come after me and my baby daughter, Emily.”
She saw his eyes darken in shock and answered his question before he could ask it, knowing that her child’s whole world depended on convincing him.
“Emily is Larry’s baby, Gabe,” she lied, her gaze clear and unwavering on his. “I was already pregnant with her when I met you eighteen months ago, but before you try to tell me that as her father he’ll want to take sole responsibility for her safety, you should know that I’ve never told him what his relationship is to her—and I don’t intend to.”
She shook her head. “I told you my circumstances had changed. I’ve changed, too. I’ll do whatever I have to, to give my daughter a happy and secure life. Larry wasn’t fiancé material, and he’s not father material, either. Even if Jess hadn’t offered me a job and a place to live after my father disowned me, I still wouldn’t have approached Kanin for any kind of support in return for letting him play a part in Emmie’s life.”
“Your father disowned you?” He frowned. “Because you were pregnant, for God’s sake?”
“Because I was pregnant and I wouldn’t say who the father was. All I told him was that it wasn’t Larry. Father had been upset enough over the breakup of my engagement. If he’d known it was Larry’s child I was carrying, he would have bulldozed a marriage through, no matter what.”
She tried to smile. “William Moore always gets what he wants. As soon as he realized that this time he wasn’t going to, he told me he no longer considered me his daughter. When I ran into Jess a few weeks later, I’d just been fired from my third job in a row and I was at my wit’s end as to how I was going to survive. I’m not a princess anymore, Gabe, I’m a working single mom.”
“With a marriage proposal from a software billionaire.” There was nothing in Gabe’s voice but detachment. “When’s the handover scheduled for?”
“Sometime tonight. The Crawford Solutions jet will get us to Jess’s Mexican villa in under an hour, and we’re to be contacted there with the exact time and place. Steve Dixon’s flying down with me, although Larry and a contingent of his men are already at the villa.”
“Larry took a contingent of his men? How many is a contingent, exactly?”
Caro blinked. “I don’t know, ten or twelve. Why?”
“Because you don’t need an army to hand over a ransom, for God’s sake,” Gabe replied tersely. “You only need an army if you intend to stage a battle. Kanin’s going to pull some kind of cowboy stunt, dammit.”
“But—” She felt the blood drain from her face. “But that could get Jess killed,” she whispered, appalled. “And then his kidnappers will come after Emily, just as they threatened to.”
The desert heat and the blazing sun seemed suddenly replaced by a bone-numbing cold and a darkness so total it might have been deadest night. She couldn’t let anything happen to her daughter, Caro told herself in desperation—she wouldn’t let anything happen.
No matter what she had to offer him, she needed to convince Gabe to take control of the hostage negotiation. But what could she offer a man who’d turned his back on everything?
The same thing she’d offered Gabriel Riggs once before to persuade him to go against his better judgment, she thought shakily. Herself. Because even if he didn’t like her, even if his opinion of her character was that she was still a shallow, spoiled princess, he’d once wanted her so badly that for one night he hadn’t been able to get enough of her, just as she hadn’t been able to get enough of him.
For a moment she almost lost her nerve. Only the thought of what was at stake gave her the courage to go on.
“You once told me that when you looked at my mouth, you wondered what it would be like to have it on you. You told me you wanted to see my hair falling across my face as I called out your name. If you still want those things, Gabe, you can have them. You can have me. All you have to do is say you’ll take on this negotiation.”
“You’re offering yourself to me, princess?” The carved planes of his face hardened. “Any way I like, any time or place?”
She felt herself flush. “That’s the offer. Do you—”
She’d forgotten how fast Gabe Riggs could move when he wanted to. He was still holding the shotgun in his right hand, but the heavy cuff bracelet gleamed silver as he caught her two wrists together with his left, his grip tight.
“Still the lady of the manor, aren’t you. And I’m still the hired hand, as far as you’re concerned—the man you snap your fingers for when you’ve got a job, like standing at stud for you when you’re bored with your usual escorts, or like bringing back your husband-to-be.”
His face was so close to hers that she could see tiny flecks of gold light up the dark amber of his eyes. She shook her head swiftly, and saw the amber turn to obsidian.
“It’s not like that—”
“Damn straight it’s not like that, honey,” he said. “Yeah, there’s been a time or two in the past eighteen months when I’ve thought of how you looked and tasted and sounded while I was going out of my mind and loving it that night. Hell, why wouldn’t I remember? It’s not like there’s been another woman to replace those memories—not here in the middle of nowhere. But just because I’ve been living like a saint in the desert for a year and a half doesn’t mean all you have to do is lean back against your car, give me a little glimpse of those satin thighs of yours, and I’ll be so grateful for the chance to take you again that I’ll promise you anything.”
He released his grip on her wrists. Against the paleness of her skin the impression of his fingers remained.
“Let me tell you how it’s going to be, princess,” he said steadily. “I’m going to take on the job of getting Jess back safely, but for no other reason than that I’ve got a conscience. Not only could Kanin’s grandstanding jeopardize the life of one of my oldest friends—” his tone took on a sudden harshness “—but it could put a child in danger. That’s unacceptable.”
Relief rushed through her, so sharp and intense that it felt like pain. Tears prickled at the back of her eyes and spilled over onto her lashes. “You’ll take on the job? Oh, Gabe—”
“There’s one more thing that’s going to happen, honey,” he went on. “One of these days you’re going to come to me for the third time, except it won’t be to bolster your ego or take on a hostage negotiation. It’ll be because you remember, too.”
He brought a tanned hand to her chin and tilted it upward so that she couldn’t avoid his eyes. “I know you do, princess,” he said in an edged whisper. “No matter what you said the morning after, you loved it just as much as I did, didn’t you? So one day you’re going to show up on my doorstep, and whatever reason you give for being there, I’m going to know what you want…and even if it takes every last ounce of self-control I have, I’m going to turn you down.”
She’d been on a roller coaster of emotions for the past twenty-four hours, Caro thought, her gaze trapped by the coldness in his. Since receiving the call from Jess’s kidnappers, she’d swung from fear to hope to despair, but what she was feeling right now wasn’t any of those.
It was anger. And what made it worse was that it was mixed with a flicker of desire. She pushed his hand away.
“No, you’re not,” she said, her voice as icy as she could make it. “Because you also said that when you looked at me you saw heat that could sear a brand onto a man. You might try to deny it, but I think you let yourself be branded by me that night…and I think deep down you’d give anything to feel that brand burning into you again.”
Just for an instant she saw bleak self-knowledge shadow the antagonism in his gaze, and knew that her barb had struck home. Pride prompted her to sink it in a little deeper.
“I won’t even