The Accidental Bodyguard

“And her feet! We should take her into the hospital so Uncle Pete—”

“No!” She grabbed their arms, her broken nails digging into their skin, her huge eyes pleading.

“Can’t you see how scared she is?” a young voice croaked hoarsely. “Somebody bad might be after her. We gotta save her.”

“What’ll Dad do?”

The whirring inside her head got louder. Halfcarrying, half-dragging her, they crawled with her to the car and made a bed of lumpy pillows and blankets for her on the floorboard of the back seat. The boys unfolded a blanket and covered her, whispering that if she was quiet they could smuggle her home and hide her in their room until she got well.

The girl lay there, trembling uncontrollably, terrified of the claustrophobic feeling she had because the blanket was over her face.

Only vaguely was she aware of footsteps hurrying, of car doors slamming, of men’s voices talking low in the front seat, of a little girl’s excited shouting. “See there! Got ’em off!”

“Oh-big deal.”

But the girl in the back seat instantly registered a man’s beautiful, gravelly drawl. “Peppin, the officer told me you helped them.”

There was something so familiar about the sound of his voice. Something so warm. It seemed to resonate in her soul.

She knew him. She had loved him. Somewhere. Some time.

“Yeah, Dad. Peppin really helped ’em,” the older boy said.

“Shut up, Monty!” Peppin slugged his brother.

“Hey!”

“Who are all the cops looking for anyway, Dad?”

“Some young girl got high on drugs and had a wreck. It’s a very serious situation. She could die without proper medical attention.”

The girl felt hot all over. Tears pooled in her eyes.

“Die?” Peppin croaked as a key turned in the ignition. His young face bleached a sickly white, he stared at his tearful hideaway.

She shook her head at him, tears escaping under her eyelids.

Peppin sucked in a long, nervous breath. “So— Uncle Pete, what sort of treatment would she need?”

“Hmm?”

“Your patient?”

Peppin bombarded his uncle with questions, demanding specific details.

Once again Peppin’s father praised his son in that deep melodious drawl of his—this time for his intellectual curiosity.

The man’s low voice was husky and somehow devastatingly familiar, and yet at the same time it lulled her. She wanted to go on listening to it, for nothing seemed left in the whole world but that voice wrapping around her.

Who was he? Why did she feel she knew him?

She was too tired for thought, and her eyelids grew heavy again, fluttering down and then rising as she fought to stay awake.

She slept soundly for the first time since the van had rolled and the driver had chased her into those blinding headlights.

She slept, knowing she was safe, because the man with the beautiful voice was near.

Two (#ulink_78c68b5e-431e-5427-8f64-f55c8fc26795)

Bluish flashes ricocheted in the boys’ bedroom.

It had rained like this the night the blue van had rolled and burned.

What van? Where? Why?

The girl lay rigidly awake, longing for Lucas as she listened to the surf and to the sharp cracking sounds of thunder. Torrents of rain beat a savage tattoo against the bedroom window.

He was two doors down from her. Peacefully asleep in his huge bed, no doubt. Unafraid of the storm and blissfully unaware of the strange woman sleeping in his sons’ bedroom closet.

He might as well have been on the moon.

She stretched restlessly, almost wishing she was as happily unconscious of him as he was of her. But she needed him because he made her feel safe.

Why did her demons always come alive when she closed her eyes in the dark?

She hated feeling shut in and alone, and she felt she was—even though the closet door was louvered and her darling boys were just outside, snugly tucked beneath quilts in their bunk beds, oblivious to the storm and her fears. She lay stiffly on her hidden pallet in their huge closet and stared at the ceiling, watching the lightning that flashed through the louvers and caused irregular patterns of blue light to dance across the walls and hanging clothes.

Her strength had returned rapidly, but, so far, not her memory. Vague illusive images from her past seemed to flicker at the edges of her mind like the lightning, their brief flares so brilliant they blinded her before they vanished into pitch blackness.

Her entire world had become Lucas Broderick’s coldly modern mansion perched on its bluff above Corpus Christi Bay. But more than the mansion’s high white walls and polished marble floors; more than its winding corridors and spiral staircases intrigued her. With every day that passed, she had become more fascinated by Lucas Broderick himself.

From almost that first moment when she had awakened in his sons’ closet to their rush of adolescent chatter, they had made her aware of him.

“What if Dad finds her?”

An audible gasp and then terrified silence as if that prospect was too awful to contemplate.

“You’d better not let him—stupid.”

She had opened her eyes and found their fearful, curious faces peering eagerly at her. She’d had no memory of who they were or how she’d gotten here.

But she’d quickly learned that they were Lucas’s adorable sons, and that they looked endearingly like him.

“She’s awake.”

“Told you she’d live.”

“We’ve got to feed her something or she’ll starve like your gerbil.”