Marrying Mccabe. Fiona Brand
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Stung by the memory of that single rifle shot. Anyone would think Lewis didn’t count, despite being the one with a bullet hole in his shoulder. ‘‘If the shooter was that professional and had wanted to put a bullet through me, why did he miss?’’
McCabe’s gaze fastened on hers. ‘‘Your boyfriend was hit.’’
Roma gritted her teeth. ‘‘Lewis isn’t my boyfriend, he’s a friend. There was also a large crowd. Maybe the gunman was after someone else. Maybe, as you say, it was a random shooting and he didn’t care who he hit.’’
‘‘Anything’s possible.’’
McCabe’s voice was low, with an intriguing roughness that made her tighten up inside; then it registered that he was soothing her, as if she needed to be babied out of her fears.
He switched his attention back to Gray, once again dismissing her. ‘‘Calibre?’’
‘‘Five point five six.’’
‘‘Sniper rifle,’’ he said softly.
Gray glanced at Roma. She knew what he was thinking. He didn’t like discussing the details of the shooting in front of her, but she wasn’t going to take the hint and walk away while they discussed the unpleasant facts. Besides, she’d made it her business to find out every last detail of the investigation. In point of fact, she knew more than anyone—she had been there.
McCabe eased the photographs and the report back into the envelope. ‘‘Any fingerprints?’’
‘‘Clean.’’ Once again Gray glanced at her as if she was made of delicate porcelain and shouldn’t hear gritty details.
Roma folded her arms across her chest and almost rolled her eyes with exasperation.
‘‘The room was sanitised before he left. Random target practice or not, he was a pro.’’
McCabe grunted and tapped the envelope against his thigh. ‘‘You need a lift into town?’’
Gray shook his head. ‘‘I’m catching a flight out, I’ve got a lunchtime meeting in Sydney. The family suite at the hotel is free, so that’s where you’ll be staying. Roma has her itinerary, and you’ve got my cell phone number if you need to get hold of me.’’
They shook hands; then Gray hugged Roma. ‘‘I know you think this is a lot of fuss about nothing, but if there’s even the suggestion of trouble, I want you back home and safe.’’
‘‘You worry too much.’’
A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘‘Where you’re concerned, sometimes I don’t think I worry enough.’’
Roma watched Gray stride away, fighting the urge to call him back and cancel this whole trip. She didn’t get to see much of Gray or Blade these days, and the gap in years had always precluded real intimacy, so this sudden urge to cling was definitely out of character. But now that her brother had gone there was just her and—
‘‘Is this all your luggage?’’
Roma stiffened at the grimness of McCabe’s tone. One of those big calloused hands was wrapped around the handle of her suitcase. She fought the urge to snatch the case off him and wondered how he would react to the tussle. Gray would have let her have her way…eventually. She didn’t think McCabe would. He hadn’t openly revealed his dislike, but she could feel it rolling off him in waves.
‘‘If I had any more luggage,’’ she stated coolly, ‘‘I’d be carrying it.’’
He eyed her sharply then nodded. ‘‘When you’re ready…Ms. Lombard.’’
She noticed he used the impersonal address of Ms. instead of the old-fashioned but infinitely more feminine Miss.
She measured the impersonal regard of his dark blue eyes as she fell into step beside him. If there had been heat there before, it was well and truly gone. McCabe’s expression was chilly, bordering on rudeness. If this was his usual manner with paying customers, she would hate to see his client list. She would bet that no one ever hired him twice. The Lombard payroll usually commanded a high level of competency, skill and politeness. She had no doubt McCabe fulfilled the first two items on that list— Gray wouldn’t have hired him otherwise—but he looked as though he didn’t give a damn about the third.
For the first time she registered the orange stain on his shoulder. Like the casual clothes, the stain made McCabe less machine-like and distant, more human, and it reminded her that he had a daughter and a life she knew nothing about. ‘‘Is that ice cream?’’ she asked, curiosity and an impish desire to put a crack in his cool reserve getting the better of her.
His gaze settled on her. ‘‘Orange chocolate chip.’’
Nope, Roma thought, suppressing a sigh, not a glimmer of humour.
Shifting her suitcase to his left hand, he half turned, doing a quick sweep of the Arrivals area and the people using the entrance. As he did so, his T-shirt lifted slightly and settled against a bulge in the small of his back. A handgun. And it wasn’t little—a nine millimetre would probably fit snugly into his big, capable hand.
Roma controlled the spurt of apprehension caused by just seeing the gun. She wasn’t usually so jumpy, but there was no getting past the fact that Lewis’s shooting had shaken her. ‘‘I wouldn’t have picked you for a chocolate chip man.’’
Chocolate chip sounded like fun.
His narrowed gaze swung back to hers. This close, she could see the crystalline purity of his eyes, the soft, glossy texture of his hair, the stubble darkening his jaw. She could smell the clean scent of his skin, as if he wasn’t long from the shower. The details were curiously intimate, and her stomach tightened on another shot of pure sexual awareness.
‘‘I like chocolate just as much as the next guy,’’ he said evenly, ‘‘even though it gives me one hell of a headache.’’
As they strolled toward the car park, Roma decided McCabe hadn’t been talking about food. She didn’t know what chocolate had to do with anything, but she’d been right in her first assessment: he didn’t like her. He would protect her, but only because he was paid to do so. Somehow that burned, which was ridiculous, because she shouldn’t care whether he liked her or not, and she didn’t want to see McCabe as anything other than a paid professional.
But with that first eye contact McCabe had made her see him as a man, and that scared her. Men got hurt. No matter how irritable or bad-tempered, they bled and died. She didn’t want to think of McCabe bleeding the way Lewis had. Dying the way her brother Jake had.
A throb of grief hit her as she stepped from beneath the shelter of the terminal into the full glare of the sun. Blindly, Roma groped in her holdall, found her sunglasses and pushed them onto the bridge of her nose, glad for an excuse to hide the tears.
Every now and then something triggered a remnant of the intense grief, the helpless rage, she’d felt when her brother was killed. In the first weeks after Jake had died, she’d suffered recurring nightmares. She would wake, rigid with shock and distress, pillow wet with tears, then lie there, replaying the dream, trying to neutralise it by changing it, by saving Jake.
In her mind she’d saved him a hundred times, a thousand times. She’d known karate, judo; she’d been an expert shot. In her heart she’d grieved because she’d never had a chance to save him, or, like her brothers, to at least bring his killer to justice.
Lewis’s shooting had brought it all back, the grief, the fear, the anger. So far she’d managed to keep her feelings firmly under wraps, shocked by the sudden eruption of violence outside the cinema and panicked by her loss of control on the sidewalk. Maybe that had been a mistake. She should have allowed herself to cry, taken the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed so she could at least have gotten some sleep. McCabe wouldn’t appreciate having a weeping female on his hands.
Offering her a shoulder