Seducing the Bodyguard

by Capri Montgomery

  He looked over to Valencia and the smile on her lips touched his heart. That smile was in her eyes; it was genuine. She was pleased with him, and the knowledge of that did something to him that he hadn’t ever in his life expected to feel because of a woman. He felt proud to be the man sitting next to her; the man holding her hand, and the man who would, if he had his way, one day hold her heart.

  A woman like Valencia wouldn’t give up her last name if she got married. Her name was a part of her family honor and he could tell family was important to her. Clearly her mother hadn’t given up her last name either. She had hyphenated her name and by extension theirs too. So if he married into the family would Valencia become Valencia Dugan-Mishoto Sinclair? Probably not. It would be more likely that he would become Harrison Mishoto. Or maybe Harrison Sinclair Mishoto. He kicked the name around in his mind for a while until he realized what he was doing. Why was he thinking of marrying this woman? Why was he playing the last name game trying to figure out how their married name would work? They were not getting married…but the thought of actually claiming her as his wife and having her claim him as her husband, as if they belonged to each other…now that was a heady thought that had a smile tugging at his lips. He had just met the woman and already he was mapping out forever with her. He told himself to pull the horses back inside and be sure to put them before the cart the next time he was ready to take them out. Clearly, he and Valencia weren’t there—yet. They could be.

  “What are you smiling about?” Latricia leaned closer to him, resting her arm against his body.

  Honesty was the best policy. “I was just thinking when Valencia and I get married how the name thing will work,” he smiled again at the look of slight shock Valencia gave him before she reeled in her emotion. “Would you hyphenate?” He asked, looking into her eyes.

  “I’m already hyphenated enough,” she laughed. “But it is my family name so I won’t give it up.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to. Maybe I’ll hyphenate mine. I rather like Sinclair, but I like the sound of your name with mine too.”

  “Well, if we were to marry it would be better for you if you did take my last name. At least the last part of it, not the full hyphenated name.”

  He understood what she meant. Her family name had honor, history, respect, and probably a heck of a lot of clout in their corner of the world. Being a Mishoto was probably like being a Kennedy—only the connotation behind the name probably invoked fear more than celebrity worship.

  “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on the task at hand?” Latricia snapped.

  “I should,” he agreed. “By tomorrow most of this should be in place. The actors will be arriving and our vocals will be here. We’ll start rehearsals day after that.” Normally he liked to start rehearsals earlier, but since the cast wouldn’t be getting in until mid-day he decided to give them the evening off. Mostly he decided the last minute change because he wanted the evening to himself—well, more like he wanted the evening with Valencia to himself. Once rehearsals got underway and the show actually opened he wouldn’t have much time for seduction. He needed to use every second he could get now. When the scheduled tightened he wanted to be sure he was already on his way to scaling that stone wall Valencia had erected around her fortress and at least being close to finding a place in her world—in her heart. He knew he was in trouble now because Harrison Sinclair had never once thought about making any relationship permanent the way he was thinking about making one with Valencia permanent. He never lost. He would have to fight hard for her, but this was one fight he was determined to win. He vowed to himself that Valencia Dugan-Mishoto was going to be his woman before they left Arizona.

  Chapter Six

  “You can’t tell me you have never had a boyfriend.” Harrison wanted to know more about this woman and now was just as good of time as any to find out. In fact, when he decided to make pasta for dinner he had already planned to use their time eating dinner to learn more about her. What he learned was that she wasn’t seeing anybody romantically. From what he could tell, she hadn’t been seeing anybody romantically in a long time. Of course she hadn’t been very willing to talk to him about her past dating history and he wanted to know why. He couldn’t imagine no man had been brave enough to at least try to court her.

  “You wanted to practice some techniques tonight,” she said. “Dinner’s done. The dishes are done. Let’s get to it.”

  She evaded the conversation as always. He decided he would let her; for now. Later, he was going to broach the subject again. And later, he intended to get an answer.

  “All right,” he said. “Teach me something.”

  He should have heeded the advice to be careful what he asked for because she gave him a lesson he wasn’t soon to forget. Valencia was tough, skilled, and he couldn’t win with her—at least not on her terms. Every move he made she pinned him. He would admit it was fun to be between her legs, but that wasn’t exactly the circumstances he had in mind when he envisioned being there.

  “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I pictured you on top of me with my body between your legs.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Be serious, Harrison,” she admonished him. “Tell me how you’d get out of this.”

  He tried to show her, but the more he moved, the more she kept him pinned beneath her weight. “Good Lord woman! How do you do that?”

  She laughed and then proceeded to show him how he could get himself out of a few precarious positions. Of course the moment he got out of one she had him in another.

  Two hours later she agreed to give him a break. They could pick up tomorrow night, she had said. Sure, that would be best given how sore his body was now. This wasn’t exactly how he envisioned the evening going. “Shower,” he said. “And when I’m done we can discuss tomorrow’s schedule.”

  “Okay,” she agreed before going to take her own shower. He had no intention of focusing on the schedule. He still wanted an answer to his question.

  “So, have you ever seriously dated? You clammed up earlier and it’s making me wonder. I mean, you’re amazing. You’re smart and strong, and beautiful. You can’t tell me you’ve never had a serious boyfriend.”

  “I didn’t say that,” she tried to keep the emotion out of her tone, but just thinking about Darryl had her emotions ready to run amuck. He had been her first real boyfriend. She had been training practically since the day she was born and that dedication didn’t leave room for boys. When she met Darryl she knew there was an attraction, but they had been paired together. She was the assassin and he was her go-to guy if she got into trouble. She liked him—loved him even. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. It had been ten years since she allowed herself to be with a man. If she had it her way it would be one hundred more.

  “Did he break your heart?”

  “It’s complicated,” she hoped the conversation would end here, but it hadn’t.

  “Did you break his nose for doing it?” He laughed.

  “I killed him,” she stated flatly. He stopped laughing so abruptly that it caused her to finally look up from her perusal of the schedule and meet his suspiciously shocked gaze.

  “You…you killed him for cheating on you?”

  “He didn’t cheat on me,” she said somberly. “There are things you don’t know about me, Harrison. Things I can’t tell you in detail, but…” she took a slow inhale before exhaling just as slowly. “I was an assassin for the government. My on again, off again partner became my lover, my heart.” She thought back to the relationship they had. They didn’t work together at every turn. For the most part she was on her own, but there were times when the cover of husband and wife was needed, or when she needed a silent partner to be her eyes when she was in a spot with limited visibility. Darryl had been that partner.

  He hadn’t done anything to hurt her other than lying to her, betraying their country and finding his name on the government hit list. She didn’t want to take the hit, but she knew if she didn’t
somebody else would. She knew she couldn’t protect him from that. “I tried,” she said. “I tried to save him. He was so stupid,” she shook her head. “He could have just taken what I was arranging for him. The new identity, the new face, the new life, and he could have lived in the Cayman Islands without anybody knowing he wasn’t dead. But he didn’t want that. Dropping his lifestyle wasn’t what he wanted to do, not even to spare me the pain of having to destroy what was left of what we had.” She felt the recollection of memory stabbing her from within. He was the first hit, the only hit, that she was ready to ignore. She planned to fake his death and give him a fresh start even though that meant they couldn’t be together. But instead of taking it, taking what she was offering, he decided he wanted to keep walking the line between good and evil, between dedication to America and dedication to his role as a double agent. What he was doing had killed hundreds of innocent people in that train bombing in Spain, and he didn’t even care. He knew she was going to kill him. He knew about the hit before she even walked into the room.

  “So this is how it ends,” he said smoothly. For the first time ever she had tears in her eyes because of a kill. She had killed without conscious before, but she couldn’t do it then.

  “It doesn’t have to,” she had said.

  “You’re too honest to let me go on like this.”

  She told him of her plan, of what she wanted to arrange for him if he would just go along with it, and he laughed in her face. He challenged her, telling her that he was the better assassin, the better fighter, and that before he gave up a lucrative profession he would kill her. She loved him, was willing to sacrifice everything for him and he would kill her. He had to know that if it got out that she didn’t carry out a hit then she would probably be the next person on the list, but instead…instead of realizing just how much she loved him he decided to try to kill her. What he didn’t realize, what he didn’t know, was that she was, and would always be, better than him when it came to executing a kill—when it came to fighting. He hadn’t seen all her skills. They were together for five years as partners and nearly as long as lovers, but she had always held something back from him. She had always kept a part of her skills hidden. Part of that was because she knew it was dangerous for anybody to know her weakness, and to know all of her strengths. The other part, and she realized it now even if she didn’t then, was that she just didn’t trust him enough with her secrets. In the recesses of her mind she always knew that one day it would come down to betrayal. After she killed him, her status went from an assassin to be moderately feared to one that was dreaded. Even the men who hired the Angel of Death knew not to cross the assassin behind the code name, but very few of them knew she was a woman. Only three people knew of her real identity, three people outside of her family that is. Those three people included herself, the middle man Ray Capshaw, and her partner, her lover, the man she thought she would spend forever with—Darryl Pekensy. Darryl was now dead and Ray, who was like a surrogate father to her, had bowed to her request and he let her out—on one condition, if ever there came a time when he needed her skills to stop a massive catastrophe she would make herself available. She agreed. She continued her intensive training with her father, and she stayed abreast of any changes in the game so that she would be ready if that time ever came.

  “I’m sorry,” Harrison leaned forward and took her hand in his. This was the first time when they weren’t in public where she allowed him to continue to touch her.

  She sighed. “That was my life. I dealt with it.”

  “Did you?” He spoke softly. “Because right now I think it’s still haunting you. You refuse to let yourself get close to anybody outside of your family. You refuse to let love in. You refuse it because you’re afraid that what happened with Darryl will happen again. Trust me when I tell you, Valencia, I would never betray your trust, or your love.” He stroked his thumb over the delicate skin on her wrist. “If I had your love, Valencia, I would give my last breath to keep it. I would walk through hell for you.”

  She pulled her hand from his grasp. “We can’t,” she whispered before pulling her thoughts out of what could be and forcing them back on what should be.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s my job to protect you. I have to stay focused on that. You have to let me stay focused on that.”

  And now it was his turn to be upfront and honest with her. “I can’t,” he said, and that was the only truth he would admit, or so she thought. “I won’t,” he confirmed. “I know you’re skilled enough, and talented enough, to split your attention between the love we could have for each other, and the life you’re trying to protect. I’ll wait,” he brushed a finger over her cheek, “as patiently as I can, for you to realize that. But, and I stress this clearly, I won’t wait forever before showing you why you should be my woman and I should be your man.” He recaptured her wrist in his hand.

  “I just admitted to you that I killed people for a living. Doesn’t that bother you at all? Aren’t you afraid to be with somebody who can kill without conscious?”

  He shook his head. “First of all what you did in the past is not who you are now. Secondly,” he looked deep into her eyes as if trying desperately to pierce her armor. “You clearly had a conscious or you wouldn’t have changed your profession. You wouldn’t have tried to save the man you loved. You wouldn’t be trying to save me now. You’re a good person, with a good heart, and I don’t need your resume to prove that.”

  She pulled her wrist free of his hand. “I have to focus,” she restated. “And you have to let me focus.” And on those words she left him sitting on the couch, lost with his own thoughts as she tried to come to terms with the words he had uttered to her, to the feelings he had reignited in her.

  “No I don’t,” Harrison whispered as he sat back on the couch. He didn’t have to let her do anything. His life wasn’t in any danger and he wasn’t about to miss a perfectly good opportunity to have in his life one the most amazing woman he had ever met. He wanted her to be more than just a bed buddy. That thought alone should have scared him because he knew so little about her still. But what he did know he liked. He wanted to know more. If he had his way he would know more. No, not if. He would have his way. He was Harrison Sinclair and he was going to do whatever it would take to have this woman in his life past the few months she planned to protect him.

  Harrison was so sure of himself, so sure of his ability to seduce this woman that he assumed the quest would take less time. He knew what he wanted. He went after it. And any other time, when he went after what he wanted he got what he wanted. But this woman was resisting his charms with a vigor that had him gasping for air. Days turned to weeks and he still hadn’t claimed her. She had accompanied him to the opening. She had pretended to be his woman, but at the end of the night, when they were back behind the walls of the hotel room, she was about business only. Hell, even the outside life was business for her. They were pretending to be lovers; it was just an act, another facet of her job that she vowed to do well.

  The more he tried to seduce her, the more he learned about her, the more he wanted her. She was amazing. She was the polar opposite of women he had dated before. It wasn’t that the women before Valencia hadn’t been smart, or successful, but this woman was smart, successful, lethal and more than capable of knocking him on his behind without breaking a sweat. Something about that had him intrigued, captivated, hooked on her.

  What he needed was help. He had never needed help getting a woman before, but he needed help with this woman. He had thought that she couldn’t resist him forever, but now he was starting to wonder about that. The more he tried, the more she fortified that stone wall guarding her heart.

  Tonight was a night with the guys. He always had at least one night in each location to just sit back and have game night with four of the trusted men working with his show, putting everything they physically could into keeping it going strong so that they had a long and successful run. Usually they
went out on the town or ordered in pizza and had drinks in one of their rooms. It was his turn to pick a venue and given the fact that if he chose an outing at a club, bar or restaurant he knew Valencia wouldn’t be more than two feet away from him, he decided on his room. They picked up pizza on the way back to the hotel, and Les was on beer duty so he didn’t have to worry about that. Valencia had agreed to stay hidden in her room after the men arrived so long as there were no unexpected guests. She had already checked out his crew and the cast and while she wasn’t completely unsuspicious of any of them, she seemed to relax, even if only a little, when it came to Les, Jeremiah, Chester and Drew. Actually, he wouldn’t jump right to saying she relaxed, so much as he would say she allowed him some breathing room around them. Of course he could always tell she was vigilant to her surroundings, waiting and ready for any attack that may come.

  He had told her several times that nothing was going to happen. He was safe. The letters weren’t still arriving. He had even put her mind at ease over his former assistant. The woman was crazy, but she wasn’t that crazy. Lani Davison had taken his trust and stolen from him in a way that he couldn’t forgive. He didn’t want to believe Jeremiah when he told him that he had seen Lani with Deveroe Johnson, one of his opera nemeses, but he also didn’t think the man had any reason to lie to him. Jeremiah was a standup guy, straightforward and honest, so he took his word as truth. He set up one of those nanny cameras in a vase in his office and he waited. A week later he caught her going into his private drawer, not just going into it, but picking the lock to get in. Fortunately he hadn’t had his newest opera in the drawer so she didn’t get his newest work and sell it to Deveroe, but she could have and would have had Jeremiah not warned him. After that he vowed he would never trust a female assistant again. She seemed sweet and honest in her, “I just love opera and want to work in the business any possible way that I can,” speech. She had even laughed at her inability to sing. “So this is the only way,” she had said. “And I love all of your work, so if you’ll have me…please have me,” she had crossed her legs on those words and his mind had gone elsewhere. He had hired her because she looked good on paper, but he couldn’t deny that he had also hired her because she looked good off paper too.