My Bodyguard

He watched her carefully for a long moment before he responded. “I spent the last four months in Uganda between two rebel factions, risking my team for a man who turned out to have been dead the whole time. We came back with seven gunshot injuries between the four of us.”

Clearly, he didn’t want to be here. She wondered how Brant and Nick had managed to talk him into it. From the look on his face, he wasn’t going to be a lot of fun to be around.

A single week, that was all. She could handle that standing on one foot. She’d been forced to put up with worse company in the past. The years she had spent at Brighton Federal Correctional Institute came to mind.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to get some rest.” She backed toward her bedroom.

“We don’t have much time. We’d better get to work,” he said, and when she looked at him blankly, added, “We are supposed to get to know each other.”

What did he call the hour-long interrogation he’d put her through earlier in the kitchen? Or was he going to finally reveal more about himself? She drew a deep breath and walked back, sat gingerly in the armchair opposite him.

“Nick Tarasov tells me you’re good with a gun,” he said with some undisguised doubt in his voice. “He seemed confident that you could handle yourself in a hand-to-hand tussle, too, in your own weight group.” He looked her over as if he was measuring her ounce by ounce and ended up with an expression that said she wasn’t quite up to snuff.

She resisted the urge to pull herself taller. “I went through the training” was all she said.

He raised a dark eyebrow. “So you think you can handle whatever comes your way?”

“I’m not stupid.”

The eyebrow went back down. There might have been a shadow of approval that crossed his face before he put forward his next question. “How long have we supposedly known each other?”

“Three months.” That was how long she’d been out. Where had the time gone?

“How much nudity are you comfortable with?” His gaze was sharp on her face, unflinching.

The question brought her up short. What did that have to do with anything? And yet, after a second, she had to admit that the question was relevant. Cavanaugh thought Reese—pretending to be David—was her lover. She swallowed, her already frazzled nerves buzzing as if she were undergoing electroshock therapy. “Very little.”

When you spent your teenage years on the streets, you strove to cover as much as possible, look as un-appealing as possible, as scary as possible. It had been part of her defense mechanism. She’d hidden behind the darkest of Goth looks, complete with chains and studded chokers, and complemented it all with a tongue and gaze as sharp as razors.

Prison had taken away most of her props. Anita had been working on her to make her see the lack of necessity for the rest. She wasn’t quite there yet, but even Sam had to admit that she had mellowed. She was no longer frightened of everything, so in turn she no longer wanted to frighten anyone who so much as looked at her.

The concept of nudity, however, especially in the same context with Reese, scared her. She searched for a cutting remark to disguise that fact.

“We are going to a beach party,” he said dryly before she could come up with one.

She had an image of topless cover models frolicking in the surf. Knowing Cavanaugh, it wasn’t impossible.

“How far are you willing to go for this mission of yours?” Reese laid down the challenge.

Putting it that way got her back up. “I’ll do what I have to.”

“Good.” He nodded and extended his arm toward her. “Then come and sit on my lap.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She was on her feet the next second. “Touch me and lose the hand.” The warning tore from her throat, hoarse and hard as a fist.

He tilted his head and waited a beat. “For the next three days, we are supposed to pretend that we are madly in lust. How do you think we’ll pull that off when you look like you’re ready to jump out of your skin even with three feet between us?”

She drew some air and let a couple of seconds tick by, straightened her back. Okay, so she’d overreacted. He wasn’t about to jump her. And he was right, once they got to Cavanaugh’s mansion, it would look suspicious if they never touched.

She had to make herself get over it.

She fisted then relaxed her hands, trying to swallow the memories in vain. She knew her face was getting whiter with every inch she moved toward him. Her muscles tensed. She stopped in front of him and fought to shrug off the temporary paralysis that clutched her.

Stop it.

This was stupid. He was Reese Moretti, the man who was going to keep her safe. He wasn’t Buck. He wasn’t like Buck at all.

Pretend, she told herself. Pretend it doesn’t freak you out so bad that you can barely breathe.

She looked into his face and could no longer find the disdain he’d shown since his arrival. He was watching her with a darkening expression.

“Who was it?” he asked quietly, through clenched teeth.

She could have pretended not to understand what he was asking, but she didn’t have the energy. All the starch had gone out of her, leaving her feeling weak.

“My stepfather,” she said, and couldn’t stop the images in her head.

Buck Cossner drank. When her mother wasn’t home, he drank a lot. And when he was drunk, he got mad. When he got mad, he hit her. Then he would feel bad and want to console her, no matter how hard she tried to tell him she was okay, no matter that she never cried. She’d been more afraid of his consoling than the beating. It’d always started with, I’m sorry, honey. Come sit on my lap.

Chapter Two

Reese stood, and she cringed, even though there was nothing threatening in his movements. If anything, he seemed an island of calm and strength. Even the bad-tempered look that she’d thought permanent was replaced by a softer expression.

“Take it easy.”

A part of her was staring at the transformation, at how handsome he was without the drawn-together brows and his mouth set in a flat, displeased line, how even the gray of his eyes changed. But the rest of her couldn’t help backing away a step. In a moment of conflicting emotions, instinct honed by years of bad experiences trumped everything. Goose bumps she couldn’t control rose on the bare skin of her arms.

A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Is that why you ran away from home?” Then, when she didn’t respond, he said, “I read your file.”

She nodded and they stood there like that, a foot or so between them. He wouldn’t take his eyes off her.

And God, that felt good. Because when you lived on the streets and became one of the “undesirables” of society, the first thing everyone did was avert their eyes. Nobody wanted to see the filth or desperation, nobody wanted to risk a pang of guilt, that they should feel uncomfortable. She had spent years without ever being acknowledged by anyone except those who sought to use or abuse her. She’d been a “problem,” and all people wanted was for problems to go away.

But there was no pity in Reese Moretti’s gaze, nor anything remotely judgmental.

She took a breath, feeling her lungs open up. “What are we supposed to do?”

His shoulders were relaxed, as well as his commando stance. The earlier bluster seemed to disappear from his body language, but some indelible hardness remained. He considered her for a moment. “Nothing if you’re not comfortable with this. We’ll find a way around it.”

And maybe arouse Cavanaugh’s suspicion and mess up the whole operation. No way she was going to be the reason this mission failed.

The very fact that Reese gave her a way out made it possible for her to consider letting him closer.

“I’m going to have to get used to human contact.” It was the healthy thing to do. She needed to get over the past in order to move into a better future. Anita had told her that during one of the woman’s numerous pep talks, and Sam could see now that Anita had been right.

She took a deep breath. “Maybe we could start with…” She hesitated, and he waited. “Maybe you could just put your hands on me.”

He raised a hand to her arm, keeping his gaze on her face the whole time. “I can’t promise not to do anything you don’t like in the next few days, but I promise I’m not ever going to do anything that would hurt you.”

She nodded, nervous enough from his touch to jump all the way to the moon.

His other hand reached up to her other arm, and he rubbed the goose bumps away with his thumb. “Everything is different now. Back then, you did what you had to. You got yourself out of a bad situation. You survived. You are a hundred percent stronger now.” He gave her an encouraging smile.

An actual smile. On Reese Moretti.

She was so startled, she almost believed him. She had always thought herself weak for running away instead of staying and fighting. Weak and stupid. Smart people didn’t end up on the street.

A survivor. After knowing the worst of the filth about her, how could he see her like that? How could he still touch her?

She expected the cursory squeeze of polite support, then for him to let go. Instead, he drew her closer, his demeanor nonthreatening, non-sexual. And yet she felt stiff, couldn’t relax, not even in response to the comfort he was offering.

Then, through the acute sense of discomfort, another feeling seeped through slowly. Surprise. His solid strength seemed like a bulwark against the world rather than suffocating restraints as it had with other men. If only she could accept it.

It’s crazy. Her defenses rose. She knew next to nothing about the man.

But that inner voice that had shouted “run, run, run” for the last decade, now stayed curiously silent. After a second or two, she leaned against his shoulder and let him tighten his arms around her. Not because she was beginning to feel comfortable, but because she knew that was what a normal person would do. As long as she was aware of the normal responses and could fake them, they would be okay.

“How are you doing?” His voice was surprisingly gentle.

“Fine,” she lied.

Truth was, she was unable to accept physical comfort from another person.

Anita had tried, Anita Caballo, with her over-developed sense for mothering and saving all who were around her. But Sam had always resisted even the simplest hug. She didn’t trust women any more than men. Her own mother had taken off and left her with Buck at the end.

“I’m here to help you,” Reese said.

“I know.” She drew a deep breath and suddenly felt her eyes burning. What was wrong with her?

“You’re nervous about tomorrow?” He pulled back a little. “What if I kissed your forehead?” But he didn’t move.

A second or two passed before she realized he was waiting for permission.

“Okay.”

His eyes were full of encouragement as he leaned over and pressed his lips above her eyebrow. He stayed there for a second before pulling away.

“See? It’s not that difficult. You just have to trust me.”

He was asking the impossible.

“I’ll try,” she said anyway. “Don’t take it personally. It’s—”

“Don’t worry about it. I know,” he said.

And from the look on his face she got a feeling that he really did. “How?”

“My job is to bring people back. Go up against rebels, bandits, whomever. I’ve done a few pseudo religious sects and gangs, too, over the years. I’ve seen both men and women who’d gone through hell before we got to them.”

They stood in silence for a while as she tried to picture the kind of work he did, the danger of it. The idea that he would do that for strangers was stunning. When she’d lived on the streets, every day she prayed for safety. She’d done dangerous things, but only out of necessity. At the end, prison had been a relief.

And look where she’d ended up now.

What if joining this mission was the worst decision she’d made yet? What if she messed up and let them all down? What if all she ended up proving, to herself and the others, was that she was a lost cause?

“How about if we just watch some TV?” he asked after a while. “You can sit by me and we’ll hold hands. You can put your head on my shoulder when you get comfortable.”

She nodded and sat.

He plopped down next to her and took her hand. “We can’t have you jump and look ready to run every time we brush up against each other.”

“I know. I can do this.” She didn’t want him to think she was a total incompetent idiot who was unsuitable for the mission.

“I know you can. Just relax.”

It helped that he was doing just that, leaning back and surfing through the channels as if he were in his own living room—wherever he lived when he wasn’t sleeping in the bush.

He settled on the National Geographic Channel. “Okay with you?”

“Sure.” She watched an interview with a woman who took in orphaned lion cubs.

They were cute feeding from a bottle. She let her tightly wound muscles loosen up a little. The cubs grew and needed to be taught to hunt. That took a while. Life was a learning experience for everyone, everywhere. Sam made herself lean against the man next to her, conscious of their bodies touching, not the least comfortable, but making herself do it all the same. If she could learn to pretend, she would be happy with that.

She didn’t think she could ever forget enough to have the real thing, to be able to relax around a man.

TSERNYAKOV GLANCED at his timetable and ticked off another task done. Next was calling in all debts people owed him. If they didn’t pay now, they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to pay next month this time. The clock was ticking.

He needed all that he could get his hands on, and not just the many currencies he did business in. After the terrorist attack, as economies collapsed, inflation was likely to soar. Whoever couldn’t pay up, he would persuade to substitute hard cash with land, equipment, gold, anything potentially valuable.

He looked at his mile-long to do list, resenting that he had to handle all the work when he employed thousands. But this was information he couldn’t trust to anyone.

COME ON, SAM. Where are you? Reese glanced toward the main house while keeping a smile on his face and his full attention, seemingly, on the blonde in front of him. The beach party was a lot smaller than they had expected. They’d figured over a hundred people. There were only about thirty, scattered in small groups on the sand.

“So what more could I do to avoid taxes?” Eva Hern didn’t bat her eyes, but made long, sweeping moves with her eyelashes, many of which were the glue-on kind.

Who wore fake eyelashes to the beach? And for heaven’s sake, why? He tried not to look at the little clumps of adhesive on her eyelids. Maybe he was out of step with fashion. He had no time to socialize.

“You could give all your money to charity,” he said smoothly.

They both laughed. Then he did his best to give an answer like his brother, David, the attorney whom he was impersonating, would. “I can’t really tell you anything without looking at your particular situation. I’d be happy to get together with you sometime next week in your office to chat about this.”

Judging from the woman’s widening smile, he’d given the right answer.

“I’ll call you. Definitely,” she said and wiggled her shoulders. She swam topless like most of the female guests, but had put on a see-through beach shirt when she’d decided to come over and chat him up.

He made a point not to look below her eyes. It seemed to disappoint and frustrate her enough to keep her constantly moving, from pose to pose.

He glanced at his watch. Sam had been gone for twenty minutes.

Too long.

She was supposed to get in and out as fast as she could. The plan was for her to take pictures of the Cavanaugh mansion’s back entry and kitchen with the micro camera she wore disguised as a large ring. She was pretending to be searching for a bottle of mineral water as they were out of “gentle” at the grass-hut bar outside.

Another thing he had missed somehow, that mineral water now came in three varieties: still (pink cap), carbonated (blue cap) and gently carbonated (green cap)—some weird stuff Cavanaugh had apparently brought in from Europe. He thought of all those times when he and his men had drunk from puddles in the jungle or sucked moisture out of roots in the desert. Different worlds for sure.

“How long are you staying on the island?” Eva was asking.

“Maybe another week,” he said. He certainly had enough work to get back to.

Except for Sam, who’d turned out to be okay, he couldn’t wait to be rid of this job. Going into an operation without a gun left him unsettled. They were armed only with a cell phone and a “secret weapon” that had come from one of the men on his team, Tony Ferrarella, who, in between missions, spent a lot of time in his lab, exercising his inventor genius. The can was a prototype, only with Reese by chance when he’d gotten the call from his brother and hopped the first plane to the island. He wished they had used it today. He couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on in there.

The small can of what looked like breath-freshener spray contained microtransmitters too small to be seen by the naked eye. Each were too weak to work alone, but sprayed on a smooth surface they worked together to transmit voice over a hundred feet or so. They were undetectable, but highly vulnerable, good for about twenty-four hours, after which the fine sheen of dust that would naturally accumulate silenced them forever.

He caught movement from the corner of his eye at the mansion. Cavanaugh was walking out with Sam.

Reese was poised to come to her aid if she needed him, but then Sam laughed and linked her arm with Cavanaugh’s.

Didn’t they just look like the best of friends? What in hell had she been doing in there all this time? He reached to his chest and pretended consternation at the fact that his cell phone wasn’t hanging there. He glanced toward the beach and the towel he’d been occupying, then flashed an apologetic smile to Eva.

“I’m sorry. I seem to have left my cell in the room. I’d better go up there and get it. I’m expecting a call from a client.”

“You couldn’t stop working just for a day or two?” Her eyes promised all kinds of incentives, although she was here at the party with her boyfriend, Derrick something or other.

“Occupational hazard,” he said. “See you around?”

“You bet.” She looked only slightly put out as she headed toward the beach.

She had checked out legit. He’d called in the names of the guests to Brant as soon as he’d had them.

Reese set his course toward one of the two guest bungalows that stood on either side of the Cavanaugh estate. Sam and he had been housed in the upstairs suite of the smaller. He’d seen plenty of fancy before: most of his clients had been big-time businessmen, and he’d spent time in their homes. Sam seemed uncomfortable, however, by the effortless splendor.

Not that she needed anything more to make her feel self-conscious. The woman was a bundle of nerves as it was. He wished he could think up something that would set her at ease and give her some sense of security even if just for half an hour. Then again, the middle of a dangerous recon mission was probably not the right time to relax. He really hoped she was going to be able to work out her issues and move beyond her past. When he looked at her, beyond the beauty, he saw plenty of courage and potential.

He wished he hadn’t let his distaste for the FBI’s strong-arm tactics show at the beginning, behaving like the morose bastard he could be when something rubbed him wrong. But he had a new client halfway across the world he was supposed to save. And would the FBI just give him the information he needed to do his job? Hell, no. They dangled it in front of him, forcing him to take on this mission first, stuff that had nothing to do with him. He’d been annoyed and let it show, and had probably scared her, which had been the flat-out stupidest thing to do considering her past and the fact that they were supposed to be a team.

He slipped inside the house and went up the stairs, waited for her in the living room. Be nice.

But then he laid eyes on her slim figure as she came in and it hit him what Cavanaugh could have done to her, alone in the big house. How the hell was he supposed to protect her when his hands were tied by the instructions he’d been given—protect without interfering. What kind of insane guideline was that?

“What took you so long?” He could have kicked himself at how harsh his voice sounded.

She cast him a wary glance. “I ran into Philippe.”

He had checked their room for listening devices the first day they’d gotten there and rechecked again every single day. So far it seemed their host wasn’t snooping on his guests, so they could speak freely.

“I saw.” He hadn’t missed the prolonged looks earlier either and the always too-bright smiles, Cavanaugh’s frequent excuses at conversation. He couldn’t blame the man, but he wasn’t going to let whatever the guy thought would happen go anywhere. Sam didn’t need that kind of harassment.

He hadn’t been too fond of the mission at the beginning, but he was really starting to hate it now that he’d met Cavanaugh and his goons. Any way he looked at it, the women were being used in a dangerous game.

Sam skirted by him toward the kitchen, and his gaze fell to her lower back, to the tattoo of a rose closed tight in a bud, the short stem having some pretty nasty-looking thorns. She stopped and drew a breath, turned to look him in the eye. He recognized the moment for what it was, her decision not to let him intimidate her. She had plenty of sheer guts, this one. He put the frown away.

“So I saw Eva keeping you company,” she remarked with a smirk before continuing to the kitchen to search the fridge. She ate on the hour, every hour. Not that any of it stuck to her.

“She wanted free tax advice,” he said, meaning to move away, but his attention stayed fixed on Sam.

She wore a tasteful bikini that covered everything and still managed to entice more than all the bare flesh on the sand. She had hair a startling color of Irish red, falling in soft waves to just below her ear, as well as big, luminous green eyes shining out of her face. She had no shortage of guys coming over to meet her on the beach.

She played along, even flirting on occasion, although he was pretty sure that was all bravado and she couldn’t have followed through if her life depended on it. She was uncomfortable around men with hunger in their eyes, but was good at hiding that fact and never let her unease stop her from doing her job.

He made a point of sticking by her as much as he could. He would have thought the two of them coming together, rooming together, sent a message to the others, but it seemed the standard rules of society were not strictly kept on private beaches.

“So what have you got?” he asked, returning to the business at hand. He tossed himself into the armchair by the window, slumped deep, arms and legs open, his body language as easygoing as he could make it.

She seemed to relax in response, leaning against the counter. “He showed me around downstairs.” She grinned, looking pretty pleased with herself.

“Pictures?”

“I got everything.” She licked some thick sugary cream off her bottom lip. “You sure you don’t want one?” She extended the plate of goodies toward him.

He shook his head.

“Okay, almost everything.” She stuck the plate back into the fridge. “There were a couple of closed doors he didn’t elaborate on.”

“We’ll start our search there. You should put on more sunscreen.” Her shoulder was getting a pink tinge to it. She was fair skinned. He looked away.

“I should try to get back in. I could pretend to need extra towels.”

“The guesthouse has its own linen closet.”

“I’ll say I couldn’t find it.”