by Lisa Childs
No. He trusted that the chief and Parker would make sure she didn’t have a call as close as this one again. He wasn’t so arrogant to think that he was the best bodyguard. There were men and women who’d been doing it longer and better than he had.
No. It was safer—for both of them—if someone other than he was Wendy’s bodyguard.
* * *
What had she done? What had she said? What had caused Hart to suddenly walk away from the assignment as if he’d been anxious to go? To leave her?
Sure, Wendy hadn’t been very gracious or grateful that he’d saved her life. And she had to admit to herself now that he had. She wanted to believe that Terrance Gibbs wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. But he’d been desperate.
The day after the shooting in the lab, she’d learned from the chief’s investigation that Gibbs’s son had been in debt to Luther. His kid would have died had Terrance not done as Luther ordered.
Since it was between Wendy’s life or his son’s, she had no doubt that Gibbs would have chosen his son’s. Hart had been right to shoot him.
To save her as he had so many times before. But then he’d just walked, or rather, he’d limped off. Maybe he’d been in too much pain from his gunshot wound. She’d seen the grimace on his face as he’d crossed the lab.
Or maybe he’d just been missing his daughter too much to stay away from Felicity any longer. Like Terrance Gibbs, Hart would choose his child every time.
That was the way it should be. Wendy wasn’t jealous of Felicity. She knew it didn’t matter whether Hart had a child or not. Even if he wasn’t a father, he wouldn’t have fallen for Wendy.
She had been nothing but an assignment to him. And, until that assignment, he hadn’t ever paid her any attention despite her crush on him.
Heat rushed to her face. Then she remembered those times they’d made love and heat rushed to other parts of her body.
Hart had warned her not to have any expectations, that he would never marry again. Was he not entirely over his ex-wife? Was that why he couldn’t give his heart to anyone else? Or was it that she’d hurt him so badly that he would never trust another woman?
“You okay?” Nikki Payne-Ecklund asked her.
Wendy sighed and then nodded. Nikki was a good bodyguard; she’d proved herself to her brothers and to Wendy herself.
Yet Wendy didn’t feel quite as safe as she had when Hart had been protecting her. The only thing he had failed to protect was her heart, despite his efforts to warn her against falling for him.
When he’d walked away, he’d broken it—her heart. She doubted she would recover any more than he had after his divorce.
“It’s just hard...” Wendy murmured. “Not working.”
Nikki smiled. “It’s just been a day.”
“But there’s evidence to process. The bomb fragments...” Frustration nagged at her, not just that she couldn’t work, but about those crime scenes, the ones at the SUV explosion and the hotel...
Something wasn’t right.
“I don’t think it’s just work you’re missing,” Nikki said with a smile.
“This isn’t about Hart,” Wendy protested. But it was a lie. It was about Hart. Everything was about Hart for her. “He needs to be with his daughter.”
Nikki bobbed her head in agreement.
“Is he?” she asked hopefully.
Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know. The chief and Parker are keeping her and your parents’ whereabouts top secret. They don’t want anyone to find them.”
“Not even Hart?”
“They’re both parents,” Nikki said. “I’m sure they will tell him. But no one else can know.”
Wendy got the message. She wouldn’t be able to see her parents or Felicity. That was good. Being close to her had only put them in danger, like it had Hart.
He was much safer away from her. But that ache in her chest didn’t ease. Maybe she just ached for missing him, though, because she did miss him. So damn much...
And it had only been a day.
* * *
Luther cursed. He’d been warned the day before that Gibbs was dead. And the son of a bitch had run his mouth off before he died.
But his lawyer had assured him it didn’t matter. Since he was dead, he couldn’t testify against him. And anything he might have said to Wendy Thompson or Hart Fisher was inadmissible in court since it was all just hearsay.
No. Hart had done him a favor when he’d killed the evidence tech. But Gibbs wasn’t the tech that Luther really wanted dead. He had to get rid of Wendy Thompson once and for all—before she disappeared like her parents had, like the eyewitness had. And he had no doubt that she eventually would.
The Payne Protection Agency was too damn good. So good that Luther probably needed to get rid of every damn one of them. And he knew just where he would start. With Hart Fisher.
Chapter 20
“Someone wants to talk to you,” Nikki said as she held out her cell phone to Wendy.
Her hand shook as she took it. Was it Hart? Had he realized that he cared about her, too? God, she was still being too naive if she seriously expected that to happen.
She had only been an assignment to him. One that, after his initial anger over being removed, he’d had no problem walking away from...
“Hello,” she said slowly, cautiously.
“Winnie!” a young voice squealed, and the cell speaker rattled.
Wendy smiled. “Hey, my beautiful princess, how are you doing?”
“Good,” Hart’s daughter replied. “Me and Mama Mags made the cookies you made with her when you was little like me.”
Mama Mags. That was what her father had always had his football team call his wife. She’d claimed she hated it, but she’d smiled every time one of them had used it. That was what Wendy wanted someday for herself: the same kind of relationship her parents had. One that was full of love and teasing and trust.
She would never have that with Hart. He’d been broken when his ex-wife had shattered his heart. He wouldn’t be able to trust again.
Wendy could hardly blame him. Her heart ached so much that she knew she wouldn’t willingly risk it again.
“You’ll have to save some of those cookies for me,” Wendy told the little girl. “They’re my favorite.” She had no idea what kind they’d made, though. Her mother loved to bake and Wendy had had many favorites.
“Daddy’s coming,” Felicity said. “But I won’t let him eat all of them.”
“Okay,” Wendy said, her voice cracking a little with emotion. She wanted to be there, too.
As if she had the same longing, Felicity asked, “When are you coming?”
“I...I still have work to do,” Wendy replied. And she did—if anyone would let her back into her damn lab. Of course, it, too, had become a crime scene.
For a crime against her, so she wouldn’t be able to process it just as she hadn’t been able to process the others.
She had never thanked Hart for once again saving her life. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she might never have the chance.
“When is your daddy supposed to get there?” she asked Felicity.
The little girl’s voice was muffled as she repeated the question to someone else. Then another voice replaced Felicity’s high-pitched one.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Mom greeted Wendy. “How are you doing?”
Not well. But she wouldn’t admit that to her mother. “Good,” she said.
Her mother sighed. “You’re not good at that, Wendy.”
Lying.
She knew. They’d caught her in every single lie she’d ever told them.
“I am still worried about all of you,” Wendy admitted. “Are you really doing fine?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “We are having so much fun with this amazing little p
rincess. You need to join us, sweetheart. Then everything would be perfect.”
Tears stung her eyes as Wendy imagined how that could be. Her parents, that sweet little girl and Hart, all together, laughing, cooking, enjoying each other’s company.
But that would never happen. Because Wendy was in danger. And Hart didn’t love her.
She blinked back the rush of tears and wrinkled her nose against the sting of them. “No,” Wendy replied. “I can’t join you. I would only put you all in danger.”
“Wendy—”
She ignored her mom’s interruption and continued. “Like I did Hart.”
“Is that why he’s coming here without you? Did you fire him?”
She hadn’t been able to do that; she wouldn’t have wanted to. He really was an amazing bodyguard. She wouldn’t have survived this long without him.
“I convinced his boss to reassign him,” she explained. “To a less dangerous assignment.”
“Wendy—”
“He’s a single father, Mom,” she reminded her. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if Felicity lost her daddy because of me.”
“Luther Mills,” her mother corrected her. “He’s responsible for all of this. Not you.”
That was true. But if she was like the others—like Terrance Gibbs and that rookie cop and all the ones who’d helped Luther cover up his crimes—she wouldn’t be in danger and neither would anyone she cared about.
Then again, Gibbs and the rookie were dead.
Maybe, eventually, people would figure out that they had more to fear from working for Luther than against him. She only hoped that happened before anyone else got hurt.
She flinched as she remembered how Hart had fallen when that bullet had taken him down. For one horrific moment she’d thought he was dead. That Felicity’s father was gone.
Wendy’s lover...
But he wasn’t her lover. He didn’t love her. But she loved him—enough to let him go to keep him safe.
What if he wasn’t in danger only because of her?
The thought had been niggling at her for a while now. Because of that bomb and the shooting at the hotel.
They didn’t make sense to her.
“Do you know when Hart was supposed to be there?” she asked.
She could hear the smile in her mother’s voice when she replied, “Were you hoping to speak to him, too?”
No. She would be embarrassed for him to think that she’d had Nikki call so she could talk to him. He would probably think she was stalking him.
“I just wondered if he was late.”
Her mother paused for a long moment. “Now that you mention it, we did think he was arriving this morning.”
It was afternoon.
“Okay, Mom, I need to go now,” Wendy said. She needed to find Hart. Not to speak to him but just to make sure that he was okay. “I’ll talk to you soon. And I’ll see you when the trial is over.”
“Oh, Wendy, are you sure you have to wait—”
“Love you and Dad...” And Felicity, too. That was why she needed to find the little girl’s father. She clicked off Nikki’s phone and handed it back to the female bodyguard. “Call Parker,” she said. “Please.”
Nikki’s brown eyes narrowed as she studied Wendy’s face. “I thought talking to your mom would make you feel better. It always does me.”
Wendy shook her head. The talk with her mother had only made her feel worse. “It made me even more certain that my fears are right.”
“That you’re in love with Hart?” Nikki asked.
She was, but Wendy shook her head again. “That he’s still in danger.”
* * *
That damn feeling was back and so intense that it was tearing up Parker’s insides. He reached for the already half-empty bottle of antacids on his desk. But just as he closed his hand around it, his cell began to ring.
Nikki...
That feeling intensified.
She was protecting the evidence tech—against his wishes. But Nikki’s boss, who was also their brother Cooper, and the chief, had overruled him. Sure, Parker knew she was good. But he and Logan had spent too many years protecting their younger sister to entirely trust her protecting someone else.
His hand shook a little when he pressed the accept button on his cell. “What’s wrong?”
He hoped nothing, but his gut was telling him differently. He knew he was right when the female voice on the phone wasn’t his sister’s but Wendy Thompson’s.
“Parker?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Is Nikki all right?”
“Yes,” his sister answered. They must have had him on speaker.
“What’s up?” he asked, curious about the conference call. One of them probably wanted to leave the hotel where he’d insisted they hole up.
After what had happened the last time she’d gone to a hotel to hide out, Wendy had been understandably nervous about going to another one. She’d worried that she might put other people in danger. She was incredibly selfless.
Like when she’d given up Hart as her bodyguard so that his daughter wouldn’t lose him.
But now she asked, “Where’s Hart?”
“Why?” He smiled. Maybe she wasn’t as selfless as he’d thought. “Did you change your mind about having him as your bodyguard?”
Parker suspected Wendy’s crush on the former RCPD detective was why she hadn’t wanted Hart to protect her any longer—she’d been more concerned with protecting him.
“No, not at all,” she said.
“See,” Nikki chimed in. “She’s happy with me as a bodyguard.”
“She’s one of the only ones,” Parker teased his sister.
She cursed him just as teasingly.
Wendy Thompson lost her patience with them both. “I’m worried about Hart,” she said. “He was supposed to be at the safe house with my parents this morning, but he hasn’t shown up yet.”
“That’s my fault,” Parker admitted.
He’d had to get permission from the chief to share the location of the safe house with Hart. At least Parker knew where this one was, though. Only the chief knew where he’d hidden Rosie Mendez and Clint Quarters. Of course, Parker’s mother probably knew, too. He doubted Woodrow could keep anything from her—whether he wanted to or not.
“I couldn’t tell him right away.”
“You were keeping his daughter from him?” Wendy asked.
He could hear the recrimination in her voice. “I was keeping her, and your parents, safe,” he reminded her. That was the priority over everything else. That nothing happened to the little girl and Wendy’s parents.
“You have to make sure Hart’s safe,” she implored him. There was a strange urgency in her voice, as if she was having the same feeling that Parker was.
“And he should be,” he said, trying to convince himself and his gut as much as he was her. “He’s no longer protecting you.”
He heard a gasp. He didn’t know if it was Wendy’s or Nikki’s.
“Sorry,” he said. “I hadn’t meant that to sound harsh.”
“It’s true,” Wendy said. “Or at least I thought it was...”
She definitely sounded as if she was feeling the same way he was. That Hart was not out of danger at all.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Why are you worried?”
“I keep thinking about the shooting at the hotel,” she said. “When Hart got shot, I was right there. He fell and I was standing, giving the shooter a clear shot at me. He had the perfect opportunity to kill me, but he didn’t.”
“He was hurt,” Nikki reminded her. “We saw blood at the scene.”
“It’ll take a while for the short-staffed lab to get back the DNA results,” she said. “And for them to process the evidence from the explosion. That’s the o
ther thing bothering me. It’s not like Luther Mills to use explosives.”
“We figured this was a hired hit,” Parker said, knowing Luther had the money to hire the best, like his sleazeball criminal lawyer.
“Yes,” Wendy agreed. “But is that hired hit man after me or Hart?”
Parker reached for the bottle of antacids. His gut was nearly screaming at him again that something bad was going to happen. He’d been worried about Wendy and Nikki. Now he wondered, was it Hart who was in danger?
* * *
Hart had had a late start, but that wasn’t what was keeping him from driving straight to that safe house and his daughter. He wasn’t even reluctant because he was worried that Ben Thompson would be disappointed he’d broken his promise.
That bothered him, though.
He’d made a promise to a man he respected. But then he’d bailed because he’d got scared. Not of getting hurt physically.
But of getting hurt emotionally again.
He’d never felt about Monica the way he felt about Wendy. And his divorce had nearly destroyed him. What would happen if Wendy turned out to have the same attention span that Monica had had?
After all, she’d said that what they’d done was just sex to her, nothing more.
Just as it had been for Monica. Sex and nothing more because she hadn’t known how to love. Just like his dad, who’d left him and his mom when he was young...just like Monica had left Felicity, for a lover.
If he fell for another woman...
Hell, he’d never really fallen for Monica, though. Not like he’d fallen for Wendy. So if Wendy lost interest in him the way Monica had, and turned to someone else, he wasn’t sure he would survive that pain—that loss.
But he wasn’t certain he was going to survive now.
No. Breaking his promise to Ben Thompson wasn’t keeping him from the safe house. Hart was stalling because he’d noticed the tail shortly after he’d left the Payne Protection Agency. It wasn’t a white van, but then, that had been abandoned in a parking lot. Hell, he wasn’t even sure it was the same driver. That driver had been so good, he’d avoided detection several times.
This driver was a little too obvious, a little too desperate, to allow much more than a car or two between them.
