Читать книгу Her Bodyguard - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 8

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.”

“Okay, well, let me tell you why not. For starters, Mahler’s not a bodyguard.” And that was only for starters.

Lara tipped her head in a tiny gesture that meant, “So what?” She reached for his wrist and turned it, making a comic face at the time on his watch, then nudged him ahead of her out the door—as if he were the one who’d been delaying them. “Does it ever occur to you,” she said lightly, following him into the bedroom, “that four months have passed since anyone tried to...hurt me?”

“I haven’t exactly given anyone a chance,” he reminded her. And if she hadn’t snuck out onto Cliff Walk without him that morning in May, no one would have laid a hand on her then. “But aren’t you forgetting your pen pal?” She’d received two letters since her fall, five before, for a total of seven.

Those disturbing letters, with their effusive admiration, their seething frustration, ominously mounting expectations, coy allusions to death and violence, had been sent by a fan who signed herself Sarah XXX, and had persuaded Lara to consult him in the first place.

Lara looked stubborn. “I’m not so sure they’re connected to...Cliff Walk.”

This was an old, old argument between them. “I’m not sure they’re not. And even if we do have two separate problems—two crazies—that only strengthens my point. You need another bodyguard, not a ditzy aerobics instructor.”

“If I’m to stay cooped up indefinitely at Woodwind, I’m more in danger of losing my girlish figure than my life! Gillian would be a big help there.”

“Any competent BG can train with you, if that’s what you—”

“I don’t want a drill sergeant, Trace. I want a—” She paused, tears gathering suddenly in her wonderful eyes, then blew out a big gusty breath and gave him a wavering smile. “I want a friend, okay? All my real friends are back on the set in New York, you know. Nowadays I only have you, and you’re useless for the girl stuff.”

“Thanks, I think.” He ushered her to the door of the suite, stepped out first and glanced both ways. She made her usual face at him. More and more she was considering him a worrywart, his precautions a nuisance. They walked down the hall to the tiny elevator installed in a dumbwaiter shaft and he waited till the elevator door had closed behind them. “Look, Lara, you hired me to protect you. Well, it’s my considered professional advice that you still need protection.”

She mulled that over while they walked through the house, out through the kitchen door to the carriage house that served as a garage. She waited obediently at a safe distance while he inspected, then started the car—he didn’t expect bombs with this kind of situation but why take the chance?—then she settled onto the front seat beside him. “You know, it...wouldn’t have happened if anyone else had been there to witness it or to scream. I mean, that was the act of a coward, wouldn’t you say—jumping out from behind me like that and...?” Her voice trailed away.

He nearly took her hand where it lay fisted on the seat between them, then suppressed the impulse. Brave girl, he applauded her silently. This was the first time she’d broached the fall of her own accord. Every other time, he’d had to lead her through it, word by halting word.

He didn’t agree with her assessment, though. Someone had jumped out of the bushes behind her as she jogged or had overtaken her silently. Had—in broad daylight!—gripped Lara’s hair with one hand, close to her nape so she couldn’t look back. Had grasped the waist cord of her sweatpants with the other hand, then forced her, step by struggling step, over the cliff edge. To his mind, the act took nerve, determination—and terrible hatred. It wasn’t the act of a coward, however it might comfort her to think so. It was the act of a risk taker.

Worse yet, a well-organized, premeditated risk taker, who’d chosen his or her place of ambush with intelligence and care—a gap in the bushes, a spot where the path skirted the drop-off, where twists in the trail blocked the view at both ends.

“Gillian’s a big girl,” Lara went on when he didn’t speak. “If she’d been there with me, no one would ever have dared...”

Yes, Gillian was a big girl—five-nine or -ten. And despite her slenderness, if she taught aerobics, tai chi, she’d be strong for her size... Strong enough to shove a smaller woman off a cliff? Definitely.

“How about a compromise?” he said, instead. “It may take me a week or two to find a female BG you can live with. In the meantime, why don’t you hire one of the other applicants—”

“No. I want to hire Gillian.”

As the gates swung ponderously inward, he studied her exquisite profile. Her chin was tipped in defiance, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. He swore to himself, then pulled out onto the avenue and stepped on the gas. For weeks he’d been silently rooting for her, hoping her spirit would mend along with her bones. But why did she have to regain her spunk today of all days? “Is there something you’re not telling me about Mahler?” he asked as they passed the Newport Casino, which had the oldest grass tennis courts in America. “You’re sure you’ve never met her before?”

“I...” Lara shook her head finally. “It’s f-funny, because that’s what it feels like, but no...I’m sure not.”

Under stress, she had a charming hint of a stutter. The question was what was he missing here? “Then why her, Lara? You didn’t even ask her how fast she types, whether she’s computer savvy, if she can—”

“I think she’d be good for me.”

Said with ominous finality. You could give a client advice, but you couldn’t make her take it, Trace reminded himself. The cardinal rule of his profession and the most frustrating. He could push no further. He could give Lara an ultimatum: insist on Gillian, and you’ll have to get yourself a new bodyguard. But he wasn’t ready to do that. For one thing, hiring Gillian Mahler might be no more than Lara’s harmless whim.

Or it might, just might, prove suicidal.

Either way, he’d stayed too long on this assignment to quit now. He meant to see it through till Lara was freed from danger. Unlike most security firms, the Brickhouse credo was that they solved the client’s problem; they didn’t just make their money off it.

And if Gillian was the problem?

Well, he’d meant to investigate her anyway. He just hadn’t expected his prime suspect to be dropped in his lap. Trace smiled at the image—couldn’t help himself—then glanced at Lara.

“All right. You’re the boss, boss.”

The smile she gave him was a fair trade—more than fair—for all the headaches this whim was bound to cost him in the end. They didn’t speak again until he turned into the parking lot across from the Newport Hospital.

“You asked me to tell you if I ever remembered anything else about that morning,” Lara murmured. “And something did come back to me a little while ago while I was brushing my hair. The runner I saw that morning out on Cliff Walk?”

The unidentified runner, sex unknown, wearing a hooded orange sweatshirt, who’d passed Lara only minutes before her attack. Trace’s best bet for her assailant. It would have been easy to spin around and follow Lara back through the fog, catch her just as she passed the fatal gap... “Yes,” he said without inflection. Come on, Lara. Give me the goods and I’ll nail the creep.

“I told you I thought it was a college sweatshirt, with University of something with an M—Michigan, Minnesota, Montana?—printed on the chest.”

“You did.”

“It was University of Miami.”

“You’re sure of that?” he said quietly. Her recall of the last few minutes before the accident was piecemeal and fuzzy, a result of either head trauma or sheer terror.

“Absolutely.”

He parked the car and turned to look at her. “So what brought it back to mind?” Sometimes the association that sparked the memory was more telling than the clue itself.

“D-don’t know. It just came to me.”