Falco: The Dark Guardian

But there was more to it than that.

She’d sensed someone was watching her. He’d been the watcher often enough in what he thought of as his former life to know how subjects looked when they suspected the unwelcome presence of an observer. He could see it in her eyes. In the angle of her jaw. In the way she held her hair back from her face. Wariness. Fear. Distress.

And more.

Determination. Defiance. An attitude that, despite everything, said, Hey, pal, don’t screw with me.

“Goddammit,” Falco growled.

Then he grabbed his cell phone and arranged for a chartered plane to fly him to the West Coast first thing in the morning.

Chapter Two

ELLE HAD spent most of the morning in bed with a stranger.

The stranger was tall and good-looking and maybe he was a good kisser. She didn’t really know.

The thing was, she didn’t like kissing. She knew less about it than, she figured, 98 percent of the female population of the United States over the age of sixteen, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to make kissing seem fantastic, especially with a guy who looked like this.

Kissing, the same as walking and talking, laughing and crying and all the other things an actress did, was part of the job. She had to remember that. This was a movie. Kissing the man in whose arms she lay was, yes, part of the job.

No question that women everywhere would change places with her in a heartbeat. Fans, other actresses…Chad Scott was world-famous. He was box office gold. And, for this scene, at least, he was all hers.

Elle knew how lucky she was. She hated herself for not being able to get into character this morning. Love scenes were always tough but today…

Today, things were not going well at all.

It wasn’t her co-star’s fault. She’d worried he might be all walking, talking ego, but Chad had turned out to be a nice guy.

He’d shaken her hand when they were introduced days ago, apologized for arriving after everyone else. She knew he hadn’t had to do that. They’d spent five minutes in small talk. Then they’d run their lines. Finally, they’d shot their first scene, which was actually a middle scene in the film. Movie scenes were rarely shot sequentially.

Today, they were shooting their first love scene. It was, she knew, pivotal to the story.

The set was simple, just a seemingly haphazard sprawl of blankets spread over the sand near a big Joshua cactus. She was wearing a strapless slip; the camera would only catch her head, her arms and her bare shoulders, suggesting that she was naked. Chad was shirtless and wearing jeans. They were surrounded by a mile of electrical cable, reflectors and boom mikes, and the million and one people it took to film even the simplest scene. Antonio Farinelli, as hot a director as existed, had told the two of them he hoped to do the scene in one take.

So far, there’d been four.

A sudden gust of wind had ruined the first shot but the three others…Her fault, every one. She’d twice blown her lines; the third time she’d looked over Chad’s shoulder instead of into his eyes.

Farinelli sounded angrier each time he yelled, “Cut.”

Elle sat up, waiting while the director spoke with the lighting guy. Her co-star sat up, too, and stretched. Chad had been really good about all the delays. He’d obviously sensed she was having a problem and he’d made little jokes at his own expense. She knew they were meant to put her at ease. Heck, he said, I’m pretty sure I shaved this morning. And don’t feel bad, kid, my wife once told me the ceiling needed paint at a moment just like this.

Everyone who heard him laughed because he was not just a hot property, he was a hot guy. Elle laughed, too. At least, she did her best to fake it. She was an actress. Illusion was everything.

In real life, she could never have lain in a man’s arms and gazed into his eyes as he brought his mouth to hers, but then, reality was a bitch.

And reality was the phone call that had awakened her at three o’clock that morning.

“Darling girl,” the low male voice had whispered, “did you get the picture? Did you get my note?” A low, terrible laugh. “You’re waiting for me, aren’t you, sugar?”

Her heart had slammed into her throat. She’d thrown the telephone on the floor as if it were a scorpion that had crept in under the motel room door. Then she’d run to the bathroom and vomited.

Now, all she could hear was that voice in her head. All she could see was that mutilated ad from the magazine, the note nobody knew about. Bad enough Farinelli knew about the ad. If only he hadn’t walked into her on-set trailer just as she’d opened the innocent-looking white envelope she’d found propped against the mirror of her makeup table.

“Elle,” Farinelli had said briskly, “about tomorrow’s schedule…”

But she wasn’t listening. The blood had drained from her head. She’d been as close to fainting as she’d ever been in her life.

“Elle?” Farinelli had said, and he’d plucked the envelope and what she’d taken out of it from her hand.

“Madre di Dio,” he’d said, his words harsh with fury. “Where did this come from?”

She had no idea. Once she got her breath back, she told him that. A crazy person must have sent it. She’d had nasty little notes before, especially after the Bon Soir lingerie ads, but this marked-up photo…

Still, anything was possible. Her face was out there. In those two-year-old ads and now in stuff the publicity people for Dangerous Games had started planting. It was nothing, she and Farinelli finally agreed, but if she received any more things like this, she was to tell him and they’d go to the police.

Elle had agreed. She’d told herself the photo was a oneshot. Whoever had sent it would surely not contact her again.

Wrong. A few days later, a note arrived in her mail. Its message was horrible. Filthy. Graphic. And it was signed. The signature stunned her but it had to be a hoax. She told herself she would not let it upset her. She was an actress, she could pull it off.

Evidently, she was not as good an actress as she thought.

Farinelli had taken to asking her if she was okay and though she always said yes, certainly, she was fine, she knew he didn’t believe it. He’d proved it two days ago when he stopped by her trailer during a break. Was she ill? No, she assured him. Was she upset about her part? No, no, she loved her part. Farinelli had nodded. Then he could only assume that the photo he had seen was still upsetting her because she was most assuredly not herself.

Elle had tried telling him he was wrong. He silenced her with an imperious wave of one chubby hand. He had given the situation much thought. The photo had been of her but it had been meant for him. She had been in, what, two, three films? She was almost unknown. He, however, was famous. He was taking a big chance, starring her in Dangerous Games. Obviously, someone understood that and wished to ruin his film.

But, by God, he would not permit it. He had millions of his own money tied up in this project and he was not going to let someone destroy him. He was going to contact the police and let them deal with the problem.

Elle couldn’t let that happen. The police would poke and pry, ask endless questions, snoop into her past and find that the story of her life that she’d invented had nothing to do with reality.

So she’d resorted to high drama. She pleaded. She wept. She became a diva. A risky gambit but she had not come as far as she had by playing things safe. No guts, no glory. Trite and clichéd, maybe, but true. Besides, really, what did she have to lose? A police investigation would destroy the burgeoning career she had worked so hard for. She was twentyseven, a little long in the tooth to go back to modeling…

More to the point, she could not face her ugly, ugly past all over again.

In the end, Farinelli had thrown up his hands. “Basta,” he’d said. “Enough! No police.”

A disaster avoided. She’d forced herself to forget the ad, the note, to keep focused on the movie. And then that phone call at three this morning…

“Okay, people” Farinelli said. “Let’s try it again.”

Elle lay back. Chad leaned over her, waiting for the camera to roll. She felt his breath on her face…

“Hey,” her co-star said softly. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, with no conviction at all.

Chad sat up and looked at Farinelli. “Tony? How ’bout we break for lunch?”

The director sighed. “Why not? Okay, people. Lunch. Half an hour.”

Chad stood up, held out his hand and helped Elle to her feet. One of Farinelli’s gofers rushed over and held out an oversized white terrycloth robe. Elle snugged into it and Chad squeezed her shoulder.

“Sun’s a killer, kid,” he said softly. “Some shade, some water and you’ll be fine.”

Her smile was real this time. He truly was a nice man, a rare species as far as she was concerned.

“Thank you,” she said, and she knotted the belt of the robe, slid into the rubber thongs the gofer dropped at her feet and made her way quickly to the half-dozen Airstream trailers clustered like Conestoga wagons awaiting an Indian attack a couple of hundred yards away.

Chad Scott was right, she thought as she went up the two steps to the door of her trailer. Cool air, cool water, some time alone and she’d be fine.

“Absolutely fine,” she said as the door swung shut…

A man was standing against the wall just beyond the closed door. Tall. Dark-haired. Wraparound sunglasses. Her brain took quick inventory…and then her heart leaped like a startled cat and she opened her mouth to scream.

But the man was fast. He was on her, turning the locking bolt, one hand over her mouth before the scream erupted. He gripped her by the shoulder with his free hand, spun her around and hauled her back against him.

She could feel every hard inch of his leanly muscled body.

“Screaming isn’t going to help,” he said sharply.

A waste of time.

Falco could damned near feel the scream struggling to burst from her lips.

To say this wasn’t exactly the reception he’d expected was an understatement. He’d spoken with the director, Farinelli, on his cell from the plane. He’d told him when he’d be arriving, more or less, and the director had said that was fine, it gave him lots of time to brief the Bissette woman and that it would be best if he, Falco, met with her in private because she’d probably want his presence on the set kept quiet, so—

“Hey!”

She had kicked him. Useless, as kicks went, because she was kicking backward and wearing ugly rubber beach thongs, but it told him what he needed to know about whether or not she’d calmed down.

Okay. He’d try again.

“Ms. Bissette. I’m sorry if I startled you but—”

She grunted. Struggled. Her backside dug into his groin. It was a small, rounded backside and under different circumstances, he’d have enjoyed the feel of it—but not when the backside might as well have belonged to a wildcat.

“Dammit,” Falco said. He swung her toward him, one hand still clasping her shoulder, the other still clamped over her mouth. “Pay attention, okay? I. Am. Not. Going. To. Hurt. You.”

Mistake.

She slugged him. Two quick blows, one to the chest, one to the jaw. He was damned if he knew what to do with her now. He had only two hands and she was already keeping both of them occupied.

“Okay,” he said grimly. “You want to play rough? That’s fine.”

He shoved her, hard. She stumbled back against the door and he went with her, pinned her there with his body. Her hands were trapped against his chest; her legs blocked by his. She was tall but he was a lot taller; her head was tilted back so that she was staring up at him with eyes even more tawny than they’d seemed in the defaced magazine ad.

Eyes filled with terror. And with what he’d seen in the candid photo that had brought him out here.

Defiance.

Okay. Instead of saying to hell with this and walking out the door, he’d try and get through to her one last time.

“Ms. Bissette. My name is Falco Orsini.”

Nothing. Still the hot blend of fear and defiance shining in those eyes.

“I’m here to help you.”

Fear, defiance and now disbelief.

“Trust me, lady. This isn’t my idea of a good time, either. I’m here as a favor. And if you don’t calm down and talk to me, I’m gonna walk straight out that door and leave you to handle this thing on your own.”

She blinked and he saw confusion sweep across her face. Yeah, but she couldn’t be any more confused than he was, unless—unless—

Oh, hell.

“Didn’t Farinelli tell you I was coming?”

Another blink. A delicate vertical furrow appeared between her dark eyebrows.

“He said he would. He said you’d want to keep this private and that I should wait for you here, in your trailer.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

It sounded more like “wmf” because his hand was over her lips but there was no mistaking her surprise. Everything was starting to come together. She, a woman who’d been sent a picture defaced by a madman, walks into her trailer and finds a stranger waiting for her…

Merda! That fool, Antonio Farinelli, had never told her he was coming.

“Okay,” Falco said, “here’s the deal. Somebody sent you a picture.” She began to struggle again. He shook his head. “Just listen. You got a picture. A bad one. Your boss wanted to call the cops. You refused. Am I right?”

He could see he was. So far, so good.

“So your boss contacted someone I—someone I know, and that someone contacted me. I agreed to talk to you, check things out, see if there were a way to deal with this so it all goes away quietly. No muss, no fuss. Yes?”

She exhaled sharply. He felt the warmth of her breath flow over his hand, just as he could feel a fraction of the tension ease from her body. Her eyes were still locked to his, bright and distrustful, but now, at least, curious.

“My name,” Falco said, “is Falco Orsini. I, ah, I sometimes do what you might call security consulting. That’s why I’m here. I know about the picture, I know that you’re worried about it, I know you don’t want the authorities involved. I’m here to discuss the situation and offer some advice. That’s the only reason I’m here—and the only reason I scared you is because your boss was too stupid to tell you about me.” He tried for what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. And maybe we can have that talk. Does that work for you?”

She blinked. Nodded. Now she was wary—but she was ready to listen.

He took his hand from her mouth.

She didn’t scream.

Instead, the tip of her tongue came out and slid lightly over her bottom lip. Falco watched its progress. His gaze fell lower, to the rise of her breasts in the vee of her bulky terrycloth robe. He knew what she had under it; he’d watched the scene Farinelli had been filming at a safe distance before he’d slipped into the trailer. What she had on was a slip. Plain. Unadorned. Not like what she’d worn in that ad.

This slip was plain. Sexless.

Not that she was.

She was gorgeous. That hair. Those eyes. That mouth. Still, even with theatrical makeup on, there was another quality to her that he had not seen in the ad. A kind of innocence.

Which was, of course, ridiculous.

She was an actress. She played to the camera. To men. She could be whatever a particular part called for. Maybe she’d decided this part called for wide-eyed and innocent. Not that he gave a damn. He was only interested in her problem, and every problem had a solution.

“Antonio shouldn’t have hired you,” she said.

“He didn’t.”

“But you said—”

“I’m doing someone a favor.”

“Whatever you’re doing, I don’t want you here.”

Her voice was husky. Shaken.

“Listen,” Falco said, “if you want to sit down—”

“I can handle this myself.”

“The hell you can,” he said bluntly.

Her chin rose. “You don’t know what I can and can’t do.”

“I saw that picture. You can’t handle that. No woman can. And there’ll be more.”

Her gaze sharpened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her answer, her body language, gave her away. Falco took off his sunglasses.

“There’s been more already,” he said grimly. “Hasn’t there?”

“No,” she said, but far too quickly.

She turned her head away; he reached out, cupped her chin, gave her no choice but to meet his eyes.

“What was it? Another picture? A letter? A phone call?”

No answer, which was answer enough. Her mouth trembled; Falco fought back the illogical desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. It was an uncharacteristic reaction for him in this kind of situation and he didn’t like it.

“Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse?” he said. “He’ll keep things going until he tires of the game.”

Elle shuddered. “You mean, until he does the things he drew on the picture.”

“Yes,” he said bluntly.

She nodded. And said, in a low voice, “And you think you can stop him?”

Falco’s lips curved in what nobody would ever call a smile. “I know I can.”

She stared up at him. “You can keep him from—from doing anything to me?”

“Yes.”

“A man of few words,” she said, with a little laugh. “How can you be so sure?”

“It’s what I do. What I used to do,” he said evenly. “I can find him and keep him from hurting you.”

Elle stared at this stranger with eyes so dark they resembled obsidian. Why should she believe him? The answer was agonizingly simple.

Because, otherwise, she might not have a life.

Perhaps this man, this Falco Orsini, really could help her.

“If I agreed to let you get involved,” she said slowly, “you won’t—you won’t contact the police?”

“No.”

“Because, uh, because the publicity,” she said, scrambling for a reason he’d accept, “because the publicity—”

“I told you. I’ll handle this alone. No cops.”

“What would you do, if I hired you?”

“You can’t hire me. Remember what I said? I’m here as a favor. As for what I’ll do…Leave that to me.”

“The thing is…I wouldn’t want anyone to know I had a-a bodyguard. There’d be talk. And questions. And questions are the last thing I want.”

“I already figured that.”

“So, how would we do this, then? I mean, how could you watch over me, go after whoever this is, do whatever you need to do without people knowing?”

Falco had considered that dilemma during the six-hour flight from New York. There were lots of ways to move into someone’s life to provide protection and search out information without raising questions. The idea was to assume a role other people would accept. He could pass himself off as her driver. Her assistant. Her personal trainer.

Personal trainer was pretty much what he’d decided on. Hollywood was filled with actors and actresses who worked on their bodies 24/7. He was fit; he’d look the part. And it would give him access to her no matter where she went.

Okay. Personal trainer it would be…

“Mr. Orsini?”

“Falco,” he said, looking down into her eyes. He saw the rise and fall of her breasts, remembered the soft, lush feel of her against him, and he knew he wasn’t going to pretend to be her trainer after all.

“Simple,” he said calmly. “We’ll make people think I’m your lover.”

She stared at him. Then she gave a little laugh.

“That’s crazy,” she said. “No one will believe—”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice low and rough, “yeah, they will.

Falco reached out, gathered Elle in his arms and kissed her.

Chapter Three

THE FEEL of her mouth under his was incredible.

Warm. Silken. And soft. Wonderfully soft.

Not that he cared about that.

He was kissing her only to wipe that smug little smile from her face. To show her, in no uncertain terms, that they sure as hell could play the part of lovers, fool anybody who saw them.

Did she think she was the only one who could stick to a script?

Or did she think a bodyguard was too far out of her class to seem a convincing lover for a woman like her?

She was fighting him. Trying to twist free of his arms, to drag her lips from his. To hell with that. That who-do-you-think-you-are attitude of hers deserved a blunt response. She was wrong and he wasn’t going to let her go until she knew it.

“No,” she gasped against his mouth, but she might as well have saved her breath. Falco speared his fingers into her hair, tilted her face to his and kept on kissing her.

So what if she tasted of honey and cream? If she felt warm and soft against him? Those things were meaningless. This was about nothing else than teaching her that she couldn’t laugh at Falco Orsini and get away with it.

He nipped lightly at her bottom lip. Touched the tip of his tongue to the seam of her mouth. With heart-stopping suddenness, she stopped fighting, stopped struggling.

She leaned into him, sighed and parted her lips. His tongue plunged deep.

The taste of her made his mind blur.

And his body react.

In an instant, he came fully erect, not just aroused but hard as stone, so hard it was painful. Desire pulsed hot and urgent in his blood. He slid his hands to her shoulders, cupped them, lifted her to her toes, drew her so close he could feel the race of her heart against his.

This was what he had wanted since he’d seen her in that first, unaltered ad. The eyes and mouth that promised passion, the made-for-sex body—

The knife that pressed against his belly caught him fully unaware.

Falco went absolutely still.

Where she’d gotten the knife was irrelevant. The feel of it wasn’t. With instincts and sharp reflexes honed by his time in Special Forces, he locked one hand around her forearm and grabbed her wrist with the other, bending it back until the knife clattered to the floor. He kicked it into a corner, saw that it wasn’t a knife at all but the slim plastic handle of a hairbrush. Not that it mattered.

It was the intent that counted.

“Let go of me!”

Her hands clawed for his face. He grunted, shoved her back against the unyielding door, used his weight to keep her in place. The only way she could hurt him was if she managed to throw him off and that was about as likely as the trailer sprouting wings. He had at least seven inches in height on her and probably eighty, ninety pounds of muscle.

“Stop it,” he snarled.

That only made her fight harder. Falco tightened his grasp on her wrists, brought her hands to her sides and pinned them to the door.

“I said, stop it! You want me to hurt you, I will.”

She made a choked sound but it wasn’t of rage, it was of terror. Her face, bright with color a moment ago, blanched. Those enormous topaz eyes turned glassy.

He’d flown out here to protect this woman. Instead, he was scaring her half to death. Kissing her had been a straight and simple matter of ego and he wasn’t into BS like that. He was who he was; he didn’t need anybody’s applause to do whatever job he set out to do, certainly not a client’s. He’d let his pride, whatever you wanted to call it, get in the way.

And he didn’t like it, not one bit.

“Listen to me.”

She wouldn’t. She was lost in her own world, fearing the worst.

“Ms. Bissette,” he said sharply. “Elle. Pay attention. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her eyes met his.

Hell. He’d seen a dog look at him like this once, years back when he was just a kid. He’d found the animal wandering an alley not far from the Orsini mansion in Greenwich Village. Its ribs had showed; there were marks he hadn’t wanted to identify on its back. Come on, boy, he’d said, holding out his hand, but the creature had looked at him through eyes that said it damned well knew his soft voice didn’t mean a thing.