She smiled, thinking about her brother and Thomas. They would be friends if ever they had a chance to spend more than two seconds in passing. That day when Thomas had finally found her, Leo had been coming up the drive as Thomas was leaving. They missed each other, even though they did see each other in passing. Thomas had called her later that night to make sure he hadn’t caused any trouble with her husband. She had laughed and told him that Leo was her brother. Leo took more after their father. He was tanned from the Hawaiian sun, but he also had a bit of permanent bronze to his skin anyway, while she was slightly darker in her complexion, taking more after her mother. She thought about the two men who were the current fixation of her thoughts. She would have to be sure to introduce the two of them one day.
She was also going to have to establish some boundaries for herself…as if that was going to happen. Thomas, just like Leo, would probably always pull at her heart strings and she would probably always want to protect both men with every fiber of her being. When Thomas called her she couldn’t say no, not to him. Plus, she had heard of Drake Daniels and she was rather intrigued to meet the man behind the legend.
She wasn’t booked to protect anybody. She had a contract she was reviewing, but she hadn’t committed herself to it, so it was easy to close up her house, ask Leo to look after things while she was gone, and get herself on the first flight to the mainland.
She reviewed information on Harrison Sinclair before she arrived in D.C. and then she met with Geneva and Drake and acquired more information about the man. She hated opera herself so she didn’t know him from his work, but by the time she finished her pre-assignment study, she knew everything about his work. She realized by the time she walked into the room that the man might be dangerous. He was sexy, and brazen, and she liked what she saw. But he was confident to almost a point of arrogance. He clearly had an inadequate view of women being the weaker vessel, and he was far too accustomed to getting his way. She wondered if anybody had ever told the man no and actually got away with doing it.
A smarter woman would have backed away and let him stick with his “no bodyguard” stance, but she hadn’t. There was something in his, “I feel as if I should be protecting you,” statement that made her want to show him just how much she wouldn’t need him to protect her, and just how wrong he was about a “little” woman not being able to hurt him. He needed protection, and something inside of her knew that if she didn’t take the assignment then he wouldn’t allow anybody else to watch over him. He could, and probably would, be dead within months. He might not have taken the threats serious, but she did, and so did the people who cared about him.
She signed on for one job and one job only—guard Harrison and keep him safe. But now it would seem as if her job just took on a second task—she was going to have to keep lover boy focused on his work and not her body.
By morning they had already gone through security checkpoint. Her weapons went completely undetected while Harrison’s buckle on his belt had kept him from making the smooth transition through the checkpoint.
“Empty your pockets,” the blonde haired, blue eyed, guard had smiled at him while uttering those words. She hadn’t smiled at anybody else that morning, but she had taken to flirting with Harrison. Valencia stood on the sidelines watching as Harrison took three trips through the metal detector before the TSA agent smiled and told him to remove his belt. Harrison, devious as the day was long, looked right into Valencia’s eyes and grinned as he unfastened his belt buckle and slowly pulled it from the loops. If he thought that was going to turn her on he was right, but she didn’t let him know that. She had spent her entire life hiding her emotions and she wasn’t about to toss out years of training over one man giving her a mini strip tease.
The flight into Phoenix had been uneventful—just the way she liked it. She talked with Harrison about the cast of the opera, about the people who worked behind the scenes, and then she needed to know more about this assistant that had made Harrison decline all future female assistants. She didn’t get a chance to hear more because the flight attendant came over and started giving instructions for landing. Harrison had told her he would get to it later. She wanted to get to it now, but clearly he was going to avoid it until they arrived at the resort where he had booked an executive top floor suite for the month. The cost alone should have made him just lease a house, but he had assured her the hotel was more adequate for the month. He wouldn’t be in Phoenix long with the show. After Arizona they had three more stateside venues, Hawaii being their last stop. He also told her that if the person behind the letters hadn’t become a threat by that final destination he expected her to stay in Hawaii while he went back to his home in D.C. In short, once the show ended so did her employment. That was fine by her. She actually, given the schedule, would be finished after their next location, but she could discuss that with him later. At some point she was going to have to get back to her world. He would be going back to his home once all was done with anyway. D.C. wasn’t exactly one of her favorite places to visit. The less time she spent there, the better.
The suite was gorgeous. During her work she had stayed at more luxurious places, but this one was right up near the top of the list of elegantly beautiful. They had two bedrooms in the split-level floor plan room. The kitchen, living room and dining area were comfortable in size and the bathrooms had both the walk-in shower and a huge garden tub with jet spa features. It was like having a home away from home the minute they stepped through the doors. Her only concern was the basket of fruit sitting elegantly wrapped on the coffee table in the living area.
“Don’t eat any of that until I have a chance to check it out,” she had said. Harrison had simply laughed. She wasn’t joking. Her first priority was checking the room for potential threats, including cameras and listening devices. The latter of the checklist was more out of habit than necessity this time around. She highly doubted that anybody had placed bugs in Harrison’s room, but she was accustomed to doing her job completely, without neglecting any possible detail.
When she was on assignments the first thing she checked for was threat by human intruder, and then she proceeded to check for cameras and listening devices throughout her room. Back then she checked every crevice, every painting, lamp, phone, furniture fixture, door, peephole and anything else that could be a potential hiding place. She planned to do the same here, but Harrison wasn’t making her job easy. He was already unwrapping the fruit basket.
She resisted the urge to chastise him like a child. Instead, she took the basket from the table and carried it with her while she did her initial walk through. She heard Harrison protest as he followed behind her. When she told him not to eat any of it, she meant it.
She deviated from her normal pattern because Harrison wasn’t cooperating. So instead of checking for human threat and then threat from trespassing technology, she checked for human threat and then inspected the package in front of her.
She picked each luscious green apple up one by one and did a visual and hands on inspection looking for tiny puncture marks.
“Like you would be able to see if somebody stuck a needle in that thing,” he shook his head.
“I would,” she assured him.
“Right,” he snorted. “And how would you be able to see something that small?”
“If you look closely enough, Harrison, you can see almost anything,” she kept her tone low. She didn’t seriously think there were bugs in the room, but she learned long ago to never assume anything. “Now please refine your speech to something else until I check the room for bugs?”
He threw his head back and laughed long and hard. “Overkill,” he panted between breaths. “Nobody has touched the darn apples,” he tried to pick one up and she grabbed his wrist to stop him. He cut her a deadly serious look of annoyance.
“It’s been done before,” she said evenly and quietly as she continued to inspect the green piece of fruit in her hand. “And if I hadn’t caught it my client woul
d have been dead.” She put the apple up to her nose and smelled it cautiously, checking for any hint of an almond smell. She didn’t smell almonds so she ruled out cyanide.
Harrison retracted his hand. “Who the heck do you protect, Valencia? The Pope?”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t bother to tell him that her protection detail went from foreign dignitaries to high power business men, and yes, she had even spent some time with religious leaders. Fortunately, most of the people she protected had been in more private settings and she wasn’t thrust into the spotlight as much as she would be with this case. Most of the people she had protected wanted their privacy and so press conferences weren’t the norm, but it would be here. Harrison already had five television interviews lined up for this week alone. It was a very good thing she was a master at disguising her looks. If ever she needed to return to the assassination game she would be able to do it unnoticed.
“You’re not going to tell me are you?”
“No,” she stated flatly as she inspected another piece of fruit. She wouldn’t tell him that somebody had tried to kill her by sending her poisoned fruit as well; only instead of apples they had sent her a basket of oranges. Twenty-two years working for the government as an assassin had made her extremely cautious. She never ate anything that was delivered to her room, not even room service.
She briefly thought back to the first time she had been sent in to kill someone. In hindsight she could see that she was being used for her smaller stature. A grown man, or woman for that matter, wasn’t going to be able to get inside that fortress. But because of her small size, because of her exotic looks, and because of her ability to speak flawless Arabic, she had been dropped in the middle of the dessert land and given the mark to kill. She blended in with the local children, but stayed far away from playing with them. Nobody questioned her; they didn’t even give her a second look. And when she made her way into that heavily guarded fortress she knew exactly where to go to execute the kill. She carried out her mission and exited just the way she entered—unnoticed. That had been her first kill, and before that she had never seen a man die. The man who sent her in had told her this kill was for the greater good of mankind, but after a while she never truly believed it. After a while, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if maybe that kill had been nothing more than a test to see if she could do it, if she had what it took to take on harder, more complex assignments.
She pushed the thoughts from her mind. There was nothing she could do about the past. A life, once taken, wasn’t something any human had the power to give back, and she wouldn’t let the decisions she made all those years ago haunt her. She could only focus on the here and the now.
“It’s clean,” she sat the last apple in the basket after checking the basket for bugs. “I’m going to check out the rest of the place.”
“Valencia,” his voice was laced with concern.
“They’re fine to eat if you want to.” She assumed he was worried about the apples.
“I’m not worried about the apples.” He looked down at her before walking closer to her “I’m worried about you. How do you live like this?” He waved his hand around the room as if encompassing her entire life. If only he knew…but she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anybody.
She shrugged. “This is my life, Harrison. If it keeps somebody safe I’m willing to make a few sacrifices.”
“You’re making more than a few,” he grumbled. “Checking the food for poison. Checking the rooms for listening devices…who are you?”
She looked at him, contemplating his question—a question that she couldn’t fully answer. “Valencia Dugan-Mishoto,” she said in the same even tone that she said everything else before she walked away from him and began her in-depth inspection of the room.
Harrison had said he would be in the room for the remainder of the day so she figured it was a good time to do her training exercises. She could push some furniture around and have space at least. She wasn’t at home so she couldn’t spar with any of the men who handled her father’s protection, but that wasn’t an excuse to get out of shape.
She slipped into fitted black pants and a sleek cerulean fitted vest before rearranging the living room furniture and pulling the draperies shut. In her bare feet she began her warm-up utilizing breathing techniques and slow fluid motions that were both graceful and lethal. She was an hour into her training when she heard Harrison open his room door. She knew he was standing there looking at her. It hadn’t been that long and she didn’t imagine that he could possibly be ready to go somewhere when he had just, a little over an hour ago, declared that he would be in for the remainder of the day.
She broke her movements and turned to face him. “Is there something wrong?”
“You’re amazing. How do you do that?”
“Years of training,” she didn’t elaborate. She didn’t tell him that by the time she was six she knew over a hundred ways to kill with her bare hands. She didn’t tell him that she was skilled in using anything as a weapon, that when she said even a small book could be deadly she truly meant that a small book could be used to kill. She didn’t tell him that she had weapons on her person that looked like accessories. She didn’t tell him that, and she wouldn’t tell him that. “Did you need to go some place after all?”
“Dinner.”
She looked at the clock. “It’s only one o’clock.”
“I know. I wanted to give you a heads up. I forgot that I’m having dinner with Latricia Anderson at this upscale place in Downtown Scottsdale. She’s…”
“Somebody I should know about,” she stated sharply. How dare he forget to mention this woman? It wasn’t that she was upset that he was dating another woman, if he were dating her; it was that she needed to know about everybody in his life. She had told him that, and yet he still felt the need to leave something out.
“She’s just a business associate. She helped me get things sorted here for the opera to go on. I had some tie ups with the local government over the amount of trucks I would need to bring all of our stuff in—there are sets, costumes, extra lighting, everything really,” he shook his head. “They wanted more money. I have money, but I don’t have it to throw around. Latricia helped me get things squared away, but we’re supposed to meet to discuss some final details. I’ll introduce you to her tonight. She’s a real sweetheart. You’ll like her.”
She doubted that seriously, but then that was mostly because she didn’t allow herself to like too many people—in fact, she would go so far as to say that outside of family and the men who worked for her father who were like family to her, she didn’t allow herself to like anybody at all. Thomas had been the first non-family member in years that she had allowed herself to form an attachment to. Not that she had much choice in the matter. The moment she saw his bloody body laying in that dessert sand her heart latched onto him and she had to save him, she had to protect him. There was nothing about consciously allowing herself to have those feelings, she just had them.
“If you need something to wear there’s a store down in the lobby that has some nice evening attire.”
“I have something,” she said simply. Yes, she had a small suitcase. It was a tiny yellow polka dot case that allowed her to look extremely docile, but on the inside it was more than spacious enough to carry the amount of clothes she would need for any occasion. Of course she had only packed six formal dresses. Should Harrison decide to do dinner out at an upscale restaurant every night she would have to improvise. Her little black dress was very versatile. Adding and subtracting from it made it look like a different dress entirely. “You don’t have to worry,” she stated. “I know how to dress for any occasion, and I won’t embarrass you.”
“I…I didn’t think you would.” His eyes widened. “It’s just that suitcase is so…small. I don’t know any woman who can carry a suitcase that small.”
She smiled. “Now you do.”
“What about makeup and body product
s…shoes to go with every dress?”
She laughed. “I’m covered.” She didn’t wear a lot of makeup; in fact she didn’t wear anything more than the occasional lip gloss or soft shade of lipstick. She never needed more. Her lips had a natural deep brown line to them. Her eyelashes were long and healthy dark black that made it look as if she was wearing mascara even though she wasn’t. She didn’t need any of the makeup products out there so it saved room in her case not to bring them when she had no intention of wearing them. She had enough footwear and clothing to put together any look she needed to. But most importantly, she had all of her weapons exactly where she needed them to be.
“I’ll get my shower so I’ll be ready when you are.”
“It’s a really upscale place,” he reminded her. “Slacks won’t work…not even if it is a nice suit.”
She looked up at him. “I’m covered,” she assured him. “What’s the name of the restaurant?” She wanted to do some research before they left.
“Victoria’s Garden,” he stated. “It’s very—”
“Upscale,” she said before he could say it again.
Harrison had rented a sleek blue SUV for his duration in Arizona. She could at least breathe a little easier in the fact that he planned to drive and not hire a driver to cart him around. She didn’t trust drivers. She never really had, but ever since that one time in Cartehenia, when the driver had been the assassin after his own employer, she trusted drivers even less. Fortunately she had won, but things could have gone differently, badly, and both she and her client could have been dead.
Seducing the Bodyguard Page 3
