he looked at her.

      Her admirers hadn’t exaggerated. She was everything he had heard she was: a tall, leggy beauty with wide, amber eyes and a mane of dark red hair that was probably the result of Scottish ancestry. But he had expected no less. Griff Matisse wouldn’t have owned her if she hadn’t been stunning.

      What did surprise Mitch was her youth. She couldn’t have been older than her early twenties. Still, there was a self-possession about her, which he supposed he had to respect considering she must be terrified under all that seemingly quiet composure.

      If she was conscious of her looks and how they might be affecting a man she was meeting for the first time—and in Mitch’s experience women like her always were—she gave no indication. But, hell, she didn’t have to be conscious of her looks. Mitch was fully aware of them for her. And he didn’t like his reaction. Not one bit. Her mere existence was problem enough.

      “Madeline,” Neil introduced him, “this is Mitchell Hawke.”

      “Looks like I’ve been elected to take care of you,” Mitch said. It was the best he had to offer her.

      There was a bad moment while she went on silently regarding him. Did his name mean something to her, after all? Or had another recognition occurred, the physical one that was certainly possible?

      Mitch relaxed, and Neil with him, when she finally nodded gravely and extended a gloved hand. Mitch accepted the slim hand. Her clasp was brief but firm; her voice was low and husky—the kind that did things to a man’s imagination.

      “Thank you for letting me be your guest,” she said simply. And then her thickly lashed gaze flicked toward Neil. “It is all arranged, isn’t it?” she asked, a note of concern in her voice.

      “Everything’s settled,” Neil assured her. He opened the back door of the car and took out a single suitcase.

      Madeline went to the front and removed a bulging canvas satchel. It looked heavy. Mitch tried to take it from her, but she clung to it possessively.

      “I’ll carry it,” she informed him, holding it close.

      Mitch, leading the way to the house, wondered what she was guarding in that satchel. It was one more complication in a situation that was already difficult. He knew this was not going to be an easy few days. How could it be, when, once Neil was gone, he would be alone with Madeline Raeburn and all that alluring red hair?

      CLARK GABLE.

      That’s who Madeline had been trying to think of all afternoon. The actor from the golden age of movies. The name finally came to her all at once as she sat across the dinner table from Mitchell Hawke. He had the same prominent ears as Clark Gable.

      Funny, she thought, how ears that were a bit too large for their wearer, and stuck out slightly, as well, could qualify as sexy. They certainly had for Clark Gable, and they did for this man. Maybe it was the way they were set on his head.

      Or maybe it was that dark head itself with its other bold features—a pair of probing blue eyes, a strong nose and a wide, sensual mouth above a square jaw. All of this was carried on a solid body clad in a bulky, wheat-colored sweater and snug jeans.

      Madeline had been making a concerted effort ever since her arrival not to notice just how well Mitch Hawke filled those jeans. This had become especially difficult during their preparations for dinner.

      The kitchen was not small, but they had been forever bumping into each other. Brief as those contacts were, they had been charged with a kind of intimacy in which Madeline had been far too conscious of the heat radiating from his six-foot frame.

      Neil Stanek trusted this man to protect her—Madeline kept reminding herself of that. Still, she couldn’t seem to shake the conviction that Mitch Hawke was dangerous. Dangerous on some level she was unable to define but that had her fearing it was a mistake for her to be here with him in this house.

      “Something wrong?”

      He had looked up abruptly from his plate and caught her staring at him. Maybe his ears were a sensitive subject. Madeline felt herself flushing, the penalty of a fair, slightly freckled complexion.

      “No. The meat loaf is very good.”

      She busied herself slicing it, but she was aware of him eyeing her across the table. Madeline was used to men looking at her. It was essentially what she had been paid for at the Phoenix. But there was a difference in the way Mitch Hawke looked at her. It wasn’t admiration. It was something else, something that worried her. Something that was very wrong.

      This, too, had been on her mind all afternoon. She had even asked him about it when she’d noticed all the somber looks he’d cast in her direction while helping her settle in to her room. But he had denied it in that brusque manner she found so troubling.

      She could feel his gaze still lingering on her as she ate the meat loaf. That was why she asked him about his relationship with Neil Stanek, not because she needed to understand it but simply in an effort to ease the tension between them.

      “You were friends with Neil back in San Francisco, weren’t you?”

      “That’s right,” he said, adding more dressing to his salad.

      “I think he mentioned you were both in law enforcement there.”

      “Something like that.”

      “But СКАЧАТЬ