The Socialite and the Bodyguard

Still, Mike and Dave were not going to let Nash walk all over their work and start to interfere. Yes, she was probably in danger. But she had a strategy and she was working it. And, so far, nothing had happened.

Except that now she was getting those death threats for Tsini. Which really was unacceptable.

“Maybe you could snoop around under the radar. Without them noticing that you’re checking into things.” She didn’t need a power struggle among her staff.

He lifted a dark eyebrow. Here came the part where he would demand full command, she thought. Alpha male was written all over the man.

For a long second, he just watched her. Then he surprised her by saying, “All right. I can do that.”

DAMN, he was in so much trouble here. He hadn’t been inside Kayla Landon’s penthouse for a full hour yet and he was already getting sucked in, getting involved on what felt suspiciously like a personal level. Nash scratched the underside of his chin.

At least he had taken her suggestion. That was something. He was protecting the client without completely taking over her life. Welkins would be proud of him.

“I don’t want any of my staff interrogated or inconvenienced,” Kayla was saying.

On the other hand, she did need to face reality.

“Do you want to stay alive?” Sometimes a man had to put things bluntly.

She paled. And something else. It was as if she wasn’t all that surprised by the severity of her situation. He noted the way she sat—stiff, on guard even in her own bedroom—and wondered what else was going on that he didn’t know about, what else had happened that she wasn’t telling him.

“You really think my life is in immediate danger?” She seemed to be holding her breath as she waited for the answer. She was so beautiful, those big blue eyes hanging on him.

For a moment, his mind went blank. Not good.

He focused back on her question. “Someone wants to scare you. His desire to harm you in other ways is not that huge a leap. The fur coat is disturbing. This guy could be a psycho.” He drew a deep breath and brought up the issue that had been on his mind for the last ten minutes. “Tell me about the deaths of your parents and your brother.”

She blinked, hesitating a moment before she started. “Two years ago, my parents died in a car accident. My father had just gotten a new Porsche. The police said he was driving way too fast. Probably testing its power and all that.” Her full lips trembled.

Some lips.

He wasn’t going to notice them. He lifted his gaze to her eyes. “What else?”

“Last year my brother died in a skiing accident. Smashed into a tree and broke his neck. His blood alcohol levels were pretty high. He was on a slope that had been shut down due to dangerous conditions.” She pressed those tempting lips into a thin line. “He was always a daredevil.”

He took in the information, turned it over in his brain. It wasn’t all new to him. He’d heard the stories at the time, although he’d paid little attention. Then the facts had come back again when he’d run a quick background check on her. Police reports were cut and dry. Nothing there had piqued his instincts.

Was it unusual to have two lethal accidents in a family within two years? Maybe. But the Landon family wasn’t exactly average. Most people didn’t drive superpowered Porsches. Most people didn’t have the kind of pull to have a closed slope open for their private night-skiing pleasure. You could do a hell of a lot more with money than without, and some of those things were dangerous.

Back when he’d thought this was nothing bigger than some idiot fan trying to get Kayla’s attention by sending her dog death threats, he hadn’t seen any connection to the family deaths. But she clearly thought there was a connection and she was rattled. And after he’d seen that blue fur coat, he did get that cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. His instincts said there was something more here than what showed on the surface.

“My father wasn’t a reckless driver. Lance was never a heavy drinker,” she added in a soft voice.

And she would know them best. The uneasy feeling in his gut grew. What she’d just told him changed everything. “If someone’s after your family,” he told her, “then both you and your brother are in danger.”

She surprised him by slumping back in the chaise and saying, “I know that.”

“HOW WAS your day?” Kayla asked Greg over dinner.

Her brother ignored her for a moment, doing Sudoku on the side, next to his plate.

She didn’t tell him to put it away. He wouldn’t. He had a thing about that. Always had to finish what he started.

Her back ached from being on her feet all day. Sitting up straight and looking upbeat took effort. And she still had other commitments, a business meeting over drinks at a popular restaurant nearby, although she’d cut way back on going out since the threatening notes began to arrive for Tsini. She didn’t want to leave the dog alone in the apartment in the evenings.

“Boring, like work always is.” Greg finished the puzzle at last and closed the book, then meticulously arranged and rearranged his utensils and his napkin until they were lined up with military precision.

“Do you want me to talk to Uncle Al about that?”

Lance, their older brother, had been a director at the company. Their father had made Kayla financial consultant when she’d received her MBA. He’d put Greg in Human Resources, where he’d said his younger son would do the least damage. Greg was entering old employee files into the computer system, an insult to the twenty-five-year-old with a degree in Organizational Management.

Uncle Al had immediately moved Kayla up in the ranks after their parents’ death, to the appropriate level for her education and experience, but had left Greg in HR. Which Greg hated.

“I’m fine.” He tugged on his Eagles jersey, a gift she’d recently gotten him, signed by the whole team. “I don’t want any more family arguments about this.”

Neither did she. God knew, they’d had plenty of that in the past. She hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye with her father. But she missed him now that he was gone, and she wished she could take some of those fights back. She’d grown up a lot in the past two years. Maybe they could have discussions now on a different level. Maybe she could make him see reason. Maybe she could engineer some sort of true relationship between him and Greg.

But her father was gone, and she couldn’t take back anything they’d said to each other. It was too late to make anything better. She would have felt guilty even if she didn’t think that she might have played a role in their parents’ and brother’s death, something she hadn’t told Nash.

The man had thrown her for a loop on more than one level. He was fast. Lightning. In every way. Caught on immediately. And he was hot beyond words, although that part she was going to ignore if it killed her.

“I’m flying out for the dog show tomorrow,” she reminded her brother, wanting to switch to a topic that would distract both of them. “I’m so nervous for Tsini. Would you come with us?”

She needed to convince him to tag along. Nash had insisted on that. He didn’t want the two of them to separate. He wanted to be able to keep an eye on both of them.

Right now he was down in the parking garage under the building, surveying it for possible security breaches or whatever.

That he believed her and was coming up with a plan to protect them was a relief, even if they didn’t agree on anything else. He thought her current security was worthless. She was proud of herself for standing up to him and not letting him ride roughshod over Mike and Dave.

“You’ll have fun. If it gets to be too much, you can always hang out in the suite. I reserved the best one they had.”

“I hate crowds. I’d rather have a couple of quiet evenings here instead.” Greg gave her a sheepish smile.

She would have done anything to see him smile more often. She would have done anything to protect her brother.

For a moment she hesitated on the verge of telling him everything. But as competent and highly functioning as Greg was, he did get stressed easily and when he was stressed, his disability became more pronounced. For that reason, she’d never discussed her suspicions about the “accidents” with him. And though he knew that some sick person out there had threatened Tsini, she hadn’t given him any details beyond that.

Something else she’d meant to talk to him about popped into her mind. “I’m thinking about a little get-together for your birthday when we come back. Just family and friends.” It’d give her a chance to meet some of the new people he hung out with these days.

His eyes lit up. “Okay.”

“You can give me a list of who you want to invite.” She hated that she had to keep track of his friends, but past experience had shown that sometimes people took advantage of him and befriended him for monetary gain. All they saw in him was the Landon name.

Even at the company. Their father had had to fire a security guard shortly after Greg had gone to work there. Yancy had quickly become Greg’s friend and had taken him to parties after work. To parties and other places. Greg had lost a ton of money betting on illegal street races, which were Yancy’s secret passion. Thank God that creep was no longer in the picture.

But Greg had new friends Kayla knew little about, friends who worried her, considering how much money Greg was borrowing from her lately. She needed to figure out what was going on there, and needed to do it diplomatically, without making Greg feel that she thought he was a child who needed watching over.

“Tsini could use the extra support at the show this year,” she told him, returning to that bit again.