Читать книгу A Bodyguard for Christmas - Donna Young - Страница 9

Smoke and tape choked her screams, smothered the oxygen she so desperately needed. The flames licked her skin—jagged knives that sliced a downward swipe, flaying a path through skin and nerves.

Suffocating, Regina struck out with her hands, defending herself against the swipe of blades, the bogged down fog that surrounded her.

“Wake up, damn you. Before you hurt yourself.”

Chris.

Relief flooded through her, intensifying the burning in her throat. But when she tried lifting her eyelids, they remained stubborn and heavy.

A string of curses floated above her head, then suddenly the weight was gone and in its place a cool rush of air.

Slowly, her eyes fluttered open. Light burst, bringing tears that stung under the lids. Regina looked down, waiting for her vision to adjust and for the first time, she realized her arms refused to move.

“So you’re finally awake?”

It took effort to turn her head. Chris Beck stood next to the bed, holding a wet washcloth in one hand.

“Well? Are you okay?”

Regina blinked. No, not Chris.

This man wasn’t her friend. She noted sharp cheekbones, the hard line of his mouth, the rigid set of his jaw.

What did Chris say about his son?

The man had no give.

“I asked if you were okay.”

“No, I’m Regina.” She glanced down for the first time, taking in the tan cotton slacks and gray cardigan with a scooped-neck tee beneath. All smudged with ash, all reeking of smoke. “Do I look okay?”

“You look like hell.”

No humor, either.

She almost sighed. Almost. But when her gaze met his, she actually forgot to.

The eyes were the same. Chris’s and Jordan’s. Both pale blue, cut laser-sharp with specks of silver that flashed little bolts of lightning-edged emotion. Pleasure, sadness, anger, impatience. It didn’t matter which, the intensity never diminished.

Harnessed, yes. Controlled, certainly. But never diluted.

“I guess this pretty much defines ‘in the nick of time,’ doesn’t it, Jordan?”

“Yes—” He stopped, surprise flashed in the blue eyes, just before they narrowed.

Regina bet not many caught this man off guard. A huge dose of satisfaction eased some of the frustration—and admittedly, a small bit of fear—stewing in her belly.

“You know who I am?”

She grimaced more from the pounding pain in her head, than his reaction. Know him? She wondered what the man would do if she told him the truth.

Instead, she settled for another truth. “Chris carried your picture in his wallet. You were younger and in uniform. You’d just received your Royal Air Force pilot’s wings.”

“Considering our relationship, it’s hard to believe he carried a picture of me around anywhere.”

“He was proud of you.” Slowly, she eased up on one elbow. Her gaze skimmed over his jeans and sweater, noting the anger that rode the hard-lined muscles beneath.

“You’re taller than Chris. Leaner, too.” Regina spoke without thought. Something she tended to do. A habit people developed when they spent most of their time alone.

“I’m not here to be compared to my father, Miss Menlow. In or out of bed.”

“Bed?” Confused, she frowned. The sledgehammers in her head had scrambled her brain more than she’d thought. “You think Chris and I were lovers?”

“Weren’t you?”

“This is my hard-earned tax dollars at work?” Annoyed, she brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “Your father collected books. First editions. I sold books. First editions. It’s really quite simple. Even for a government man like yourself.”

“My father told you quite a lot, it seems.” His tone was flat with disbelief. “What was in the book?”

“Book?” She froze, remembering. “Your father’s journal. Do you have it?”

“No,” Jordan replied. “The guy who attacked you left with it. I wasn’t able to follow him.”

“He grabbed me from behind and shoved a gun at my head.” She rubbed her right temple, remembering. “I don’t know how he broke in. I had already closed up. Maybe a window in my loft. Although I usually keep both locked.”

“If he was a professional, a locked window wouldn’t have stopped him.”

“He demanded the journal and I told him where to find it. He must have hit me with the pistol right after because I don’t remember anything until I came to in the office. I saw the fire and managed to roll under the desk.” Automatically her fingers went to her head and she winced when she found the top of her skull tender. “I honestly didn’t expect to survive. Thank you.”

“Just your tax dollars at work,” he commented wryly.

Her head jerked up, her mouth tilted in self-deprecation. “I deserved that. I’m sorry. I guess my only excuse is that I’m not at my best right now.”

The apology caught Jordan off guard. She had surprised him for the third time in less than three hours. The fact that she crawled under the desk, then knew he worked for the government and now the apology.

His gaze skimmed over the dark chestnut hair, liking the way the thick waves drifted over the graceful line of her neck, drawing his eye to the delicate spot just above her shoulder.

But it was her eyes—big, somber, moss-green. Pools of liquid that swallowed a man whole.

“I cleaned the wound. The bruise is minor.” He sat on the side of the bed. When she continued to probe the cut, he pulled her hand away. “Stop playing with it or you’ll make it bleed again.”

“I’m sorry.” Her fingers fluttered beneath his, just for a moment before she tugged them away.

Nerves?

“What did your intruder look like, Miss Menlow?”

“Regina,” she corrected him automatically. Slowly, she sat up and drew her knees to her chest.

The woman intrigued him. She was soft, feminine, intelligent. She stirred something he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Desire. Interest.

Another surprise.

“He was football-player big. Linebacker size. Cool, mercenary type. Six-two. Dark brown hair. Crew cut. Dark brown eyes. His features were flat. Almost like his face had been pressed by glass.”

“Identifying marks?”

“No tattoos that I saw, but he wore a black corduroy coat. So if he had any on his arms, they were covered. He had a scar, though. A crescent one. Right here.” She stroked the side of her left cheek. “But he didn’t escape with anything important.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he doesn’t have the journal. I made a fake after I read the original. I gave the fake to him.”

“Where is the original?”

“In my loft. Under the sink in my bathroom.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, bracing herself. “How bad was the fire?”

“The bathroom, along with the rest of your loft crashed into the store just after we escaped.”

Her forehead dropped to her knees. Everything gone. Not that she owned much. But there were photographs, small treasures her parents had left for her. The letter Chris had given her.

The pain wasn’t sharp, but a dull throb just under her heart. Or maybe she’d just gotten used to it over the years and didn’t notice the sharp edges anymore.

“Did you read my father’s journal?”

“Yes.” Actually, she’d read it front to back, twice, before she’d been satisfied she’d committed it to memory. “Chris sent it with a letter. He told me to read it then wait for you to contact me. He said you’d know what to do.”

“His message told me to find you. To protect you until I could decipher the information he’d given you. I had no idea the information was a book until tonight.” He walked over to the window, split the curtain apart barely an inch and peered out. “When I saw Scarface walk out of the store with it. I just knew.”

“You watched him?” Regina asked. “How long were you outside the store?”

The curtain dropped back into place as he turned back to her. “Not long. I decided to wait for you to lock up. I didn’t want any interruptions.”

“So you preferred to wait in a snowstorm rather than a warm office while I dealt with my customers? Which I didn’t have,” she rationalized, frowning. “That doesn’t make sense. Now if you were to tell me I was under surveillance, that you wanted to make sure I was legitimate before you approached me…”

He ignored her comment, simply because it hit too close to the truth. “The only lead we have now is the guy who left you for dead.”

“Not necessarily.” She shook her head, only to stop mid-motion, dizzy. “How well did you know your father, Jordan?”

“Bloody well,” Jordan responded, smoothly. “The question is, how well did you know him, Miss Menlow?”

“Bloody well,” she quipped in a perfect British accent, mimicking him. “Or at least I thought I did.”

“Well enough to sleep with?”

With his temper, came hers. “Do I look like the mistress type?” She snapped the question back, expecting the epiphany to dawn on him any moment.

His eyes raked over her, and Regina’s cheek’s flushed when the blue eyes lingered over her breasts, then her face.

“Yes,” Jordan drawled; the deep timbre of his voice set her trembling, but not from temper or fear, she realized. “You do.”

“Well, I’m not.” The fact that she managed to look down her nose at him surprised them both. “I was his friend.” She scooted to the edge of the bed. Her muscles protested with some aches and stiffness, forcing her to move slower than her anger demanded. But once her feet touched the floor, knowing she could run if needed gave her a sense of bravado.

“You’re lying,” Jordan bit out the words. “And you’re not very good at it.”

“I’m not lying. Because you’re right, I’m not good at it.” She turned away, not wanting to deal with the contempt that flashed in his eyes. Instead, she studied her surroundings, cringing.

Roses spattered on the wallpaper all four sides of the room—their image faded until the flowers were no more than red splotches on the walls. The only thing that broke the dizzying monotony was the black lacquered bed and matching nightstand, both scuffed and cigarette scarred.

“Where are we, anyway?” A shag carpet—crimson and orange-speckled—covered the floor, its traffic pattern worn bald from the door, to the bathroom, to the bed.

“We’re in downtown D.C.”

“I must have been out of it quite a while.”

“Almost two hours.”

“No wonder I’m dizzy.” On the nightstand, she saw the matches. “The Carltonesque? That’s catchy,” she murmured, suddenly grateful for the scent of her smoke-filled clothes. “Your father never brought me here, that’s for sure. Of course, if I had been his mistress, I would have insisted. Can’t beat a place that comes with a scarlet shag carpet and matching velveteen bedspread.” She plucked at the bedding to prove her point.

“If you’re trying to convince me, lady, that you’re telling the truth, you’re going about it the wrong way.”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything, Jordan.” His attitude, his problem. Not hers.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I already told you the truth and I don’t have the energy to defend myself.” The pounding in her head picked up its tempo. “Could I get some aspirin?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Then your accusations are going to have to wait five minutes.” Regina sat cross-legged on the bed. She raised her right arm and bent her elbow. She found the pressure point two fingers above her elbow and pressed with her thumb.

“You have a bump on your head, not on your arm.”

With her eyes closed, she slowly turned her head from one side to the other. “I know that. But it isn’t the skull that hurts so much as the muscles at the neck that have tightened to fend off the pain,” she explained patiently, before returning to a simple form of meditation breathing.

“So holding your elbow will heal your neck—”

“Shh,” she ordered, only to regret the action when another jab of pain hit her head.

“Are you trying to annoy me?” he snapped.

“No, but if I’m succeeding, I’ll consider it a bonus. After all, you annoyed me first,” she pointed out.

“Of all the bloody—”

“Can you stop yelling? Please?”

“I wasn’t.” But his voice softened to a dangerous growl.

She let her hands drop to her lap and sighed. “What I’m trying to do is get rid of my head and neck pain. I need to think clearer. If I try to deal with you right now, my headache will only get worse and that won’t do either of us any good.”

“So your answer is yoga?”

“No, my answer is aspirin, but since there isn’t any I have to make do. And this isn’t yoga. It’s acupressure. I read this remedy in a book—”

“You read it in a book?” His opinion was short, pithy.

“The concept shouldn’t be much of a reach, even for a slow thinker like you,” she remarked. “Own a bookstore. Surrounded by books. Love books,” she added, then once again closed her eyes and continued the pressure. “Plethora of information, if you can read.”

Suddenly, she opened one eye again. “You can read, right?”

“Yes.”

She grunted, shutting her eyelid once more. “Then you’re lucky. Many can’t.”

“Let me guess, you’re into causes, too?”

Regina ignored him. Something that wasn’t easy to do. After a full minute, one she was sure he spent staring at her back, he decided to give her the five minutes.

Unhurried, he stretched out on the bed behind her.

His weight threw her back into him. Every time she scooted forward, she’d fall back again. After a few minutes, she gave up.

“Headache gone?” he asked and folded his arms behind his head. He seemed relaxed, but she wasn’t fooled. The man was angry. Not enraged, but annoyed enough to keep his jaw tight.

“No.” Regina decided to retreat, if only to give her some space to think. She stood, then walked to the far side of the room—which wasn’t more than five feet—and sat in the straight-back chair. The movement only seemed to increase the pressure in her head.

She noticed the gray coin box on the headboard. “Does the bed vibrate?”

He glanced at the box. “It appears so.”

“Really?” For a brief second, she debated on trying it out, to see if it would help ease her neck ache. But she didn’t have money. When she glanced at Jordan, he shook his head.

“Fine.”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Jordan said, the hard line of his mouth slipped into an easy smile. “I’ll massage your neck while you talk to me about my father’s journal.”

“It would be easier just to get me some aspirin,” she said, more than a little disgruntled. The last thing she wanted was close proximity right now.

“Not at this time of night,” Jordan explained. “It’s either the massage or nothing.”

He moved to the edge of the bed, placed his feet on the floor and opened his knees. “Right here,” he said and pointed in front of him.

For a moment she was tempted. “No, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

Instead, she leaned over and placed her forehead in her hands. The throbbing increased until nausea twisted her stomach into knots. She was being truthful; she couldn’t think straight with sledgehammers battering her skull. But it was ridiculous to sit there and let the headache turn into a migraine.

“This is such a bad decision.” She crossed over and settled into the vee between his thighs. “All right, but just for the record, I wanted you to get me some aspirin.”

“Just for the record, I wouldn’t trust you not to take off on me as soon as I get you out the door.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Regina said softly. “I want to help Chris. The journal implicates him as a terrorist.”

“You said you looked at the journal. What do you remember reading?”

“He and at least four others were planning some kind of threat. One that involved killing millions.”

“Ridiculous. My old man would never have betrayed his country.” His thumbs worked the muscles at the back of her neck, lighting little fires along her nerve endings.

“Who were the others?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Chris addressed most of them by code names. Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta and Echo. I’m not sure what Chris’s code name was.”

“Why didn’t you let the authorities know?”

“His letter told me to trust no one but you. The journal implied his accomplices held positions high in our government. Chris had connections everywhere,” she said, then tilted her head to the side, allowing him more access to the muscles, and nearly groaned when he found a sensitive spot beneath her ear.

“If that’s the truth, why didn’t he just send the book to me?” he snapped.

The man was full of contradictions. Gentle hands, raging temper. “He had his reasons.”

“Which were?”

Not wanting to lie, she ignored the question, hoping to put him off for a while longer. “I think at some point, Chris might have changed his mind about following through on his plans. One of the last entries indicated that one of his colleagues had grown suspicious.”

“That narrows the field,” Jordan said sarcastically. “My father had a lot of enemies. And even more colleagues.”

“Because he was an MI6 agent?”

“Did he mention that in the journal?”

“No.”

Jordan grabbed her chin with his finger and brought her face around so he could see her. “He told you he was MI6?”

“Yes.”

“He must have trusted you,” he admitted. It actually impressed the hell out of him. Chris Beck trusted very few. “He told you I was an operative also.”

“Yes. I knew you would be there no matter what kind of falling out the two of you had,” Regina said quietly. “The journal said it had been almost two years since he last saw you.”

“That long?” Jordan stiffened but otherwise showed no reaction. He hadn’t thought so, but honestly couldn’t remember. So much had happened in between.

“I received the package a few days after your father was killed. He must have known his life was in danger.”

“You said most were code names. What did you mean?”

“With one entry he used initials. R.L. A person who supplied him with the weapons. An arms dealer of some kind.”

“Why didn’t he assign him a code name?”

She frowned. “R.L. was only mentioned once. For all I know, it could’ve been a mistake, or he assigned R.L. a code name later on in the book. Three of the names didn’t appear until after he mentioned R.L.”

“Did he mention the type of weapons? Guns? Biochemical? Explosives?” His fingers slipped to the front and skimmed her throat while his thumbs rubbed the back of her neck just at the base of her skull.

“No. It could be any one of them or all of them.”

“Okay, Regina. Now the million-dollar question.” Jordan’s fingers tightened, cutting off enough of her air to get her attention. “Why did my father send you his journal? And if it’s not the truth, I just might snap your beautiful little neck.”