Her Bodyguard

“Or if you don’t want to climb,” Sutton continued when she refused to smile, “you walk between this electric eye and that one.” He nodded at two knee-high metal posts implanted at intervals along the driveway. “They decide you must be a car heading out and-voilà.” The gates swung majestically open. “Goodbye, Gillian,” he added gently. “And...don’t get your hopes up.”

“I—” She spun and stalked off, tears of rage gathering in her eyes. So close, so close! All but for that selfish... brute.

CHAPTER THREE

HANDS JAMMED IN HIS pockets, a reluctant smile quirking his lips, Trace Sutton watched her go.

Most people tightened up with rage. Gillian swung off on those long, long legs like a woman on a mission—a tiger to shoot or a city to sack. As if she’d just heard about a summer sale on silver platters. She needs one for my head, he acknowledged ruefully.

He leaned against the bars of the gates to keep her in sight as long as possible and crossed his arms. After a moment he noticed he was rubbing his right forearm. It still tingled where he’d snugged it around her waist. With a grimace, he shoved his hands back into his pockets.

She hadn’t been toting; he was reasonably certain of that. A weapon tucked in her waistband had been the logical assumption since she’d worn a loose, gauzy overblouse that hid the top of her skirt. But his lightning frisk had found no gun, no knife—only vibrant, willowy slenderness, a feminine shape that fit his arms as though molded to his personal specifications.

Given her skirt, there was only one other place Gillian might be packing. He’d pictured himself smoothing his hands up the inside of her long, honey-colored thighs—strictly searching for a shiv or a gun taped in place, of course. But try as he might, he hadn’t come up with an excuse for doing it that the lady would buy.

Except that I’m an oaf and she thinks that already.

Far down the street, he noticed, she reached a corner and turned left. Which checked out. That was the most logical route back to the address she’d given on her résumé.

He’d thought it was too damned convenient to Woodwind when he’d first noted her street. But Newport had a layout unlike most cities, where the rich lived on one side of town and the poor on the other. Situated on a long, meandering ridge that encircled a harbor, Newport divided its social classes not by horizontal miles but vertically. The “summer cottages” built at the height of the Gilded Age graced the top of the ridge, while the bungalows and triple deckers that had once housed the Irish maids, the gardeners and cooks and stable hands who had serviced those mansions occupied the lower slopes.

So in itself the proximity of Gillian Mahler’s place to Woodwind was no grounds for suspicion. Still... “Something doesn’t fit,” he murmured aloud. She’d looked like a winner to him, and that didn’t jibe with the profile.

But looks and manner aside, there was the fact that she’d drifted here from afar. And she lacked a steady, full-time job.

Which describes just about every kid in the city, he reminded himself. Newport had a well-earned reputation as a good-time town. The young swarmed here from all over the country, even from abroad, to work the summer jobs at the hotels, restaurants and bars. After hours they partied the night away, then spent their mornings drowsily perfecting their tans at the beach, before it was back to work again.

So explain away Gillian’s rootlessness and still he had that look she’d given him when he’d stopped Lara from hiring her. If looks could kill. And rage was definitely part of the profile.

Maybe she just needed the job. He squared his shoulders, shrugging off that twinge of guilt. He had one goal here and one goal alone, and nothing would deflect him from it.

So, put her on the shortlist?

His list was damned short. Twenty-seven applicants so far and he had only three candidates, losers all, but not one he’d bet his money on.

So, Gillian? Profiling was hardly an exact science. And those emotions he’d sensed once Lara had joined them... They’d raised the short hairs on the back of his neck.

Powerful, inappropriate emotions were definitely part of the profile—though oddly, he couldn’t quite swear which woman had been transmitting.

Or both? Did I miss something? Or add something that wasn’t there? Usually he trusted his instincts in these matters. This time, something seemed to be jamming the signals.

An image of long graceful legs, of smoldering lioness eyes, drifted across his mind. Trace grimaced. He didn’t like to think of sexual attraction crossing his wires, but he’d seen it happen to so many men in his business he’d be a fool to consider himself invulnerable.

And a greater fool to let it interfere with his job.

Well, the solution to that problem was easy. Keep her at a distance.

But put her on the shortlist, he decided also, and headed up the driveway. Maybe even the top of his shortlist.

LARA HAD GONE UPSTAIRS, Trace found when he returned to the mansion. He took the steps two at a time—she really did have a physiotherapy appointment within the hour. He entered her unlocked bedroom without knocking, then paused. “Lara?”

His pulse jumped a notch when she didn’t answer. His eyes swept the big sunny suite, half bedroom, half sitting room, then the balcony beyond, with its magnificent view of the sea. Nothing out of order. Nothing smashed or overturned. Lucy, the downstairs maid, had told him Lara was up here, but maybe she’d—

He sensed a presence and turned to find her standing in the doorway to her dressing room. Silent and unsmiling, she gazed at him for a moment, then withdrew.

So...he had offended her. She’d been so docile and subdued since her fall, he’d grown used to taking the lead. Surprised when she’d gone her own way during the interview this morning, maybe he’d brought her back into line a little too smartly.

“We need to leave in ten minutes,” he said, coming to stand in her dressing-room doorway, wondering whether to apologize or let it ride. The little room, lined with mirrors and louvered doors that hid her wardrobe of stunning simplicity, was empty. Lara had retreated all the way into her bathroom, a room that by unspoken agreement was off bounds to him. But the door was open and today wasn’t just any day, since they so rarely disagreed.

“Lara?” He stopped in the doorway to her bathroom. She stood brushing her hair before her mirror, a gesture that would have expressed her irritation beautifully four months ago, when those silvery locks had been a foot longer. In her imagination, they probably swirled around her shoulders still.

In reality, short as her hair was now, it stood up in silky tufts, then fell softly as the brush passed. She looked like an outraged downy fledgling. He had to work not to smile. “We’d better go.”

“I wanted that one, Trace,” she said with fierce determination, staring at herself in the beveled glass.

“You know it’s not in the plan.” He desperately needed a second person to spell him. Backup hadn’t been a problem those first two months after her fall, while she’d stayed in the nursing home. He’d brought in three capable private-duty nurses and alerted them to the danger. Whenever he’d left her bedside, he’d known she was in good hands and he could rest easy.

But these past two months back at Woodwind... There was too much ground here. Too many people for one man to cover. Even for a low-profile assignment, this was ridiculous, as he’d tried to tell her from the start.

A typical shift in his business was twelve hours. He was doing twenty-four, day after day after day. His concern wasn’t exhaustion so much as growing stale. No one could live at the pinnacle of alertness without stand-down time.

“So let’s change the plan,” Lara muttered.

Trace breathed in, held for a count of three, breathed out. A centering exercise in karate: achieve serenity first, then take action. “What was wrong with number seven?” he asked finally. “Liz Galloway?”

Galloway wasn’t a member of his own security firm, Brickhouse, Inc., but she’d come with the highest recommendations. To maintain her cover, she’d applied for the job in the same way as all the genuine applicants.

The brush paused midstroke. “She...intimidated me.”

Trace snorted. “Don’t be silly.” Lara was one of the bravest people he’d ever met, man or woman. The pain she’d endured without whimpering, those first few weeks after her fall... He remembered looking down at those big haunted eyes set in that swath of bandages and wishing she would cry out, complain, weep—anything but lie there bleakly accepting, as if pain were only her due.

“I’m not! I felt as if she was measuring my neck for a collar and leash. As if she’d expect me to heel every time we went out for a walk. Well, no, thank you. It’s bad enough having you—” Lara stopped, carefully set the brush aside. Reached for a bottle of lotion and fidgeted with the cap.

“Having me...?” he prompted mildly, though he knew what she’d say. It was the perennial problem between bodyguards and their clients, almost always the reason a bodyguard’s contract was terminated prematurely. Along with protection came loss of freedom. Spontaneity. Privacy. Once the client’s original fear diminished, resentment inevitably followed.

“Having you living on top of me,” Lara mumbled without meeting his eyes. “If I was stuck with Liz, as well, I think I’d go...” She shrugged. “Nuts.”

“I’m sorry. I try to not cramp your style.” Yet the requirements of the detail made it all but impossible. He was here under cover, and only one role allowed him to plausibly stay by her side day and night.

“Oh, Trace, I didn’t mean it that way! You’ve been—” She turned and smiled up at him. “I’m very lucky to have you—I can’t believe how lucky. But if I can’t have my privacy, at least I want to be...comfortable with the people around me. And besides,” she hurried on as he opened his mouth to argue, “we agreed that whoever was hired, she’d have to really function as my personal assistant. Liz Galloway just didn’t have the—the warmth or the tact the job requires. Some of those fan letters are so silly, the people who write them so—so desperately needy... The job takes somebody with sensitivity. A sense of humor.”

“Ouch, poor Liz!” But he could see what Lara meant. The ex-policewoman wouldn’t score high on the warm-and-fuzzy scale. “All right, then. I’ll see if I can find somebody else.” Inwardly he groaned. Female BGs were rare, and therefore in demand, and of the few available not just anyone would do. He’d hire only the best for Lara. And for himself. A partner he couldn’t trust was less than useless, endangered everyone. ,

Laura shook her head. “Don’t bother, Trace. I want her. Gillian.”

“Out of twenty-seven women you’ve interviewed, why her?” The one who worried him most.

Laura shrugged. “I don’t know. She...” She shrugged again. “I liked her.”