Buch lesen: «His Christmas Assignment»

Chapter 1

Voices rose in anger, penetrating the thin walls of Logan Payne’s office. Garek Kozminski closed the outside door so softly that it made no sound. He probably could have slammed it and they wouldn’t have heard him enter. But he was used to moving silently. In the past, his freedom and even his life had depended upon it.

Not much had changed...

He crossed the reception area and approached Logan’s office—not to eavesdrop. Due to the volume of their argument, he could have heard them from the parking lot. Usually Logan didn’t yell; as the CEO of Payne Protection, he didn’t need to yell to be heard. The other voice was female and easily recognizable to Garek even though Candace Baker didn’t usually deign to speak to him.

Apparently she had no problem talking about him. “I can’t believe you would consider offering this assignment to Garek Kozminski!”

He had figured Logan had called this meeting about a job. In the year that he’d been working for his brother-in-law he’d had many assignments. Had Candace protested every one?

“He’s proven himself over and over again,” Logan defended him. “He’s a damn good bodyguard!”

“Garek Kozminski is a thief and a killer!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you would trust him. I never will!”

Garek felt a twinge in his chest—one he refused to acknowledge as pain. Candace’s low opinion wasn’t exactly a surprise or unwarranted. And of course he had done nothing to change it; he’d actually done more to provoke it and her.

Logan’s voice wasn’t just loud but it had gone chillingly cold when he said, “He helped save my life and my brother’s life—”

“Because of his criminal connections,” she interrupted.

“That’s enough,” Logan told her. He didn’t shout now; he sounded too weary to fight anymore. “Garek and Milek Kozminski are essential members of this team.”

“They’re your brothers-in-law...”

And maybe that was her real problem: Logan had married Stacy instead of her. She had obviously been in love with her boss for a long time; she’d left the River City Police Department when Logan did in order to join the fledging bodyguard business he’d started a few years before.

“Candace,” Logan said, “if you can’t work with them, maybe you can’t work—”

“Hey!” Garek said as he pushed open the office door before Logan could finish his ultimatum. He didn’t want Candace fired. Sure, she hated Garek. But he didn’t hate her.

He wanted her.

He had wanted her since the very first time he’d seen her. She was all long legs and sharp curves and sass. It sparkled in her blue eyes every time she looked at him. But she wouldn’t look at him now. Instead she’d tilted her head down so that her jaw-length black hair skimmed across her face, hiding her eyes.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Garek said, although he’d had a good excuse. Someone else had called him about a job, an assignment he might not be able to refuse no matter how much he wanted to...

“It’s probably a good thing you were,” Logan remarked. “In fact you might want to give us a few more minutes...”

Candace lifted her chin and shook her head. “There’s no need. I’m doing what I should have done a year ago...”

A year ago was when Garek had started at the Payne Protection Agency—after his sister had married Logan Payne. He doubted Candace’s timing was a coincidence. She had probably wanted to resign then, but no doubt her pride had forced her to stay.

“I’m quitting,” she finished.

Logan jumped up from the chair behind his desk and cursed. “Damn it—”

“You were just about to fire me,” Candace pointed out. “This is for the best, and we both know it.” She turned then and finally faced Garek. Her blue eyes had never been so cold as she stared at him.

Conversely, heat rushed through Garek as his temper ignited. But before he could say anything, Candace pushed past him. He reached out and grasped her arm.

She stared down at his hand. Her voice as cold as her gaze, she said, “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

He would have teased her, as he had incessantly for the past year. But he sensed that her coldness was just a thin veneer for deeper emotions.

Candace Baker was strong. She was nearly as tall as he was, and she was all lean muscle. But there was also a vulnerability about her that she desperately tried to hide beneath a tough attitude. Just like the coldness, neither was who she really was.

“I didn’t figure you for a quitter,” he goaded her.

“You don’t know me,” she said as she jerked her arm free of his grasp. “And you never will...”

Before he could challenge her claim, she was gone. And he couldn’t have that. He just couldn’t have that...

* * *

“I’m a fool,” Candace berated herself as she tossed clothes into the open suitcase on her bed. “I am such a fool...”

Not for quitting. Hell, she should have done that a year ago. She was a fool because she’d waited too long. And mostly because she had let him get to her.

How?

She knew what Garek Kozminski was. And unlike everyone else, she wasn’t going to forget—because she couldn’t let herself forget. In addition to being a killer and a criminal, he was also a flirt. Just a flirt...

That was why he kept teasing her. And looking at her...

She shivered even now thinking about how that silvery-gray gaze was always on her, touching her like a physical caress. He was just teasing her. He couldn’t really want to touch her. He couldn’t really want her.

She was always the buddy, the gal-pal—never the woman a man actually desired. So he was just messing with her for his own amusement. She was not amused. She was furious. And the more he flirted with her, the most frustrated she got. That was why she had lost her temper with her boss.

The doorbell rang, echoing throughout her bedroom from the wooden box on the dark blue painted wall. She doubted it was Logan paying her a visit. He had obviously been about to fire her before Garek had interrupted him.

After what he must have overheard her saying about him, why had Garek tried to stop Logan? Instead of insisting his brother-in-law terminate her on the spot, Garek had actually tried to talk her out of quitting.

But he didn’t know her. And around him, she wasn’t certain that she knew herself anymore.

The doorbell rang again, or rather incessantly, as if someone were pressing hard on the button. With a sigh she turned away from her bed and headed down the hall. But before she could even reach the front door, it opened. She knew that it had been locked; she always locked her door. And nobody else had a key to her place.

She reached for her holster only to realize she had left it—and her weapon—on her bed with the half-packed suitcase. But why would someone break into her place?

She had nothing of value. And while she had once brought a Payne Protection client to her apartment in order to guard the woman, she was alone now.

But then she was no longer alone as the intruder boldly sauntered into her apartment. He was incredibly tall with lean muscles and blond hair that nearly touched his shoulders. Her breath caught, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Who else would have so easily picked her high-tech lock but Garek Kozminski?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded to know.

“I need to talk to you,” he replied. But he was looking at her that way he always looked at her—like she was an ice cream cone he wanted to lick.

“So you picked my lock and let yourself inside?”

He shrugged as if breaking and entering was inconsequential. But surely he knew there were consequences for crimes; he had spent time in prison for at least one of the probably many offenses he had committed. “You didn’t answer the doorbell.”

“There are reasons people don’t answer their doorbells,” she pointed out. “I could have been gone.” If she’d packed faster, she would have been gone. That urge she’d had to run intensified—probably because she had come face-to-face with the reason she wanted to run. That she needed to run...

His lips curving into a smug grin, he said, “But you’re here.”

“Not for long,” she said as she spun around and headed back down the hall toward her bedroom. It wasn’t too late. She could still escape.

But he followed her. “You’re packing? Where the hell are you going?”

She paused as she was about to toss a sweater into the suitcase and realized that she had no idea. She had no plan. She’d only known she needed to leave—to get away for a while. Then she could decide if she wanted to come back. Ever.

“You don’t know,” he surmised.

“Anywhere you’re not,” she replied.

He clasped a hand to his heart. “Oh, that hurts—like a knife through the heart.” Despite his playful tone, there was something in his gray gaze—something almost like real pain and regret. Did he actually care that she wanted to get away from him?

“Do you have a heart?” she wondered.

“Yes,” he replied. “So much so that I convinced Logan you’re a better man for this job than I am.”

“Man?” Now she knew what he meant about the knife through the heart; a sharp pang in her chest felt as if he’d driven his blade deep.

“Yeah, that assignment you wanted—it’s all yours,” he magnanimously offered.

She shook her head. “I quit.”

“Because you wanted that assignment,” he said.

“No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t wanted that assignment; playing bodyguard to some reality star turned B-movie actress held no appeal for her.

His gray eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “You just didn’t want me to have it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked. “What would I steal or who would I kill if I took this assignment?”

He had definitely overheard her argument with their boss. Her face heated with embarrassment—not over what he’d heard as much as having to explain why she hadn’t wanted him guarding a woman who rarely wore clothes on camera, or according to the tabloids, off camera either. She wasn’t certain she understood why herself.

She wasn’t certain about anything anymore.

She shrugged. “It’s a high-profile assignment—one that will raise the awareness of Payne Protection to the national level.”

“Last year—all the attempts on Cooper’s and Logan’s and Parker’s lives—raised the awareness of Payne Protection,” he pointed out. “That’s why an LA actress wants to employ one of our bodyguards. We’re the best.”

She wanted to argue the “we,” but Logan had been right earlier. He and Parker probably wouldn’t have survived if not for Garek’s help.

“That assignment doesn’t require the best,” she said—since she suspected the entire need for a bodyguard was just the actress desperately trying to get some more minutes of fame.

“Then why didn’t you want me to take it?” he asked.

She shrugged. She wasn’t about to admit it had bothered her a lot to think of him with a scantily clad reality star. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It mattered enough to you,” he said, his voice deepening with confusion and concern, “that you quit the job you loved.”

“Loved is right,” she agreed. “Past tense. I don’t love it anymore.” But that was a lie; she knew it even as she said it. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her job anymore. It was that she was afraid she might fall in love with something—with somebody—else.

“Is that my fault?” he asked. “Or Logan’s?”

That was why she couldn’t risk falling again—because she had already made enough of a fool of herself over love before. “If this had anything to do with Logan, I would have quit when he married your sister.”

“Maybe you were just waiting around for them to fail,” he said. “It’s not like anyone really thought they’d last.” He chuckled. “Least of all me.”

“They have a child together,” she said.

“Little Penny,” he murmured, his grin widening with obvious love for his two-month-old niece.

Candace’s breath caught in her lungs. Garek was so damn handsome it wasn’t fair. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You need to leave.”

He glanced around as if just realizing where they were. “I’ve been wanting to get into your bedroom for a year now...” He stepped closer to the bed and ran his fingertips across the sheets. “Silk...”

She flinched with anger and embarrassment and lashed out, “Of course you’d be surprised a man like me would have silk sheets.”

“Man?” he repeated, his brow furrowing with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You just said I was the best man for the job—”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked. “Everybody else thinks of me as just one of the guys.”

He shook his head. “I have never thought of you that way.” He stepped closer now and jerked her into his arms so quickly that she didn’t have time to react. If she’d had time, she would have stopped him—she would have hurt him. Instead she just slammed up tightly against his chest, so that she felt his every breath, his every heartbeat...

“And I have thought of you,” he said with an intensity in his gray gaze that had her heart racing with excitement, “every moment since I’ve met you...”

He lowered his mouth to hers but when their lips were just a breath apart, he paused and murmured. “And I have thought of doing this...of kissing you...”

And then he did—he kissed her with that intensity she’d seen in his eyes. He kissed her with such passion that she had no doubt he didn’t think of her as one of the guys. He thought of her the way she’d been thinking of him.

And she realized something else—it was too late to escape.

* * *

It was too late. No matter how hard he tried, Garek was unable to escape his old life. It just kept dragging him back in...

Back into a life lived on the edge, back into a life of danger...

Maybe it was a good thing that Candace had taken off the way she had, because at least he wasn’t dragging her in with him. He didn’t even know where she had gone—just that she’d finished packing her suitcases sometime that night and she’d left.

Her leaving had hurt more than the fist that slammed hard into his stomach. He coughed and doubled over in pain, but strong arms held him up so the fist could strike him again. Harder.

A curse slipped through his lips along with a slight trickle of blood. He didn’t have any internal injuries; he’d just bitten his tongue. Purposely. He’d been beaten harder than this before; hell, his brother had beaten him harder than this before. Of course that had been years ago when they’d been just kids. But he groaned as if he were in agony. The truth was the old man didn’t pack the wallop he had once had. But as the godfather of River City, Michigan, Viktor Chekov commanded respect and fear.

And with good reason. The guy was a killer. And maybe it could finally be proven...

With a jerk of his silver-haired head, Viktor called off his goons so that they released Garek. He dropped to the ground with a groan and complained, “What the hell kind of greeting was that...?”

“How do you expect me to greet you?” Viktor asked. “You just walked away—”

“I didn’t just walk away,” Garek said. “I was taken off in handcuffs to prison.”

A muscle twitched in Viktor’s slightly sagging cheek. “That wasn’t because of the work you did for me.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Garek agreed. “But I might have avoided jail time if I’d given up what I did for you, or if I’d set you up...” Like he was setting him up now...

Viktor swung again—this time right at Garek’s jaw. He could have ducked. But he took it on the chin. And this time he didn’t bite his tongue on purpose. He spit out a trickle of blood and wiped his mouth.

“If you’d done that, you would already be dead,” Viktor told him.

And this was why he hadn’t given up or entrapped Chekov. The sentence he’d served out had been for something that hadn’t actually been a crime.

“I never would have betrayed you.” Then. But he was a different man now. He was actually a man now whereas when he’d worked for Viktor he’d been a desperate kid, living on the streets.

“You’ve been out of prison a long time, Garek,” Viktor reminded him. “But until tonight you have never come back to the family.”

Viktor and his organization had never been family. They had preyed on his desperation and utilized the skills he’d learned from his jewelry-thief father before Patek Kozminski had gone to prison.

“I made my sister a promise,” he said. And while it had been a struggle at times, he had kept that promise—to never leave her again for either a jail cell or a grave. They had already lost their father—first to prison and then to death. “I vowed to her that I would stay on the straight and narrow.”

“You’ve been working for her husband, that former detective, Logan Payne.” Viktor had obviously been keeping track of him over the years.

“Still am,” Garek said. Unlike Candace, he wasn’t about to quit a job he loved—even for another job that had to be done.

“So why are you here?”

Garek wiped the blood that continued to trickle from the corner of his mouth. Maybe Viktor had hit him harder than he’d thought. “To offer my services.”

Viktor glanced at his gargantuan goons and chuckled. “You think I need another bodyguard?”

“I think you need a good one,” he said.

The two muscular guys glared at him.

Viktor shook his head. “I am perfectly safe.”

“But the people close to you aren’t,” Garek said. “I heard you recently lost a member of your family.” Not a blood relative but a very close associate.

That muscle twitched again in Viktor’s sagging jaw. “It is too late for Alexander.”

Polinsky had been murdered just days ago—shot in the head execution-style. The feds believed that Chekov had been the executioner.

“What about Tori?” Garek asked. “Aren’t you concerned for her safety?”

Viktor’s face flushed with color at the mention of his daughter’s name, so Garek braced himself for another blow. But Viktor didn’t swing his fist. Instead his shoulders slumped. “Tori is safe. Safer without you near her.”

Garek nodded. “I thought that once, too.” Actually he’d thought the opposite. He was safer if he was nowhere near her. Viktor loved his little princess so much that he would probably kill anyone who made her unhappy. And Garek hadn’t ever seen the young woman happy.

“Why are you really here?” Viktor asked. He stared at him again, as if trying to see through him.

“You already checked me for a wire,” Garek reminded him. He needed more than a recording with Viktor’s admission of guilt. He needed evidence. And he had to get close in order to get his hands on it. “I want to make sure Tori is really safe,” he said. “For old times’ sake.”

“What about that promise to your sister?” Viktor asked, his dark eyes still narrowed with suspicion.

Garek shrugged. “I haven’t been happy with my sister for a while now.”

“Then why work for her husband?”

“Logan didn’t lie to me and Milek,” he said. “Stacy’s the one who kept secrets.” That secret had affected and devastated Milek. While Garek had already forgiven her, he wasn’t sure that their brother ever would.

Viktor nodded with understanding. He had obviously kept very apprised of not just Garek’s life but Milek’s and Stacy’s, too. A shiver of unease chilled Garek’s skin. He didn’t care about himself but he cared that his past association might have put his siblings in danger.

“I think Tori would like it if I hire you,” Viktor admitted. “Despite all the years that have passed, I don’t think she ever quite got over you.” He stepped closer, his hand reached out as if to shake, but he slapped Garek instead. “And if you hurt her again, I will hurt not just you,” Viktor threatened, “but everyone close to you.”

The unease turned into a shiver of dread and foreboding. It was good that Candace had left town; she would be out of danger. It was just everyone else that Garek had to worry about when he took down the godfather of River City.