Guardian (3 page)

David pushed away from the warm wall and jogged down the steps, exhaling his frustration. He would have to take a long lunch tomorrow and track her down, which would make him late picking up his daughter for the second time in a week. Crap.

He cut a path across the scraggly lawn. He glanced back just as Sophie stepped through the door with one of the other lawyers from her office. Her boss maybe? A kick of possessiveness shot through him. Unwanted. Unwelcome. And damn stupid. It wasn’t as if they were acting like a couple. She paused for a moment to put on her hat before the other guy took off, leaving her standing alone.

Yeah, he was relieved and staring. He braced for the inevitable whammy—that wallop to his libido that came every time he looked at her.

Long ago, he’d learned to harness his reaction to her. From the first time he’d come across her, eighteen months ago during a deposition on another case, he had wanted her. The glint of her wedding band had sparked regret.
Not to mention he’d been in the middle of a hellacious divorce.

Her marital status may have changed along with his, but her posh lakeside neighborhood remained the same. He didn’t need any further incentive than that to resist her. Encounters focused solely on work offered security from temptation.

Sophie hurried down the steps, her pencil-straight uniform skirt hitching higher up her leg. Her legs had driven him close to crazy during his stint on the witness stand. And when his eyes traveled upward to the best set of curved hips in the free world?

A man could lose himself in her softness.

Her sun-streaked blond hair was swept back into some kind of twist. Not for the first time, David imagined pulling out the pins and sliding the silky texture between his fingers. Her light hair contrasted with her golden glow, deep brown eyes, lightly tanned skin.

Tan lines.

Shit.

He knew the minute she saw him. Her gaze went from open to distant in a snap.

“Major Berg,” she acknowledged before charging past.

Ego stinging, he watched her hips twitch in her brisk walk as she left him in the dust. His whole body throbbed from viewing only two inches of skin above her knee, and she barely noticed him. Her dismissal bothered him more than usual because he really needed to speak with her.

A good swift reality kick reminded him of his reason for seeking her out, and he resolved to take comfort from the chill of her greeting.

“Major,” David called, catching her in three strides. “Wait a minute.”

“I haven’t got a minute.” Sophie tossed the words over her shoulder without meeting his gaze.

“Make time.”

She took two shorter, quick steps for his every long stride. “Call my secretary for an appointment.”

“Hold on!” He gripped her arm and tugged her to a halt. “If I’d wanted an appointment, I wouldn’t have spent the last hour waiting.”

The combined force of her sudden stop and spin to face him brought them a whisper apart. The simple act of touching her for the first time sent blood surging well below the belt.

Down, boy.

David unclenched his hand, allowing himself a brief trail down Sophie’s sleeve as he released her. A bubble of privacy wrapped around him, as it had during the moment on the witness stand when she’d leaned a bit too close.

A hint of uncertainty crossed her face before she stepped back. “This better be important.”

“It is.”

“You have exactly two minutes.” She checked her watch, late-day sun glinting off the faceplate. “I’m late picking up my son.”

He gestured toward the corner of the building, away from the crowd. “Let’s step over here in the shade.”

Following her, he almost cupped his hand to the middle of her back. Sophie stopped to face him just in time to prevent him from making
that
colossal mistake. Sophie Campbell was a JAG, an officer in the same air force he served. The Bronze Star on her uniform proved she was more than just someone sporting a bunch of “I was there” ribbons. Right now, he wanted to know how
she’d gotten that Bronze Star as much as he wanted to know the taste of her.

“One minute left, Major Berg.”

Right. “We need to talk about your line of questioning upstairs.”

“Do you have something to add to your testimony?”

“No.”

“Then we have nothing to discuss.” She moved to dart around him.

David braced a hand against a sprawling eucalyptus tree, blocking her escape. “I feel bad for that injured kid—Ricky—and for his family, too. Aside from how damn tragic the whole thing is, Dr. Vasquez has got to be swamped with his son’s medical bills on the salary of an untenured assistant professor. I’d like to help the kid win a hefty settlement, but I can’t. You’re on the wrong track.”

“Major Berg…”

“Cut it out, Sophie. We’re not in the courtroom.” So much for keeping matters impersonal.

“This isn’t accomplishing anything. If you have something concrete to discuss, come to my office, and we can meet in a more…professional setting.” Her gaze skittered away from his. “David, I really can’t do this today.”

He concurred on that point at least. “Am I supposed to wait around until you can fit me into your schedule?”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“No good. I don’t feel much like playing tag team with your voice mail.”

Sophie watched undisguised frustration wrinkle David Berg’s brow as he barred her exit. She needed to leave. Now. Rather than diminishing, the tingling she’d felt earlier had increased to something resembling a third-degree sunburn.

Much longer with him and she might launch herself at him like a sex-starved woman. Which, of course, she was, even if she hadn’t realized it until an hour ago.

Sexual attraction. That’s all it is, just a natural, physical reaction. After a nap and some ice cream, she would be fine. The reasonable explanation calmed her. As a normal, healthy woman, of course her body would inevitably react to enforced abstinence. She could push aside the unwanted attraction long enough to talk with him, for the good of her case.

“All right, I would like to go over a couple of points in the incident report. But I honestly don’t have time this afternoon.”

David’s hand pressed to the tree trunk brushed mere inches beside her cheek. His heat reached to her like a furnace blasting on an already hundred-plus-degree day.

He shifted, his knee bent, his shoulders angling closer. “What if I meet you tomorrow for lunch?”

The offer tempted her. Hell, the man tempted her. She tried to focus on his tie instead of the flecks of steel in his blue eyes.

The rows and rows of tiny rectangular ribbons on his uniform jacket drew her eyes. An image of her father in his uniform came to mind, so vivid she could almost smell the flowers in the funeral parlor when she’d seen her father wearing it for the last time.

Time to leave before she did something totally off the chain—like cry. “Your two minutes are up. Stop by my office after court tomorrow.”

Sophie ducked under his arm in an attempt to escape his appeal.

Two cracks sounded.

David slammed into her, tackling her. Her briefcase flew from her grip.

Another pop. A gunshot? No time to question. Her head smacked the rocky earth as David Berg’s body blanketed hers.

Sparks flashed behind her eyelids, her head throbbing from smacking the ground. Sophie gripped David’s uniform jacket as if holding him tighter could make them both less of a target. Shots and sirens blasted through the air, rivaling the sound of her heart hammering in her ears. Or was that David’s pulse?

Or even theirs combined, linked like their bodies tangled up together.

Machine gun fire sounded, followed by an explosion that reverberated like a hand grenade. The acrid scent of shots and smoke stung her nose. Only a few months ago, an airman had opened fire on a hangar full of deploying troops. Could lightning be striking twice on this same base?

Her world darkened by the press of him around her. David’s honed muscles tensed against her as she braced herself for another shot to rip through the air. To tear into her body. And at that moment, everything else faded but thoughts of her son. If something happened to her, he
would be orphaned, with no one but her elderly grandmother to care for him.

She’d been all too aware of the possibility since the day Brice was born—she wore a military uniform, after all. She could protect herself. But she’d always thought if the worst happened, it would be in combat. She’d originally planned to make a career of the air force. But after her husband died, she’d put in her paper to get out once her commitment was up. Finally, she was only weeks away from being a civilian.

Their mixed heartbeats seemed louder as her mind allowed her to close off the battle sounds in the distance, to rein in her fear. Her senses went on high alert, taking in David’s crisp scent that pushed away the sting of smoke. The heat of him blanketed her with total
man
. And how completely insane was it to be scared as hell and turned on all at once? Her hunger and fear feasted on the adrenaline surging through her.

His warm, rangy body stayed pressed against her. Too easily, she could savor all those buried yearnings. Was it her imagination, or did David inch his face closer as if he might…

She felt David shift over her. Looking? Assessing? She couldn’t see past the bulk of his shoulders.

“Shit,” he hissed, levering upward. “They just started an exercise down the street.”

An exercise?

Of course it was. Security cops had stepped up practicing for unexpected attacks on a base, and it wasn’t as if such exercises only happened during nine-to-five timelines.

Relief all but melted her into the sandy ground.

Now that David had inched upward, she looked past
his broad shoulders and saw the signs posted two blocks away announcing the exercise—what appeared to be practice storming a building. At least she wasn’t the only one who’d freaked out. At least a half dozen other people had run for cover and were now easing from around trees and back to their feet.

Even knowing others had been surprised as well, she still wondered how she’d missed the alert signs when she was talking to David. Although he hadn’t noted them either, and that unsettled her even more than her own distraction.

If he felt the same attraction…

“Uh, David?” she whispered his name, then damn, damn, damn, realized she should have called him Berg, or Major, to establish distance. And was that funny as hell considering how close they were now? His leg pressed intimately between hers, a sweet pressure against a deep ache. “Do you think you can get off me now?”

His blue eyes went stormy for a second before he blinked all expression away.

“Yeah, right.” He rolled to the side and sat up. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, thanks.” She breathed deeply to chase off a light-headedness that had little to do with hitting the ground and everything to do with the man beside her. She sucked in another gasp and realized…Oh God. It was too easy to breathe deeply. Her hand shot to her waist and…

Damn it.

Her too-tight skirt had popped a button. The absurdity of it all hit her. She laughed. And laughed more, letting the laughter just flow as she sprawled on her back staring up at the Nevada sky. Yeah, she was on the verge of hysteria, strung too tight from a year of sheer hell.

“Sophie?” He gripped her shoulders and eased her up to sit. “What’s wrong?”

Other than just about everything in her life?

Her laughter faded. She swallowed back the urge to cry and focused on how to get to her feet without losing her skirt or having to fess up to popping out of her clothes. She pressed a hand to her waist, winged a prayer, and stood.

Thank God, the zipper held.

Her knees, however, didn’t. David caught Sophie by the upper arms. His fingers wrapped around as he kept her from melting to the pavement. She let him help since everything around her still blurred together, certainly not because his touch felt impossibly good. She must have hit her head harder than she’d thought.

“Easy now.” Frowning, he glanced over his shoulder at a bench. “Maybe you should sit. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she lied, her head throbbing. “And you?”

“Not a scratch.”

“Good. Thanks for the quick thinking, even if it was a false alarm.” Her deployments, as well as years as a military brat, provided her with ample real-life scenarios to draw upon.

“You hit your head pretty hard.” David led her to a bench shadowed by a palm tree.

Arguing with his stubborn jaw would drain more energy than she could scavenge. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He tugged his jacket and straightened his tie, wincing as if it was too tight.

Humvees filed down the road along with a caravan of security police cars, lights flashing, all converging on the building under “attack” for the exercise.

“David, I’ll be fine after I sit for a minute and catch
my breath. Thank you for your help, but I don’t need an oversize babysitter.”

His thumb stopped twitching. “I’m not leaving until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion. Period. So stop arguing. We’re not in the courtroom. You would do the same for me—or for anyone.”