Falling For Her Bodyguard

CHAPTER TWO (#u358e2534-8289-5d6e-9913-31b1fcf2139c)

“STAY WHERE YOU ARE.” Kelly fumbled for her phone. How could she have been so stupid as to not ask for identification? She redialed her uncle. “Tell me your name again,” she demanded from the stranger.

“Walsh. Detective Walsh.”

Kelly’s heart was thumping so hard that it was becoming a distraction. Her hand shook so much that she feared she’d trigger the pepper spray before finding out who this guy was for sure. At the same time, she prayed he didn’t attack her before her uncle picked up. “I don’t know any detectives who forget their badge at home.”

“I didn’t forget it.” He sighed as if she was irritating him. “I can show you the piece of paper your uncle wrote your name and address on.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Kelly,” her uncle said when he answered the phone. “I won’t pull him, so get used to it while I hunt your stalker down.”

“The guy here says his name is Detective Walsh, but he doesn’t have a badge or a cop car. He’s about six-three, has short-cropped brown hair, no facial hair. Built like he could wrestle an alligator and win. He’s wearing navy pants, a pale blue button-down and a green tie. No jacket.”

With his hands on his hips, her possible stalker stared down at his feet. If he wasn’t who he said he was, he didn’t seem very nervous about a real detective showing up.

Uncle Hal gave a little chuckle. “That’s my guy, Kell Bell. He is who he says he is. He’s doing this as a favor to me, so he isn’t carrying his badge.”

Kelly lowered her pepper spray and took a deep breath in hopes her heart would slow down now. “I don’t love this plan, Uncle Hal.”

“I know, sweetheart. But it’s the only one I’ve got right now. If anything happened to you...”

Kelly understood he was only doing what he thought best. She was the daughter of police officers. Her dad had been a homicide detective and her mom was a desk sergeant in Knoxville. Growing up, her curfew was earlier than all of her friends’ because her parents couldn’t bear it if anything bad ever happened to her because they knew exactly what kind of bad things could happen.

“Okay, he says you are who you say you are,” she said as she hung up the phone.

Detective Walsh acted as if this was how he spent every Wednesday. He unlocked his truck, completely unfazed by what had happened. “Pepper spray is a terrible way to protect yourself, by the way.”

“It stopped you cold,” she replied, feeling defensive. She’d spent her life trying to prove she could take care of herself and now another cop was telling her that she couldn’t do it.

“That’s because I had no intent to do you harm. If I had, I could have easily turned your pepper spray against you.”

Who did this guy think he was? “Oh, really? Well, I wouldn’t have hesitated to spray you in the face, and this stuff will incapacitate anyone.”

He shook his head and opened the passenger door for her. “First of all, the wind was blowing away from me and toward you. Secondly, pepper spray is not guaranteed to stop everyone. If your attacker is drunk or on drugs, he might just get angrier.”

Kelly climbed in the truck and put her seat belt on, letting his comments sink in. She hadn’t noticed the wind. It couldn’t have been strong enough to blow it back at her, could it? Detective Walsh got in the driver’s seat.

“And what if that little girl over there was asthmatic or that older lady and her dog walked through the cloud and inhaled it?” he asked. “You could have done serious damage to some innocent people.”

Kelly hadn’t considered how it could affect anyone other than the attacker. She suddenly had the urge to throw her pepper spray in the garbage. “So, what would you suggest I do to keep myself safe?”

“Have you ever taken a self-defense class before? Your body is really the best weapon.”

Her mother had been trying to get her to take one for years, which was probably why she hadn’t. She lived in a safe neighborhood, didn’t run around at night alone and believed people—for the most part—were good. Until yesterday, she had never felt like she needed to protect herself that way. The pepper spray was an emotional impulse buy last night after she dropped her car off at the body shop.

“I’ll have to look into it.”

Their drive continued in silence once she gave him the address of the station to put into his phone’s GPS. The quiet unnerved her. Detective Walsh only seemed to speak when he needed to. Kelly, on the other hand, talked for a living. Silence was dead air.

“I wish I had time to stop for coffee. Everything in my life feels off because of this.” The meeting with Caroline was important and Kelly was so distracted. The impression she wanted to make today was not of some discombobulated airhead. Detective Walsh had nothing to add. He was not helping ease her anxiety in the slightest.

“So what did you do?” she asked as they came to a stop at a busy intersection. His eyebrows pinched together. She clarified, “To lose your badge and gain the responsibility of babysitting me?”

His jaw ticked. “Let’s just say I am not a big fan of drug dealers and they aren’t fans of me, either.”

“Well, I have the opposite problem. I have a fan who thinks he’s in love with me and that I cheated on him with a make-believe boyfriend.”

The line between his brows reappeared. “He thinks you have a make-believe boyfriend?”

“No, he thinks I have a real boyfriend who is really a make-believe boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m single. And not dating. Not because I can’t find someone, I just don’t have the time to put into a relationship. My job keeps me busy,” she rambled. Detective Walsh clearly didn’t care if she had a boyfriend or not. “Are you married?”

He glanced at her for a quick second. “How about we keep the personal business sharing to a minimum?”

“Right.” Kelly fidgeted with her hands. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so chances were he wasn’t married. His brown hair was cut short like they wore in the military. He sure looked a lot like those Navy SEAL guys on the covers of her mom’s old romance novels.

His phone rang just as they neared the station. The caller ID showed it was a high school calling. Detective Walsh groaned and clicked the phone icon on his steering wheel.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Walsh? This is Dean Higgins again. I’m sorry to bother you,” the voice said through the car speakers.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Higgins?”

“Well, I’m sorry to say I have Graham here in my office.”

Detective Walsh pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did he do this time?”

No ring, but he had a kid. Maybe he was divorced. Or didn’t like wearing rings. Either was possible.

“He decided to skip math class again and we found him vandalizing the library.”

“I wasn’t vandalizing,” a new voice shouted in the background. “It’s called art. I was improving the overall aesthetics of this dump you call a school. You should be thanking me, not giving me detention.”

“You’ve surpassed the limit for detentions, young man. Vandalism is a crime. I could have turned this over to the police.”

“You called him, didn’t you? You just turned it over to the police. Thanks a lot. Now I’m dead.”

Oh, boy, could Kelly relate to this poor kid. She knew better than anyone the fear associated with a call home from school when your parents were cops.

“Tell him to stop with the dramatics,” Detective Walsh said, cutting in. “He has no one to blame for this other than himself.”

“We have a lot of concerns about the acting out Graham has been doing lately. We’ve tried to be understanding and compassionate. I know that things have been hard since his mom—”

Detective Walsh didn’t let the man finish. “What’s his punishment? In-school suspension? Saturday school? Does he have to pay to clean up the graffiti?”

“Well, sir, because he not only was truant from class but also vandalized school property, we’re going to issue an out-of-school suspension for the rest of today. We need you to come pick him up.”

Detective Walsh pulled the car over. “Hang on a second.” He pressed the mute button on his phone. “You good getting out right here?” he asked Kelly.