Tycoon Protector. Elle James
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“Champion Shipping doesn’t transport explosives or detonators. Nowhere on my manifests was this indicated or I would have put a stop to it before it left the port of embarkation.”
Brody’s lips twisted into a mirthless smile. “Right. Still, I’ll need to question you and all your employees involved in the loading and unloading of this particular ship. And I’ll bet the Department of Homeland Security will want to talk with you as well.”
“Fine. I have nothing to hide.” Jackson ran a hand through his hair and looked around for the hundredth time. Where was Ysabel?
As if reading his mind, Tom, the executive rotation trainee, stared down at his watch. “She said she’d be here in twenty minutes. That was…twenty minutes ago.” He looked across the container yard and grinned. “Just like clockwork. How does she do it?”
The skin on the back of Jackson’s neck tingled. He didn’t need Tom’s words to tell him Ysabel was behind him. The day of reckoning had arrived and Jackson was no more prepared for it than he’d been two months ago. Face the music, Champion. Face it and lose her.
Sucking in a deep breath, he slowly turned.
Ysabel Sanchez strode across the heated concrete, her heels clicking, her long straight hair swaying around her shoulders in a curtain of light. Her full hips mesmerized him in the glare of the overhead lights.
Jackson’s mouth went dry and his groin tightened. Two months should have erased all physical yearnings he might have had for his executive assistant. It worked for all the other women he’d dated since he’d escaped puberty.
Ysabel wasn’t like the other women. She carried herself as if she were a Spanish queen, poker-straight, a haughty tilt to her chin, all business and no nonsense. Yes, that was the Ysabel he wanted to remember, but he had the other Ysabel branded in his mind and every nerve ending in his body since that night he’d spent in her arms.
Jackson had witnessed the softness and tenderness beneath the hard-core front she put on for Champion Shipping. Her Spanish heritage showed in the full curve of her breasts, the light olive tone of her skin and the rounded swell of her hips. Soft, moss-green eyes saw through his soul to the man he’d hidden beneath the rough exterior since his first day in the foster care system. The woman had a knack for reading minds. If Jackson believed in magic, Ysabel Sanchez was most definitely a witch.
His hands ached for the straight, light brown hair that sifted through his fingers like strands of the finest silk. Beneath that cool, professional exterior lurked a fiery passion he hadn’t seen before. The urge to pull her into his arms and pick up where they’d left off that night in his bed nearly blew away his icy reserve. Damn the woman to hell!
Jackson suppressed a moan and struggled to keep his hands in his pockets and maintain a professional face in front of the detective and the kid. Neither of them had a need to know of his transgression or his secret lust for his executive assistant. That was his cross to bear.
Without a “Hello” or a “Good to see you” after two months out of the office, Jackson skipped the niceties and went straight for dealing with the more immediate problem. “Detective Brody, Ysabel Sanchez.”
Ysabel extended a graceful hand. “Detective.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed, his lips tightening. “Miss Sanchez.” He didn’t take her hand, just raised his notepad a degree and made a show of jotting down notes with the government black pen. “For the record, what is your relationship to Mr. Champion?” His glance skewered her.
Sensing the detective’s rising ire, Jackson jumped in and answered for Ysabel. “Miss Sanchez is my executive assistant.”
“Right.” Detective Brody’s gaze swept her from head to toe. “We should all have our very own assistant like Miss Sanchez, shouldn’t we?” A nasty smile slid across his face as he glanced at Jackson and Tom.
Tom’s brows rose and Jackson’s anger spiked to dangerous.
“Don’t overstep your boundaries, Detective,” he warned, his fists clenching at his sides. If the man wasn’t sporting a badge and a gun, Jackson would have taken a swing and to hell with the consequences.
But with a man being loaded onto a gurney for transportation to the morgue and an unexplained shipment of explosives, Jackson couldn’t afford to lose his cool. No matter how warranted.
Ysabel’s lips spread in a tight smile, her hand dropping to her side. “Could someone fill me in on what’s going on?” She glanced up at Jackson, her gaze quickly shifting to Tom.
A twinge of annoyance made Jackson’s chest tighten. So things weren’t right with her either after the two-month absence. So much for time and distance diminishing memories. Damn, he had a lot of backpedaling to do to convince Ysabel not to leave Champion Shipping. And he had to. She’d become his lifeline to sanity in a business that seemed to have mushroomed overnight.
Detective Brody stepped between Jackson and Ysabel, completely ignoring her and addressing only Jackson. “Could you direct me to whoever is in charge of offloading the cargo from your ship?”
Longing for a minute or two with Ysabel to set the record straight—although a minute wouldn’t be nearly enough—Jackson grit his teeth. “Sure.” He turned to Tom. “Could you enlighten Miss Sanchez? I’ll be back.” He hoped.
“Yes, sir.” Tom practically snapped to attention at the request.
A small smile quirked the corners of Ysabel’s mouth.
Warmth filled Jackson’s chest. That was the easy smile he remembered from his assistant before he’d slept with her. The warmth chilled almost as quickly as it came on. What he wouldn’t give to put things back to the way they were.
He walked away, leading the detective toward Percy Pearson, the superintendent responsible for offloading the cargo.
All the while, he could feel her gaze boring into his back. Yeah, he’d screwed up. If only he could get her alone and try to undo the mistake and make things right again.
Fat chance.
YSABEL clutched her purse to keep her hands from shaking. Her first face-to-face contact with the man who had tied her in knots for the past two months hadn’t gone nearly as she’d planned. She’d wanted to get him alone, hand over her resignation letter and walk out. A clean break. The less said the better. After he’d walked—no, make that ran—from his apartment following the most incredible night of sex she’d ever experienced, she had a firm understanding of what he expected from her.
Nothing. And she should expect nothing from him.
She might have been able to hide her true feelings and gone on, business-as-usual just like she had for the past two months—which hadn’t been hard considering the man had disappeared off the face of the earth physically, if not so much by e-mail and voicemail. Unfortunately, the result of their mental lapse in their otherwise professional relationship was the baby growing in Ysabel’s womb.
Her hand rose involuntarily to her still-flat midsection. She’d harbored more than a professional yearning for her boss pretty much since she’d gone to work for him five years ago. Determined to keep her job, she’d squelched her natural desires and pretended that his constant parade of different women didn’t hurt. After a while she’d begun to see a pattern in his dating. Date twice and dump. The women he dated were primarily money-hungry gold-diggers, mostly interested in his wealth and social standing. They hadn’t been given a chance to know the man beneath the charming, if somewhat distant, exterior.
Being his assistant, Ysabel saw what made Jackson Champion tick. When he didn’t think she was looking or he didn’t notice she was in the room, she saw what made him hurt and knew more than he’d ever tell her about himself by simply observing. In order to better understand her boss, she’d done a little digging of her own and knew he didn’t have family. Tossed into the foster care system at the sensitive age of seven, he’d been passed from one family to the next, never feeling the