For Her Protection. Lauren Giordano

as she tucked a strand of hair back into her ponytail. “Or I guess you would’ve gotten yourself killed by now.”

      Luke did a double take and then realized she wasn’t being sarcastic, only direct. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. What about you?” he challenged. “Ever been married?”

      She made a face as though she’d just sipped bitter lemonade and wanted to spit it out. “No, thank goodness. I almost did, though. What a mistake that would’ve been.” She shook her head ruefully. “How’s that for absurd? I’m twenty-seven years old and I still have trouble saying no. My mum nearly had me talked into marrying the man she wanted. In her eyes, he was bloody perfect.”

      He smiled over her disgruntled expression. It wasn’t hard to believe at all. Jillian struck him as the kind of girl who leaped first and then thought about looking when it was too late. “So, what stopped you?”

      The gray-blue eyes grew very wide, almost startled. “Why, the children, of course. I mean, I was going to break it off anyway. We were so completely different,” she added absently. “But then I got the call about my sister.”

      Her voice catching, he watched her eyes grow suspiciously misty. Warning bells jangled in his gut. Somehow he’d managed to push the wrong conversational button. She rubbed her arms, as though she’d suddenly realized she was cold.

      “She…passed away two weeks ago,” she said, her voice starting to break. “I only learned of it, um, a week ago, Tuesday.”

      Ten days ago. And she’d already been here a week. Luke rocked back on his heels, stunned by the enormity of what she’d been through, surprised by the courage it must have taken to hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world to tend to her sister’s children. He watched as she took a deep breath and forced back the tears that threatened to spill over. Watched in amazement when she regained control almost instantly.

      Jillian hadn’t just learned that trick on the transatlantic flight. He recognized a control freak when he saw one—he’d had the misfortune of living with one—and realized that his initial impression of her was probably wrong. Despite her flighty exterior, Mary Poppins was very tightly wrapped.

      “How come you’re here alone? Isn’t there anyone who could help you?”

      “My mum—she’s…busy with things back home.” Jilly averted her eyes and he knew instinctively that it was with shame. His thoughts drifted to his own family. For the most part, the Gianettis were a traditional Italian-American family, but due to the sheer volume of them, there was definitely a strong dysfunctional element. Yet he couldn’t help wondering what the hell had gone down in the white-picket-fence Moseby house. Judging by the way her eyes were swimming, this was definitely the wrong time to ask.

      “So what happened with the guy? The one your mother picked out for you.”

      “Oh, Ian didn’t want— He thought three chil—” Jilly clamped her mouth shut and suddenly stood, her movements jerky. “We broke up.”

      This was getting interesting. He settled himself more comfortably on the blanket. So Ian was an ex-fiancé…not simply the old friend she’d claimed.

      “Uh, could you watch Sarah for a minute? I really should fetch the boys back over here.”

      “Sure. Tell ’em they’ve got five more minutes.” He watched her walk away while his brain automatically began processing what he’d just learned. His mind filtered everything as though it were a giant puzzle, the unfortunate byproduct of too many years as an operative. He couldn’t shut it off, so he’d learned to use it to his benefit. Once a puzzle piece fell into place, everything else became sharper, more focused.

      For some strange reason, Jilly’s mother hadn’t thought her dead daughter worth the effort of an overseas trip. Nor, apparently, her three grandchildren. And loverboy Ian didn’t want to be saddled with someone else’s kids. Luke was willing to bet they’d both applied pressure on Jilly, tried to convince her to stay home. And she’d still chosen to go it alone. With that piece of information, he added “stubborn” to the mental column marked Jillian.

      He checked his cell phone for the millionth time, grateful the damn thing was finally working. His fingers itched to call his partner. He wondered if Murphy had come up with any new information to fill in some of the holes in the investigation. Anything that would take the edge off his jumpy stomach.

      According to Murphy, the junkie grapevine was abuzz with news. Notorious for both good information and bad, the top story today was about Billy T. Lathrop. Word on the street had him on the run with a price on his head, a damn high price, now that he thought about it, and that he was as good as dead.

      Sarah chose that moment to grin up at him, cooing as she reached for his finger. The tiny little tug on his finger caused an even stronger tug in his chest, in the vicinity where his heart had once resided. He would’ve sworn on a stack of bibles that Sarah was looking straight into his eyes when she smiled. He jerked back in reaction.

      The sooner he got back to the streets, the better. He’d dealt his hand in life. And he meant to play it out until the end. The faces on his cards were pushers and pimps, not angelic children, not beautiful women who would need him too much.

      Dammit to hell! He didn’t want to be interested—in any of them.

      But there were still too many unanswered questions. Like why Sloan had seemed to know the bust was coming? Or, where the hell the backup team had been when the building had blown to smithereens? As he replayed the takedown in his mind, he fingered the slug in his shirt pocket, a growing sense of uneasiness trickling through his brain.

      Who the hell had shot him?