A Time to Die

“Ham or roast beef?” she asked. “Or both?”

“Both.”

When she left the bedroom, he heaved a deep breath in and out, glad she had gone before noticing his hard-on. Damn it, he had to take control of his body. He hadn’t been this easily aroused since he’d been a teenager, when just about any female had turned him on.

It wasn’t as if he had insisted on guarding Lexie so he could take advantage of her. But he’d noticed a certain look in her eyes, one that told him she could be persuaded. It wasn’t unusual for a woman to become attracted to her bodyguard. In fact, it happened quite a lot. And sometimes an agent would have a brief affair with a client. But he couldn’t let that happen this time. Not with Lexie.

Hadn’t he hurt her more than enough ten years ago? Hadn’t she suffered far too much because of him? He couldn’t deny that the sexual attraction was there between them. But because of their past history, she was the last woman on earth he would ever seduce.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER GIVING the place a thorough inspection, Geoff Monday decided that the Bedell mansion on Lookout Mountain was almost as secure as Fort Knox. That didn’t mean some brilliant criminal couldn’t figure out a way to penetrate the fortress, but the odds of that were slim to none. Unless a plane dropped a bomb directly on the old house, Cara Bedell was safer here than anywhere else.

Upon arriving two hours ago, they had gone through electronic gates that required a code to open, and once inside the massive antebellum house, she had given him a quick tour, showed him the security system, which included camera surveillance, and then assigned him a room.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Bedell, but this room won’t work,” he’d told her.

“I beg your pardon?” Cara Bedell looked sweet and wholesome, not glamorous or sophisticated the way one would expect the heiress to billions to look. The lady was a tall, rawboned, freckled redhead and, although not nearly as pretty as Lucie Evans, reminded Geoff of the lone female Dundee agent.

“I need a bedroom as close to yours as possible,” he’d explained.

“Oh. Yes, of course. I wasn’t thinking.”

She had quickly taken him to another wing in the huge house, showed him her bedroom and pointed to the one directly across the hall. “Will that one do?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

Despite not being a great beauty, there was something downright appealing about Ms. Filthy-Rich Bedell. Within minutes of meeting her, he’d been aware of the fact that she was a take-charge, used-to-being-obeyed woman who didn’t waste time with pleasantries. But whenever he’d pointed out the obvious to her, she hadn’t argued with him and had so far acquiesced to his expertise. He figured she was smart enough to know that was why she was paying Dundee Security the big bucks—to get the best. And that was exactly what he and Deke Bronson were: the very best. Dundee’s security and investigation team had no equal in the business. They were the cream of the crop.

Just as he started unpacking his bag and putting his clean underwear and socks in an antique dresser, his cell phone rang. After checking caller ID, he dumped his stuff into the drawer, closed it and answered the call.

“Hello, Dimples. You’re calling rather late, aren’t you?”

Geoff had been told by friends that he was a flirt, which he supposed he was, but he loved the ladies—all ladies, young and old, rich and poor, fat and skinny, pretty and plain. And one of his favorite ladies was Dundee’s Ms. Efficiency. She always had a warm smile and a friendly greeting for him. He had given her the nickname because she had a set of gorgeous dimples.

“I finished putting together the preliminary reports on Ms. Bedell, Ms. Murrough and the Helping Hands organization,” Daisy told him. “I’ve sent both as e-mail attachments to you and to Deke.”

“Anything unusual? Something that warranted a phone call?” He placed the phone between his shoulder and ear, then removed his two sets of clothes, still on hangers, and searched for the closet.

“Nothing really. Just one of my odd feelings.”

“Hmm… So tell me.” He couldn’t find a closet. The only door, other than the one that led into the hallway, opened up into the adjoining bathroom.

“Helping Hands is a charity organization,” Daisy said. “Their reach is worldwide, with about a third of their efforts centered on poverty-stricken areas in the U.S. But two-thirds of HH’s money goes overseas to third-world nations. One of the chief beneficiaries is a little African country called Gadi.”

The word Gadi struck a nerve, but he didn’t react, other than to say, “Yeah, and…?” He found an empty armoire lined with padded clothes hangers and realized this was the only closet space in the room. He shoved aside the fancy hangers to make room for his clothes, which were on the metal hangers from the dry cleaners.

“Ten years ago, Lexie Murrough was a reporter for UBC. She was in Gadi, at the capital, covering Babu Tum’s inauguration the day he was assassinated. She took a bullet in the back when she got caught in the crossfire between Tum’s guards and the assassination squad. Because of that, she was left partially paralyzed, and had to undergo several surgeries and years of physical therapy.”

“And this is important to our case because…? To this day, no one outside of top-secret British and U.S. intelligence knew that an elite squad of UK and U.S. special-ops soldiers had assassinated President Tum. After all, both countries claimed they no longer assassinated undesirables. And only two people knew that Deke Bronson had shot Lexie Murrough—Geoff and Deke.

“I’m not sure, but my gut tells me that there might be a connection between Gadi, Ms. Murrough and the bomb. After all, we know for a fact that some of the rebel factions in Gadi now belong to the Majeed, and they hate the U.S. What if they don’t like Helping Hands being such a strong force in Gadi?”

“You know what, Dimples? Your talents are wasted as office manager. You should be an agent. You think like one.”

Daisy laughed. “No, thanks. I prefer staying behind the scenes.”

“We need to find out if—”

“There are three citizens of Gadi working there in Chattanooga at Helping Hands,” Daisy told him. “Robert Lufti, Vega Sharif and Malik Abdel.”

“Run a check on each of them.”

“It’s being done as we speak.”

“You’re always one step ahead of us, aren’t you? You’re one in a million. I hope you know that.”

Silence.

“Dimples?”

“Hmm…?”

“You got terribly quiet there for a bit.”

She laughed again. “I was just taking a minute to appreciate the compliment without letting it go to my head. I had to remind myself that you’re free and easy with your praise.”

“Ah, Dimples, you wound me.” He chuckled. “I might exaggerate when I use my debonair British charm on other ladies, but never with you. Any compliment I’ve ever given you came straight from the heart.”

“Yeah, sure.” She quickly changed the subject. “I’ll phone when I get preliminary workups on Lufti, Sharif and Abdel. It could take a couple of days to compile a full report.”

“Thanks, love. I’ll be in touch from this end once we get more info from the Chattanooga PD.”

DEKE HELPED LEXIE clean up after supper, and although he did his best to contribute to the conversation she tried to maintain, he failed miserably. He wasn’t good at idle chitchat. And he was even worse at sharing anything personal with another person. Finally they fell into a silence that filled the massive loft until Lexie turned on the CD player and Andrea Bocelli’s voice, blended with Spanish guitars, vanquished the utter quiet.

Deke sat in the overstuffed tan leather chair aligned at a right angle to the plush, brown chenille sofa. When Lexie didn’t sit, he watched her roam restlessly about the room. With each slow, deliberate step she took, aided by her cane, he experienced a stabbing twinge. She would never be free of that limp or the cane she relied on for support. And he would never be free of his guilt and the memory of the day he had shot her.

She walked toward the middle of the three sets of French doors. Before he could speak and tell her it wasn’t smart to stand in front of anything glass and make herself an easy target, she opened them.

“Close them,” he ordered.

She glanced over her shoulder. “What?”

“Close the doors and move away from them.”

Obeying him instantly, she moved toward him. “I simply wanted to get a breath of fresh air. I wouldn’t have stayed on the balcony more than a few minutes because it’s chilly tonight and—”

“A long-range rifle could take you out like that.” Deke snapped his fingers. “If someone wants to kill you, we have no way of knowing to what lengths they might go.”