Читать книгу The Socialite and the Bodyguard - Dana Marton - Страница 7

Nash looked the thing over. “Did a note come with it?”

“No.”

“So basically this is your death threat?” He did his best not to laugh. Someone sends her an electric-blue fur coat and she runs crying for help. Women.

The job was looking easier by the minute. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Some challenge would have at least kept him from being bored to death.

Maybe she could put the damned coat on, not that there was much of it, just a strip of back and the sleeves. He thought, but wasn’t sure, that they called this sort of thing a bolero jacket. Partially completed clothing seemed to be her thing. There had to be parts missing from the dress she wore. The white silk clung to curves that were made to tempt a man. Tempt him and drive him mad.

She had a perfect figure, which the paparazzi loved, big blue eyes and silky blond hair that tumbled down all the way to her pert little behind.

Temptation in a designer dress, if outside appearances were all a man cared about. But he’d been burned one time too many to be taken in by any of that.

He’d been burned and Bobby was dead. He pushed that thought away, still not ready to deal with it. He’d done many stupid things in his life, but for this one, for “Pounder”—Bobby Smith had been a wizard with heavy artillery—Nash would never forgive himself.

He watched dispassionately as Kayla Landon’s luscious, hot-pink, glazed lips tightened.

“That coat is made of dog fur.” She emphasized the last two words. “Same breed as Tsini, dyed blue. The decoration around the neckline is exactly the same as the collar Tsini has.”

Okay, he could see that now. He dropped the thing back into the bag. He had friends who could go over it for any clues, although he didn’t hold out much hope for anything usable. Likely everyone and their PR manager had already had their hands on it. Kayla Landon worked with a large staff.

“How would you feel—” her blue eyes flashed “—if someone sent you a coat made of human skin with tattoos exactly like yours?”

Point taken. He glanced at Tsini at Kayla’s feet, then back at the blue coat, then at Kayla again.

And got seriously ticked when he saw the lines of concern around her eyes, and the fear behind them. And he knew in that instant what he’d stepped in the middle of here.

This wasn’t about the dog.

The threats were about her. Someone wanted to scare her. And if the bastard was anything like some Nash had had to deal with in the past, harming her would be the next step. Only, her incompetent bodyguards had been too busy brushing lint off their designer suits to realize that. He’d seen them and wasn’t impressed. They’d let him into the penthouse on his word. Nobody had checked that he was who he’d claimed to be. Amateurs, the both of them.

Not my problem, his brand-new resolution smacked him upside the head the next moment. He’d been hired to protect the dog. He wasn’t here to solve all of Kayla Landon’s problems.

That held him back for about thirty seconds. Then his mind crept back to the issue again.

Someone was out there with Kayla in his sights. Nash watched her closely, as analytically as he had ever considered any mission.

There was a vulnerability about her that didn’t come through on the television screen or show in her frequent pictures in the tabloids. Predictably, he found himself responding.

Don’t go there.

He was a sucker for women in jeopardy—his one weakness. Hadn’t he just gotten into trouble over that? Exactly how he’d ended up with the damned “pet-detective” assignment in the first place.

If he sank any lower, he’d be doing cat shows next.

He’d shoot himself first, he decided.

He couldn’t afford to get involved in Kayla Landon’s life chin-deep. Welkins would have his head on a platter. But he could do two things for her, at the very least: the first was to convince her that she was in a lot more danger than her dog, the second was to put the fear of God into her bodyguards so they would step up their vigilance. While protecting the poodle and navigating the Vegas Dog Show. All this in the next four days, which was the duration of his assignment.

And during that time, Kayla would be in an environment that was impossible to control, even discounting the media circus that was bound to follow her around. Best thing would be to convince her not to go to the show, but he had nothing save his instincts to take to her, and she had no reason to trust him.

Hell, it would probably take four days just to convince her that she was in any kind of danger. Mediadarling socialite. She probably thought the whole world loved her.

He watched as she bent to kiss the dog’s head, caught the curve of a breast, dropped his gaze only to land on her mile-long legs.

A target who didn’t know she was in danger. A woman who was definitely tempting him on a raw, primal level, but who came with a “strictly forbidden” sticker.

“I’m a little worried that a new person will throw off the team,” she said.

Great. She didn’t even want him there.

“I wish there were another solution.”

He wished for the simplicity of armed combat. He didn’t think it’d be prudent to tell her that.

SHE HATED that she would feel rattled under his scrutiny. As a businesswoman, Kayla had fought her way through a top-notch MBA, then into a corner office at Landon Enterprises at last. As a public persona, since people seemed fascinated with her, she’d been dragged through the tabloids over and over again. She had her protective shields firmly in place on every level. She didn’t like the fact that Nash Wilder was able to get to her with a glance.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’m going to take care of this,” he said.

“Excellent,” Kayla told him, all snooty like he would expect. Sometimes that was easiest. “That’s what I’m paying you for.” She flashed a saccharine smile.

And watched his Adam’s apple bob up, then down.

She was getting to him, too. And how childish was it to gain pleasure from that? She needed to get away from him, away from his penetrating gaze. She wished they would call her to the kitchen.

“I’d prefer if we took the Landon jet to Vegas,” he said, focusing back on the work at hand. Apparently, he’d read the detailed file her secretary had sent over to Welkins’s office.

“The team is flying commercial. First class. I already have the tickets.” The corporate jet would be too easily set up for another accident if her parents’ and brother’s murderer decided to use the opportunity to take her out.

Whoever the bastard was, she didn’t think he would blow up a passenger jet and kill hundreds of people just to get to her.

Greg’s voice filtered in from the den. She glanced that way. Back already? She wished Nash would finish their question-and-answer session so she could talk to her brother. But Greg seemed to be leaving again with a quick wave to her. He’d probably come back for something he’d forgotten. He was often absentminded.

“The corporate jet would give me a smaller environment to control. It’d make my job easier,” Nash was saying.

Obviously, he expected her to rearrange her life to his specifications. She knew bodyguards like that. Her aunt had fallen prey to a similar man when Kayla had been a teenager. The guy had come in, made Aunt Carmella completely paranoid, got her to where she wouldn’t trust anyone but him. She ended up leaving Uncle Al and marrying that man. He left her after a year, taking half of the family fortune with him.

“Your job is to protect Tsini. My job is to live my life, not to make yours easy,” she spelled it out for Nash.

He considered her with a lazy look that she was pretty sure hid fury. “As you pointed out before, you’re paying me to protect you—” He cleared his throat. “Your dog. Are you going to fight me on everything I recommend?”

He didn’t seem like a guy who was used to taking no for an answer. He probably scared the breath out of the average person. He would have scared the breath out of her, too, if her life hadn’t been in constant jeopardy in the past year.

She flashed her best debutante-millionaire-heiress smile. “Of course not, just when we don’t agree.” Then she thought, shouldn’t have said that.

He looked in control, but she wasn’t sure whether it was the kind of control that would easily snap. For all she knew, he was getting ready to strangle her for standing up to him. Her father had been like that. Bore no opposition from anyone. How quickly she’d forgotten.

But Nash threw his head back and laughed.

The sound was warm and genuine, reached right across the distance between them. The harsh lines of his face crinkled into a look of mirth. Not staring with her jaw hanging open took effort. The man was beyond belief good-looking.

“You’re not like I expected,” he said, his demeanor turning friendlier.

“And you think you know all about me now after what, five minutes?” She didn’t want to admit that he was quickly disarming her.

“I know that spunk and a sense of humor rarely accompany an empty head.”

Score one for Nash. He was more observant than ninety-nine percent of the people she usually met.

“Imagine that.” She couldn’t help the sarcasm, but for the first time in a long time, she wanted to.

He didn’t seem to take offense. “I want you on your own plane because I can control a ten-person team easier than I can a commercial flight with hundreds on it.” He considered her for a long moment, the look on his face turning serious. Then he seemed to have reached a decision at last and leaned forward, his voice dropping as he said, “I think you’re in danger.”

The slew of emotions that washed through her was bewildering. She’d been saying that for how long now? And nobody had ever believed her.

He was a complete stranger. She didn’t trust him yet, might never trust him. He was the last person she wanted knowing about her personal problems. He could easily take them to the press. Confidentiality clauses tended to be forgotten when tabloids offered tens of thousands of dollars for any gossip about her.

She wanted to act as though she didn’t know what he was talking about.

Failing that, she wanted to act like “yeah, I’m in danger, but I’m cool with that.”

Failing that—She would have wanted to do anything but what she did do.

She burst into tears.

In front of a total outsider.

Who was probably beginning to think she was certifiable.

She didn’t dare look up at him. God, she was a mess.

“Five-minute warning,” Fisk, her agent, called out behind her.

She didn’t turn, only lifted a hand to indicate that she heard him.

“All right, guys, let’s get this party started. She’s coming in a sec,” he said to the producer in the kitchen as he walked back.

Nash was by her side the second Fisk left the den.

“We’re going to talk someplace private,” he said, then took her hand and gently pulled her up from the pod chair.

The line of potted palms between the living room and the den kept them out of sight of the staff as he led her to her bedroom, his hand at the small of her back as if he were her escort at some posh party, walking her down the red carpet.

He steered her to her reading chaise, plucked the box of tissues off the bookshelf and dropped it in her lap, then went back and, after letting Tsini in, closed the door.

She blew her nose then drew Tsini onto her lap.

He stood between her and the door, scanning her bedroom. He made no disparaging remarks, although the place currently looked like a movie set. Her uncle’s interior decorator had had it redone a week ago, in time for a magazine shoot. The cooking show was making a major promo push, highlighting their special angle that the celebs would be filmed in their homes, some for the first time. Her bookshelves and chaise had had to be taken out for the pictures. They’d finally gotten dragged back that morning, after she’d repeatedly asked.

“I think there are things you need to tell me.” Nash stood tall and strong, as if standing between her and the world.

At the moment, the thought was incredibly comforting, even if it was only a fantasy.

“We don’t have much time before they call you, so go ahead.” His voice was steady, his gaze attentive, his demeanor calm. His stance radiated self-confidence.

The power structure had shifted between them. When he’d shown up, she was the boss and he was a hired man. Now he was—

She couldn’t find the right word, but the man was clearly in his element.

“Do you know who’s after you?” he asked.

“Tsini—”

“You,” he corrected with a stubborn look.

She shook her head.

“Other than the death threats involving the dog—” He looked at Tsini. “And I want all of them, with the exact circumstances of how and when they were received. What else happened?”

Here came the part where she told him, and he would think her crazy, just as the police had.

“I felt at times that I was being followed.” She waited for him to roll his eyes.

He listened without giving his opinion away. “What else?”

She drew a deep breath. “A couple of times, I thought someone might have been in the apartment when we were all out. Things were out of place. I don’t think it was Angie, the woman who cleans.”

“You asked?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll talk to her. I want to talk to your whole staff.”

Just what she didn’t need. “Mike and Dave are going to hate that.”

Her bodyguards were protective of her and their jobs. They’d been with her for close to three years.

“What extra security measures have they put in place since you told them all this?” Nash’s gaze was direct, his tone honed steel.

Point taken. Mike and Dave agreed with the police that the stress of the paparazzi was getting to her. They all thought she was getting paranoid as a result of living under constant stress.

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.

Truth was, even before she’d talked to Nash, she hadn’t felt comfortable leaving Greg alone, had already talked to the housekeeper about spending more time at the apartment for the next four days. And back then, all she’d had were her own fears and suspicions, since everyone she’d ever told was telling her that she was wrong. And since she wanted to believe that, she’d half talked herself into thinking that they were right and all the stress of the last two years had made her paranoid.

But Nash agreed with her.

And, more than any of the cops she’d brought the issues up to, he looked as though he knew what he was doing.

So most likely there really was someone out there after her family.

Which meant she couldn’t leave Greg behind.

He pushed the peas aside on his plate, away from the potatoes. “I’ll like staying here.”

Of course he would, she thought, ashamed for a moment. He’d never had much autonomy. He’d gone to a small local private college, at their parents’ insistence, and had commuted from home every day. Their mother had been overprotective of him. Their father had never had any confidence in his abilities. From the moment he’d been diagnosed, he’d become damaged goods in Will Landon’s eyes. If his son could be of no use in his father’s quest to build his empire, Greg was good for nothing. Worse than that, he was ballast.

And as much as she loved him, Kayla hadn’t been much better, had not encouraged him to become more independent after their parents’ death. He’d been so distraught. She’d insisted on him moving in with her, pleaded with him, telling him she needed him. Then, after his brother’s death Greg had become depressed. She should have helped him build his own life, but she was worried about him, so she kept him tethered to hers instead.

And to keep him safe now, she had to continue doing that.

She patted his hand on the table. He had long, slim fingers like their mother’s, the blond coloring that Kayla had inherited, as well. He had a slight body, had never been into sports or anything physical. He looked younger than his age, but he was smarter than most people expected. He’d gone through college with the help of a private tutor their father had hired, and had received a degree he’d worked hard for and earned.

He did deserve a normal life. A better life than she was making for him, she thought, and decided to help him become more independent once she was sure they were past all danger. But she needed to keep him close until then.

“I’m nervous. It’s a big show for us. I don’t know what I’ll do without you. I need you there. You don’t have to go to any of the big events if you don’t want to. Just come along. Please.”

And to her relief, Greg nodded.