The Reluctant Heiress

He could have been built like a tire and had eyes like a rabbit for all she cared. Now that he was there, she just wanted him to tell her how to get her privacy back.

A faint tension radiated from his body as he slipped the chain back in place and glanced at her. That tension seemed to snake toward her, through her. Disconcerted by the oddly intimate sensation, uneasy enough already, she moved farther from the door. And him.

“You didn’t go back to Washington.”

“It seemed more practical to stay in Hayden.” Dismissing the fact that he’d obviously known he would be back, he flicked an assessing glance over her uneasy features. “I was already on my way over here with your other bodyguard when you called.”

“Other bodyguard?” She had bodyguards?

“You have two. One of them is the man you saw following you in the gray SUV this morning. Steve Schroeder. Big guy. Blond. Blue ball cap. The other just got in.” The dark slashes of his eyebrows merged. “Didn’t you get my message?”

As rattled as she’d been when she’d arrived home, she’d totally ignored the blinking light on her answering machine. “I haven’t checked my messages yet.”

“I left you one at seven-thirty this morning.”

At seven-thirty she would have been getting ready for school. They were on late schedule this week. “I must have been in the shower.”

She had bodyguards. The thought seemed inconceivable to her.

“The police should be here soon,” he continued, taking in the impeccably neat space. His glance landed on the one object in the room that didn’t look almost painfully ordered; the refrigerator she used for a bulletin board. The front and what was exposed of the sides were covered with postcards, pictures of children and magnets holding up reminders to herself to do whatever it was she apparently knew she’d forget without a note.

“Mr. Garrett…”

“Ben.”

“Ben,” she conceded, as anxious to distract him from his perusal of what she thought important as she was to get his advice, “how do I get rid of them? You said yesterday that you were here to stop them from invading my life. That’s what they’re doing, so…please,” she said, stepping back to clear his path to the front door, “stop them.”

He remained right where he was, partway between her round white dining table with its vase of bright-yellow sunflowers and the back of the sofa that cut the open area in half.

“What I said is that my job is to help you with them. And I will,” he assured her over the voices of a television talk show. “We just need to talk first.”

“About what?”

“About what you want to say to them.”

“I don’t want to say anything to them. I want them to go away!”

His forehead pleated as he motioned to the entertainment center. “Can we turn that down?”

She turned on her heel. She had the distinct feeling that this would have all been easier if she’d let him help her yesterday. No doubt he’d had something preemptive in mind. But it was clearly too late to beat anyone to the punch. Just as clear, from the level way he regarded her after she’d hit Mute on the remote control and turned back to him, was that he would be a gentleman and not point that out.

Grudgingly grateful for that courtesy, she watched his focus shift from the V of the pale coral T-shirt she wore with brown linen capris to the closed drapes by the barrel chairs.

She supposed she should ask him if he wanted to sit. As agitated as she felt, she much preferred to stand herself.

“The best way to get rid of reporters is to give them what they want,” he advised, before she could make the offer. “What they want are answers to their questions. Or a statement. If you’d like, I can help you write one.”

“I don’t have anything to say. How I feel about William Kendrick is private. What happened between William and me is private. So is what happened between him and my mother.

“I don’t even know that much about what went on with them,” she admitted. “What little I do know I’m certainly not going to share with rest of the world. I don’t want my mom’s name dragged through the dirt. And it will be,” she insisted as the sense of urgency she felt identified itself. “My mother was the ‘other woman.” ’

She had no idea what to make of the way Ben’s eyes narrowed on her. In some ways he reminded her of a predator calculating his prey, biding his time until a weakness or lack of guard betrayed itself. She didn’t doubt for a moment that behind that sharp, intelligent gaze, he was processing everything she’d said and figuring out the perfect way to get around it, or use it to his advantage.

Turning from those unnerving prospects, she closed her eyes and snagged her hair back with both hands. She’d barely considered just how unmerciful the public might be when she felt the weight of his hands settle on her shoulders.

Without a word, he aimed her toward one of the slat-backed chairs at the table, pulled it out and turned her around.

He had felt her stiffen the moment he’d touched her. Dismissing the odd disappointment he felt at that, he nudged her down to the seat. More conscious than he should be of how fragile her bones felt beneath his fingers, of the softness of her hair brushing his hands, he deliberately drew away.

He’d caught her fresh, provocative scent the moment he’d come up behind her. He could have sworn he caught a whiff of coconut in there, too. In her hair, maybe. From her shampoo.

Uncomfortably aware of the effects she seemed to have on his body, he pulled out the chair next to her, swung it around to face her and sat down himself. Leaning forward, he clasped his hands between his knees.

“Jillian,” he said, practically leaking the patient control he prided himself on maintaining, “if it’s your mother you’re concerned about, you’ll have far more control over how the public views her if you speak about her first. The same goes for how you will be perceived yourself. Public perception is very much about first impressions. You can get by with a ‘no comment’ today, but you’ll be better off in the long run to come up with some tidbit for the press before they put their own slant on your silence. And they will. I promise you that.”

He’d promised yesterday that the press would find her.

She held the certainty in his eyes only long enough to feel her stomach knot. She needed time. Time to digest what he’d said. Time to decide what she could possibly say to defend her mom when she knew in her heart that the only defense her mother had for sleeping with a married man was that she’d loved him. And that was no defense at all.

The thought of talking to the press made her positively queasy.

“They’ll go away if I just say ‘no comment’?”

“You’ll have to give them a little more than that,” he conceded. “You’ll have to tell them you’ll be available for an interview tomorrow. Or that you’ll give them a statement then,” he added, holding up his hand to stop her when she started to protest. “If they know they don’t have a chance of getting anything today, the big guys will go home.”

“The big guys?’

“The networks and their affiliates. They’re the ones out there with news vans and camera crews. They might leave a reporter behind to see if he can catch you leaving, but the stations will probably send their crews on to other stories. It’s hard to say what the newspaper reporters will do. It depends on how close they are to deadline and what else they need to turn in.” His mouth momentarily thinned. “The paparazzi won’t go anywhere. I don’t know how many are out there, but you have at least one that’s been on your tail since this morning.”

“The guy in the black sedan,” she concluded. The one with the wiry red hair who’d been photographing her bedroom.

Ben gave a confirming nod. “Schroeder…the guard who took up his post about midnight,” he clarified, “spotted him when you left for school this morning.

“There will be more,” he told her, utter certainty in the calm tones of his voice. “The first pictures of you will be worth a small fortune, so you can count on paparazzi doing everything short of dropping down your chimney to get those shots.”

He could have told her it would be worse if she was reclusive. The harder a target tried to escape the prying lenses of the cameras and the fewer pictures there were to sell, the more valuable the target became. From the way her soft-brown eyes held his, he had the feeling he didn’t need to mention that inescapable fact. She’d already figured it out.

She couldn’t seem to stay still. Chair legs scraped against beige linoleum as she rose to move away. From him. From the situation.

“So,” she said, seeming to weigh all she’d just heard, “if I do that…if I tell them I’ll give them a statement tomorrow, the news crews will stop bothering my neighbors?”

“Unfortunately, no. They want information about you, and your neighbors are the logical first source.”

“But the police…”

“All the police can do is cite them if they park illegally or ticket someone for trespassing if someone in the neighborhood phones in a specific complaint. Worse comes to worst, they can probably block off your street to all but residents if you wind up with a crowd out there. But right now, there’s nothing to stop a reporter from using a walkway to approach a front door and knock on it.” He looked from where she stood beside him to the gold watch on his wrist. “I’ll talk to them when they get here. It shouldn’t be too long now.”

The knocking on her door had stopped about the time Ben had arrived. She wondered now if her bodyguards were responsible for that. The man she’d noticed coming up behind the paparazzo at her bedroom window must have been one of them.

“How long do you think it will be before I can leave without being followed?”

Rising, he gave a shrug of his broad shoulders. “Weeks. Months, possibly. It depends on how interested the public becomes in you.”

“I have to live with this for months?”

“Or longer.”

It seemed as clear as the distress in her eyes that his conclusion wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. Equally clear was that the slightly chaotic circumstances provided the perfect opportunity for him to accomplish one of the judiciously unmentioned goals on his agenda. He’d known yesterday that he hadn’t had a snowball’s chance in the Sahara of talking her into a meeting with William. Not only had she barely tolerated the sound of the man’s name, she’d been dead certain she could handle the press on her own. With that naive assumption put to rest, he could use her concern for her neighbors and her clear desire for privacy to his advantage.

“They can’t follow you if they don’t know where you are,” he pointed out. “Once they figure out that you’re not here, your street will get a whole lot quieter, too.

“If you’ll go pack a bag, I can have you away from all this in no time. There’s a room reserved for you at the Four Seasons in Washington,” he continued, fairly certain she’d see the wisdom in leaving. “William would very much like to talk to you.

“We thought you would be more comfortable in neutral territory,” he explained when she visibly stiffened. “He didn’t want to impose himself on you by showing up unannounced at your door, and we were both certain you wouldn’t want to meet on his turf. Washington is about halfway for both of you. We can be there in a little over an hour.”

Jillian said nothing. She didn’t even ask how he planned to cut the drive time to D.C. in half. Despite his and William’s apparent consideration for her comfort, she didn’t care at all for being manipulated and maneuvered. As her defenses toward William rose even higher, she had every intention of letting his very practiced and professional cohort know that, too.

“I’m not talking with William.” Ever again, she thought. “Feel free to pass that on, too. And I’m not leaving Hayden,” she informed him, her agitation rising. “I have school tomorrow and a principal who will not be happy with me if I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Even if I didn’t love my job, I have an obligation to it, the other teachers and to my students. That job is all that kept me sane after my engagement got canceled and my mom died and I’m not about to blow off my responsibilities to it.”

Ben’s eyebrows bolted into a single slash.

“Your engagement?” The information was news to Ben. It also raised a definite sense of caution and about a dozen red flags. “Who called it off?”

Totally confused by his concern, she said, “I did.”

“Was the breakup amicable or ugly?”

“What possible difference does that make?”

“I need to know if there’s anything potentially embarrassing your ex-fiancé might say. Or show,” he emphasized as she frowned at him. “The press is sure to track him down once they learn about him. And they will,” he assured her. “If he doesn’t come forward himself, someone you know will mention him.”

Uncertainty clouded her face as Jillian cocked her head. “Show?”

Ben didn’t even blink. “Nude photographs or videos. Letters or e-mails that detail anything erotic or kinky. Is he in possession of anything you wouldn’t want anyone else to see?”

“Of course not!” Jillian was dumbfounded. “The split hurt, but I can’t imagine that Eric would say anything to embarrass either one of us. And recording our lovemaking was definitely not something we were into. As for kinky, I don’t even like to make love with the light on.” Coloring to the roots of her hair, she took a step back, threw up her hands. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”

Wishing to end it, she turned away.

“Did you know this Eric well enough to be sure he hadn’t taken pictures of you without you being aware of it?”

The question stopped her cold. Turning back, she faced the man who seemed to have no qualm at all invading the very depths of her privacy. The paparazzi had nothing on him.

“Incriminating photos of unsuspecting partners wind up on the Internet all the time, Jillian. Especially when revenge is involved. Most especially,” he emphasized, “when a person is the item de jour for the press because the tabloids pay so well for anything remotely sensational.”

His eyes remained hard on hers. From the way he refused to look from her face, it seemed almost as if he was forcing himself not to let his glance move down her body.

He lasted about six seconds before his eyes drifted downward anyway.

Not caring to imagine what he might be considering about her just then, she tried to ignore the knot his presence put in her stomach and turned to pick up the books she’d dumped on the sofa. She had always liked order. In her surroundings. Especially in her life. She didn’t always get it. There had been times when she hadn’t even came close. But she could at least control the state of her possessions.

Gathering the books in her arms, she set them in two neat stacks on her coffee table.

“Eric would never do such a thing,” she insisted, straightening the already perfectly aligned trio of citrus-green candles. She added the faucet knob to the top of one stack. “He’s not a criminal sort of louse like Tess Kendrick’s ex-husband. He’s just the run-of-the-mill sort. Asking me to marry him had just been a way to keep me around.

“He kept balking at setting a wedding date,” she explained, if for no other reason than to divert him from her so not adventurous sex life. “So I finally asked if he ever intended to marry me. He said he didn’t know. What he did know was that he didn’t want the kids that were so important to me. That’s when I broke up with him. He strung me along, but I can’t see him trying to hurt me in any other way. There’s nothing for him to seek revenge for.”

“You’re certain.”

She reached to straighten one of the half-dozen throw pillows on the sofa. His skepticism stopped her short.

The man didn’t seem to be hearing her at all.

“I’m quite certain.” He wasn’t just not listening to what she said, he wasn’t accepting it. She doubted he had any idea how much he’d just revealed about himself. “But if that’s the sort of faith you have in people, then I really feel sorry for the woman in your life.”

“I’m divorced. That gives me a certain insight into just how little a person can truly know about someone else’s character.”

There was no mistaking the bitterness in his tone. That quiet hostility fairly coated his words, tightening them right along with the lean, chiseled line of his jaw.

It seemed she wasn’t the only one who’d come away scarred from a relationship. But she felt ready to move on, to leave the past and its hurts behind. Ben, apparently, did not. She’d glimpsed more than his bitterness. She’d seen pain. And loss.

Wondering if he simply hadn’t had time to heal, if maybe his hurts had been more recent, she watched him deliberately look away. It seemed he knew what he’d so inadvertently exposed and wasn’t about to reveal anything more.

Yet he already had. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that all the subterfuge and maneuvering he must encounter in his work played pure havoc with his faith in people, too.

“I’m sorry.” The unexpected twinge of pity she felt for him softened her voice. “I guess I operate from a different level of trust than necessity dictates to you.”

He had been thinking the same thing about her, and wondering if she had any idea how dangerous such naïveté could be. She didn’t seem to have a clue what some people would do for a buck, or that infamous fifteen minutes of fame. His ex-wife had gone for both.

“Let’s just say I have a hard time giving people the benefit of the doubt.”

“You have a gift for understatement.”

“Thank you.”

The muscle in his jaw tensed once more. He had forcibly blocked the mental images of her driving some guy wild in bed. He worked now to do the same with the defenses that had slammed into place at the sympathy still in her eyes. That sympathy was misplaced. The wounds meant nothing to him now. The scars had hardened, and so had he.

“So,” he continued, preferring her baggage to his own, “can you think of anyone else who might know anything incriminating about you?” Despite his skepticism, he felt somewhat appeased by what he’d just heard. It didn’t sound as if her ex-fiancé had a specific reason to rush forward with an exposé of her past, their relationship or whatever it was he might care to share in an interview. That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else out there with some detrimental little detail he should be aware of. “Another lover? The disgruntled parent of a student?”

Disbelief flashed in her eyes. “There’s nothing incriminating for anyone to know! What kind of person do you think I am? Do you think I have some torrid past that will come to light and embarrass your client? Are you afraid the…”

“Jillian, I’m just—”

“…world is going to hold him responsible…”

“It’s not like that.”

“…for something I’ve done that might not reflect well on him?”

“Will you listen?”

“I have been! And so far I haven’t heard—”

“I didn’t mean to insult you!”

The room suddenly went quiet. In that deafening stillness, Ben pushed his fingers through his hair, then jammed his hands on his hips. His negotiating skills were usually far superior to this.

“I didn’t,” he repeated quietly. “And I’m sorry that I obviously have. I’m only asking these questions because it’ll be easier to help you if there are no surprises.” He was growing more certain by the moment that what a person saw with her was exactly what he got. The realization caught him a little off guard. He hadn’t thought that such unprotected openness existed in any human past the age of twelve. “I really am sorry. Okay?”

If the wary way she watched him was any indication, she wasn’t overly anxious to accept his regret. She really wasn’t, however, like any of the women he knew. Rather than make him stand there and squirm, repeat himself or otherwise grovel, she gave a small, cautious nod.

“Okay,” she conceded, sounding as guarded as he felt. “I’ll accept your apology…but only if you stop worrying about what some reporter might dig up, and tell me how I’m going to get to school tomorrow without being followed.”

“That’s not going to happen. You will be followed. But we’ll get to that in a minute.” Having almost blown his welcome, what he needed to focus on was her resolve to not budge from her house. That refusal was keeping him from taking her to meet with William. It was also threatening to cut into the time he’d promised his grandfather he’d spend with him.

“You said you hadn’t listened to any of your messages.” Wanting her to appreciate how much worse things would be before they got better, he motioned to the blinking answering machine by the oddly silent phone. He would have bet his box seats at the symphony that the thing would have been ringing right off its base. Or so he was thinking before he noticed that the phone was unplugged. “I think we should listen to them now.”

Chapter Three

Checking the messages on her answering machine just then seemed pointless to Jillian. She knew from what she’d seen on her caller ID and from what she’d heard before she’d turned down the speaker volume so she couldn’t hear what was being recorded, that at least some of the calls had been from the local newspaper. Since Ben seemed to think listening to them was important, though, and since he was arguably more experienced than she with the logistics of such situations, she punched the play-messages bar on the phone base and crossed her arms over the knot in her stomach.

An electronic voice told her she had fourteen messages. As she moved from the phone, Ben pulled a small notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket, sat down in one of the barrel chairs and propped one ankle on his opposite knee.

The first three calls were hang-ups. The next began with a female voice efficient in tone and broad on vowels.

“Ms. Hadley, this is Karen Mabry, Nina Tyler’s assistant with Good Morning, USA.” The woman named the major television network in New York that produced the nationwide newscast-cum-talk show. “We’d like to interview you tomorrow on our program and will make whatever accommodations you need to get here. If tomorrow is a problem for you, we’ll work with you to get a more compatible date. Please call me at 1-800-555-6000 when you receive this message. I look forward to hearing from you.”

Jillian looked toward Ben. She listened to GM, USA, as it was known to its viewers, nearly every morning while she got ready for the day. Nina Tyler and her cohost were as familiar to most of the general public as sports figures and rock stars. Yet Ben didn’t appear at all impressed or disturbed by the show’s interest in her. His features revealed nothing as he wrote down the woman’s name and number and listened to the beep that preceded the next message.

The next call was from the assistant of a nationally known afternoon-talk-show host who wanted the same thing: an on-air interview.

The call after that was from a major television journalist wanting her for a special.

A publisher wanted to talk to her about a possible book deal before she talked to anyone else.

Vanity Fair wanted an exclusive.

In between there were more hang-ups and the calls from the newspapers she heard when she’d first come in. Nina Tyler’s assistant from GM, USA left another message.

Jillian had sunk to the sofa between messages from the journalist and the publisher.

She now blinked at the primary colors spelling out Fun With Math on the textbook atop the stack on her coffee table. Her life, it seemed, had just officially turned surreal.

Afraid to wonder how much more bizarre things could get, she watched Ben go back through his notes and add a mark by Nina’s name. He still didn’t look especially concerned about what he’d heard. If anything, she had the feeling that the messages were pretty much what he’d expected them to be.

Looking as if he’d written nothing more interesting than a grocery list, he tucked his gold pen back inside his jacket.