Lace & Lead

Chapter 1

“Shit! Keep your head down!”

Emmaline Gregson immediately followed the barked command, ducking behind the low stone wall surrounding the garden. The next shot passed overhead where she had been half a second earlier. Her heart was hammering, her palms sweaty and she thought she may lose her nerve completely as the exchange of gunfire rang out through the crisp morning air. “Wh—what should we do?”

“Well, honey, at this point I’d be pretty damn pleased about not dying!”

Emmaline gritted her teeth against the presumptuous endearment. Peirce Taggart had been hired to protect her. Right now clearly wasn’t the time to fire him.

Instead she shot him a glare. Too bad the bullet-jockey was busy returning fire and didn’t even give her a sideways glance. Even now, with her life at risk and shots hammering the stone wall at her back, she couldn’t completely escape the fact that he was the most striking man she’d ever seen. For the past two weeks, he had been a welcoming distraction from her father’s controlling behaviour.

She’d been smitten since the mercenary had waltzed into her comfortable ancestral summer home, all confident swagger and heady sexuality, carrying his security orders from her father. A former corporal, Taggart moved with the restrictive grace of an ex-Lawman despite his broad shoulders and muscular thighs. His blonde hair remained buzzed, although he’d relaxed his training enough to allow the most interesting shadow of stubble grace his strong jaw and chiselled lips. Even now, face smudged with dirt, blood rising up where he’d been hit by the spray of rock shrapnel, she couldn’t look away from the intent focus in those blue eyes, currently narrowed and focused on the unseen enemy. He’d be the perfect man to help her solve her little problem, if not for—

“What the fuck are you doing sitting there?” he yelled at her as he ducked down behind the wall to reload. “I told you to get to the fucking house!”

If not for his filthy mouth.

Emmaline lifted her chin in defiance. “I can’t. They’re shooting at us—”

“That’s why I’m trying to shoot back at them,” he retorted. “It’s called cover fire, sweet tits.”

She slapped him.

She probably shouldn’t have, judging by the way the muscle in his jaw ticked. But he didn’t raise a hand toward her. Instead, he just glowered at her until she was quailing and told her in a very low, very calm voice, “You have exactly three seconds to get your ass up and moving toward that house.”

She swallowed. “I can’t.”

His huge hand, one she knew was rough with calluses under his leather mechanic’s gloves, gripped her chin, forcing her to look him eye to eye. Her breath caught.

“Kai and Douglass are moving in to cover us. We have to get inside before their positions are compromised. I’m going to tell you to go and you’re going to run. I’ll be right behind you.”

Something inside her broke, maybe from fear, maybe from the knowledge that denial was no longer an option. Tears spilled over and she finally admitted, “I’m scared.”

He looked at her for half a second and suddenly his mouth was on hers, harsh and unyielding. His tongue swept across the seam of her lips and she parted them on instinct, moaning against him when he deepened the kiss. He’d pulled away before she could fully come to her senses, leaving her dizzy and reeling, while he was returning fire again.

When he turned back, he ordered, “Go!”

And, to her brain’s surprise, her body obeyed.

Shit, he shouldn’t have done that.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Felt her lips soften under his. Felt her body become pliant. Seen those dark eyes look at him with the confused haze of passion.

What a cluster.

But he didn’t have time to berate himself. Not now, not when he was popping up from behind that wall to shoot off a few more rounds in the direction of the mercs who’d surrounded the front half of the house. At least Emmaline wasn’t arguing with him.

Instead, she was sprinting up to the house, the light skin of her shapely calves flashing at him from underneath her prim and proper skirt. The woman was a helluva distraction. Had been since the moment he’d set eyes on her.

He was right behind her, shielding her as best he could with his body, firing blindly behind him, knowing Kai and Douglass were keeping the mercs off their asses until he and Emmaline were safe inside the ancestral stronghold of the Gregson family.

She tripped, her boot turning under just metres from the door. He immediately adjusted, holstering his gun and reaching down to scoop her up in his arms without pausing. Unfortunately, the burn in his shoulder told him he hadn’t pulled the move off unscathed.

Douglass was at the door, slamming it shut with a resounding thud behind them. Peirce didn’t have to look to know both his men were already moving furniture in front of the door.

He slowly came to a stop and looked down to realise he was still carrying Emmaline in his arms, pressing her against his armoured chest. She was blinking up at him with a strange expression on her face. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Yeah, whatever.” He put her down a bit more roughly than she probably deserved, but his shoulder was aching like a bitch. There was no time to fix it. That would have to come later, once they were safe.

&nbs

p; “We’ve got the east wing sealed off,” his engineer Kai informed.