Guardian by Kaitlyn O'Connor (ebook e reader txt) 📗

And little miss, all distracted, justwalks right into him like a tree grew out of the sidewalk since thelast time she passed.

What really convinced him not to justdiscard the possibility that it was just some poor dumbass beingled around by his dick, though, was the fact that he ‘helped’ herwith her purse and palmed the can of mace she’d beencarrying.

Now why would he want that?

* * * *

It was rare for Jarrowd tosecond guess his decisions or regret some action he had taken, evenwhen he had acted on impulse, because he generally found that itwas honed instincts that had compelled him and his action was notonly warranted, it was precisely the right thing to have done. Ithad saved his life more times than he could count. And it had ledhim to remove dangerous criminals from freedom to the cages theyneeded to occupy enough times that he had practically flown fromthe ground to top detective faster than anyone else in hisgraduating class—actually almost anyone else who hadever graduated theintergalactic ranger academy.

His most recent impulse,unfortunately, did not fall into that category.

He knew it was based on instinctalright—animal rutting instinct—and had nothing to do with survivalor ‘catching the bad guy’.

The truth, as hard as it was toswallow, was that he had been so focused on his physical attractionto his neighbor that he’d screwed up royally. Maybe.

Irritation, flickered through him ashe acknowledged that he might well have just attracted preciselythe sort of attention he was trying hard to avoid when he had hisclose encounter with his pretty neighbor—whom he had already beentoo interested in physically and whom he suspected was more thanjust interested in him on a physical level.

He had, in fact, begun to have someconcern that she was suspicious of his activities.

Under other circumstances, he mightsimply have dismissed those … inconvenient possibilities andpursued the object of his desires. It wasn’t for nothing that thegeneral consensus of his co-workers and his superiors was that hehad an unfortunate proclivity toward being a cowboy and a loosecannon.

Struggling with hisresentment over his current situation, he finally acknowledged thathe couldn’t afford to get involved with her no matter howattractive she was to him. His work was too sensitive—they mighthave to relocate any number of protected witnesses if he wasdiscovered, and worse, hemight have to relocate, and he was reallyreluctant to do that even though he wasn’t happy about theassignment when he had first arrived.

He liked the planet and he liked theoccupants.

He felt more ‘at home’ than he everhad anywhere else—because they were ‘cowboys’ like he was, hesupposed with some amusement.

The reluctance in his gut, though, washard to ignore even though he refused to acknowledge that thebiggest reason he did not want to be removed and reassigned was thepretty little neighbor that tied him in knots every time she lookedat him.

Because, he suspected, he had walkedright into the invisible web of mating pheromones she was givingoff whenever she saw him.

He just needed to watch hisass.

And keep a closer eye onher.

Chapter Three

Cold fingers crept down Marilyn’sspine when she had upended her purse to search thecontents.

Her mace was gone.

She did tend to be just an itsy bitabsentminded from to time, though, and that resulted inlosing—misplacing—things from time to time because she was badabout carrying things around unconsciously while she was lookingfor something and then setting it down when she found that thing.And since it ended up in a place where it shouldn’t be, where shewould never have consciously put it or used it, she had to take herplace apart to find it.

To her dismay, however, even thoughshe took her place apart as she was prone to do at least once aweek looking for something she’d misplaced, it didn’t turnup.

She was ready to cry when it suddenlyoccurred to her that she’d dropped the purse and spilled everythingout when she’d run into her neighbor. With that thought girdingher, she barreled out of her door to search the sidewalk and cameall around running into the man again!

Jesus! She couldn’t move withoutfalling over him!

She couldn’t decide if it wassomething like … kismet, or his fault or some subconscious behavioron her own part.

Like maybe she’d heard his tread andran out in the hope of running into him?

He’d picked up her purse for her andthrew everything back in—including dirt, pebbles and blades ofgrass and yet, somehow, he’d managed to miss the shiny canister ofmace?

No! Don’t go there,Marilyn!

Begging pardon, she brushed past himand damned near tripped on the stairs and rolled to the bottombecause she was so self-conscious she couldn’t dismiss thesuspicion that he was watching her.

She was so certain, in point of fact,that she glanced back when she’d made it to the groundfloor.

Sure enough, she could see the bottompart of his legs at the top of the second floor landing, with hisshoes point toward the stairs.

Her heart skipped three beats and thenrushed to catch up.

Panting a little, she headed outside,trying to remember where she’d been, exactly, when she’d run intoher neighbor.

For the life of her, she couldn’t, butshe checked all the way down one side of the walk until she got tothe crosswalk she knew she’d taken and then she started backstudying the other side.

She stopped when she encountered apair of men’s shoes—size twelve, at least, if she wasn’tmistaken.

With her gaze, she followed the shoeto the ankles, up the calves and thighs and belly and chest untilshe was looking up at her neighbor.

“Did I misssomething?”

“I … uh ….” Jesus! Shedidn’t want to tell him he’d missed the mace she’d bought … in caseshe had to fight him off.

A cold wave washed overher.

What if he hadn’t missedit?

What if he’d palmed it?

She stared at him, trying to jumpstartbrain function. “I … uh … I thought I’d just make sure you didn’tmiss anything … just in case you missed somethingimportant.”

He stared at her for a long moment,frowning. “You did not check?”

She blinked at him, feeling her facego white and then neon red. “I … uh … well, actually, I don’t knowevery little thing