It was a stretch. But also an easy situation to imagine.

  “You’re thinking whoever is after me would hack credit card usage?”

  Again, could be overkill. Her instincts were telling her to move forward with the plan anyway. “We’ve just established that we’re dealing with someone who’s highly tech savvy within Bellair. We also know we’ve got someone savvy enough, and unscrupulous enough, to put up a Joe Hamilton message board on the dark web. It stands to reason that either of these folks, and any number of others, have motive to find you. And the skills to hack credit card usage. You willing to risk them being successful?” she asked but didn’t wait for a response. “Never mind answering that. I’m not willing. End of story.”

  “You aren’t going to tell me we have to close up and leave again, are you? Because you already said we didn’t, and I’ve had a beer.” As if to signify the point, he emptied the bottle he still held. And turned to her wearing a stony expression.

  “I always carry a prepaid credit card, just as a precaution, and after Glen’s call earlier, the need for dumping my phone and waiting for him to call us, I decided to use the prepaid to check us in.”

  His almost grin was back.

  The man was being hunted by tens of thousands. Someone wanted him badly enough to be illegally tracking a company’s phones. Someone who knew he’d hired Sierra’s Web. Proof was appearing that made him look guilty.

  By McKenna’s estimation, the world was completely closing in on him.

  And Joe was...seemingly glad just to be able to stay put for the night.

  She didn’t know whether she should admire him or worry about his sanity. And didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter, as her heart was already busy thinking more highly of him.

  The whole thing with William... In the midst of his own trauma, Joe had had the patience and wherewithal to think of another, to try to right a wrong he claimed he hadn’t even committed.

  But her heart wasn’t a part of her current equation. As she checked the outside cameras and then turned off her phone, she would have liked to have had more of a view than the darkened area around them, or to have a chance while it was still light to get a better sense of their immediate surroundings.

  And she’d like for Joe to excuse himself to bed.

  To be locked away from her for a few hours so she could have a few private words with herself. Refocusing on head over heart.

  And maybe get a little rest, too.

  In his shorts and white shirt, with those bony knees right there for her to concentrate on, he headed for the door, all right. The one leading outside.

  “What are you doing?” Her tone was sharp. It needed to be.

  “I’ve got to get out of here, to walk a bit. Even if it’s just around the rig. As dark as it is outside, and as secluded as we are, and while there are no pictures or mentions of you or the rig on social media, I’m as little at risk as I’m going to be.”

  She hated to disappoint him, most particularly since she understood his need for exercise, but, “It’s just too risky, Joe. I have no idea what’s out there. If it’d still been light when we’d driven in...”

  With a shake of his head, he took another step toward the door before turning back to her. “I’m not asking, I’m telling, McKenna.” His tone wasn’t nearly as sharp as hers had been, but it brooked no argument. “I’m more of a risk to myself if I don’t get out for a minute or two.”

  “I can’t let you just go wander off alone into the night.”

  “So come with me.”

  “It’s not smart.” She had to stop him. “You can’t evaluate risk level without knowing what you’re walking out to.”

  “Look—” His shoulders relaxed, and for a second she thought she’d convinced him. “I’m following all of your commands, taking your advice, but right now, if I don’t get out of here, I’m going to be climbing some serious walls. Or attempting to jump your bones.”

  He just put it right out there. Stark. In the open.

  And, wrong as it might be, she flooded with desire between her legs. Something that, thankfully, was not apparent to him.

  As his suddenly clear erection was to her.

  “I’m the client. You’re the bodyguard,” he said, turning abruptly away from her. “My choice. I’m going outside. You may come with me or not as you choose.”

  He was going to say something like that and just...walk out?

  She couldn’t let him do that. He’d walk back in and his words, the attraction clearly building between them, instead of just inside her, would still be there.

  The door lock clicked, and McKenna sprang up. She had two choices—physically restrain the man with a neck hold.

  Or follow him out the door.

  Deciding that not touching him was the less risky choice, she followed him out.

  * * *

  Maybe he’d been an ass. Had just shot himself in the foot. Joe just knew that he’d been too cornered, for too long, to maintain his healthy equilibrium without a break.

  He got that having a bodyguard was probably the best choice—she’d not only saved his body from William’s knife, she’d prevented a kid from ruining the rest of his own life.

  On his own, Joe had been followed and photographed.

  With McKenna calling the shots, they’d stayed days ahead of everyone stalking him.

  It was possible that the guy who’d slashed their tires as a very clear warning to get out had taken that route because he’d seen Joe with someone.

  A woman posing as his wife.

  For whatever reason, the man had been as good as his word, based on the lack of new photos on Twitter.

  She’d gotten him out of the park he’d paid cash for, too, before anyone had time to get a picture of him. Or knew about her.

  And...she was right behind him, within half a step, as, hands in his pockets, he walked slowly around the rig. He wasn’t an idiot. Didn’t intend to embark on some adventurous midnight hike.

  Fresh air, even with the temperature still pushing seventy, felt good. He could hear the river, along with McKenna’s footsteps. And the sky for a ceiling...much more freeing than the room he’d be bedding down in soon.

  A room where, if he stood upright on the far side of the bed, he’d hit his head on the ceiling.

  A bed where, earlier that day, McKenna had sat with her shirt raised, exposing the soft skin of her side and back to him.

  The room where, after he’d left, she’d changed her shirt.

  The walk was supposed to be giving desire a chance to drain out of him...

  Step, step and there she was. Beside him. Close enough to brush shoulders. Closing in the space he’d sought by escaping to the outdoors. “As your bodyguard, I’m supposed to be in front,” she said, and then, pointing to the right, behind and past their rig, she added, “Can we head over there? Since I’m out here, I’d really like to get a better feel for our surroundings.”

  Didn’t matter to him where he walked. And being out, with her, while not calming him, was definitely dispelling the impending sense of doom that had threatened during the phone call.

  What had appeared to him to be a thick mass of woods behind them turned out to only be a few yards in depth. The trees were densely situated, but they made it through them in a couple of minutes. Stepping carefully since they couldn’t see much.

  He mentioned wildlife.

  She had her hand on the butt of the gun sticking out of her waistband. The woman was always aware, prepared, ready.

  Qualities that he held dear.

  Her left hand suddenly flew out in front of him, stopping forward motion and catching him across the crotch. Though he was instantly inflamed again, he wasn’t sure she’d even noticed what she’d touched.

  That’s when he heard the crackling sound she’d obviously already noticed.

  Motioning at him to stay behind, she crouched and moved silently forward a step and then two, then stopped and flagged him forward.

  The scene was...nice. A fire on the beach, and what looked like two couples sitting around it. He couldn’t make out voices, but they were obviously talking. Having some libation.

  Normal life.

  He couldn’t remember a time he’d had one.

  Couldn’t picture himself ever sitting around a fire on the beach. Past or future. Not unless it was a manned bonfire and the beach was a lavishly catered private party.

  But for that moment, he was glad to be sharing a small part of someone else’s good time with his bodyguard.

  * * *

  “I’m not a sexual predator.”

  McKenna missed a step, not even sure at first she’d heard Joe right as they walked slowly along the outer side of the woods that filled the cliff above the river. She’d allowed herself to slip into the moment. The rapidly cooling night, the moon above, the river, friends on the beach, peace, quiet, privacy and her, walking along the edge of some woods with a man she liked.

  Then she really heard his words and stopped walking altogether, putting him between the cliff edge several feet away and her. “Why would you say a thing like that?”

  If he was about to confess some other crime that he was suspected of committing...

  Even as she had the thought, she dismissed it. No way she was going to believe that one.

  “Back there...my comment about jumping your bones...was beyond inappropriate.”

  Oh. Yeah, she’d known they had to get back to that.

  Had been enjoying their time away from their reality.

  “To the contrary, I found it honest. And in our situation, commendable, even. You were struggling with something specific and you gave warning.”

  “I’ve never, and would never, touch a woman without her consent. Not purposefully. In a sexual manner.”

  She stepped right up to him, head tilted to meet what she could see of his gaze in the moonlight. “Joe, you don’t have to convince me that you’re a decent man.”

  His gaze was hot. Sliding through her skin to the inside no one got to share.

  “I don’t fear for my physical safety with you at all.”

  “That sounds like you do fear something else.”

  She’d hoped her tone hadn’t left that hanging there.

  “I do.”

  He stepped around her, as though to head back to the rig, and she caught at his forearm, pulling him back to her. “I fear that I won’t be able to stay on top of my attraction to you, and then we would have a problem.”

  His head tilt was...endearing. Made her want to smile.

  “Well, I guess we got that out into the open,” he said, sounding so casual she wanted to laugh out loud.

  She didn’t. She started back to the rig by his side, instead.

  And wondered what it would be like to not be on a job, but rather to be taking a moonlit stroll in the woods, her fingers interlocked with Joe’s.

  “I won’t take advantage.”

  They’d gone several yards before he spoke again, all levity gone from his tone.

  “I know.”

  “I need you on this job. You know the case. Know me. And I trust you to do the job well. You’ve proven your abilities and I find it...not impossible...to take orders from you without the fact that I have to do so getting too far under my skin.”

  “I’m not leaving, Joe.”

  He gave a half grunt. She took it as a thank-you.

  “Hypothetically, what would it look like if, say, you happen to lose your battle and your attraction gets on top of you?” She’d told him she had to stay on top of it. Did the man remember every word she uttered?

  Was she surprised by that?

  He paid attention.

  Which made it so hard to understand how someone could have used his computer, multiple times, to commit fraud without him picking up on it.

  The thought crept through.

  Because no matter what, she was on the job.

  And still, his question hung there...needing an answer. For both their sakes.

  “Hypothetically, how? In what sense?” She had to tread like cotton, choose her words with acute care.

  “Would you lose your job?”

  “Absolutely not.” The words rushed out, maybe because he’d allowed her an easy answer. “In the first place, I’m a commissioned expert, not on staff. In the second place, as long as I keep you alive and as free from the danger threatening you as is humanly possible, I’d be doing nothing wrong. Assuming you were consenting, which you would be or nothing would happen anyway. I’m not a predator, either.”

  “What about conflict of interest?”

  “You think, if I took personal interest in you, I’d be less interested in keeping you alive and free from danger?”

  They’d almost reached the rig, which brought a pit of disappointment to her gut.

  “I think I could be a distraction...” His tone, that hint of audacious humor, made her want to laugh. She was working. Contained herself.

  “Well, I know that, if anything, I’d be more invested in protecting you, if that were possible. Because I’d be protecting a part of me, as well.”

  She heard the words. Stopped in her tracks. “Oh, man, I swear, I did not mean that at all, in any way, like it sounded,” she said, her eyes so wide with horror, she could feel the night air drying them.

  And then had to take a quick visual sweep of the area around the rig, before they stepped into the clearing, just because...that was her.

  “No worries,” he told her, but he sounded pleased with himself. So much so that her brain was scrambling for the words to take him down a step or ten.

  “And for the record,” he added, before she got there. “If I ever do get to know what it feels like to share...bones...with you, you can bet that you would be a part of me as well.”

  McKenna glanced down. Around. Behind them as they reached the rig door.

  She did what she had to do so her client absolutely did not see the smile on her face.

  Chapter 13

  Joe was on his way to bed, to go over spreadsheets and employees, job responsibilities and time schedules, in light of the new information he’d received that evening, when McKenna called him back.

  He stopped at the door into the bathroom. Was she going to suggest heading to the back with him? Growing hard at the thought, he said, “Yeah?” Trying not to sound too eager.

  Or needy.

  “I just need to be clear about something...”

  If the clarity would lead her to bed with him...

  “What’s that?”

  “If we ever do, you know, do the bone thing...and I’m not saying that I’m up for it, just if...it would only be for the moment...”

  He’d already figured that one out. She was a two-couple beach fire and he was a catered-bonfire gathering of two hundred.

  Beyond that, even if he found that he could do the beach fire, he was still a very rich man to whom the security of wealth meant more than he could give up, and she’d made it very clear that she wanted no part of that life.

  “Can I ask you something?” Leaning his shoulder against the edge of the pocket door he was about to close, he watched her settle back into a corner of the couch, phone in hand.

  “Of course.”

  “Those stipulations you had the court put on your visits with your grandparents...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you still require them to abide by them?”

  “It’s no longer a matter of needing to require it,” she told him. “Once they really understood how I felt, they’ve made certain that they don’t ever put me in a position of having to ask.”

  He had no idea how much he’d been hoping for a different answer until it didn’t come.

  And yet, with the completely solid understanding that even if he and McKenna took their relationship to a personal level it wouldn’t be anything long term, Joe had less trouble concentrating than he’d expected when he sat up in bed half an hour later, spreadsheets in front of him.

  He still wanted McKenna, but the differences between them weren’t going to be breached, which meant that anything that happened between them would only open the door to one of them getting hurt.

  He wasn’t worried about himself. Normal relationship hurts would almost be a welcome change from the majority of the pain he’d suffered in his life. And holding her in his arms, knowing her intimately, would be worth any resulting heartache.

  Knowing that, because of him, she was hurting...not so easy to dismiss. That would eat at him, and he’d end up not liking himself.

  Reaching that point, his thoughts were finally able to be consumed by the information he’d received from Glen that night. He had to find the evidence that had been eluding him for months and get McKenna out of his life before anything more happened between them.

  In the past two days, Sierra’s Web’s experts had given him not only new information regarding the fraud at Bellair, but new insights, as well.

  He had no timelines—except that he knew when he’d been in the office. With sixty hours a week being his norm, and the office closed most of the time he wasn’t there, that left very few windows.

  He began narrowing and then stopped as something else struck him.

  A virus might hit at any time, by various means, but an actual change to the sales program for which Bellair had become nationally known—the program the company still used itself—could only have happened when the program was down. Anything else would have sent several alarms across the desks of all top management. Ditto, even a momentary, few-stroke hesitation. A glitch in the program could cost the company millions, even billions of dollars, and so extra protocols had been put in place and were aggressively monitored. And with online sales, the company had to carefully schedule maintenance time to service the program or install updates, generally in the middle of the night when fewer sales were generated, with carefully monitored employee involvement. Heightened security protocols were also in place during those times.