The Baron and The Bodyguard

He circled again, looking for an opening. “But not the first time I’ve kissed you.”

Apprehension prickled along her spine. “You said you dreamed about it. Sometimes the mind can’t tell the difference between a real experience and one that’s strongly imagined.”

“Now you sound like Pascale.” Mathiaz said in annoyance, as if her evasiveness bothered him more than her fast footwork.

She was bothered, too, for different reasons. She didn’t like lying to him even by omission, but how else could she describe her refusal to tell him what had gone on between them in the year he had lost?

Why didn’t she simply tell him that she was the one who couldn’t deal with the closeness blossoming between them?

Mathiaz lunged at her with a speed that surprised her, given his injury. When he grasped her and pulled her down to the floor with him, her mind whirled back to when she was eighteen, returning from a date with her first love, the man she had fully expected to marry when they were old enough.

They had blown a tire on a back road on the way home from a dance. She had been helping Colin change the tire when a group of teenagers pulled up beside them, making lewd, drunken comments.

They had ignored the catcalling, but the four drunken youths piled out of the car and encircled her. She had tried talking to them, hoping to defuse the situation, but they began pawing her. When Colin tried to stop them, one of the youths struck him from behind with the tire lever. Colin slumped to the ground. Never had Jacinta felt more helpless.

She tried to reach Colin but two of the men pulled her to the ground. A third dragged her dress up around her waist. Her attempts to kick and bite her assailants proved useless. She knew what would have happened next if a police car hadn’t cruised to a halt beside them, lights blazing. After a scuffle, the youths were arrested. She had been vindicated to see them convicted of Colin’s murder.

She had made up her mind never to be helpless again, learning every self-defense move she could, and finding that she had an unerring eye with a gun. Perhaps because she now projected an air of being able to take care of herself, she had never needed to use any of her skills other than in practice.

It had taken her a few years to learn that her ability to let anyone get close to her had also been a casualty of that night. After panicking as soon as she began to care too much about anyone, she had made sure her dates weren’t allowed to progress beyond friendship.

Until Mathiaz.

She had resisted his appeal as long as she could, telling herself that anything else was unprofessional. He had no such qualms, making his feelings for her plain, as well as ensuring that she knew he didn’t give his heart lightly. She had really thought she could respond in kind, until the night when he told her he loved her. Until her sense of panic had become too strong to fight. No amount of logic could shake her terror that if she allowed him to love her, something terrible would happen to him, too.

Caught up in the memory of the attack, she fought Mathiaz as if possessed, almost succeeding in breaking his hold on her until she realized who he was, and where they were. In her confusion, he was able to pin her beneath him. She had no choice but to concede the match.

He looked down at her, enjoying the moment. She tensed, thinking he meant to kiss her again, but instead he smiled in triumph. “What was that about hurting me?”

She let him give her a hand up, resisting the urge to use the leverage to flip him over her shoulder. One day she would have to warn him about making such a basic mistake. “I always fantasize when I’m fighting, don’t you?”

He grinned. “Sure. I fantasize that what we’re doing isn’t fighting.”

She felt her cheeks glow, and looked away. While they were apart, Mathiaz had figured in her fantasies more often than he had any right to do. She felt the familiar swell of panic start, and made an effort to control her breathing. “I need a shower.”

Mathiaz watched her go, feeling puzzled. Whoever she had been fighting just now, he’d wager anything that it wasn’t him. When he had lunged at her, she had acted exactly as he’d hoped, moving into his attack and trying to throw him off balance. The move had enabled him to pull her to the floor, pinning her beneath him.

That was the moment when she’d left him to fight some demon of her own imagination. He wished he knew what it was.

There was so much about her he didn’t know, including why he felt as if he’d kissed her many times before today. He felt a tug of need. She was so fragile and so strong, and the glow of her exertion made her look beautiful.

Holding her in his arms felt right. He couldn’t accept that today was the first time. Some part of him had known exactly how she liked to be touched. He crashed one fist into the other in frustration. If only he could force his way through the fog shrouding his memory, he was sure he would find some answers.

He strode to the changing room and stood under a cool shower for a long time, hoping either to stir some memory of the past year, or wash away his need to know. He did neither, and came out chilled to the bone, his leg aching, and his temper heading for boiling point. Dr. Pascale had said Mathiaz’s memory of the last months might be gone for good, but fragments of recollection kept tantalizing him, especially when he spent time with Jacinta. So his next step was obvious. He would spend as much time with her as he could.

Chapter Four

Some people never learned, Jacinta thought furiously as she showered and dressed. Bad enough to let him kiss her. Agreeing to practice unarmed combat with him was the height of folly and could only end in one way, with every nerve in her body screaming for more of his touch, and her mind urging her to get as far away from him as she could before something terrible happened to him as it had to Colin.

She should have turned down this assignment, she knew. But when Dr. Pascale had called to tell her that he needed her help to rouse Mathiaz from his coma, she hadn’t hesitated, hastening to the baron’s bedside like a lovesick adolescent. Her conceit at thinking she was the one person who could bring him back was going to cost her dearly.