Just as he always had. Even when she was a child. As soon as she started getting used to a housekeeper or nanny, they were replaced. As soon as she found someone she could talk to, they were gone. She had stopped trying to care years ago. She wasn’t going to care now.
Strangely, Dyson didn’t say anything more. She noticed he kept looking behind them, kept playing with his cell phone, but he stayed silent. And so did she. She had stopped explaining herself years ago. And until her father gave her a better reason than he had given her over the years for making certain she didn’t have a life, then she was going to have just that. A life.
As soon as she stopped shaking. As soon as she stopped remembering a bad boy in leather who there wasn’t a chance in hell could stand up to her father. Eatable lips, a hard body, and the breath of lust vibrating on her clit.
Hell, forgetting that one just might take a while.
THE SENATOR’S PRIVATE PLANE LANDED and taxied into its hangar at Atlanta’s airport as Durango Team moved from the limo awaiting him and waited patiently while the senator disembarked.
The unscheduled trip from D.C. had come as a surprise as the final team members returned to the naval base and prepared for the operation with the senator. The information that Diego Fuentes was targeting him and his daughter once again had come as a surprise to them all, considering the fact that Fuentes usually played by a different set of rules. Best him in one of his games and he walked away. He didn’t retaliate and normally he didn’t strike again. Unless, apparently, one got away with memories that she shouldn’t have, as Fuentes suspected the senator’s daughter had done. Add that to the senator’s investigation into the government mole known only as Mr. White, and it placed Emily and the senator in Fuentes’s sights once again. Durango Team had been after Diego Fuentes for over three years, ever since his name had been connected with the elusive Sorrell, the terrorist arms dealer they had come up against in the Middle East.
As the senator stepped from the plane, Kell watched him carefully. The senator had taken him under his wing nearly fifteen years ago. He had helped train him. Helped Kell to achieve the goals he had set for himself. This was the man whose daughter was a demon on Atlanta’s highways and danced like a fucking wet dream. He couldn’t see anything of her wild impulsiveness in Richard Stanton’s closed expression and gray eyes, but he knew it was there. As a younger man, the senator had been just as wild, but with a steel core of control that only a Navy SEAL possesses.
Stanton was barely six feet, but still a powerful man at the age of fifty-five. His deep voice and commanding presence managed to get things done in the capital. He was serving his first term, and making a name for himself there just as he had in the SEALs. He was a man to depend on, but he wasn’t a man to cross.
“Kell, it’s good to see you again, son.” The senator returned his salute quickly before directing his gaze to the rest of the team.
“Chavez. Men. Thank you for meeting me here. If you’ll get in with me, then my assistant will drive.”
He nodded to the interior of the limo.
Minutes later, the five men of Durango Team were in the limo, waiting silently as the senator removed a bottle of water from the tiny refrigerator and took a long drink before pinning Kell with an accusatory stare.
“That girl is going to make me crazy,” he muttered as he capped the water and turned his gaze instead on Reno. “Do you know what she was doing?”
Reno’s gaze shifted to Kell. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant Krieger was following her this afternoon and reported her whereabouts. It seemed her bodyguard is a little overwhelmed by her.”
“A little overwhelmed?” Senator Stanton asked rudely. “Chet Dyson, remember him?”
“Yes, sir,” Reno answered severely, but Kell caught the gleam of amusement in his eyes.
They had all read Dyson’s record. He was one of the toughest marines the corps had had at one time. He still would have been if his kneecap hadn’t been blown to hell and back by a sniper in Baghdad.
“He quit.” The senator scowled.
Kell wasn’t in the least surprised.
“Excuse me, sir?” Reno stared back at him in surprise.
“Dyson called an hour ago from his cell phone and gave me twenty-four hours to find a replacement. He called her a danger to herself and every sane man in existence.” His jaw worked furiously. “I had hopes for that boy. He would have made a damned fine son-in-law.”
Once again, the senator pinned him with a gaze that screamed in accusation.
Kell arched his brow in question. He was aware of the others watching the senator with hidden shock. Kell watched him with silent amusement. Hell, everyone who knew Emily knew that her father carefully selected her bodyguards. He wanted a son-in-law, and he was determined to be the one to choose him.
The senator was trying to direct his daughter’s life the same way he had directed his SEAL team when he was still in the Navy. Someone needed to remind him that he was no longer an active SEAL but a senator, and his daughter wouldn’t have any problems finding her own man.
Hell, no. All she had to do was put in half the effort of that dance she had given Kell and they would be lined up on her doorstep.
AFTER HIS SEAL CAREER HAD ended, courtesy of a mission that went to hell and nearly killed him and the team he led, Captain Stanton had returned home and entered politics. With the backing of a personal fortune, courtesy of his parents and his wife’s inheritance, he had moved quickly up the political ladder and begun providing his daughter with a steady supply of bodyguards from the day she turned eighteen.
Potential sons-in-law.
It was no damned wonder his daughter was a wild child looking for escape.
“She was involved in a relationship with Dyson?” Reno asked.
“No!” the senator snapped. “The girl is too damned picky to even go that far.” He sighed then. “That’s beside the point. He faxed me the reports she had convinced him to hold back while we were on the phone.” He ran his hand over his face. “God help that child, she’s going to get herself killed. Fuentes’s man won’t have to lift a hand to hurt her, she’s going to do it on her own.”