Wilde Nights in Paradise (Wilde Security #1)

Chapter Three

“You’re still here?” Libby stopped short in surprise when she exited her office to find Jude camped out on the floor beside her door, his long, jean-clad legs outstretched, his head tilted back against the tiled wall. His eyes were closed until she spoke, but he hadn’t been sleeping. He thrummed with suppressed energy.

“Where else would I go?” he asked.

“How about away?”

Jude released a long breath. “Christ, woman, you really know how to hold a grudge.”

“And you really know how to break a young girl’s heart.” He opened his mouth to reply, but she didn’t want his excuses. She didn’t care to think about the catastrophe that was their past, didn’t know why she’d felt the need to bring it up, and shrugged as if it all meant nothing. “Just…forget it.”

“For now,” he said.

Lovely.

On his lap lay a closed folder, and she didn’t have to strain to guess what it was: her dossier. She nodded toward it, desperate for a subject change. “Learn anything interesting?”

“Yeah.” He smacked the folder against his palm and pushed to his feet. “You father is right to worry. You’re not taking this threat seriously enough.”

“C’mon. Not you, too. It’s all harmless crap.”

“It’s escalating.”

“That’s bull.”

“Go over everything for me,” he commanded. “From the beginning. When did it all start?”

She faced him as disbelief roared through her. “You can’t be serious.”

“I rarely am, but in this case…”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it. You and Dad are worked up about nothing, and I refuse to give this…stalker…one nanosecond more of my time.”

“Fuck me,” Jude said. “Some things never change, huh? You’re still so freakin’ stubborn, knocking my head against a wall would be more productive than talking to you.”

She conjured up her sweetest smile and waved a hand at the wall. “Knock yourself out. Please.”

Jude scowled. “Libs—”

Her heart clenched. “Don’t. You lost your right to use cutesy nicknames eight years ago.”

With a heavy sigh that moved his wide shoulders, he corrected himself. “A.D.A. Pruitt, I need to hear the whole story from you. Your version, not some watered-down—or trumped-up—report.”

Sure, now he had to go and be all reasonable.

“All right.” She hitched the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder and started walking. She didn’t wait to see if he was following. He was. He even had the audacity to reach out and take her hand. She tried to pull away, but he only tightened his fingers.

Okay then. If he really wanted to go through with this ridiculous charade, she could manage it as far as the parking lot.

“It started about a month ago,” she explained. “Right after K-Bar made bond. Little things, at first, like a paper doll under my car’s windshield wiper. I just brushed it off, but then the dolls started showing up with fewer clothes. Then with no clothes. Then the letters started.”

“What did they say?”

“Things like ‘see me now?’ and ‘I’m here.’” A chill clawed through her at the memory, despite her best efforts to repress it. “The worst was ‘I’m waiting for you.’ Then I started getting phone calls on my cell and videos sent to my e-mail. Always a distorted voice saying the same types of things as the notes.”

“And the videos?”

They stepped into the elevator, and she hit the button for the ground floor. After the doors slid shut, she tried to pull her hand away from his. He held on and gave her a smile that was all challenge.

Giving up on the possibility of getting her hand back, she answered his question. “Same voice, but the picture is usually of a paper doll or blacked out. I saved them all if you want to see them. The first video frightened me enough that I finally told my father about it, and he overreacted and hired you.”

“I don’t think he overreacted.”

Yeah, he wouldn’t. For as different as Jude and her father were, in some ways they were very much the same. The elevator dinged, and the doors opened to the lobby, which she always thought looked more like the waiting area of a dentist office than a government building.

“Do you agree that the threats are from this gangbanger you’re going to put away?” Jude asked.

“They’re not threats,” she told him.

“What would you call them then?”

“Not threats. None of them are overtly hostile. Just…creepy. If I took this to a courtroom and named them threats, the defense would hand me my ass on a silver platter.”

“But do you agree with the possibility of K-Bar’s involvement?” Jude persisted.

“Yes. He’s trying to frighten me. He has been from day one. I had to get a restraining order against him to stop him from harassing me from prison.”

Jude fell silent for a moment, his brows drawn together in an expression of concentration that was so very familiar. “Maybe,” he said finally.

She sighed in exasperation. “Well, if not K-Bar, who else would it be?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You do kinda have a knack for pissing people off.”

“And you don’t?”

“Hey, I didn’t say it was a flaw. It’s a knack. A propensity. No, a forte. That’s a good one. Forte .” He exaggerated the accent on the word and let go of her hand long enough to hold open the building’s front door. As soon as they were both through, his hand found hers again. “I want you to make up a list of other possible suspects that I can give to my brothers for background checks.”

“That’s not necessary. They don’t need to waste their time.”

“Nah, Reece’s only pleasure comes from running background checks. God knows the dude has no life to speak of.”

A cloud of dust danced across the pavement, and clouds lumbered toward the city from the east, dark and foreboding, promising a storm. The gusty, late spring wind still held enough of a hint of winter that it ripped the heat from her body, but with Jude’s hand encircling hers, she didn’t feel the chill. That hand, so familiar and yet so different, rougher with more calluses than she remembered… It could give pleasure like she hadn’t felt since he last touched her.

Too bad it wasn’t attached to a different man.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, he stopped walking and turned her bodily to face him. He’d done a lot of growing up in these last eight years. When she met him in college, he’d still been handsome in the way of a teenager, wholesome and fresh-faced. Now, no trace of that twenty-two-year-old boy remained in his chiseled jaw, wide shoulders, and shadowed pale blue eyes. He towered over her, making her feel petite when she hadn’t qualified as petite since middle school. At five eight, she was constantly fighting a battle against her size-ten jeans, and more often than not, she lost due to long hours at the office, lots of on-the-go food, and no time for a daily workout. She had wide-load hips and D-cup boobs and never thought of either as sexy—until Jude looked at her with that hot gleam in his eyes.

God, why couldn’t he have gained a hundred pounds and lost all his teeth in the last eight years? She hated that she was still attracted to him.

“Fearless Libby,” he said in such a low tone that she almost couldn’t hear him over the wind. She saw the kiss coming. Could have avoided it, but dammit, she wanted it. Wanted to know if having his mouth on hers was as erotic as it had been earlier when he’d kissed her in the hallway.

He dragged his lips over hers, back and forth, back and forth, a barely there caress that lit her up from the inside like a human torch. It wasn’t fair how her body responded instantly to him when she’d spent years having to coax even a mild reaction from it. After Jude devastated her life, sex had become a chore rather than a pleasure, and she’d taken to avoiding even the most casual of encounters. And now here he was again, offering part of what she’d once had. Offering what she burned for, what she shouldn’t still want.

She nipped at his lip, punishing him for making her ache with desire like this, but he didn’t back away. Instead, he took that as an invitation, and the taste of him filled her mouth as he invaded and claimed. She gripped his shoulders, needing the rock-solid weight to steady herself. Her head roared with a jumbled mix of outrage and don’t-you-dare-stop.

No, wait. That roaring sound wasn’t her head. A…car?

Jude yanked away with a curse, and before she fully grasped what was happening, he folded his body into a protective shield around her and spun them to the left. She felt a jarring thump as Jude took the brunt of their landing and heard him grunt in pain, but he didn’t let go of her as they rolled across the pavement. The car with the noisy engine whipped past in a flash of blue and a squeal of tires as it fishtailed out of the lot.

“Damn,” Jude breathed and helped her to her feet again. Her knees wobbled. He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Libs?”

“Yes,” she said, eying him up and down. He had a tear in the thigh of his jeans and seemed to be favoring his right side. “Are you? Did it hit you?”

“No. Landed hard, but I’m fine.” He grinned. “Better than fine. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Feels good to get the adrenaline going. Wanna have sex?”

Libby huffed out a breath in disbelief. “You’re insane.”

“Depends on your definition. So is that a no?”

“Yes.”

His eyes danced. “Yes?”

“No! I meant yes as in yes, it’s a no. I mean—” She threw up her hands. She never got tongue-tied, and yet she couldn’t seem to string two coherent sentences together around him. But at least she could stand on her own two feet now without wobbling, and she had a sneaky suspicion he’d put her on the defensive for just for that reason. “I’m going home.”

“Good.” All the laughter faded from his expression. “Nobody can try to run you over there.”

“What?” She stared up the street where the car had disappeared. “You think that was on purpose?”

“Yeah, I do. Did you recognize the car? It was meant for you because as far as I know, nobody’s out to kill me.”

“If they knew you, they would be,” she said between her teeth. “It was just an accident, Jude. I’ve never seen that car before. It wasn’t aiming for me.”

“Twenty dollars says you’re wrong.”

“All right.”

He pointed to something over her shoulder. Dread turned her stomach sour as she spun and stared at the windshield of her Subaru Impreza.

WATCH OUT.

The words screamed at her in blood-red paint, and a nude paper doll had been stuck to the trailing line off the T like an obscene exclamation point.

“No.” She swayed again, and Jude slid an arm around her waist to steady her.

His expression hardened, and he all but dragged her toward a black truck parked three spaces down from her car. He opened the passenger-side door and lifted her into the seat. Numb, she stared at the dashboard, barely noticing when he climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine.

Someone was actually trying to kill her.

Holy hell.

“We got a problem,” Jude said.

She glanced over to lash out with a derisive, “No shit, Sherlock.” Not very original as far as comebacks went, but she wasn’t exactly at the top of her game.

Except he wasn’t speaking to her. He held a phone to his ear.

“An attack,” he added. “There was another message on her car. Yeah, another doll, too. Then someone tried to run us down with a blue four-door sedan, possibly a late-model Ford Taurus. I got a partial plate number.” After that, whoever was on the other end of the line did most of the talking. He nodded once, then again, then said, “Okay,” before hanging up.

“Who was that?”

He slid the phone back into his coat pocket. “Your father. He’s going to meet us at your place.”

“Oh. Great.” Here she’d thought this day couldn’t possibly get any worse, and now she had to deal with Jude and her overbearing, overprotective father at the same time. “I thought you two hated each other.”

“We’re Marines. Personal feelings don’t factor into missions.”

“Missions. Right. I’m just another mission.” She told herself not to let that hurt and failed miserably. The dispassionate tone he’d used burrowed under her skin and tweaked at her nerves. She angled her head at him. “Personal feelings don’t factor into anything for you, do they? You avoid emotion like leprosy.”

“Pretty much. Emotion is messy.”

She slumped in back in her seat. The jabs she kept taking at him weren’t wholly deserved, especially after he saved her from becoming a road pancake, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself. The man pushed all of her buttons—good and bad—and right now, she needed the distraction he presented. Anything to take her mind off the image of that car headed directly toward them…

Oh God, why wouldn’t her hands stop shaking?

She rolled her fingers into fists on her lap and clenched her jaw to keep the trembles from traveling up her arms and into the rest of her body.

For once, Jude didn’t rise to the bait of her snide remarks. He studied her for a second, then reached over and covered both of her hands with one of his.

“Jesus, your hands are half-frozen.”

She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened. She wasn’t going anywhere until he allowed it, and that knowledge grated. “Let go of me.”

To her surprise, he did and turned up the heat, angling the vents her way. But, being Jude, he couldn’t leave it at that. “You used to like when I touched you.”

She still did, a little thrill dancing through her belly at every contact, but she’d bite off her own tongue before admitting it. “I was young, stupid, and horny back then.”

One corner of his mouth kicked up in a half smile. “Yeah, been there.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’re still there,” she said.

He actually laughed. “You know, Reece said the same thing to me yesterday. Sure he’s not your brother?”

She vaguely remembered Reece and Greer. And the twins, but she couldn’t remember their names. She’d met them all once at Jude’s apartment, but only very briefly. Jude had rushed through the introductions and then hurried his brothers out the door, making a fake excuse about having dinner reservations.

That should have been her first clue their relationship was doomed.

Young, stupid, and horny.

She looked at him again, let her eyes trace the line of his long, muscled frame, and a spark of pure desire heated her from the inside out.

Yeah, so what was her excuse for wanting him now?

…

When Jude pulled to the curb in front of her house, her father’s car already waited in the driveway, and he stood in the open doorway, his big body backlit by the lamps in the living room. He held a gun in his hand.

Libby sighed and got out of Jude’s truck. “Dad, put that away.”

He merely grunted.

“Daddy, please. You’re overreacting.”

With the tip of his gun, he pulled her front door shut. “Is this overreacting?”

“Shit,” Jude said from behind her.

Heart in her throat, she stared at the streaks of dark red splattered over the door. Here, too? No, not here. Not at her home, her sanctuary from the world. “Is that…?”

“Paint,” her father said. “Now come inside out of the open.”

“Oh.” Relief shook her to the bone. Her legs didn’t seem to want to move. “Paint. Right. Just…paint.”

“Wilde.”

“Yes, sir,” Jude said, and suddenly her feet were no longer touching the ground. She wanted to tell him to put her down, that she could walk herself, thank you very much, but her vocal cords had also stopped cooperating. Jude carried her into the house.

How ironic , she thought. Here he was, finally carrying her over the threshold after all these years. Tears threatened, and she focused on blinking them back. She must be an emotional wreck right now if something as ridiculous as an old romantic fantasy brought on the waterworks.

“Plan B,” her father said.

“I didn’t know we had one,” Jude responded and set her down on her favorite overstuffed leather recliner.

“We do now.” Her father tucked a chenille throw around her shoulders, and she clutched it, welcoming the warmth. “You have to take her away from the city. Hide her somewhere, keep her safe until the trial.”

“How far are you thinking?” Jude asked.

“I own a hunting cabin in the mountains in Vermont—”

“No.” Jude moved away from her, over to one of the three front windows. He nudged the curtain aside and peeked out as if he expected her stalker to be across the street, watching…waiting…

Oh God.

Libby buried her face in her hands.

“Why the hell not?” her father demanded. “The cabin’s defensible, remote. A perfect place to hide.”

“Yeah, until a storm blows in and strands us up there with a psycho killer. Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie?” When her father said nothing in response, Jude let the curtain fall and turned back to them. “You don’t want her trapped someplace all alone. Sure, she might be harder to find, but once she’s found, she has no way of getting help fast. You want her someplace well populated, someplace where the locals see new faces every day and don’t question it.”

“And you have such a place in mind?”

“One or two,” Jude said, and the undercurrent of laughter in his voice finally snapped Libby out of her fog.

Wait. They wanted to take her out of the city?

“Stop.” She shook off the blanket and stood. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“No,” they said at the same time, and in that moment, the similarities between the two men struck her speechless—except one meant everything to her and the other she wanted nothing to do with.

She turned to the only one who mattered. “I’m not going anywhere, Dad.”

His expression softened, and he soothed down a flyaway strand of her hair. “You don’t have a choice, sweet pea. Whoever this is knows where you live. I won’t take a chance with my only daughter’s life.”

“And I understand that, but you can’t just ship me off somewhere. I’ll get a hotel.”

“Not good enough. You need protection.”

All right. If that was how he wanted to play it, she could be stubborn, too. She was her father’s daughter after all. She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. “Then hire someone else because I’m not going anywhere with him .”

Her father looked at Jude for a long moment, then back at her. “He saved your life tonight.”

“Yes.” And did that mean she owed him something? Because she really didn’t want to be indebted to Jude Wilde in any way. She could only imagine his version of a repayment plan. “But I can’t stand him. He’s selfish, hedonistic, reckless, and…and I don’t want to be near him.”

Jude grinned. “You’re full of compliments.”

She propped a hand on her hip and held her other out as if to say, see what I mean?

“Yes, he is all those things,” her father agreed with a long-suffering sigh. “And he can’t take an order for shit, but he’s also good at what he does, the best I’ve ever had the misfortune to train. He’ll keep you safe for me.”

Oh no, this couldn’t be happening. Frantic, she searched for another excuse. “I can’t leave my job.”

“I already talked to your boss. He said you have plenty of vacation time coming and agrees that you should take it. Please, Elizabeth,” he added softly. “Please. For me.”

She studied his face, noted the new lines around his weary eyes. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?”

“Very. You should be, too, and it terrifies me that you’re not.”

Closing her eyes, she let out a breath in defeat. There would be no winning this battle, and honestly, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to. Elliot Pruitt never admitted to such weaknesses as worry or fear. That he would do so now only went to show exactly how concerned he was.

“All right.” She took a moment to fortify herself before she faced Jude. “What should I pack?”

The man grinned, and tendrils of heat curled through her belly at the sight of his dimples. Damn him.

“Swimsuit,” he said.

“Figures.”

As she stalked toward her bedroom, she heard him laugh. This was going to be one long, headache-inducing vacation.