Guardian of Her Heart

“Damn!” Jeremy said. “Well, you’ll have an opportunity to tell the right person soon. The head of our new security company is coming. He demanded this meeting, said he has something important to talk about. He didn’t sound happy. Maybe he already knows what’s going on.”

“I certainly hope so,” Wally stated. He was seated again, and his scowl added creases to his wrinkly, round face.

“If he doesn’t know now, we’ll make sure he jumps right on it,” Jeremy asserted, as usual assuming leadership.

The partnership between her bosses reminded Dianna of pairs of comedians from the past, since Jeremy was so much thinner than his counterpart. His perfectionism in business dealings carried through to his appearance, for even when he removed a tailored suit jacket, as he had for this meeting, his shirts were clearly of fine quality cottons or silks.

But the similarity to comedic teams stopped with their appearances. Though both men were kind, they tended to be serious. Neither was prone to crack jokes.

They both seemed equally rattled now.

“Look,” she said placatingly. “It wasn’t—”

A sound from outside Wally’s office interrupted her. Beth Baines, the attractive African-American receptionist, poked her head in. “Mr. Flynn is here with another man,” she said.

“Send them in,” Jeremy said. “Although Cal didn’t mention anyone else.”

Two men entered—and Dianna rose, clenching one fist so tightly that her nails dug into her skin.

Thank heavens. The new security team had come through.

Only—was she supposed to take part in the interrogation? “No,” she whispered aloud. She wanted no part of it.

One of the men, bulky and wearing a blue uniform, Dianna recognized from the group manning the metal detectors and conducting random searches of visitors at the building’s entry. He was obviously a representative of the security company.

But the other—it was the good-looking juggler from the courtyard. The man who’d unnerved Dianna. He strode confidently inside, followed by Julie.

“Are you going to show us more card tricks?” the child asked, her eyes aglow once more. Dianna wanted to whisk her from the room. Julie didn’t belong near this unpleasantness.

“Not now,” the man said with a smile. “I’ve some tricks to discuss with the adults.”

Tricks? Shakily, Dianna said to Julie, “Go back to your dad’s office, honey, and finish your homework. I’ll come help when we’re done here.” She gave the child a hug.

“Okay.” Julie’s look was baleful, but she obeyed.

The other man closed the office door behind her.

“What’s going on, Flynn?” Jeremy demanded. “Who is this?”

“He’s the man I told you about,” Dianna said coolly. “The one who tried to scare me outside on the plaza. He must have been hired by Farley.”

She glared at him, but he laughed aloud. Dianna felt her temper flare. Who was he?

She was able to ignore him for a moment as the uniformed man approached, holding out a hand. It felt like refrigerated meat as she shook it briefly, then let go.

“Ms. Englander.” He ducked his head as if in deference. His hair was light brown, and he had a bald spot at the crown. “I should have introduced myself before. I’m Cal Flynn, president of Flynn Security. I’ve stationed myself right alongside my staff because of the sensitive nature of the situation. Mr. Alberts called us in after you saw Glen Farley the first time.”

“That’s right,” Jeremy agreed. He sat again in the chair across from Dianna. “Flynn’s outfit is already making a lot of changes in the Center’s security.”

Cal Flynn’s smile broadened, revealing teeth so perfect Dianna wondered if he’d had them knocked out in the course of security assignments and replaced artificially.

Flynn continued, “Jeremy said you recently spotted the suspect a second time, and that you informed the police.”

That wasn’t exactly true. Dianna had mentioned it to her contact at the local police station, a community relations officer. It had been an offhand reference, but she’d told Jeremy nevertheless.

“That was fine, of course, but it would have been better if you let us handle the notification, since—”

“Since his feelings have been hurt,” said the juggler. He also approached Dianna, all but shouldering Flynn aside. His hand was out, too, but not to shake hers. He held a small leather case.

Dianna took the case, then glanced up at his face in surprise as she handed it back.

It was his ID. He was Lt. Travis Bronson of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Who is he?” Wally’s voice nearly exploded from behind his desk.

Dianna told him as the police officer and security man took seats at opposite ends of the couch.

Flynn faced Lt. Bronson. “We certainly appreciate your interest and help, sir, but we have things under control.”

Dianna doubted that. Farley was a murderer. And they certainly hadn’t captured him.

In any event, she had a lot of questions. She asked the first. “Why were you outside juggling, of all things, Lieutenant?”

“Keeping an eye on everything,” he said. “We’ve other guys posted around here undercover, too.”

“Aren’t you a bit obvious, with all your—” she wanted to say “gyrations,” but that word brought back too clearly her own reaction to his sexy moves “—juggling?” she finished lamely. “And tricks.”

“Ah, but what better way to draw people near so I can observe them?” The archness of his grin suggested he knew just what she had been thinking.

“But why?” Jeremy asked almost peevishly. “We’ve hired the best security there is. What’s going on here?” He took a position beside Wally’s desk. His arms were folded, and a scowl puckered his long face.

Lt. Bronson rose. He looked directly at Dianna. “Because you’re in danger.”

“What?” Wally drew his bulk from behind the desk and crossed to stand protectively beside Dianna. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Even if she saw Farley, that doesn’t necessarily mean—”

“Oh, it means a lot,” the cop said.

Dianna felt both annoyed and gratified. Wally had said if she saw Farley. One of her own bosses, her friend, apparently doubted her. It brought back some unpleasant memories.

But for the local police to have sent someone undercover to keep watch, they, at least, must be taking her seriously. What a relief, after being ignored so blatantly before. It felt strange, though, to think she had an ally of sorts in this irritating cop.

Dianna stood and walked toward the window behind Wally’s desk. Looking down toward the courtyard, she could not see the pushcart where she had first viewed the man.

She turned back toward the sofa where he sat once more, one muscular leg crossed nonchalantly over the other in his snug jeans. The security chief sat ramrod-stiff beside him, the tight expression on his bearlike face all but shouting his annoyance.

“Why do you think I’m in danger, Lieutenant?” she asked.

“My commander got a call from Officer Treya, a community relations officer here, at the Van Nuys Station. He told me about the Englander Dispute Resolution Center, and that the late Representative Englander’s widow works here. He also said you’d informed him of seeing your husband’s alleged murderer here a couple of times.”

“He’s more than an alleged murderer,” Jeremy contradicted. “Dianna saw him shoot Brad Englander.”

Only half-conscious of the gesture, Dianna placed her hand on her abdomen. Brad was not the only victim of that horrifying scene…. “But everyone’s innocent untilproven guilty in a court of law,” she recited in a monotone, watching a hint of amusement play in Lt. Bronson’s deep blue eyes. “Right, Lieutenant?”

He nodded and stood. “But I’m inclined to believe that an eyewitness is probably right. Which brings me back to why I’m here. Officer Treya asked a detective to look into the situation, but, as you know, Mrs. Englander, no one, not even the feds, has been able to nab the suspect. But Glen Farley’s been implicated in some other situations. One was recent—the bombing of a redevelopment area in downtown L.A.”

Dianna’s heart rate speeded up as if she had pressed on an accelerator. “I hadn’t heard that Farley was involved.” She kept her breathing even. “But I’m not surprised.” And that explained why, this time, she was being taken seriously.

“It’s just speculation so far,” the police officer said calmly. “In any event, we’re placing a few strategic undercover officers to keep an eye on the Englander Center, just in case.”

“Just in case what?” demanded Cal Flynn.

“Just in case he decides that one bombing in the L.A. area isn’t enough. Or—” he continued, looking directly at Dianna “—if he thinks that murdering one Englander isn’t enough, either.”

Chapter Two

Travis almost wished he hadn’t left his knives outside, locked in the cart. Juggling would help right about now.

He shoved his hands hard into the pockets of his jeans—his damn restless hands, hands that wanted to touch the lovely woman who’d gone so pale before his eyes. To help her to her chair and steady her now as she stumbled over the few steps to get there.

To hold her tight and comfort away the fear that made her gnaw, with perfect white teeth, on her lush bottom lip.

“We need you to cooperate, Ms. Englander.” His voice barked more gruffly than he’d intended. She was simply another citizen. One under his protection. No one under his protection would be harmed ever again, nor would he allow himself to care about one more than others. He’d learned that lesson well. He would simply do his job. And this time, he would do it right.

“I’m sure she’ll cooperate.” The slimeworm Flynn was talking, a hell of a lot more placatingly than before. His turf was being invaded by the cops, and he clearly didn’t like it one damned bit. But he could hardly tell the LAPD to go chase itself—at least not in so many words.

With only the slightest squaring of her slim shoulders beneath her dark suit jacket, Dianna Englander seemed to regain control. She sat, then crossed one slender ankle over the other.

Her skirt was short. Or was it that her legs were long? In either case, their endless, shapely forms tantalized Travis.

He abruptly drew his gaze back to her face. Solemnity raised her small, slightly pointed chin.

“Look, officer.” Jeremy Alberts had taken Dianna’s former position near the window. “Of course we’ll cooperate. But we need to make sure the Center and its business aren’t compromised. It’s not unusual these days for buildings to have beefed up security, and we did that. But if people learn the police have us under special surveillance…well, that’s different.”

“Of course,” Travis echoed sardonically. “We wouldn’t want to compromise your business just to save a life or two.”

The other guy from the building, Wally Sellers, who was walking back toward his desk chair, made a sound as if he had swallowed his spit wrong.

“That’s uncalled for.” Dianna Englander rose to face Travis. Her bright blue eyes were ablaze with indignation. There was no sign of her earlier fear. That, at least, was good.

“Sorry,” Travis said, though he knew he didn’t sound in the least chastened. “We don’t intend to harm the Englander Center. There’ll be less possibility of that if you cooperate.”

“Of course,” she acknowledged with a curt nod. “What would you like me to do?”

Travis had done his research. He knew that Jeremy Alberts and Wally Sellers were partners in A-S Development. A-S had formed a public-private partnership with the City of Los Angeles to build the Englander Center at the edge of the Van Nuys civic center, to extend the redevelopment of the area. Only it wasn’t called Englander Center then. It was renamed for the U.S. Representative whose redevelopment efforts caused it to be built after he was murdered during its construction two years ago.

“First thing,” he said, “I’d like you to give me a tour of Englander Center.”

“I’d be glad to later,” Jeremy Alberts interceded, taking a step toward Travis. The fiftyish man, whose hair had gone silver, was obviously used to being in control. Travis wondered idly if his partner Wally ever got his way in an argument. As between the domineering Alberts and his chubby, uneasily smiling partner, Travis suspected Wally had his mind changed often if it dared to hold a differing opinion. “We have people coming in for a meeting now, but I’ll show you around soon as they’re gone. Or perhaps you would like Mr. Flynn to do it.”

“Thanks,” Travis said, “but I meant Ms. Englander. I want her insight on the place, plus I need for her to point out exactly where she thought she saw Farley.”

“I’ll be glad to show you where I did see Farley,” she asserted. Good. She’d taken the bait. This way, she’d insist on giving him the tour, to try to assuage any doubt he had. And he didn’t have much. If anyone would recognize Glen Farley, it was Dianna Englander.

“Fine,” he said. “There’s more you can fill me in on, too.”

“Like what?” Her clear blue gaze challenged him. Though she’d said she would cooperate, she seemed to expect him to come up with something she would refuse.

He had a feeling that, in a clash of wills between Dianna Englander and himself, he’d need a tie-breaker.

That wasn’t good. Not when he had to make sure nothing happened to her, with her husband’s worst enemy so close.

“I’ve read in the local newspaper,” he said, not moving his gaze from hers, “that the Van Nuys civic center is about to have a street fair as a fund-raiser for more redevelopment.”

“That’s right,” Dianna said. “I’ve been working with government agencies and local merchants to put it together.”

“Security will be beefed up, too,” Flynn huffed importantly. “We’re already planning it, along with the private companies that support other nearby buildings.”

“Any idea why that date was chosen?” Travis ignored the pompous security guy and kept his gaze firmly on Dianna’s. Of course, he knew the answer.

“It coincides with the first anniversary of the opening of Englander Center,” she said.

“I need to have you fill me in on the festivities,” he said. “What the public has been told. Whether there’s anything Glen Farley might know about the celebration, and anything he doesn’t—or shouldn’t—know.”

“Oh.” One small hand flew to Dianna Englander’s mouth. “Oh, what?” Wally Sellers asked. He appeared confused.

“I wondered,” Dianna said slowly, “when we first talked about the fair, if it was a good idea, but I got so caught up—”

“That you failed to consider whether some anti-redevelopment nut like Farley might consider it a challenge,” Travis finished.

“What do you mean?” Wally still didn’t get it. He rose to stand beside Dianna. He was about her height, his hair black and thick, and it was hard to tell where his chin ended and his neck began. “We need good press,” he continued. “A few months ago, a celebrity couple worked out their divorce settlement here, in the Center. We got such good publicity that our conference rooms are scheduled months ahead for arbitrations and mediations. We’ve even been booked for movie shoots in our simulated courtrooms. A big anniversary celebration will put us in the news again, bring more business. Maybe even more movie shoots.”

“Farley might have come here because of the anniversary celebration, Wally,” Dianna said quietly. “He may intend to do something to…” She hesitated, as if the things she contemplated as within Farley’s plans were too terrible to voice.

Travis had no such compunction. “Something that would definitely get your center publicity on its first birthday,” he said. “A bombing? Killing the widow of the Center’s namesake? What better time than a celebration to make his perverted point?”

SINCE SEEING FARLEY the second time, Dianna had avoided parking in her designated space in the garage. She paid for valet parking, a service offered by Englander Center that allowed more visitors to stow their cars in the building’s lot and added an extra touch of prestige to the dispute resolution center.

But now she was visiting her empty second-floor parking space. She ignored her apprehension. This time, she was not alone. And even if Glen Farley didn’t realize that the tall, muscular pushcart peddler standing beside her was a trained—and probably armed—policeman, Dianna knew it.

She kept her voice low. “He was over there,” she said to Lt. Bronson. Travis. He’d told her, before they began their tour, to call him by his first name.

In fact, he’d told her to do a lot of things. She was to cooperate. To show him around. To treat him like a pushcart peddler trying, as so many actors and others in L.A. did, to get discovered as a street entertainer, a guy who also tried to get his friends a break: showing off their skills at the anniversary celebration. His apparent attempts to convince her to hire his buddies and him would be the ostensible reason for their spending time together in the next week, as he and his fellow multitalented officers watched over her and the Center.

And, he’d told her with determination, they would nab Farley.

When Travis and she reached the lobby, he told her to let him get out of the elevator first. She had been married to a man who had told her exactly what to do. Sometimes she had listened. Sometimes she hadn’t, yet she’d had to give up her public relations career in favor of his political one. As a result, there had been friction between them—she’d hated his commands—but there had been love, too.

Except—if Brad had known when to keep his mouth shut, when not to issue commands, might he still be alive today?

And their baby—

“Let’s go over exactly where you were standing, and what else you remember,” Travis said. “All right, Dianna?”

She had automatically responded, when he’d said to call him by his first name, that he should use hers as well. Even though it was the norm these days not to use the more formal title of Mr., Mrs. or Ms. whatever—or, in his case, Lieutenant—she now regretted the informality. It seemed almost…well, intimate, for the two of them to be on a first name basis. And Dianna did not want to be in the least intimate with any man, particularly not an officious officer of the law—even to support his cover.

“All right, Travis.” The coolness in her voice earned her a sideways look from the man who had been surveying their surroundings. Deliberately, she explained where her car had been parked both times and where she’d been standing. “The first time I saw him, he got out of a white car parked a few vehicles away in a reserved space.” She shuddered at the recollection. Farley had known where she was. Why not? She’d made no secret of where she now worked—in the building her husband had once championed that now bore his name.

It was no surprise, either, that he found her in the parking garage, near her spot at the time she usually arrived for work in the morning. If he had been watching her, he would know that.

“Are you all right, Dianna?” Travis’s deep voice rang with concern, and it snapped her from her reverie.

She looked up, focused on the planes of the face of the man beside her, the light shadow of beard barely showing beneath his rugged skin.

He was staring intently, as if he figured she would break.

She wouldn’t. But neither would she look, right then, at the confining walls of the parking garage. The cars that could disgorge Farley at any moment.

She described the scene she’d been reliving.

“And you think Farley knew this was your space, and that you would be there then?”

She nodded. “He got out of his car long enough to smile at me.” She cleared her throat. “He got back in and drove away.”

“I don’t suppose you got his license number.”

“Part of it—a California plate that began with 4ACR.”

Travis jotted it down in a small notebook he extracted from a pocket. “Probably rented with a false ID or stolen, but we’ll see if we can figure it out.”

“I’m not sure what kind of car it was, either,” she continued. “It was a sedan that looked like a high-end Japanese import. But when I saw Farley again, I didn’t see the same car, and that time he just seemed to disappear without driving away.”

“Okay. You’re doing fine, Dianna. Now, let’s go over this again.” Question by question, he led her carefully through the events before, during and after both sightings of Farley, continuing to make notes.

The telling became cathartic, for when she was done, she was able to lead him to where she had seen Farley each time, without hesitation. Without fear.

Except when, in the middle of her attempt to recall what Farley had been wearing, she took a step backward and a car horn sounded right behind her. She jumped, reaching out to grasp the nearest thing she could for comfort.

It turned out to be Travis’s hand.

He squeezed hers in return, pulling her out of the way by putting his other hand soothingly on her back.

Only it wasn’t soothing at all. It was unnerving to have her hand held, to be caressed, by a man, a stranger, in plain view of anyone who might be watching.

It also felt much too good. It had been a long time since she had been touched and held by any man.

That’s all it was, of course, her strange reaction to this undercover cop. A perfectly human, perfectly understandable response to the touch of another human being.

The car that honked rolled by, the elderly female driver scowling as if she considered anyone near her driving lane to be in her way. Dianna shook her head in exasperation, retrieved her hand from the warm clasp of Travis’s and took a few steps back.

“Look,” she said, “it’s not enough for you to understand what I’ve seen here. There’s a lot more…. I don’t know how much you know about Farley or what he did.”

She assumed he didn’t know everything—like the reputation she’d been burdened with—or he wouldn’t be here now.

“Some. But why don’t you tell me?”

As if she could compress years of anguish into a few brief sentences. But she had to try. “Do you know he once owned a small company that sold security equipment?” At Travis’s nod, she continued, “He blamed my husband for putting him out of business when a redevelopment bill Brad championed was passed and the building Farley leased was torn down. He got his revenge by killing Brad. And Farley’s knowledge of security—well, he’s elusive. He knows what the authorities look for and how to avoid detection. But he’s made sure that I’ve seen him.”

She waited for Lt. Bronson to suggest that maybe she’d seen him too much…but he didn’t. Thank heavens.

“Why?” he asked.

She waved her hand in frustration. “To scare me, I guess. But why he wants to, especially after all this time…” She shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

“We’ll find out when we nab him. Meantime, if you think of anything else important, let me know.”

TRAVIS HAD NO INTENTION of admiring Dianna Englander’s guts.

Admiration was too close to the commencement of caring. And caring came too close to failure. And loss.

But he realized nevertheless, while he followed her slender, sexily swaying body as she hurried back toward the elevators, that he did admire her guts.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she was terrified by the man who’d killed her husband. But despite the traumatic recollections of seeing Farley that Travis forced her to relive, she came off cool and collected, if a little nervous.

All right, a lot nervous, he conceded as he watched her all but collapse against the elevator wall when they were both in the otherwise empty car.

But he’d jumped a little, too, when that impatient driver had honked a horn behind them. It had been reflex to reach out for Dianna’s extended hand. Pull her back out of harm’s way.

Better that than reach for the snub-nosed gun he wore in a holster at his ankle.

“Do you mind if we make a stop before we go back into the Center?” Dianna asked as the car descended.