Читать книгу Beauty and the Bodyguard - Merline Lovelace, Merline Lovelace - Страница 11

S he noticed his tie first.

Having spent ten of her twenty-five years as a model, Allie Fortune had seen every extreme of fashion. During her career, she’d glided down runways wearing items from collections the most generous critic could only describe as eclectic.

This particular piece of neckwear went well beyond eclectic, however, and got lost somewhere on the other side of atrocious. Red and orange fish-eyes splashed against a purple background made a fashion statement Allie couldn’t begin to interpret.

Wondering what kind of man would combine such an outrageous tie with conservative black slacks, a pale blue cotton shirt and a cream-colored linen sport coat that stretched at the seams of his impressive shoulders, Allie raised her eyes to his face.

She’d never met him before. She would have remembered him if she had. He stood out, even among the diverse crowd of advertising executives, art directors, photographers, chemists and production engineers gathered at the party her older sister had thrown for the people involved in launching Fortune Cosmetics’s new line. Under his neatly trimmed midnight hair, his face was lean and tanned and striking, despite the scars on his chin and neck…or perhaps because of them. Certainly she would have remembered his eyes. Silvery blue and framed by black lashes a good number of her friends would have committed serious mayhem for, they riveted hers across the crowded room.

For several long seconds, those cool blue eyes held her pinned. To Allie’s considerable surprise, his scrutiny sent a spine-tingling tension arcing through her. The tiny hairs at her nape lifted, as though stirred by an unseen breeze. A sort of prickly awareness drifted across her shoulders and down her back, left bare by the plunge of her dress. For a moment, the excited buzz of conversation about Fortune Cosmetics’s new product line seemed to lose its sharp-edged focus.

Being watched wasn’t a particularly unique experience for a woman who’d spent most of her adult life under the harsh, unforgiving eyes of makeup artists and stylists and photographers. Yet an inexplicable little shiver shimmied along Allie’s nerves as the awareness intensified. With the ease of long practice, she maintained an unruffled poise as she returned his stare.

Then, slowly, deliberately, his gaze traveled from the top of her upswept hair, down the soft lines of her lemon-colored chiffon tank dress to the tips of her open-toed sandals. When his gaze snared hers again, she felt a small jolt of surprise.

Allison Fortune had learned to expect a wide range of reactions in men’s eyes when they looked at her. Cool dismissal wasn’t usually one of them. Her interest piqued, she took a small sip from the crystal champagne flute she held in one hand.

“Would you like another glass?”

The deep, slightly slurred voice at her side pulled her attention from the dark-haired stranger across the room. “No, thank you, Dean. I’m fine.”

Dean Hansen’s blond brows slanted into a frown. “You’ve been nursing that glass for over an hour. It’s probably flat by now.”

“I’ve got to watch my calories,” she returned lightly. “I’m leaving for a shoot tomorrow, remember?”

Her escort’s scowl deepened, marring the lines of his handsome, classically Scandinavian features. “I remember. God, Allie, you just flew in from New York this morning. When are you going to spend a little time in Minneapolis? More to the point, when the hell are you going to spend some time with me?”

His voice rose querulously, carrying over the hum of conversation and the jazzy beat of the trio at the far end of the high-ceilinged living room. Several heads turned, and Allie caught sight of her older sister’s face, sharp-set with worry. As chief of marketing for the vast array of products produced by Fortune Cosmetics, Caroline Fortune Valkov shouldered a heavy responsibility. Since their grandmother’s death in a plane crash six months ago, those responsibilities had become almost unbearable burdens.

Although their father, Jake, had stepped in and taken over full control of the corporation at Kate Fortune’s death, he’d had to reorganize and streamline several subsidiary companies to keep the huge conglomerate afloat while the lawyers sorted through Kate’s financial affairs. As a result, stock values had nosedived. To make matters worse, a series of break-ins and a fire at their main chemical lab had caused several severe setbacks in the development of the new line of products Allie would help launch.

They’d staked so much on this new line, her father and Caroline and every other member of the Fortune family. Even without the secret “youth” formula her grandmother had been working on when she died, this collection of new beauty products would buy them time to pull the corporation out of its financial slump. Thousands of people worldwide depended on Fortune Cosmetics for their livelihoods. There hadn’t been a layoff in Kate’s lifetime. Jake was grimly determined that he wouldn’t be the first Fortune to send their workers to the unemployment lines.

Which was why Allie had put her budding acting career on hold and agreed to be the “face” for the new line. Why she hadn’t told anyone but her twin the precise details about the frightening phone calls she’d received. And why, with those sharp lines in Caroline’s forehead, she didn’t need Dean Hansen causing a scene at her sister’s party.

Allie studied the man she’d been dating off and on for several months. Dean’s flushed face told her this would be the last function she’d attend with him. The brimming tumbler of Scotch in his hand also told her he wouldn’t take his marching orders well. Deciding it was only fair to him to settle things between them before she left for New Mexico tomorrow, she set her champagne flute on a sofa table.

“Why don’t we go out on the terrace?” she suggested, nodding toward the bank of French doors lining one wall. With any luck, the breeze from the lake would counter the effects of his Scotch.

Dean’s frown disappeared. Amber liquid sloshed as he set his drink down beside her. “Lead the way, beautiful.”

Allie wound through the noisy crowd and stepped through the open doors. Crossing the wide terrace, she leaned both hands on the low stone balustrade and dragged in a deep, welcome breath of the August night. After two weeks of meetings and consultations with advertising executives in New York City’s sweltering mugginess, the Minnesota air felt unbelievably clean against her skin.

Dean’s uneven tread echoed on the flagstones behind her, almost lost in the rise and fall of laughter and music from inside. His big hand curled around her arm.

“Let’s get away from the noise. Walk down to the lake with me.”

Nodding, Allie slipped off her sandals and left them on the terrace. When she stepped off the stone stairs, her toes curled into the dewy grass. She’d run barefoot through these lush lawns with her twin sister so many times during the summers they stayed with their grandmother. She and Rocky had chased fireflies and giggled and shared their girlish dreams with Kate. Now Kate was dead, and Allie had put her dreams on hold.

With Dean beside her, she made her way down to the lake. The long, sloping lawn muted the sounds of the party. Gradually the noise died to a faint murmur. For a few moments, she heard only the lapping of indigo water against grassy banks and the cheerful chirp of cicadas. Then Dean’s hoarse voice disturbed the harmony of the night.

“God, Allie, you’re so beautiful.” Sliding a hand behind her neck, he turned her to face him.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she replied, “but…”

His thumb pressed her lips. “No buts. Not tonight. Not when you’re leaving in the morning.”

When he tried to pull her forward, Allie placed her palms against his chest. “We need to talk, Dean.”

“We’ll talk later.”

To her surprise, he dug his fingers into the back of her neck and dragged her forward. Frowning, she stiffened her arms.

“Dean, please!”

“Dammit, Allie, don’t do that! Don’t freeze up on me again.”

“You’ve had too much to drink,” she said evenly. “Let me go.”

“Not this time,” he growled, his breath hot and smoky with Scotch. “I’ve been dancing to your tune for months now. Every time I try to get close, you poker up or turn away. What’s with you, Allie? What kind of game are you playing with me?”

“I don’t play games, with you or anyone else.”

“The hell you don’t. What else would you call it when you put on that beautiful come-hither face, then pull back every time I try to touch you?”

Wedging her arms against his chest, Allie fought to keep her voice steady. Although she’d inherited a fair share of her grandmother’s fire, along with her hair, she’d long ago learned to hide her own emotions behind the smiling facade the public wanted to see.

“I’ve told you repeatedly. I like you…as a friend. I enjoy your company…as an escort. But I’m not going to go to bed with you.”

“Why not?”

He sounded so aggrieved, so much like a sulky teen denied the use of the family car, that she had to smile. “Because I don’t want to, Dean.”

As soon as the words were out, Allie recognized their truth. Her smile slipped a little.

The sad fact was, she hadn’t wanted to in a long time. Too long. With Dean or anyone else. Not since she’d discovered that men in general, and her former fiancé in particular, were far more taken with Allison Fortune’s face and money than with Allison Fortune herself. That rather humbling experience hadn’t totally turned her off either sex or men. She just hadn’t yet found a man who could see past her glamorous public image to the private woman within.

Dean Hansen was a case in point. Instead of accepting her blunt admission that she wasn’t looking for an affair when they first met, he’d taken it as a personal challenge. Every time she flew home to visit her family and agreed to dinner or a movie with him, he’d tried to tease and flatter her into having sex with him. Now, apparently, he’d run out of flattery.

His mouth twisting, he used his hold on her neck to drag her face a few inches from his own. “You don’t want to, huh? Maybe I should make you want to.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t. Let me go, Dean.”

“I don’t think so. Not this time.”

“Yes.” She ground out the word. “This time!”

He wasn’t expecting the sharp elbow jab to his stomach. His breath whooshed out, and his hold slackened enough for Allie to wrench free. She stepped back a few paces, holding on to her temper by a thread.

“Get out of here,” she told him coldly. “Don’t come back to the party. You’re no longer welcome.”

She turned to head back to the house. When his hand wrapped around her upper arm again, Allie’s temper slipped its tight reins. Whirling, she planted both palms against his chest and shoved.

Taken by surprise, Hansen stumbled backward, his arms windmilling wildly. Too late, Allie saw that the combination of Scotch and his own momentum was going to take him into the lake. In his inebriated condition, the fool would probably drown.

“Oh, for—!” She jumped forward, grabbing for his jacket lapels. “Dean, watch out!”

Frantically he snatched at her. His hand snagged one of the thin straps holding up her tank dress. The strap dug into her shoulder, then snapped. With a comical look of surprise on his face and a swatch of lemon chiffon clutched in one fist, Dean splashed into the lake.

His uncoordinated entry sent a wave of cold water splashing over Allie. Moments later, his clumsy, cursing exit added considerably to her drenched state. By the time she’d helped him clamber back onto the grassy bank, her irritation had given way to the sense of the ridiculous that helped her through long, exhausting shoots, when everything that could possibly go wrong did. Biting her lower lip to contain her smile, she held her soggy dress up with one hand while Dean tried to swipe thick, oozing mud off his face and hands.

Her escort didn’t appear to share her humor at the situation. Cursing, he shook his hands to fling off the mud, then advanced on her, his blond hair straggling down his forehead. In the pale moonlight, his eyes glittered with fury.

“You little…”

“I’d suggest you take a hike before you end up in the lake again. This time permanently.”

The deep, drawling voice spun both Dean and Allie around. Peering through the darkness, she spotted a shadowy figure lounging against a tall, silver-barked river oak.

Shoving his wet hair out of his eyes, Dean glared at the shadowy figure. “Who the hell—?”

“You’ve got about ten seconds to get out of here, pal.”

“Look, pal…”

“Yes?”

The combination of polite inquiry and deadly menace in the single syllable made Allie blink and Dean’s cheeks puff up like a blowfish. Indignant but more wary now, he tried to bluster it out.

“This is a private conversation.”

Levering his shoulders away from the trunk, the intruder strolled into the wash of moonlight. Allie drew in a quick breath as she identified the gaudy collage of red and orange and purple.

“According to the lady, the conversation’s over,” the stranger offered casually. “I make it about five seconds now.”

“Who is this character, Allie?”

Since she had no idea, she ignored the question. “I think you should leave, Dean. Now.”

His jaw worked for a few seconds. Then the stranger sauntered forward, with a coiled, controlled economy of movement that sent the bigger man back a pace.

“Fine,” Dean snarled. “I’m leaving. It’s time I found a real woman to spend my time with instead of a plastic-faced doll, anyway.”

Neither Allie nor the man beside her said a word as Hansen stalked off, his shoes squishing lake water at each step. With his departure, the summer night settled around them like a cloak. Only this time, Allie wasn’t conscious of the wavelets lapping against the banks or the chirping cicadas. This time, the man before her absorbed her entire attention.

His eyes a pale silver in the moonlight, he surveyed her with the same dispassionate objectivity he’d displayed earlier. Once more, he measured her from head to toe, only this time his gaze lingered on parts in between.

Belatedly Allie realized that her gauzy tank dress was plastered to her like a second skin. Since Dean had taken a good chunk of its bodice into the lake with him, she could only hope that her bikini panties and scrap of a bra concealed more than they revealed. She was sure the cool breeze had puckered her nipples, along with the rest of her flesh, into giant goose bumps.

At the thought of this enigmatic stranger’s eyes on her breasts, Allie’s fingers scrunched on the torn chiffon. For the second time that night, an unfamiliar sensation rippled through her. Not quite attraction. Not exactly curiosity. More an awareness that crept through her at some subconscious level and left her feeling off balance.

With some effort, she controlled an instinctive feminine impulse to cross her arms over her breasts. She hadn’t felt this self-conscious about her body since she’d posed for the college classmate who’d begged her for some test shots to add to his portfolio. Those shots had launched both Dominic’s career and her own, and Allie had shed her prudish modesty under the unforgiving eye of the camera. Or so she’d thought.

When his gaze finally made it back to her face, his eyes held a predatory male gleam that Allie recognized instantly. A slow, liquid disappointment spilled through her.

Earlier, this man’s cool detachment had intrigued her almost as much as his tie. For a few moments, she’d imagined he was different. That he didn’t care about appearances. She’d actually let herself believe he was trying to see past the image she projected to the person within when he pinned her with that cool look.

He wasn’t detached now, if that brief flare of masculine interest was any indication. Telling herself she was crazy to be disappointed because a man appreciated the exterior packaging she worked so hard to perfect, Allie lifted her chin.

“I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“No, we haven’t.”

When he didn’t appear inclined to elaborate, she extended her free hand. “I’m—”

“I know who you are, Miss Fortune.”

Her hand dropped slowly. The fact that this stranger knew her name didn’t particularly surprise her. Mass marketing and the explosion of media interest in the lives of top models had made them into the superstars of the nineties. As a result, Allie’s face usually garnered instant recognition whenever she walked into a room.

Lately, it had garnered something else, as well. Something dark and frightening.

An echo of the call that had dragged Allie from sleep only last night whispered through her mind. She bit her lip as her inexplicable preoccupation with the man standing before her slipped, like a car skidding on a patch of ice, then skidded into unease. Silently she stared up at him.

Etched by moonlight, his face showed no softness, only sharp, uncompromising angles. A square chin, darkened by late-night shadow. A nose that had collided with some solid object once or twice in its past. Lean cheeks. And those scars on the left side of his chin and neck…

Swallowing to clear a suddenly dry throat, Allie broke the little silence. “Well, you may know me, but I don’t know you. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“My name’s Rafe Stone. I’m your bodyguard, Miss Fortune.”

Stunned, Allie stared up at him. “My what?”

“Your prospective bodyguard,” he corrected. “I’ve been asked to take on the job of guarding your person.”

“By…by whom?”

“By your father.”

For several long moments, Allie could only gape at him. Then anger washed through her. Swift, hot anger that she refused to let this stranger see.

Jake Fortune couldn’t stop trying to control her, any more than he could his other children or his wife or his thousands of employees. On the heels of that bitter thought came the cynical realization that her father was just trying to protect the “face” that he’d staked his company’s future on.

“When did my father hire you?”

“We haven’t closed the deal, but the understanding was I’d start tonight, if I decided to accept the job.”

“Tonight?” She lifted a scornful brow. “Then why didn’t you intercede a little earlier, Mr. Stone? You must have seen me struggling with Hansen.”

“I haven’t negotiated the terms of my contract with your father yet. Besides,” he added, his gaze drifting to the wet fabric bunched in her hand, “for a while there, I wasn’t any surer than your over-muscled Viking friend just what kind of game you were playing.”

Allie stiffened. “Then I’d say you’re not very perceptive, for a man who makes his living watching people.”

One dark brow lifted sardonically. “Perceptive enough to see who invited whom for a stroll in the dark.”

“You know, Mr. Stone,” Allie replied, spacing each word carefully, “I don’t think I particularly want you guarding my person.”

“Maybe you should talk to your father about it.”

“I will.”

She tried for a dignified exit, which wasn’t easy, with her French twist scraggling down her neck and her dress clinging to her thighs with every step. The walk up to the house seemed to take several lifetimes longer than the walk down to the lake.

Rafe followed at a more leisurely pace, his eyes on the slender figure ahead of him. He wondered if she had any idea of the way that wet handkerchief of a dress clung to her body, or what it did to his lungs. Rafe grimaced at the thought. Of course she did. Women like Allison Fortune were probably born knowing their impact on men.

All right, so her wide-spaced eyes, full mouth and endless limbs were the stuff of late-night fantasies. So he’d felt an immediate, gut-level urge to stroke his thumb across those impossible cheekbones when he first spotted her across the noisy room. Rafe possessed what he assumed was a normal testosterone level. Any man’s hands would itch to touch her skin, just to see if it was smooth and creamy as it looked.

Unfortunately, his initial reaction to Allison Fortune had been mild compared to the one Rafe experienced now. Watching her stride up the sloping lawn with an easy, long-legged grace detonated small implosions of heat, one right after another, just below his belt line. For all her almost boyish slenderness, the woman had a figure that would stop traffic on any street, in any city, on any continent.

Good thing she didn’t want him guarding that body, Rafe thought cynically, any more than he wanted the job. He didn’t need the staggering sum Jake Fortune had offered, nor did he need the kind of complications his involuntary reaction to Allison Fortune could cause. The reputation he’d earned in certain circles for his ability to penetrate seemingly impossible locations and extract hostages brought him more business than he could handle. He’d succeeded in that dark and dangerous world because of his ruthless ability to focus on his target. If he let himself get involved with the person behind that target, he’d lose the razor edge of concentration his work demanded.

Besides, Rafe had survived one disastrous experience with a beautiful woman, and he was a man who learned from his mistakes. His ex-wife wasn’t anywhere near Allie Fortune’s class in looks, of course, but her breathless baby-doll beauty had turned more than a few heads.

Phyllis had left him three years ago, when it became clear that no amount of surgery would erase the scars left by the bomb that had almost killed him and his client. Rafe had made it a point to steer clear of any entanglements ever since…which made him all the more wary of his instant animal attraction to the woman in front of him. With each step, his resolve to tell Jake Fortune to find another man hardened.

Among other things.

She reached the stairs that led to the terrace, and Rafe wondered idly if she intended to march into the brightly lit living room with her every curve on display. Probably. According to the dossier he’d had compiled on Allison Fortune, there weren’t many parts of her that hadn’t been captured in explicit detail on film and displayed to the eager public. Despite her huffy little speech to Eric the Blonde a few moments ago, this woman had made a career of playing games. When she draped herself across a rock on some mistswept shore, as she had in a full-page ad that had made Rafe break out in a cold sweat, she was trying for an effect. The ad might make the female half of the population want to run out and buy the tiny scrap of fabric the manufacturers called a bathing suit. The male half, Rafe among them, fantasized about sliding the straps down her arms and…

She halted abruptly, with one foot on the first stone step. Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, she glanced up at the open French doors, then turned to Rafe.

“Would you go inside and find my father? Ask him to meet me in the library in fifteen minutes.”

Rafe had never been real good at taking orders, even during his years with Special Forces. In this instance, though, he was as anxious as Allie Fortune to terminate their association before it officially began.

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled with exaggerated politeness.

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you this sarcastic with all your prospective clients?”

Silently acknowledging that he wanted to be a whole lot more than sarcastic with this particular prospective client, Rafe shook his head. How the hell could a simple collection of flesh and bone stir such atavistic male urges in him? He hadn’t felt this powerful an attraction for any woman since Phyllis. Hell, he hadn’t felt it for Phyllis.

“No, Miss Fortune. I’m not.”

Before she could respond to that one, he started up the broad stairs. His footsteps rang on the flagstones as he headed into the house, determined to tell Jake Fortune he wasn’t interested in the job.