Nautier and Wilder by Lora Leigh

share with her something
     that even Timothy Cranston was unaware of.
    “You hide your family.” She nodded as though it made sense.
    “Well, my mother hid me from them first,” he admitted with a flicker of amused remembrance.
     “She didn’t want my father to know about me, didn’t want me to be threatened by his
     career in covert intelligence or his enemies. Father knew about me, though. When I
     was old enough, he found me, and drew me in like he does so many others and gave me
     one task: Protect my sister.”
    He could laugh about it now; at the time, it hadn’t been nearly so funny.
    “You say that as though it were an impossible task,” she observed curiously.
    “You would have to know Mary Elizabeth to be amused,” he said with a grunt. “She taught
     me a long time ago that you can’t surround those you love in bubble wrap and expect
     it to work. First they burst the bubbles; then they find an escape route. Once they
     escape, they don’t tell you where they’re going or why.”
    Piper watched as that crooked little smile she loved touched his hard lips and gleamed
     in his dark blue eyes.
    “You tried to surround her in bubble wrap then?” she asked. “Guess you learned the
     hard way, huh? I wish you could teach Dawg and my cousins the fact that it simply
     isn’t possible to lock us away until it’s time to bury us.”
    “That’s your job, sweetheart.” He sighed as she watched him, her gaze meeting his
     for the second he glanced at her, yet feeling the effects of the amused heat in his
     eyes for that tiny moment in time.
    “How is that my job?” She couldn’t imagine teaching Dawg anything. The man gave stubborn
     a bad name.
    “Most sisters start when they’re babies,” he admitted. “But you’re on the right track.
     Live, laugh, have fun, and go head-to-head with him whenever you have to. But don’t
     disappear on him again, Piper. Do it again, and next time I promise I’ll help him
     find you.”
    “And what makes you think you can find me if Dawg can’t?”
    “Because Dawg doesn’t want to admit you would actually leave the state without telling
     him,” he pointed out as guilt flayed her once again. “I don’t have that problem. I
     saw you leave the inn when you snuck out. I heard the car stopping just down the road.
     I knew why you were doing it, though. I didn’t follow; I didn’t run a check on the
     car. I went back into my room and stared up at the ceiling the rest of the night,
     wondering who was the man you left with.”
    The man?
    Piper almost smiled. She could hear the probing question he was doing nothing to hide.
    “It wasn’t a man,” she admitted. “It was the sister of a friend giving me a ride to
     the Louisville train station. I tried to cover my tracks so Dawg wouldn’t follow me.”
    He nodded once.
    “It didn’t work out so well.” She sighed, completing the thought.
    “No, but I’m going to assume the circumstances were unusual,” he stated.
    “How the hell do I know?” She still didn’t understand why, who, or what. “One minute
     I’m waiting on a bellhop and a ride to the train station, and the next second I’m
     being pounded on, then waking in a hospital with a concussion and so many bruises
     that breathing hurts.”
    There was the faintest memory of a demand. A demand for what, she wasn’t certain.
     It wasn’t even a memory, not really. It was a confusing collage of something, amid
     a blast of pain, fear, and her own screams.
    “Did you remember the people next door who rushed in to help you?”
    She didn’t remember the rescue at all.
    “I remember meeting them at the hospital after I woke up.” She answered him, wishing
     she could hold on to whatever it was her attacker had said in those chaotic moments.
     She had a feeling if she could just remember . . .
    “They were good boys,” he told her gently. “A lot of young men would have waited,
     or been too wary of poking their noses in where they