Falco: The Dark Guardian

He’d won the dog’s trust by squatting down, holding out his arms, showing his hands were empty. What was the human equivalent of that kind of message?

Falco cleared his throat.

“Okay. Here’s what happens next. I’ll let go of you and step back. You stay where you are. No hands, no fists, no weapons. And we’ll talk. That’s it. We’ll just talk.”

He gave it a couple of seconds. Then he did what he’d told her he’d do. Another couple of seconds went by. She didn’t move. Neither did he. That was some kind of success, wasn’t it? A little color had returned to her face. Another plus. Finally, she took a deep breath.

“I want you to leave.”

Her voice was low but steady. Her eyes had lost that terrified glitter. Good. Maybe now they really could talk.

“Look, Ms. Bissette—”

“I said—”

“I heard you. But we need to discuss this.”

“We have nothing to discuss.”

She was back. He could see it in the way she held herself, in the lift of her chin, the steadiness of her gaze.

“Actually, we do. I’m sorry if I frightened you but—”

“Frightened me?” Her eyes narrowed. “You disgusted me!”

“Excuse me?”

“Putting your hands on me. Your mouth on me.” Her chin went up another notch. “Men like you are…you’re despicable!”

Falco felt a muscle jump in his cheek. He’d been called similar names, a long time back, though they’d been names that were far more basic. It happened when you were a kid and your old man was Cesare Orsini.

He’d learned to respond to such remarks with his fists.

Not this time, obviously. This time, he flashed a cold smile.

“Trust me, Ms. Bissette. The feeling is mutual. I’m not into women who look into a camera as if they want to screw the guy behind it. I was simply making a point.”

“You made it. You’re contemptible.”

Falco gave an exaggerated sigh. “Disgusting, despicable, contemptible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.”

Elle Bissette folded her arms. “I’ll bet you have.”

“You said we couldn’t fool anybody if we pretended we were lovers. I figured I could save us ten minutes of talk by showing you that you were wrong.”

“Well, you didn’t. And I wasn’t. I’m an actress but playing at being your lover would take more talent that even I possess.”

Her insults almost made him laugh. From poor little victim to haughty aristocrat in the blink of an eye. Damned right, she was an actress.

But he was willing to bet that her terror a little while ago had not been an act.

“Look,” he said in as conciliatory a tone as he could manage, “why don’t we start over? We’ll go somewhere, have a cup of coffee, you’ll fill me in on why you need a bodyguard—”

“I do not need a bodyguard. Are you deaf? I want you out of here, right now.”

She pointed an elegant hand at the door and tossed her head. Her hair, a mane of jet black, flew around her face. He’d bet she’d practiced the gesture in front of a mirror until it looked just right.

“Get out or I’ll scream so loud it’ll bring half the world running.”

Enough, Falco thought grimly. He took a step forward and clasped her elbows.

“That’s fine,” he said coldly. “Go right ahead. Scream your head off.”

“You think I won’t? I will! And five minutes after that, you’ll be in jail.”

“You left out a step. The part where the cops show up.” He tightened his hold on her and hauled her to her toes, his head lowered so their faces were inches apart. “They’ll want to have a nice, long chat with you, baby. Are you up for that?”

She stared at him. The color drained from her face and she became still.

“What’s the matter, Ms. Bissette? Don’t you like that idea?” She didn’t answer and he flashed a smile as cold as a New York winter. “Maybe, if we’re really lucky, the paparazzi will come by along with the cops. Then you can talk to the whole world.”

Whatever fight was left in her was gone. She went limp under his hands, her head drooped forward and all at once he thought, to hell with this! He had not flown 3,000 miles to play games. She found him disgusting? Her prerogative. She had a reason to keep the cops away? Her prerogative again. She was not his problem, none of this was. How he’d let himself be drawn into the mess was beyond him but no way was he going to get drawn in any deeper.

The lady had said “no,” and “no” it was.

“Relax,” he said, his tone flat as he let go of her and stepped back. “You don’t need to scream to get rid of me. Just move away from the door and I’m out of here.”

She didn’t move. He rolled his eyes, shouldered past her and reached for the knob.

“Wait a minute.”

Falco looked over his shoulder. Elle Bissette swallowed; he saw the muscles move in her throat. Which color were here eyes? Amber or topaz? The thought was so completely inappropriate, it made him angry.

“What now?” he growled.

“Mr. Orsini.” She hesitated. “This is your—your line of work? You’re a bodyguard?”

He smiled thinly. “I am any number of things, Ms. Bissette, but it’s a little late to ask for my CV.”

“The thing is…I didn’t ask for a bodyguard.”

“Here’s a news flash, baby. I didn’t ask for the job.”

“But you said someone sent you.”

“I said someone I know told me you had a problem and asked me to check it out.” His mouth twisted. “And here I am.”

“Look, it’s not my fault you agreed to do a favor for a friend and—”

“He isn’t a friend and I don’t do favors for anybody.” Falco heaved out a breath. Why get into any of that? How he’d come to be here didn’t matter, especially since he was about to leave. “It’s a long story and it doesn’t change the facts. I came here because I was under the impression you needed help.” Another thin smile. “I was wrong.”

“You were wrong,” she said quickly. “You can see for yourself, I’m just fine.”

He thought of the terror that had shone in her eyes a little while ago. Well, maybe it was true. Maybe she was fine. Maybe all that fear had been strictly of him.

“Really, I’m fine. I’m just wondering why you…why someone would have thought otherwise.”

Falco dug his hands into the pockets of his flannel trousers. “You posed for a magazine ad,” he said. “A provocative one.”

Her chin rose again. He’d seen pro boxers with the same habit. It wasn’t a good one, not if you didn’t want to end up in trouble.

“It was a lingerie ad, Mr. Orsini, not an ad for—for Hershey’s chocolate.”

He grinned. “No argument there, Ms. Bissette.” His grin faded. “Fifty thousand lovesick idiots went out and bought their girlfriends whatever it is you were wearing in that ad, then wondered why it didn’t look on them the way it looked on you.”

She stiffened. He could almost see the gears working. She was trying to figure out if what he’d said was a compliment or an insult.

“For your information,” she said coldly, “statistics show that women are the target audience for lingerie ads.”

“Great. So fifty thousand broads went out and bought that outfit, put it on, looked in the mirror and wondered what the hell had gone wrong.”

For a fraction of a second, she looked as if she wanted to laugh. Then that chin rose again.

“Is there a point to this, Mr. Orsini?”

“Damned right. All those people looked at an ad and saw an ad.” His voice became chill. “One sicko saw something else and decided to—what’s today’s favorite psychobabble term? He decided to ‘share’ what he saw with you.”

A flush rose in her cheeks. “You’ve seen what that—that person sent me.”

Falco nodded. “Yes.”

He expected a rant. Indignation, that Farinelli had sent the thing to someone. Instead, she shuddered.

“It was—it was horrible,” she whispered.

A fraction of his anger dissipated. She looked tired and vulnerable; she was frightened even though she was determined to claim she wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to do anything to protect herself. It made no sense.

“It was worse than horrible.” He waited a beat. “Why won’t you go to the cops?”

“You said it yourself. It was just the work of some—some crazy.”

“Crazies can be dangerous,” Falco said. “He should be found.”

She stared at him, her eyes suddenly filled with that same despair he’d seen in the photo of her on the beach.

“That would mean publicity.”

“Publicity’s better than turning up dead.”

His blunt statement was deliberate. He’d hoped to shock her into telling him the real reason she didn’t want to go to the police—he’d have bet a thousand bucks there wasn’t an actor or actress on the planet who didn’t want publicity, good or bad—but he could see that wasn’t going to happen.

“It’s just a prank,” she said, very calmly. “Stuff like that happens. I mean, this is Hollywood.”

“Has he contacted you again?”

“You already asked me that. I told you, he hasn’t.”

She’d lied again. So what? So what if there was more to this than she was letting on? Fifteen minutes from now, he’d be on a plane heading back to New York.

“Just that one thing?” he heard himself ask. “Nothing else?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” A smile as false as the one she wore in that lingerie ad curved her lips. “Look, I’m not worried. Really. There’s security on the set. I have an alarm system in my house.” Another smile. A toss of the head. Forget despair. What he saw in those topaz eyes now was dismissal. “At any rate, thank you for coming to see me.”

Falco shrugged. “No problem.”

She held out her hand. It was a queen’s gesture. She was discharging him, her subject.

Something flickered inside him.

Had that softening of her mouth under his, that barely perceptible sigh, really all been an act? Had she been diverting him so he wouldn’t expect that phony knife at his belly? Or had it been real? That sudden, sexy little sound she’d made. The way she’d parted her lips beneath his.

One step forward. One tug on those slender fingers extended toward him. Then she’d be in his arms, her breasts soft against his hard chest, her thighs against his, her lips his for the taking. And he would take them, he’d kiss her again and again, taking each kiss deeper than the last until she moaned and rose to him, whispered her need and her hunger against his mouth…

Dammit, was he insane?

She didn’t go for men like him. Hey, that was fine. He didn’t go for women like her. And he sure as hell wasn’t turned on by women who flaunted their sexuality, who all but invited a faceless sea of men to get off on thinking what it would be like to take her to bed.

Falco ignored her outstretched hand.

“Goodbye, Ms. Bissette,” he said, and he opened the door of the trailer and stepped briskly into the heat of the desert.

The afternoon’s shoot began badly and went downhill from there.

It made the morning’s attempts look good.

Everybody was unhappy.

The heat was awful; they’d been breaking early because of it but Farinelli announced that they were going to get this scene filmed or, per Dio, nobody was leaving!

Elle just could not get the scene right. Not her fault, she kept telling herself. The encounter with Falco Orsini had shaken her. She’d done her best to be polite to him at the end but it hadn’t been easy. Finding him in her trailer, a stranger so tall, so powerful that he’d seemed to fill the space…

And the way he’d kissed her, as if he could make her want to kiss him back.

Some women might; even she knew that. Not her, though. She hated the whole sex thing. It was like a bad joke, a woman hired for her sex appeal in an ad, but it wasn’t a joke, it was the terrible truth. A man’s wet mouth, his rough hands…

Falco Orsini’s mouth had not been wet. It had been warm and hard and possessive but not wet. And his hands…hard, yes. Strong. But he hadn’t touched her roughly…

Elle gave herself a mental shake.

So what? The point was, he’d had no right to kiss her even though he’d done it in response to her telling him she and he could never pretend they were lovers. Besides, it didn’t matter. He would not be her bodyguard. Nobody would. Nobody would poke and pry and ask questions she had no intention of answering…

“…listening to me, Elle?”

She blinked. Antonio was standing close to her while everyone waited. “This is a love scene. A very important one. You must convey passion. Desire. Hunger. And you must do it with your eyes, your hands, your face. There is no kissing in this scene, sì? There is only teasing. Of your character, of Chad’s character, of the audience.” He took her arm, looked up at her, his expression determined. “You can do this. Relax. Forget the cameras, the crew. Forget everything but whatever brought that look to your face in the advertisement you did for Bon Soir.”

Elle almost laughed. She’d had small movie roles before but that ad had gotten her this big part. What if people knew that “that look” had been the lucky result of an unlucky sinus infection? A heady combination of aspirin, decongestant and nasal-and-throat spray had miraculously translated to glittering eyes, slumberous lids and parted lips.

Better not to mention that, of course.

“One last try,” Farinelli said softly. “I want you to imagine yourself in the arms of a man whose passion overcomes your most basic inhibitions, a man who stirs you as no other ever could. Imagine a flesh-and-blood lover, bella, one you have known and never forgotten. Put Chad out of your mind.”

Chad rolled his eyes. “Damn, Antonio. You really know how to hurt a guy.”

The joke was deliberate. A tension reliever, and it worked. Everybody laughed. Elle managed a smile. Farinelli patted her hand, stepped away, then raised his hand like the Pope about to give a benediction.

“And, action!”

Elle lay back in her co-star’s arms. Her heart was racing with nerves. What had she been thinking, letting her agent convince her to take this part? What Antonio wanted of her was impossible. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t look into a man’s eyes and want him not even when it was make-believe.

Having a man’s hands on her. His wet mouth on her mouth. God, oh, God…

“Look at me,” Chad’s character said. It was a line of dialogue he’d repeated endless times today. Elle looked up, just as she had done endless times today…

And saw not his movie-star handsome face, but the beautiful, proud, masculine face of Falco Orsini.

Obsidian eyes. Thin, aristocratic nose. Chiseled jaw and a hard, firm mouth—a mouth that she could still remember for its warmth, its hunger, its possessiveness.

An ache swept through her body, heat burned from her breasts to low in her belly…

“And, cut!”

Elle blinked. She stared at the man looking down at her. Chad, her co-star, who flashed a toothy grin.

“Elle, mia bella!” Antonio Farinelli hurried toward her. She heard a smattering of applause, a couple of whistles as he held out his hands and helped her to her feet. “Brava, Elle. That was perfetto!” He brought his fingers to his lips and kissed them. “The screen will sizzle!”

Chad rose beside her and winked. “I don’t know who you were thinkin’ about, honey, but he is sure one lucky guy.”

A quarter of a mile away, half-concealed by a Joshua tree, Falco Orsini slammed a pair of high-powered binoculars into a leather case and tossed it into the front seat of his rented SUV.

What a hell of a performance! Elle Bissette and a cameraman. Elle Bissette and an actor. And when this movie hit the theaters, Elle Bissette and a couple of million faceless men.

She was hot for every guy in the world.

Except him.

No that he gave a damn.

What got to him was that he’d flown 3,000 miles and she’d sent him packing. Her choice, but he couldn’t stop thinking about that look in her eyes in the beach photo and again in the trailer, a look that spelled FEAR in capital letters.

Something was happening and no way was he leaving until he knew what it was. Falco got into the SUV and settled in to wait.

Chapter Four

AN HOUR passed before he saw her. She was heading for the cars parked near the set. He’d figured her for something bright and expensive. He was right about the bright part, but expensive? He smiled. The lady drove a red Beetle.

He’d been wrong about her destination, too. He’d figured her for a rented house in Palm Springs or maybe a glitzy hotel but she headed northwest. To L.A.? It was a fairly long drive but this was Friday. She was probably heading home for the weekend.

Following her wasn’t a problem. There was plenty of traffic, plus she turned out to be a conservative driver, staying in the right-hand lane and doing a steady 65 miles per hour.

He settled in a few of cars behind her.

After a while, her right turn signal light blinked on. She took an exit ramp that led to the kind of interchange he was pretty sure existed only in California, a swirl of interlocking roads that looked as if somebody had dumped a pot of pasta and called the resultant mess a highway system.

Freeway. That was what they called them here. He remembered that when the Bissette woman took a freeway headed north.

Still no problem but where was she going?

Another thirty minutes went by before her turn signal came on again. This time, the exit led into a town so small he’d have missed it had he blinked. Following her wasn’t so simple now, especially after she hung a couple of lefts and ended up on a two-lane country blacktop.

Traffic was sparse. A couple of cars, a truck carrying a load of vegetables, that was about all.

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