In The Bodyguard's Arms

Whatever was going to happen to Jordan Mannes would happen, and even though she wouldn’t be the one doing it this time, it would still be her fault because that madman out there was after her.

Jordan Mannes was only doing his job.

* * *

Over the past few years as a bodyguard, Cooper Payne had heard fear in the voices of many women. Hell, even as a Marine he had heard it—in the voices of friends’ families, in his own family.

He heard fear now in Teddie Plummer’s voice as she spoke through the speaker on his cell phone. “I think he’s been out there too long,” she said. “But I haven’t heard any gunshots.”

“Why would he be shooting?” Cooper asked with concern. “Who would he be shooting at?”

“At the man who attacked me,” she said. “Mr. Mannes went back out to see if he could find him. But he can’t see...”

It was late. And in the UP, it would be especially dark. “He has a flashlight—”

“Yes,” she said. “But he still won’t be able to see.”

Cooper’s head began to pound. Not only was she afraid, but she was also so distraught she wasn’t making sense anymore. “He will be able to with the flashlight—”

“He can’t see because I pepper-sprayed him earlier.”

A curse slipped through Cooper’s lips. What the hell kind of situation had he sent his friend into?

Before Cooper had started his own branch of the Payne Protection Agency, his brother Logan had tried to send him off on an assignment to protect some reality star who claimed to have a stalker. She’d made up the whole thing just to get publicity to launch a film career.

Was that what Teddie Plummer was up to? Theatrics in order to get into the theater?

“I didn’t think he would be here already,” she explained. “I didn’t expect the bodyguard you sent to get here for at least another day or two.”

“He flew in,” Cooper said.

“He got here just in time,” Teddie said, and her breath rattled the phone as her fear increased. “I was coming back from a hike when someone chased me through the woods. He had caught me. If Jordan hadn’t rushed out when I screamed...”

If she was this good an actress, she would not have needed to stage any publicity stunts to break into movies. She couldn’t be faking the terror Cooper heard now.

“He’s been out there too long,” she murmured again. “Can you send someone else up here?”

Cooper knew that Cole would go. He would leave in a minute even though he would have to borrow someone else’s plane since Manny had his. But with the fog that had just rolled into River City, Cooper suspected all flights would be grounded.

“Nobody would get there in time now,” Cooper said. If Manny were in danger right now...

“Then I’ll go out there,” she said. And he could hear the deep breath she drew in to brace herself.

“No!” Cooper said. “The guy already tried to grab you once. If you go back out there...” and if he had already taken out Manny, then there would be no one to protect her.

Damn it, he should not have sent Manny off alone on this assignment. Cooper had had no idea just how dangerous it was. And unfortunately, neither had Manny.

* * *

He had been gone too long. The son of a bitch could have circled around the woods and gone back to the cabin. If she’d been telling the truth, if she had locked the door when she’d left earlier, then the bastard must have a key.

Because the lock hadn’t looked picked. The jamb hadn’t been broken. No. If she had locked the door, then someone had just let himself inside, and he could have done it again the minute Manny had walked out and left her alone and unprotected.

But he’d had to check out the brush he’d seen moving right after Teddie had pepper-sprayed him. He hadn’t found anyone hiding in those trees, not that he was certain he’d searched in the right place. All the damn trees and brush looked the same to him.

What he could see of them...

His eyes kept streaming as the spray continued to burn them. He blinked repeatedly and peered through lids that felt swollen and raw. Damn it.

Everything looked the same. He wasn’t sure where he’d been or even where the cabin was now. A light shone in the distance, beyond the trees in which he found himself. Was that light glowing from the cabin? Or another house?

He hadn’t seen any other homes along this road when he’d driven the motorcycle he had rented from the private airstrip to here. He’d had no idea then if he was heading in the right direction. But her cabin had been the only one he’d found. Not that there couldn’t be others set farther back in the woods.

This was bad.

There were no street lamps here because there were no streets. No sidewalks. He had no idea where he was or how to get back to her. He rubbed his eyes again and tried to focus.

He needed to get back to the cabin. He needed to make sure she was safe. He should have at least left her the gun for protection. She might be able to hit her target. He wasn’t certain that he would be able to.

As Manny moved toward that light, it wavered. Maybe it only appeared that way because of his eyes, though. They continued to burn, but it wasn’t just from the spray anymore. As he walked closer, he realized the light came from a fire burning inside a circle of rocks. He’d stumbled upon someone’s campsite.

He hadn’t walked that far, so whoever was camping here was close to the cabin. Close enough to watch Teddie?

Despite the warmth of the flames, he shivered. Was that where the guy was now?

Nobody sat around the campfire. On the other side of it, a sleeping bag was rolled up next to a knocked-over tent. Had the person been setting up camp or taking it down?

And where the hell was he now?

Manny blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. But the smoke was making it worse. Instead of moving away from the fire, though, he moved closer, circling around it to investigate the sleeping bag and the tent.

Maybe there was a backpack lying there, too. Or at least something that would give him a clue to the camper’s identity. But as Manny stepped closer, he found the only thing that lay atop the collapsed tent was a ski mask—just as she’d described her attacker as wearing.

It wasn’t cold enough for the camper to need the mask for warmth. No. This was the camp of the man who had attacked Teddie. So he must have started the fire. He intended to come back, then.

Should Manny wait for him to return?

Nerves of uneasiness moved through his gut. He was more concerned about where the hell the guy was now than if he would come back here. Had he returned to the cabin?

Was he going to try to attack Teddie again?

Manny had had to carry her into the cabin, she’d been so exhausted from her earlier struggle with her attacker. He doubted she would be able to fight off the stalker a second time.

“Son of a bitch.” He cursed himself this time. Manny should not have left her. He needed to get back to her as soon as possible if he could even figure out which direction the damn cabin was in.

The smoke shifted, then began to take the form of a dark shadow. Before Manny could point his gun, the shadow raised a huge stick and swung it toward Manny’s head.

He ducked that blow but braced himself for the next as the shadow swung again. He was determined to strike Manny, determined to take him out. And Manny wasn’t certain he could see well enough to fight him off.

Chapter 4

“I can fly out in this,” Cole insisted, glancing out of the hangar into the nearly impenetrable fog that surrounded the old metal structure. He had flown in far worse weather conditions with enemies trying to shoot him down. “Lend me your plane.”

The older man snorted and shook his head. “Lots of dead pilots thought they could fly out in fog like this. They never made it wherever they’d intended to go.”

“I have to get to the UP,” Cole said. And those dead pilots hadn’t been him.

“And you want to crash my plane doing it?” Walt asked him. He didn’t know the old crop duster’s last name, just his first. “Where’s your little Cessna? You already crash it?”

“I lent it to a friend,” Cole said. “And now he needs my help.” That was what it had sounded like when Cooper had called him earlier. Someone had attacked the client, and Manny had disappeared while trying to track down the assailant.

Letting Manny go alone to the UP had been a serious mistake. Sure, the whole thing had seemed funny at first. Manny thinking he was protecting a man only to find a gorgeous supermodel instead had seemed like the ultimate prank, like the ones they used to play on each other in boot camp.

It would have been hilarious. Except for the whole dangerous stalker part of the scenario. There was nothing funny about that.

“Come on, Walt,” Cole pleaded, and he reached for his wallet. “I need that plane. How much will you take for it?”

Walt snickered. He probably didn’t think Cole could actually afford it. But then, Walt had seen his new Cessna, since they kept theirs in the same hangar, so he had to know that Cole could pay him what his old crop duster was worth and then some. “Money’s not the most important thing to everyone, son.”

It was to Cole’s family. They would kill each other over it if they thought they could get away with murder. And given how much money they had, they probably could.

“I’m sure your friend would rather have you alive than risking your life for him,” Walt said.

Knowing Manny as well as he did, Cole had to agree. Manny wouldn’t want him risking his life or even spending money on him. Manny was one of the few people Cole knew to whom money was not the most important thing. That was why he was such a good friend. Except for the other guys from their unit, Cole didn’t have many people like Manny in his life. That was why he couldn’t lose him.

“His life is in danger,” Cole said. “I need to get there.” He glanced out the open doors and shivered slightly as he noticed the fog had thickened even more.

Walt had moved away from the table where he’d been sitting. He squeezed Cole’s arm now. “And risking your life isn’t going to save his.”

Cole could have argued. He had examples. The missions they’d survived because they’d done exactly that, risked their lives for each other. “Walt...”

Walt squeezed harder. “Once the fog lifts, you can borrow the plane,” he said. “And all you need to do is fill the fuel tanks for me.”

But Cole suspected it would be too late for him to help Manny once the fog lifted. Hell, he suspected it was already too late.

* * *

Cooper Payne had told her to stay in the cabin. But with every second that ticked by, it became harder and harder for Teddie to do nothing.

Jordan Mannes was out there alone, half-blinded because of her. His life was in danger because of her.

Of course, he was a bodyguard, so his life was probably often in danger. And she had hired his agency to protect her. But she was the one who had blinded him, making it more difficult for him to do his job: to protect her and to protect himself right now.

She should at least try to help him. But how? She had dropped the pepper-spray canister outside. It was probably empty anyway, though. And really, if a guy as big as her Payne Protection bodyguard hadn’t been able to fight off her stalker, what would she be able to do?

The self-defense class she’d taken had taught her only the basics. She wasn’t trained in hand-to-hand combat like Jordan Mannes undoubtedly was. How did one qualify to be a bodyguard? What was his background?

Why was she so curious about him? Teddie hadn’t been curious about any man—but her stalker—in a long time. And all she’d wondered about him was who the hell he was and why he wanted to terrorize her.

Jordan Mannes had saved her from the stalker. So of course she would be curious about the bodyguard and about the kind of man who risked his life for others like he regularly did. She’d not known many heroic men in her life. Her own father had abandoned her before she’d even been born.

Maybe Jordan wasn’t as heroic as she’d thought. Maybe he had abandoned her, too. She could hardly blame him if he had after she’d pepper-sprayed him. But she’d heard no motor start up when he’d walked outside. Wherever he’d gone, he’d gone on foot. So he couldn’t be that far...

Could he?

Teddie paced the small confines of the cabin, walking back and forth across the living room with her heart pounding fast and hard as if she was outside running again. She ventured closer to the window, stuck her fingers between the slats of the blinds and peered out. She could see nothing outside. It was as if the darkness had wrapped itself around the little cabin like a thick blanket.

She shivered. Even though it was just early autumn, the temperatures dropped a lot at night in the Upper Peninsula. But it wasn’t the cold that had chilled her. It was that feeling she’d had—the one she’d gotten earlier in the woods—that she was suddenly not alone.

And then she heard it. The scrape of metal moving against metal.

Where was the noise coming from?

She tilted her head and listened intently, trying to identify the sound. What was making it? Or, more important, who was making it?

She peered intently around the cabin, searching the shadows. Jordan had said he’d searched it before rushing outside to rescue her.

So nobody could be inside.

And she had locked the door just like he’d told her to. But just to be safe, she headed toward the door to double-check. As she did, she saw the knob move, and now she knew that the scraping noise was the sound of a key sliding into the lock and turning it.

Someone was coming inside the cabin.

Her heart slammed against her ribs as fear overwhelmed her again.

When Jordan had told her he’d found the door unlocked, she’d known she had locked it. Somehow her stalker had gotten a key. And now he was about to get her.

The cabin was so small that there was no place for her to hide. It was also so small that if she tried to run out the patio door to the deck—which was the only other exit—he would see her for certain. He had already outrun her once; she knew that he would again, especially now that the muscles in her legs had cramped up. It took an effort for her to run just to the kitchen.

Even if he was too big for her to overpower, she had to try. She was not going down without one hell of a fight. She jerked open a kitchen drawer and grabbed the handle of the biggest knife in the utensil divider. With it firmly clasped in her hand, she moved toward the electrical panel hidden behind one of the cabinet doors. And she threw the switch that shut off all of the power, plunging the cabin into darkness as complete as the darkness outside.

At least this way she had the element of surprise on her side. Maybe—just maybe—she could hurt him before he could hurt her.

She shivered as she waited for the attack. But this time she would not be the one getting attacked. She was going to be the attacker.

* * *

Manny cursed at the darkness. He’d almost gotten used to it outside. But the lights of the cabin had guided him back to her—after he’d chased off the stalker. He had dodged the guy’s second swing and jerked the tree limb from his grasp. Then Manny had turned the gun toward the man, but before he had been able to fire, the stalker had slipped back into the darkness outside the circle of light the campfire cast.

But it wasn’t just dark now. The air had turned so thick it was like quicksand, sucking him deeper and deeper. Fog had rolled in along with the night, getting thicker as the night grew later. He didn’t know how late it was or how long he’d been gone.

Too long.

He had left Teddie Plummer alone for far too long.

What if the stalker had circled back after Manny had run him off from the campsite? He obviously knew these woods better than Manny did. He had hurried back as fast as he had been able to move through the trees—toward the lights he had barely been able to discern through that thick blanket of fog and night. But was he too late?

He fumbled with the keys he’d found on the ground shortly after the stalker had run off. The guy must have dropped them when he’d picked up the stick he’d swung at Manny. He tried them all until he found the one that unlocked the door. But just as he was about to push open the door, the lights went off inside the cabin.

He glanced around outside. Was the stalker out there? Had he cut the power line? Or had nature caused the outage?

This wasn’t a storm, though—just fog. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe it was his damn eyes blurring everything around him. They burned yet, tears streaming from them.

He needed to wash out the pepper spray completely.

But more than anything, he needed to make sure Teddie was safe. He opened his mouth to call out to her. But what if the stalker had slipped around him and headed back to the cabin?

What if he was already inside with Teddie?

It was better that Manny enter as quietly as he could. And despite his size, he was good at being quiet since his and his friends’ lives had so often depended on being as silent and invisible as they could during their missions.

He worried that his and Teddie’s lives depended on it now. He pushed the door open just wide enough for him to slip inside—not that much light could spill into the house from the outside or from the inside out.

It was too damn dark.

He hunched over as he moved through the cabin, trying to make himself a smaller target. Whoever was inside had had time to get used to the darkness—while his irritated eyes were still trying to adjust. Maybe it wasn’t that dark, though; maybe he was just blind.

His knee bumped against something soft. It must have been the couch. The tiny kitchen was situated behind the living area, so he turned. And just as he turned, he noticed a glint of something in the darkness.

He recognized the blade of a knife as it swung toward him. He didn’t want to fire his gun in the dark, but he swung it toward that blade. Metal clinked against metal. Using the barrel of his gun to hold off the blade, he propelled his body forward—into the body of the person armed with the knife.

The damn stalker would not get away from him this time. And if the man had already hurt Teddie...

Where the hell was she? Tied up in the darkness? Or worse, already dead?

When he settled his body onto the body of the person he had knocked to the floor, he realized where Teddie was—lying beneath him. Her soft curves cushioned his muscles. And he was struck dumb for a moment at the intimate contact between their bodies. Her hips cradled his, her legs tangled with his, and her soft breasts yielded to the hardness of his chest. The contact set off a reaction inside him.

Adrenaline had already been coursing through him from his earlier encounters with the stalker and with her, but another kind of adrenaline entirely gripped him now. His pulse raced, his heart pounded and his mouth had gone so dry he couldn’t speak.

The guys would laugh if he ever admitted that. They wouldn’t believe that Manny Mannes had ever been speechless. Hell, he couldn’t believe it, either.

Teddie squirmed and struggled beneath him and tried to swing the knife at him again. He dropped his gun and instinctively grabbed her wrist, closing his fingers around the delicate flesh.

He could feel the fear and the desperation in her, and he could hear it when she released a scream like the one that had first drawn him from the cabin and into the darkness.

“Shh,” he said, finally finding his voice, which sounded strained even to his ears. “It’s me. Jordan Mannes.” He cleared his throat. “It’s just me...”

Her body went limp beneath his as her breath escaped in a gasp that warmed his skin. She dropped the knife, then threw her arms around his neck. Pulling him close, she arched against him, molding their bodies even more intimately together.

“Oh, thank God, thank God,” she murmured, “you’re all right.”

He wasn’t all right, though. He was the furthest thing from all right that he had ever been. And it wasn’t because his eyes still streamed from the pepper spray or he’d been attacked by her stalker and now by her...

He wasn’t all right because his body was reacting to her. Every muscle was taut, and he had an intense ache in his groin. A tension gripped him that had nothing to do with the threat her stalker posed.

Manny was experiencing another kind of threat entirely. He was attracted to his client. And with a crazed stalker on the loose, that attraction was a distraction that neither of them could afford, not if they were going to survive the night.

He strongly suspected the stalker would come back to the cabin to try for her again. After she’d escaped him earlier that night, the man hadn’t gone far away from her—just to his campsite.

He was determined.

And Manny’s presence had seemed to do little to faze him. In fact, it might have made him even more intent on getting her. Manny had no backup. It was up to him to keep her safe. So he had to stay focused—to keep them both alive.

Chapter 5

Who the hell was that muscle-bound giant? And where had he come from?

Anger coursed through him, and he kicked one of the rocks around his fire pit, sending the stones into the flames, which flickered as sparks shot everywhere.

He jumped back, not wanting to get burned, not so soon after nearly being shot. The guy had a gun. He’d swung the barrel toward him, could have shot him if he hadn’t moved faster.

Then he remembered the conversation he’d overheard as he’d crept around the house where Teddie had grown up, the house where her crazy mother had nearly shot him. Didn’t she realize who he was?

That he was her daughter’s destiny? Her soul mate?

She was supposed to be with him. And only him...

But her mother, that crazy gun-wielding bitch, had suggested that Teddie hire a bodyguard from the Payne Protection Agency.

Was that supposed to be some kind of joke? Nobody could protect anyone else from pain. He’d felt it his entire life, growing up with parents who’d never considered him good enough. And now he felt it every time Teddie ignored him and what they could have together.

Did she not think he was good enough for her, either?

How could she not see that they were perfect for each other? Why did she keep fighting him?

And now she had someone else to fight for her—another idiot with a gun, just like her crazy mother. Maybe he needed to get a weapon of his own. He wasn’t certain how long it would take, but he would have no problem passing a background check. He had never done anything wrong to be refused the right to carry a weapon.

Even now he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

He was just going to take what was his. She was his and his alone.

Even though he would pass, he couldn’t wait for a background check to clear him to own a firearm. He would have to find another weapon to use to eliminate her bodyguard. He would not tolerate anyone trying to come between him and what was his. And if he couldn’t have Teddie, well then, nobody would.

* * *

“I’m so sorry,” Teddie said, blinking against the sudden light as Jordan flicked on the power again. She stared down at the knife lying on the hardwood floor next to his gun. She had nearly stabbed him. Well, maybe not nearly. He had disarmed her quickly and easily.

Jordan closed the cabinet of the electrical panel. “You have no reason to be sorry,” he said.

Now she stared at him in shock. “I pepper-sprayed you,” she reminded him.

Not that he would have needed the reminder. His eyes were still red, still watering.

“And I could have killed you.” She gestured at the long knife.

He chuckled as he leaned over and picked up the knife and the gun. He slid the gun back into the holster he wore over his black T-shirt. The cotton was molded to his heavily muscled chest, and his arms bulged.