Sacrifice (3 page)

“Does Madison know about Father’s
connection to The Club?” he asked her then. “Is this causing you problems?”

He would kill the bastard if he had
dared to abuse the petite, fragile woman that Jared knew his mother was.

She smiled mirthlessly. “You forget
Jared; this is a marriage of convenience. But as far as I know, Daniel hasn’t
heard any rumors he shouldn’t have. But if he did, it would serve him no good.
He can’t harm me with it. But that isn’t the point. What will you do now?”

What else could he do?

“Let her go,” he whispered
bitterly. “The only thing I can do.”

She could have been a spy, Kimberly
thought, but the additional training didn’t go hand in hand with enforced
chastity. There was always modeling, but Kimberly always thought that doing
without pizza and losing that extra fifteen pounds that tormented her would
have just been too painful. And being a rich man’s mistress was just out of the
question; there was only so much shopping one could do before it became rather
boring. Besides, just like being a spy, it would require the loss of her
virginity. Everything else was just boring, so she joined the Police Academy
instead, going from there to several security agencies that specialized in
protection.

The work wasn’t really abnormally
dangerous, and she got to wear a gun. She liked that part. Especially when the
assignments required her to be in close proximity to arrogant men with more
testosterone than good sense. Those assignments were few and far between
thankfully, but occasionally they reared their ugly heads. Then there were
those assignments that just sucked. The ones that she knew were going to test
her patience and her training. This was one of them.

She stared back at her boss and one
of her dearest friends, dumbfounded, restraining her disbelieving laughter.
This one was just too bizarre to be real.

“Could you repeat that?” she asked
carefully, certain she had to have heard wrong.

Richard Decker’s thick gray brows
snapped into an instant frown.

“You heard me, Kimberly,” he said
with careful emphasis. “You will be assigned to Raddington’s team, despite the
alert that your welfare could be on the line as well. You will stick close to
Raddington, and the team will surround you for the duration of time it takes to
ascertain if the threat is real or imagined. You’ll head out to the Raddington
Farm tonight, and you will stay there until this assignment is over.”

Kimberly stood stiffly before him,
breathing in carefully through her nose as she gritted her teeth with the
effort it took to restrain her sarcastic reply. This was a farce if she had
ever heard of one. How in the hell had it happened?

“Richard, I don’t believe this is a
good idea…”

“It isn’t your place to make that
determination,” he said coolly. “The order has come down from the Capitol
itself. There is no other option.”

Another deep breath. Deep breaths,
she reminded herself. She could control the explosion building at the top of
her head; all she had to do was breathe. At least, that’s what that arrogant,
soft-spoken martial arts expert had told her.

“Then I’ll resign.” It wasn’t a
threat. It wouldn’t be the first time she had resigned from an agency, and she
doubted it would be the last.

“You could do that.” Decker nodded
his head slowly, watching her dispassionately as she stood before him. “You’re
a big girl, Kimberly, you can do whatever you want to. If you want to keep
running. Or, you can face the fact that there will be times you’ll have to
knuckle down and accept the inevitable. Especially if your father is chosen as
the vice presidential hopeful in the next election as is rumored.”

So the rumors were true. Just what
she needed.

“I don’t consider it running…”

“Well I do, dammit,” he growled. “I
put my ass on the line to hire you, if you remember correctly. I didn’t think I
was bringing on a damned quitter.”

She almost flinched. He didn’t
raise his voice, but Richard Decker didn’t have to, his dark brown eyes could
slice you in half when he felt the need.

“It’s a trick,” she argued,
dropping the pretense of subordination as anger fed the resentment that had
been building within her for weeks. “It’s not his first, it won’t be his last,”
she said as she spoke of the father she had given up on years before.

She shook her head, fighting the
need to confide in the only person who had reached out to her in years.

Richard Decker wasn’t just her
employer; he and his wife had become friends of hers. They had supported her
need for independence from her father, and had provided her a quiet, peaceful
retreat in their home when she had needed it. Turning him down ate at her soul,
but the risks were too great.

“If you walk away from this
assignment, then you can kiss your future in security work goodbye. You’ll
never get another decent agency to hire you. And you know it.” He leaned back
in his chair, his arms lying comfortably on the sides as he regarded her. “Is
that what you want?”

She resisted the urge to clench her
fists. “You know it isn’t,” she said heatedly. “But this is insane, Richard.
There’s no more a threat to Raddington and myself than there is to you. It’s
another of his asinine little plots, nothing more.”

“And we can’t be certain of that,”
he retorted. “Until we are, you will take this assignment Kimberly, and you
will do it to the best of your ability. If for no other reason, than for me. I
really don’t relish the ass chewing I’ll get from my boss if you pull out.”

Emotional guilt. She hated that and
he knew it. He knew it and he was using it against her anyway.

“That’s low,” she snarled.

“But effective.” He leaned forward
once again. “You’ll take Matthews, Adams, Lowell and Danford with you. They’ll
take shifts patrolling the main grounds while you stick close to Raddington.
Stay with him. Just until we’re certain.”

Stay with him, close to him, be in
the same house with him. Kimberly wanted to groan miserably at the thought. The
past week had been hell already, the arousal that normally taunted her was
turning into a torment. She dreamed of Jared, craved his touch, his kiss. The
emptiness that echoed between her thighs seemed to echo through her soul now.

He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer
for long. He would have what she had denied every other man at that club, and
she knew it. In the process, he might very well steal her heart. She couldn’t
afford to let any man touch her heart.

She breathed out wearily. She was
tired. Sleep was getting harder and harder to attain and she knew she was going
to deal with the exhaustion claiming her soon. Another trip to The Club was out
of the question. After the last episode with Jared she had a feeling the relief
she had found there would be nonexistent now.

“Fine,” she finally muttered,
knowing she was making a mistake, feeling it so deep in her soul that it
reverberated through her body. “We leave tonight. Anything else?”

Richard’s eyes narrowed
thoughtfully.

“Is there something you’re not
telling me, Kimberly?” he finally asked. “Something that could affect this
assignment?”

Yeah, she wanted to fuck the client
so damned bad that even now, her vagina wept with the hunger of it.

“No,” she answered instead. “Other
than the suspicion that Senator Madison is playing yet another of his games, I
can’t think of anything.”

“Would Jared go along with it?” She
could see the automatic need to protect her in his eyes. Richard and his wife
had been lifesavers in the past few years, but as she had told him before,
there was nothing anyone could do to save her from her relationship with her
father.

“I doubt Jared is involved in any
scheme he would hatch up.” She finally shook her head at the question. “I don’t
even think his mother knows all the details. The Senator wouldn’t want to ruin
his good image.” It was all she could do not to sneer in contempt.

“Even I don’t know all the
details,” he grumped. “Does anyone?”

She smiled mockingly. “The Senator
and myself, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s two too many.”

Richard’s gaze was compassionate,
but it did little to still the demons raging within her.

“I would pull you out of this if I
could,” he told her softly. “You know I would Kimberly. But it’s not my call.”

She nodded bleakly. “I know
Richard. Don’t worry, I won’t mess this up. We’ll leave tonight.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ll keep in
touch with any new developments. As I said, at this point, the threat is only
suspected based on intel coming through Homeland Defense. Your father’s a dirty
son of a bitch, Kimberly, but he’s working wonders in Washington in national
defense. That makes him a target, and it makes you and Jared a target. You
can’t get away from that.”

“There are a lot of things I can’t
seem to get away from,” she bit out fiercely. “Doesn’t mean I have to like any
of it… I’ll get ready to leave now, if there’s nothing else.”

Richard sighed heavily. “No,
there’s nothing else, Kimberly.”

She nodded shortly and turned and
left the room. She managed to hide the fine tremble in her body until she
reached her jeep, but as her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, she
felt the small shudders that reverberated inside her.

Jared. She stifled a moan as she
laid her head against the wheel for long seconds and fought for her composure.
For some reason, it seemed fate was out to destroy her. She could be strong
away from him, but how the hell was she supposed to hide the hunger that ate at
her soul for him, if she was forced into such proximity with him? And why was
she suddenly wondering if the fight she was embroiled in with her father was
even worth losing out on so much as a minute in Jared’s arms?

Jared stood on the back porch of
his home staring into the twilight of a Virginia summer evening. He remembered,
long ago, watching his father stand here as he debated some problem, staring
into the surrounding forest with a frown on his dark brow as though the answers
he sought were to be found there.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s
Kimberly’s life in jeopardy, Jared,” his mother continued to speak behind him.
“I’ve managed to convince William Lance, the head of the Secret Service, of my
plan. He in turn has convinced her father that this is the only course they can
take in protecting both of you. I didn’t think you would want this left to
strangers.”

The mist was rising along the
mountains now, he noticed distantly. Like gentle wisps of fairy dust, easing
along the ground. Soon, they would enshroud the land as night took over,
bringing an eerie comfort to the darkness.

“How high is the risk?” he finally
asked her, keeping his voice carefully even.

“They aren’t certain yet. But you
know how these things are. It could be rumor; it could be fact. I didn’t think
you would want to take the chance with her life, though.”

Never. There could be no risk.

“How many are on the team with
her?” he asked her quietly.

“Four, though two of them are iffy.
I attempted to get them pulled, but when William approached her father with the
idea he was vetoed out of hand. Their records aren’t as good as I would have
preferred.”

He nodded slowly. “I have several
of the men who were with me in the Forces working here. I’ll pull them in to
the house and set up safeguards. As for the men on Kimber’s team, I’ll need
their records as well as any intel on them.”

“I have everything with me,” she
said, smiling back at him gently as he turned to face her. “Do you have any
idea how much you remind me of your father when you stare off like that?” she
asked him fondly. “He solved his most difficult problems here on this porch.”

Her voice echoed with the memories.

“He solved most of mine out here,
too,” he sighed. Damn, he could have used his father’s advice now.

Jared rubbed his neck tiredly. He
had returned from Texas that morning to find his mother awaiting him with the
news that Kimberly’s safety could possibly be in danger and the plan she had
set in motion to protect her.

“Does Madison know you’re behind
William’s brilliant plan?” he asked her suspiciously. He had a feeling the
Senator only knew what Carolyn wanted him to know.

She smiled serenely. “Daniel might
not approve of you marrying his daughter, but he’s very well informed of your
qualifications to protect her.” Not exactly an answer, but he knew that tone of
voice well. He wasn’t going to get any more out of her.

“And how much does Kimberly know?”
he asked her.

“That she’s to protect you, the
team is to protect both of you. It’s simply a matter of protecting two birds
with one shield so to speak. You are aware of the budget crunch the government
is in the middle of, dear. Cost effectiveness is a major consideration.”

He snorted at that one.

“When does she arrive?” He needed
time to go over the information his mother had brought with her and get his own
plans in place.

“She’s leaving D.C. this evening.
They should arrive here at the farm by morning. Kimberly is less than pleased
with the assignment as I understand it, but I’m certain she’ll settle in
nicely.”

Jared cast her suspicious look.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you’re leaving out here, Mother?” Carolyn
Raddington was as sharp as a dagger when the need presented itself, and he
could clearly glimpse the sharp edges in the cultured, cool tones of her voice.

She watched him with a gleam of
laughter in her eyes as her lips curved at the corners in a sedate smile. “I’ve
told you everything I know, Jared,” she said soothingly, causing him to wince.
Damn, he knew there was something she was holding back now. The only thing he
was confident of was that it would be personal information, rather than
anything he needed to keep Kimberly safe.

He faced her, resignation filling
him now. He had stayed away from Kimberly, just as he had known he should, and
now, for some reason, they were being thrown together in such a way that
keeping his distance would be impossible.

The need for her was eating him
alive. He tasted her kiss on his lips, could smell the sweet scent of her on
the air around him. And at night, when he should be sleeping, he was stroking
the tormented length of his cock instead, fighting to ease the hunger racking
him. He hadn’t been back to The Club, even though he had a job to do there. He
didn’t think he had enough control to restrain himself if he found Kimberly
there again.