In The Bodyguard's Arms

What the hell was Ted that he had a stalker? Manny remembered now that the reception had told Cooper that Teddie Plummer needed a bodyguard. He’d been the one who’d shortened it to Ted. Teddie Plummer sounded like an accountant. Maybe for the IRS? And someone he’d audited wanted revenge?

No. A tax accountant probably wouldn’t call himself Teddie. He would be a Theodore. No. Teddie sounded like...

Like what?

Manny felt a prickle of unease, and it wasn’t just because he’d found the cabin empty when he’d shown up. And it was getting dark...

After opening the unlocked door, he’d flipped on a light. But nobody had fallen asleep on the couch. Or in the bed in the loft. In fact, the bed with the drawers beneath it was so neatly made with a plaid comforter and navy sheets that it looked as if it hadn’t been slept in. Maybe he hadn’t found the right place after all.

The cabin looked spotless, not a plate or glass sitting out on the wooden counter or lying in the black hammered farmhouse sink. The only things lying around were books. Could Teddie be a professor? Was a student stalking him, wanting revenge over a bad grade or something?

But when Manny picked up one of the books, a paper fell out. It looked like notes a student would make, not the professor. And the handwriting was very neat with a feminine flourish to the letters that increased Manny’s uneasy feeling. Was it just that Teddie had another person’s book, another person’s notes?

Or was there something else going on?

Manny shouldn’t have been so quick to leave the conference room. He should have let Cooper brief him on the situation with Teddie Plummer, so Manny could have found out who the hell Teddie was.

Because that name sounded vaguely familiar to him now.

So familiar that Manny had a bad feeling not just that something had happened to Teddie Plummer but that something was about to happen to him.

* * *

Something bad was about to happen. Teddie knew it. Even though she was close—so close that she could see the light burning inside her cabin—she wasn’t going to reach it in time. She wasn’t sure that it would be any safer in there, anyway, as a shadow passed behind the blinds. A hulking shadow. Whoever had broken into her place was big, so big she doubted she would be able to fight him off.

She couldn’t turn around, either. Someone was behind her. She was certain of it. Too many twigs kept snapping while brush rustled. Someone or something was behind her. So she had to keep running forward, not to the cabin but beyond it to the big shed where she’d hidden her Jeep.

But the keys were inside the house, hanging on a hook by the back door she was certain she’d locked. How had the intruder broken in? And if he was inside, who was chasing her?

Had she had two stalkers this entire time? No wonder it seemed as though she’d never been able to get away from him. That he always found her wherever she was.

Despite the sweat dampening her clothes, she shivered as her blood chilled. She couldn’t fight off two of them. And she might not be able to outrun them, either.

Without the keys, she wouldn’t be able to start the Wrangler and use it to escape. And she wasn’t certain how much longer she could run. The numbness had left her muscles to leave a burning pain. She felt like her ligaments were on fire and about to tear.

But she couldn’t stop. Now she didn’t hear just the snap of the twigs or the rustle of the brush. She heard footsteps—pounding against the ground. Whoever was behind her was gaining on her.

And she was so close to the cabin where that shadow lurked behind the blinds. She was trapped with no hope of escaping. Would this be how it ended?

If only she had hired the Payne Protection Agency sooner...

Then she wouldn’t be alone facing the greatest danger of her life. The bodyguard would already be with her instead of somewhere en route. But Teddie wasn’t entirely helpless. While she didn’t have the gun that her mother had offered to lend her, she always carried a canister of pepper spray with her.

She had thought she would be safe from the stalker here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Out of habit, though, she’d clipped the canister on her belt before she’d left for her hike to protect herself from a bear.

She really hoped that was what was following her.

But she heard no growl, just the deep pant of labored breathing as the distance closed between her predator and his prey. Before she could unclip the canister from her belt, a hand caught her hair, jerking her head back.

She whirled around to face the monster.

* * *

Manny had searched the cabin again, which didn’t take long since the structure was small. The kitchen consisted of a short refrigerator, a two-burner stove, that farmhouse sink and a couple of cupboards. The bathroom was nearly as tiny—a stand-up shower squeezed in the corner between a pedestal sink and a toilet. The bedroom was the loft. The biggest room was the open living area. There was an overstuffed couch, an old trunk for a coffee table, and a small secretary-type desk in front of the windows with the closed blinds.

He’d pulled open the drawers beneath that bed and what he’d found had confirmed his fears. He walked back to the desk and that paper with the notes. The handwriting was definitely feminine.

He noticed a folder sticking out from beneath one of the textbooks. When he opened the folder, his breath caught with a gasp.

There weren’t notes in the folder, at least not notes taken from a textbook. These notes were scrawled in black marker across cut-up photos. They were threats.

I’m going to mess up your beautiful face...

And he had. The face in the photo had been scraped off, leaving only the body clad in a camisole. Even without the face, Manny recognized the body.

It was everywhere. She was everywhere. Or at least, she had been until the past few months. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. For a model, her career had been long, probably spanning nearly a decade and a half. But since she’d started modeling young, she wasn’t that old—not old enough to really retire. Now he knew why she’d dropped out of the spotlight. Because of this...

The threats.

There were more photos. Most were missing her face. The rest had other body parts cut out. The notes contained so much hate. So much madness.

He shuddered at the venom, and his skin chilled with fear for her. With dread.

Where the hell was she?

Where was Teddie Plummer?

When he’d searched the cabin again, he’d found a key ring hanging by the unlocked door. Unless she had another set, she probably hadn’t driven away. But where was the Jeep?

With another shudder, he dropped that folder back onto the desk. Then he headed toward the back door. He was just reaching for the handle when he heard it, the bloodcurdling scream of terror.

Pulling his gun from his holster, he threw open the door and rushed outside into the all-encompassing blackness. Born and raised in cities, he’d only been anywhere this dark while on missions. Usually street lamps illuminated his way. But now he couldn’t see where he was going. So he tripped on the steps leading off the deck.

His breath escaped in an oath as he struck the ground, hard. Twigs and roots tore at his clothes. It was so damn dark. He had a light on his gun. But if he flipped it on, he would lose the element of surprise. Whoever was out there—whoever had caused that scream—would see him coming.

But he wouldn’t be able to find Teddie without the light. So he regained his feet and flipped on the switch, sweeping the flashlight beam and the barrel of the gun around the woods surrounding the cabin.

Even with it burning along with the glow shining through the blinds of the cabin’s windows, the shadows were thick. No stars even shone in the sky—not that he could see much of the sky through the thick branches of all of the trees.

Some of those branches moved. And leaves and grass rustled. No breeze stirred. The air was cold and damp and stagnant. It wasn’t the wind blowing those branches around; it was something. Or someone.

He opened his mouth to call out, but again, he wasn’t certain what the situation was. Had Teddie’s stalker found her? Or was Teddie even here?

He couldn’t be sure she had been staying here any longer. Maybe she had a second set of keys for the Jeep. Or maybe the Jeep wasn’t even hers.

He couldn’t imagine a supermodel driving a Jeep or staying in that rustic little cabin, either. She had to be a millionaire, at least. For years she had modeled every swimsuit and lingerie brand on the market. He’d even had a poster of her that he’d brought with him to boot camp.

How the hell hadn’t he recognized her name?

The guys must have been laughing their asses off at him being so clueless about who she was. And when he’d insisted on taking the assignment, he could just imagine their reactions.

He could not imagine what might be out in those woods, in the dark. Maybe that hadn’t even been a human scream. Maybe it had been some animal.

Because he didn’t know the reason for the scream, he held his silence, which any of his friends would have said was unusual for him. Except on missions.

On missions and about missions, he knew to stay quiet. Just like they had all stayed quiet when he had mistaken Teddie for a man. Cooper—of all of them—should have at least given him a heads-up. He was the boss now.

But then, he guessed Cooper had kind of tried. Manny hadn’t given him much of an opportunity. He’d been so insistent on taking this case, on staying away from all damsels in distress.

If that scream had come from Teddie, she was definitely in distress. But where the hell was she?

The voice, or whatever it was, had sounded so close. He walked in circles around the cabin, swinging the beam on his gun in ever-widening circles. The beam glanced off tree trunks and brush. The cabin had no yard, just a thinner version of the woods that surrounded the property.

If she was still staying here, what the hell had she been doing outside this late? She’d put herself in danger, not just from her stalker but also from whatever wild animals lived in the area. Bears? Wolves? Mountain lions? He had no idea what could be out there. If any of those things were, he didn’t blame her for screaming.

He opened his mouth to call out to her, but then his beam glanced off something on the ground. He moved the flashlight back so the beam took the same path. The shadow was crumpled between two trees, lying lifelessly.

Was it a person? Or a pile of brush?

He stepped closer, and the beam illuminated clothing. The fabric was a shiny blue material, like some kind of workout apparel. He hurried forward now as he noticed the curls, the profusion of bright red ones spilled over the clothing and onto the ground.

Twigs and dirt were matted in her hair. What the hell had happened to her?

“Teddie?” Her name escaped his lips on a rasp of concern. He had to know if she was all right. He leaned over her, but she was facedown on the ground.

He could see only her clothes and her tangled hair. Could he even be certain it was her? He remembered the hair—not just from the desecrated photos he’d found in the cabin, but from memories of all the images he’d seen of her. That he’d had of her.

If she knew, she’d probably think he was a stalker, too. But he never would have desecrated those photos. He never would have written such horrific threats.

Only someone truly sick could have written such things. As he crouched down closer to her, he swept his flashlight and barrel around the woods near them.

Was that creep out there? Waiting to strike again?

Manny was tempted to squeeze the trigger, to fire a few shots and hope he hit the son of a bitch. But none of the trees or brush moved or rustled now.

Whatever had been out there was gone.

Was Teddie gone, too?

He reached out and closed his free hand over her shoulder. She was slender but there was muscle beneath his fingertips, too. That was what had always been so damn sexy about her. She had never looked like she starved herself like so many other models did. She was curvy but fit.

Beautiful but natural.

She’d had no breast implants or lip augmentation. Everything about her had been real. She was the girl next door if the girl next door was drop-dead gorgeous.

Dead...

Damn, he hoped she wasn’t—for so many reasons, the primary one being that he would have failed his first solo assignment before it even began.

He drew in a deep breath, bracing himself, before he rolled her toward him. Her hair was tangled across her face, but he could still see the heart shape of her face, the pointy chin and wide cheekbones.

Her eyes—which he remembered being a clear and crisp green—were closed. Some of her hair was tangled in her thick lashes. And dirt was smeared across her forehead and along one cheek.

His breath escaped as he uttered a ragged sigh. At the very least she was unconscious. At the worst, dead. He reached now for her neck to check for a pulse, and his hand shook slightly as he pushed aside her hair.

Her skin was silky and damp and cold beneath his fingertips. Was she...?

He moved his fingers again and finally felt it, the leap of her pulse. She was alive, her pulse pounding madly beneath his fingertips.

He expelled another breath—of relief. “Thank God...”

When he glanced down, he found her eyes open and staring up at him. Her green eyes—so vivid even in the faint glow of the flashlight beam—were wide with fear.

Of course, he was holding a gun on her. She had every reason to be afraid, especially since she must have just been attacked.

“Don’t be scared,” he told her.

“I’m not,” she said, her voice sharp as the fear turned to anger.

Before he could say anything more, he started choking and sputtering as she sprayed a canister right in his face. He couldn’t breathe, and his eyes and face burned.

His vision blurred, so it was hard to focus. But as he turned away from her, he caught a sign of movement again—in the trees and the brush as twigs snapped and the leaves rustled. Whoever had attacked her wasn’t gone. He’d only been watching, probably for his opportunity to attack again.

Manny had thought he’d failed her once. Now he might fail her again, but this time it was her damn fault for blinding him.

Chapter 3

Teddie choked and sputtered as the pepper spray wafted back into her face. Her eyes and nose stung painfully while her skin burned. She’d had no choice but to spray him.

The man had a gun, one he had been pointing right at her. This must have been the man from the cabin. He was bigger than the one who’d caught her in the dark, pulling her hair to stop her from running.

That man hadn’t stopped her from fighting. She’d kicked and clawed and screamed. But he hadn’t relented until this man had run from the cabin—or vaulted from it. Then the first man had released her and run off into the woods. Would he have done that if the two men were working together?

She didn’t know whom to trust, especially when she’d trusted so many of the wrong people in the past. That was why she’d dropped out of the public eye—because she’d had no idea which eyes belonged to her stalker.

Still on the ground, she scrambled away from the big man with the gun. Her eyes streaming, she crawled like a crab toward the cabin. The door onto the back porch stood open. She could grab the keys to the Jeep. She could drive away—if she could see.

Not only couldn’t she see but she also could barely stand. She tried to regain her footing, but her legs folded beneath her. She dropped to the ground again. Before she could get back up, a hand closed around her arm.

She’d dropped the damn canister after she’d released the pepper spray. There probably hadn’t been any left anyway. But she needed something to protect her. This hand was big and strong, bigger and stronger than the one that had gripped her hair and jerked her to the ground.

This man could easily hurt her if he wanted to, and after she sprayed him, he probably wanted to hurt her badly. She was still tempted to fight him the way she’d fought the other man. But this guy had that gun, which was why she’d played dead until he’d gotten close enough for her to use the spray. She knew, just like she hadn’t outrun the other man, that she wouldn’t have been able to outrun a bullet.

Instead of hurting her, this man helped her up. “Get in the cabin,” he urged her. “Lock yourself inside. I checked it already. It’s clear. He wouldn’t have been able to get around us to get in there.”

He sounded like he really wanted to help her—when he should have been furious with her. And yet she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just manipulating her. Could she trust him?

She did need to get to the cabin—to her Jeep keys. Maybe by the time she got there, her vision would be clearer. But as she started forward, she stumbled, her legs still too weak to hold her. She’d already been physically exhausted when she’d been forced to run for her life. It was no wonder her muscles were protesting now.

The man caught her again, lifting her easily from the ground. He swung her up in his arms, but he stumbled, too, as he climbed the steps of the small porch to the back door.

Judging from the mammoth size of his arms and shoulders and chest, he wasn’t struggling with her weight. Like her, he had to be struggling to see. He made it up the steps and through the open back door. His shoulder struck the jamb, but that might have been just because of how wide his shoulders were.

She’d slung her arm around his shoulders just to steady herself. It wasn’t as if she had to hang on. He wasn’t about to drop her.

He had one arm under her legs, the other around her back. His arms were hard—like his shoulders and his chest—all sculpted muscles. She would have thought he was carved from rock—if not for his warmth. He wasn’t a statue; he was a man.

She needed to wriggle down to break free of his grasp. In the hand of the arm beneath her legs, he still held his gun, the barrel pointed down. The flashlight beam shone like a spotlight on the hardwood floor. What if he pointed the gun at her again?

She didn’t have the pepper spray to defend herself. But she was beginning to believe she hadn’t needed to use it.

“Who are you?” she asked as she stared up at his face.

Even with his spray-reddened eyes and skin, he was handsome. His complexion was tan, but that might have been more from nature than the sun. His hair was black, and his eyes were dark, too, but for the red rimming the deep brown irises. He was probably the same age she was: thirty. If they’d ever met before, she would have remembered meeting him.

“Jordan Mannes,” he said. “I’m the bodyguard from the Payne Protection Agency.”

She gasped in shock and regret. She had maced the man sent to protect her.

“And you’re Teddie Plummer?” He asked it like he was wishing she wasn’t but afraid she was.

She could understand his not recognizing her if he were familiar with her photographs. She didn’t look anything like her pictures right now with her baggy clothes and her hair all dirty and tangled around her face.

She nodded. “Yes, I’m Teddie.”

He emitted a short sigh. Of disappointment?

Although she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to protect someone who had hurt him.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not hurt?”

She nodded again.

Then he released her and turned back for the door. “And make damn sure you lock it this time,” he admonished her. “I found it unlocked when I first got here.”

Her breath caught, and she shook her head. He had to be wrong. This had happened at her mama’s house. They had been certain they’d locked the door when they’d left for dinner. But when they’d returned, the door had been unlocked.

“It was locked,” she insisted. She remembered checking it twice after she’d closed it behind herself. “I always lock the doors.”

He shook his head now. “It wasn’t when I showed up earlier. So make sure you lock it behind me when I leave.”

“You’re leaving?” Not that she could blame him after what she’d done to him.

“Somebody’s out there, right?” he asked as he looked over his shoulder at her. “That’s why you screamed?”

She shuddered as she remembered that hand in her hair, jerking her head back. “Yes. Someone was chasing me through the woods.” Her voice cracked with a resurgence of the fear she’d felt when she’d been running, trying to escape him. “And then he caught me.”

“Did you recognize him?”

She shook her head. “It all happened so fast,” she explained. “He caught me from behind, but when he jerked me around, I couldn’t see his face. He had a ski mask on...” So the pepper spray probably wouldn’t have affected him—had she had time to shoot the contents of the canister in his face.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Jordan asked.

“N-no,” she stammered. She wasn’t physically harmed. But she might have been in shock. No. If she were in shock, she would have been numb. And she was feeling too much now: too much achy pain from overexerting herself and too much fascination with her bodyguard. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” he said, “because now I’m going to try to catch him. He couldn’t have gotten very far yet.”

“No,” she agreed. “I kicked him—hard.” She was surprised he’d been able to move at all, let alone run, when Jordan had rushed out of the cabin.

The bodyguard’s mouth curved into a slight grin that Teddie couldn’t help but find sexy. He had sensual-looking lips. “Good,” he said again, his deep voice even deeper with satisfaction. “Then he probably didn’t get far at all.”

“But how will you find him?” she asked. “You can’t see.” She couldn’t, and not as much of the spray had gotten in her eyes and face as in his. How was he even standing?

When the volunteer in her self-defense class had been sprayed, the young man had writhed around on the floor in agony until they’d taken him to the ER.

Jordan Mannes stood strong and steady now, unlike her. Her legs still trembled with exhaustion and...

She wasn’t sure what she was feeling anymore. Fear. Excitement. The adrenaline rush had yet to leave her, her pulse raced and her skin was flushed. But maybe that was just from the spray—or from how easily Jordan Mannes had carried her.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. Too many sleepless nights and too much fear had taken its toll on her senses. She was losing them.

“You need to let me take you to the clinic,” she said. “Or at least try to wash out your eyes.”

“No,” he said. “There’s no time. I have to find the guy who grabbed you.” He touched his red face and grimaced. “Did you think I was him—coming back—when you sprayed me?”

“I didn’t know who you were,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting the bodyguard to arrive for a couple of days yet.”

“I flew here.”

Her skin chilled as a wave of doubt crashed over her. “There’s no airport for over a hundred miles and that doesn’t take commercial flights.”

“I didn’t fly commercial,” he said. “I didn’t want to waste any time getting here.”

Which had been damn lucky for her if he was telling the truth.

If he was who he claimed he was.

Could she trust him?

“I’m going to check around outside.” He opened and closed the door behind himself before she could protest any further. But through the door, he shouted, “Lock it!”

He was worried about her safety. But what about his own? Not being able to see, he could walk right into danger before he even realized it, kind of like when he had rolled her over and she had pepper-sprayed him.

A pang of regret and concern struck her heart. She wished she hadn’t hurt him. And she hoped he would not get hurt even worse.

“Be careful,” she called out through the door as she locked it. But she suspected that her warning was too late. That he was already gone.