Outlaw Derek by Kay Hooper Page A

nothing could have kept him from her, you know that.”
    Josh agreed with a reluctant nod. “I know. But threats are fairly common, and with Zach’s security team around us, a gnat couldn’t get in here, much less an armed gnat.”
    Raven slipped her arms around his waist. “Well, we’ll be heading back to New York in a few days. In the meantime, if Derek
does
ask for our help—?”
    “Then we give it,” Josh said promptly. “If hehadn’t acted so quickly in England, I would’ve had to fall flat at your feet in Red Square.”
    “The logistics would have been tricky,” she agreed with a solemn nod.
    He kissed her. “Indeed. And, speaking of logistics, is there anything along those lines we can do for Derek?”
    Raven looked innocent. “He said he didn’t want us getting involved. Said it rather fiercely, as a matter of fact.”
    Josh eyed her. “Oh, he did, did he? Just because I don’t want to take over the man’s company doesn’t mean I’m going to let him push me around.”
    “I thought you might say something like that, darling,” she murmured, smiling.
    Derek didn’t give Shannon a chance to withdraw completely from him that day, though she would have. He gritted his teeth and managed to control his unruly impulses, concentrating onclosing the distance between them as unthreateningly as possible. Considered by others a nerveless man, he was fast discovering that his supposedly nonexistent nerves could come alive because she smiled at him, and that his heart had developed a disconcerting habit of stopping suddenly whenever he touched her.
    And he touched her often. Sharing the duties of cooking breakfast in the small kitchen provided opportunities, and he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of them, whether it was a guiding touch on her shoulder or a firm hand around hers to demonstrate the proper way to flip a pancake. He forced himself to be as casual as possible, matter-of-fact, but he was also firm and quite deliberate. He was still gauging her reactions very carefully, trying to move slowly.
    It hadn’t taken very long at all for him to realize that there was no lover waiting somewhere in the background; a large part of Shannon’s reaction to his touch was sheer surprise. The light, flirtatious conversation of the night before, conductedin darkness, had not prepared her even to consider that Derek’s casual touches meant a very personal interest.
    And even though he’d intended to keep everything on an impersonal basis as long as possible in order to gain her trust, that restless male part of him that loved and wanted began to get the upper hand. It wasn’t a conscious decision that his touches began to linger and his voice drop to a new lower note, and he wasn’t even aware of it until he saw her increased surprise and wary confusion.
    And by then he wasn’t sure he could stop it.
    A distraction presented itself when Derek made a few calls, checking out Civatech with one friend and asking another to find out what he could about the company’s director of design, Adam Moreton. Shannon was restless while he made those calls, wandering around the loft as if she couldn’t settle in one place. Derek watched her, wondering if the restlessness was becausethe calls had reminded her of the danger again, or if his own behavior had unsettled her.
    She was limping.
    “Anything?” she asked when he cradled the receiver at last.
    “We may know something later today,” he told her.
    “Can they find us here? Those men?”
    Derek hesitated, then answered truthfully, “Anyone can be found with enough time. But it’ll be damned hard for them to find us here. Shannon, is your leg bothering you?”
    She immediately stopped moving, sitting down on the second step leading up to the platform. “It isn’t hurting.”
    She had stopped, he thought wryly, with almost the length of the room between them. Hardly a good sign. “That isn’t what I asked.”
    Shannon seemed to become fascinated by the tight