Defender

“I’m saving up,” she promised.

He chuckled and started walking back toward the house, hands in his pockets. “He says there’s a threat. Something external, and to do with someone he knows.”

“That woman he sees,” Sari said. She looked up at Paul’s surprised expression. “Merrie and I know about her,” she added. “Her name is Betty Leeds. She came here once, driving a new Mercedes, all decked out in expensive clothes with a purse that cost more than my leather coat. She looked down her nose at me and Merrie, went into Daddy’s study with him and closed the door.”

He frowned. “She can afford all that on a government salary?”

She scowled. “I didn’t think about that. I don’t think the government pays salaried workers that much, and I overheard Daddy tell somebody that she worked in an office as an analyst or something.”

He let out a breath. “Best not advertise that news, tidbit.”

“I wouldn’t. Daddy has an unpredictable temper.” Her whole body went taut. “Neither of us wants to make him mad, ever.”

He turned to her in the shadow of the porch, out of range of the security cameras. “Why are you afraid of him, honey?” he asked softly, his voice unconsciously tender.

Sari’s heart jumped. She wasn’t used to endearments from anyone except Mandy. Paul never used them. She looked up at him with quiet, soft eyes, searching over his hard face. “He’s just volatile,” she hedged. “We never know how he’s going to react to anything we say. It’s almost like he’s two different people, especially when he has those dizzy spells.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Merrie and I learned early not to make him mad.”

“He wouldn’t really hurt you, would he?”

“Oh, of course not,” she lied, managing a smile. “It’s not like that. He just yells and stuff.”

“I see.”

“Where are the cameras?” she asked suddenly.

He pointed to one at the corner of the house that had the security light, and to another camera just over their heads, pointing away from the house.

“Do they have microphones?” she worried.

“They do.” He pulled a little device out of his pocket. “But that one—” he indicated the one overhead “—has had a slight malfunction.” He showed her the device and grinned.

She grinned back. “Devious.”

“Very. I’m going to turn it back on. Watch what you say.”

She nodded. He pointed the device at the camera and clicked it.

“I wonder what Mandy’s got in mind for supper?” he asked conversationally. “I’m starved.”

“Me, too. Thanks for showing me the new foal, Mr. Fiore,” she lied. She’d seen it much earlier, but it was for the sake of the recording, in case her father saw it.

“My pleasure, Miss Grayling,” he replied, and went to hold the door open for her.

* * *

Later, Paul was reading Herodotus when Isabel came through the door and jumped onto the bed with him. She was wearing a gown this time, a pink silk one with a matching peignoir. She was nicely covered, but the silk slithered over her firm, pretty little breasts and it dipped down so that just the tops of them showed. It was a modest gown. The problem was that little sliver of pretty, pale, freckled flesh. Paul had to drag his eyes away from it, especially when he saw quite suddenly two little peaks on either side of the bodice. She liked his eyes on her, and it was visible in a way she didn’t even seem to know.

The girls didn’t date. They had no knowledge of men, or even their own bodies. Isabel was very likely a virgin. It made him react unexpectedly, in a very masculine way. He leaned forward carefully so that his reaction was less noticeable in the folds of his black silk pajama bottoms.

“You’re reading that man again,” she noted, looking at the book in front of him on the bed. “Wouldn’t it be easier to read him in English?”

“You lose something in the translation,” he said easily, smiling.

“How did you learn Greek?”

He smiled. “From my grandmother. She was a firecracker. I never saw anything or anyone she was afraid of.” He shook his head. “She went after a mob boss once with a length of salami. Damn, she had spunk!”

“A mob boss? A real one?” Isabel asked, fascinated.

He nodded. “Most of our family worked for, shall we say, underworld elements. One of them was a mob boss with a real attitude problem. He came to a family gathering and insulted one of her grandsons. She took after him with a salami and damned near unmanned him with it. He actually apologized to her.” His eyes were far away and thoughtful. “After that, he sent her a present every Christmas. Shocked us all. He wasn’t the type, you see.”

She smiled. “I never knew my grandparents, on either side,” she recalled sadly. “Mama’s people originally came from Georgia. Her parents were pretty old when I was born and they died when I was a baby. Mama was worth millions. Her people were a founding family in Jacobs County. My father never talked about his people much. His father was very wealthy—that’s where Daddy’s money came from. He inherited after he married my mother. His mother died when he was a baby. He didn’t have brothers or sisters.”

“That’s sad, not to have family.”

“Do you have any?” she asked softly.

He averted his eyes. The question hurt, but she didn’t realize it. “No. Not anymore,” he said tautly. “Except for a cousin.”

He didn’t like remembering it. His grandmother had died years ago. He’d had a brother, but when he was in his teens, his sibling had died in a particularly horrible way, and not one he felt comfortable telling an innocent girl about. The others, well, he had a lot of guilt about the way they went, and the memories tore at his heart like talons.

“I’m sorry,” she said gently, touching his muscular arm.

He looked up, surprised at her empathy.

She shrugged. “You never talk about your past. I guess you have some memories that are pretty bad, huh?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Pretty bad.”

She drew her hand back. “I’ve never had the opportunity to make any real memories,” she said on a sigh. “I go to school and come home, do class work, eat, sleep, get up and do it all again, except in the summer.”

“I get up, work, eat, sleep, go to bed.” He chuckled. “I suppose there’s some sort of comfort in the routine. No great shocks. No big surprises.”

“It’s tedious, isn’t it?” she asked suddenly, surprising an odd look in his large brown eyes. “We don’t do much except go through the motions of living.”

He cocked his head. “You’re pretty clued in, for a sheltered little chick.”

“I listen,” she said simply. “I don’t have much experience of my own, but women talk. I overhear things I don’t really understand, but once in a while, a woman is nice enough to explain it to me without making it sound vulgar.”

Both thick eyebrows went up. “Now I’m intrigued.”

She cleared her throat. “It’s nothing I could talk about in mixed company,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“I see. It’s that sort of conversation, is it?” he teased.

She flushed. “Well, books and movies and television sort of hint at things, but you don’t really know, do you? It’s just secondhand.”

“So is hearsay evidence,” he mused.