“This is my home, Sam,” the senator growled. “You don’t have that authority.”
“I outrank you,” the admiral reminded him in amusement.
“My home!” the senator pushed out between clenched teeth.
Sam Holloran shook his head with a smirk. “Look at it this way.” He indicated Kell’s neck. “She can give better than she gets. Stop acting like a momma bear with a cub, Richard. She’s a woman, not a teenybopper.”
Richard’s face flushed as he glared back at Kell.
“I intend to marry her, Richard.” Kell kept his voice carefully low, but no less firm. It wouldn’t do for Emily to hear him.
Both men stared back at him in surprise now.
“You do?” the senator asked with wary hope. “Does she know that?”
“No. She doesn’t. And I’d prefer she didn’t know until the time’s right.”
There was no sense in keeping her father’s pride inflamed by holding back the information from him. She was still his daughter, and Kell could imagine how he would have felt if a man had dared to so blatantly touch his daughter without the benefit of an engagement or wedding band. Hell, come to think of it, Kell barely managed to restrain his wince. It would be hard to see such a mark on his daughter’s neck if she were married. If he had a daughter.
The senator and admiral exchanged concerned looks.
“Into my office.” Richard Stanton turned on his heel and led the way to the open office doors. “If we’re going to discuss this, then I’ll be damned if I want her to hear it. I didn’t like that look in her eye.” He muttered the last sentence with an edge of confusion. “That girl has never talked to me like that.”
“She’s growing up, Richard.” The admiral’s gaze was approving as he gave Kell a small nod.
“She’s learning bad habits,” the senator snapped back, before leveling a piercing look at Kell. “And I have a feeling it’s your fault.”
“I don’t doubt it a bit, Senator,” Kell agreed with no small amount of pride.
Hell yes, it was his fault. He didn’t want a woman too scared of her own shadow to survive while he was on a mission. Nor did he want a woman who couldn’t add a measure of common sense and precaution to her own defense.
Emily would always have resources to fall back on, but he wanted to be certain she could get to those friends if trouble arose and he was out of the country.
It wouldn’t be easy, working the senator to a place where he understood that his daughter was never going to allow them to wrap her in cotton batting and place her on a shelf.
He wanted her to be strong. He needed her to be strong. For his own sanity.
He stood silently now as Emily’s father closed the office doors carefully behind them, then turned to stare at Kell with narrow-eyed intent as the admiral walked to the wet bar on the other side of the room.
“You think you can make her marry you?” Stanton asked in disbelief.
“I won’t have to make her, Richard.”
The senator shook his head. “You obviously don’t know Emily well enough. I told you, you should have spent more time here at the house with us.”
Kell considered, for the briefest second, pulling his punches with the other man. But it was obvious the senator had no intentions of doing the same.
“No, Richard, it’s obvious you don’t know your daughter,” he said instead. “She’s not a timid little girl. If you don’t loosen the reins she’ll get herself killed trying to have her freedom and satisfy you as well. Give her what she needs and she’ll settle down. She’ll think about her safety rather than making certain you don’t catch her having a little fun.”
“A little fun?” The senator growled ominously. “You mean, the kind of fun that found her in a strip club, giving some strange man a lap dance?”
“I don’t consider myself that strange,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest and let his comment sink in.
It didn’t take long.
“You were there?” Anger vibrated in the tone.
“I was getting the lap dance. And she was damned cautious for a woman who’d paid a nice little chunk of change out of a bank account that was also riding damned low from feeding your goons. She was careful. And the men who got their little bonus for keeping the area clear while she was in there made damned certain she wasn’t touched. She watches her back.”