Conceal, Protect - By Carol Ericson Page 0,9
remained.
He backed up and then swung wide to face the dilapidated gates. He pulled onto the deserted road. With his arm draped across the backseat, he backed up until he had a clear view of the entrance to Noelle’s ranch.
If Zendaris’s men had broken into Noelle’s house with her gone, what was stopping them from breaking in with her home? When would looking through her stuff cease to satisfy them? When would they make a move on her?
J.D. slumped in his seat and tipped his hat over his eyes, eyes that saw everything.
He turned the key in the ignition and fiddled with the static radio stations until a woman’s dulcet tones flooded the truck. Ah, a radio therapist dispensing advice to the lovelorn.
Not that he needed any advice. You had to have a love life to need advice. His fiancée had left him for being too married to his job, and she must’ve been right because he barely missed her absence.
Jack Coburn had warned them that working for Prospero and having a personal life could be mutually exclusive. Although Jack had managed—he and Lola had an adopted son and Lola was expecting a daughter.
J.D.’s Prospero Team Three buddy, Cade Stark, was currently living below the radar in Europe with his wife and son after Nico Zendaris had threatened their lives.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and yawned. Nobody said this life was gonna be easy.
The side mirror glinted, and J.D. sat up to scan the road from his rearview mirror, cracking open his window. A single headlight pierced the darkness. As it drew closer, the sound of a motorcycle engine whined in the night.
He narrowed his eyes, every muscle tense. The bike slowed at the dip in the road right before the entrance to Noelle’s ranch. When he came up the rise, the rider pulled the bike to the side of the road and cut the engine.
J.D.’s pulse quickened. The motorcycle rider hadn’t noticed his truck, nestled up against the bushes across the road from the ranch. Of if he had, he didn’t give J.D. a second look.
With his helmet still on his head, the rider hopped off the bike, grabbed the handlebars and pushed the silent motorcycle through Noelle’s broken gates.
J.D. didn’t know what this guy planned to do at Noelle’s place, but his job compelled him to find out and put a stop to it.
His job and the insane attraction he felt for the attractive, reserved widow.
Chapter Four
Noelle flipped open her book at the folded-over page and curled her feet beneath her. The words blurred in front of her. She blinked a few times and then tossed the paperback on the cushion next to her.
That J.D. had impeccable timing. Impeccable muscles, too. She’d even felt them through his jacket when she’d thrown herself into his arms. After the scare of finding the disordered items in the house, those arms had been a welcome refuge.
Alex had never made her feel safe, up to and including the night he was murdered.
She bit her lip as if that could stop the traitorous thought.
Creak. Creak.
Noelle froze, her bottom lip still caught between her teeth. Her gaze darted toward the front door. Someone was on the porch.
She half rose from the couch, her hands clutching the folds of her robe. When Sheriff Greavy and then J.D. had left, she’d pulled her dad’s shotgun from the closet and loaded it. It rested against the wall by the front door.
Time to see if it still worked.
She scooted from the couch and tiptoed to the door.
A man shouted, and she grabbed the gun. A scuffling sound replaced the creaking and something or someone crashed into the front door, shaking it on its rotting hinges. More shouting. And cursing.
Another man yelled and the door reverberated with his pounding. “Noelle! Noelle! There’s a crazy dude out here.”
She hitched the shotgun under her arm and threw open the door.
Her half brother, Ted, blood spouting from his nose, stretched across the porch, his fists poised for another assault on her front door.
Beyond the crumpled mess of her brother, J.D. loomed, hands bunched and a coil to his body that looked ready to spring.
“Stop!” Noelle held up her own hands. “This is my brother, Ted.”
Her words did nothing to cut through the ferocity coming off J.D.’s tense frame in solid waves. What had happened to the easygoing cowboy?
Brushing past Ted, she stepped between the two men. “Really. This is my brother. He’s harmless—well, sort of.”
Ted gasped and gurgled behind her.