Bear Claw Bodyguard by Jessica Andersen Read Free Book Online Page B

unreal, as if they had happened to someone else, or came from a movie about shootouts, sabotaged vehicles and car chases.
    The man kissing her was equally outside of her normal zone, as were the heat and desire rocketing through her, but she could grab on to those feelings, dig into his solid strength and feel alive . They had made it out, made it down. They were okay, thanks to him. If he hadn’t been there… She shuddered against him, feeling safe and protected.
    But at the same time she was very aware that this, too,was a moment out of reality, fleeting and temporary. It had to be. So when her hands wanted to clutch, she made them caress instead, and when his body stiffened and he made a low noise of surprise, she let go and leaned back, hands up and open in the universal gesture of “don’t freak, no harm, no foul.”
    That was how she ran each and every one of her short-term relationships, after all: no harm, no foul.
    They sat there a moment, in a pool of light coming from the observatory’s floods, staring at each other. His breathing was fast, his eyes hot with a desire that speared straight into her and made her want to fling herself at him, on him, kiss him until neither of them was thinking about anything but the slip and slide of flesh and the pounding of their hearts.
    But even though his eyes were hot, he shook his head slowly as if to clear it, or maybe deny what had just happened between them. And although that rejection pinched at her feminine core, she was the one who’d let go first, and she was the one who broke the suddenly strained silence to say, “Sorry. Got caught up in the moment there.”
    He searched her face for an interval that stretched long enough for her to wonder what he was looking for, what he saw. But he only said, “We should get inside and start making calls. The guys at the station house need to hear about what just happened, as do the members of the task force; I need backup, and you need an official escort back down to the city.”
    The implication was “and a plane ticket the hell out of here,” and she wasn’t arguing—there was a line between dedication and stupidity, and sticking around when she was being shot at would put her way over onto the “stupid” side.
     
    T HE RINGING PHONE brought Percy Proudfoot groggily awake. As he fumbled on the nightstand for his cell, he muttered, “Damn it.” He slept alone, so there was nobody to care if he kept up his cursing when he knocked the phone off the nightstand and onto the floor and had to get down there and hunt for the damn thing. And if the staffers who lived in the other wing of the mayoral mansion heard anything, they’d been well-paid to turn a deaf ear to far stranger sounds.
    The Aubusson carpet scuffed his bare knees and he nearly brained himself on the corner of the nightstand, but he came up with the phone and leaned back against the giant canopy bed to flip it open. There was no ID on the display, just a number, but when he saw that it was coming in on his most private line, the sleepy cobwebs disappeared.
    Taking a deep breath, he clicked the call live and answered with a professional, borderline respectful, “Proudfoot here.”
    It wouldn’t do any good to irritate the man on the other end of the line. He was powerful, far-reaching, and he had Percy’s mayoral future in a vise.
    “You said you’d keep the cops away from the Forgotten.” The Investor—that was what he’d told Percy to call him from the very start of their association—sounded more than irritated. He sounded coldly furious. Murderous, even.
    Uh-oh. Going on instant alert, Percy searched his memory banks for even a hint of trouble, and drew a blank. “I did. They are. Chief Mendoza pulled his people off the militia investigation and prioritized the drug case last week. There’s nothing going on out in the Forgotten.”
    “You’re out of the loop, Mayor. There was a cop there today, Jack Williams, along with a woman