She didn’t want JJ on that level. She didn’t want to marry at all now. But she knew staying single wasn’t a real option. At some point she would have to take over their family and she would have to produce a child to carry on once she was gone. Leo could do the same, but there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that her father intended to leave the position to her, and not Leo. Leo didn’t really want it. He was happy as he was, and completely happy to shuck all the responsibility on that level. He loved the family; would die for it, but his heart wasn’t into taking over.
She dried her body before spreading an essential oil laced body cream over her delicate skin. It wasn’t until she exited the bathroom that an eerie feeling hit her. Harrison was quiet—too quiet. She slipped on her stiletto boots over her dark blue jeans and she went scouring the room for him. When she reached the door she saw a note tacked to the peephole. “Valencia, I want you to stay. I went to get a surprise for you. I’ll be back soon.” And then he signed his name with a heart beneath it. She was pissed, not only at herself for getting lost in the shower and not hearing him when he left, but at him for leaving in the first place. “Idiot,” she snapped as she ran down the hall and took the first elevator down to the garage. His vehicle was still parked, so he hadn’t left the hotel…at least that’s what she thought until she saw his car keys on the ground close to the back tire.
She felt blood pumping through her veins with a vengeance. She cursed, angry that she might lose this one. “No way,” she told herself. There was no way she was going to lose him—not like this. She could walk away at the end of the day, but she couldn’t walk away knowing he died because of her mistake.
She raced back up to the room and pulled a small device from her dresser drawer. She flipped on a switch and watched the blue screen spring to life. Fortunately for her Harrison still hadn’t listened when she told him to pay closer attention to things because if he had he would have noticed his watch was a slightly different shade of brown. She couldn’t find an exact match and she had banked on his lack of attention to details that weren’t opera related to mask the tracking device she had stuck him with. She had hoped she would never have to use it, but since Harrison hadn’t been taking things seriously she didn’t want to take a chance on him sneaking out and her not being able to find him. With this device she was going to go get him, wherever he was. Whoever had taken him better make their peace with God because this time she wasn’t going to leave an enemy alive. Harrison would have peace, even if she had to kill to give it to him.
Chapter Twelve
Harrison blinked in confusion. The last thing he remembered was standing in front of his rental getting ready to get in and go for a drive. He wanted to get something special for Valencia and he had the perfect idea of what it would be. He figured he could run out, pick up a nice pair of emerald and diamond earrings for her and be back before she even realized he was gone…well, maybe not that quickly, but at least before she could launch an all out search effort. He felt a sharp prick in his neck and after that everything went black. Now he was flat on his back with his hands and ankles bound to the metal railings of what he imagined was somebody’s idea of a bed. The mattress beneath him felt more like a board of solid wood than an actual mattress.
He was probably going to die and the only thing he could think of was that he had done a piss poor job of making things right with Valencia. He couldn’t even really remember why he was angry. Okay, so she looked as if she would kill the man, but she hadn’t killed him; that had to count for something. He couldn’t, or at least he shouldn’t, fault the woman for doing her job and trying to protect him.
He tugged at the ropes that bound his arms spread wide above his head. When he didn’t feel any release he used his leg muscles to tug at the ones wrapped around his ankles. “Stuck,” he groaned. There was no way he was getting out of this on his own. A new set of curiosity laced thoughts hit him. Who on God’s green earth had done this to him? It couldn’t have been his stalker. If it was her then she had help. He was two hundred five pounds and there was no way a little woman could move him by herself. He contemplated the validity of his own thoughts. Valencia was the smallest woman he had met in both height and weight and she could kick his behind in two seconds flat without even breaking a sweat.
He had seen Valencia in action, when she wasn’t pulling her punches, and he knew she could have seriously hurt him had she wanted to. When she was fighting JJ she didn’t hold anything back. There were a few moments when he felt his heart nearly lurch out of his chest watching the sword fight between the two. When JJ knocked her into a wall and then pounced on her with the sword he thought the man might actually kill her, but she evaded and survived. Even though she lost the fight at the end game she held her own masterfully. She was a little woman and if she could do all that in pint sized form then maybe his stalker could manage to drag him into a vehicle and tie him to a bed without help. He wanted to see who this woman was…if it was a woman. In this day and age it could be some deranged man for all he knew. In either case he wanted to know who was after him. He wanted the ropes to come off and he wanted a chance to defend himself. Lord knows he would fight to the death before he let anybody do anything to his body that he didn’t want done.
“Hey!” He yelled in anger and frustration. “Get in here and show yourself. Man up and stop cowering behind the other side of that wall!” Maybe baiting his attacker wasn’t a good thing, but he was angry and he wanted to know just who, or what, he was preparing himself to fight. He should have listened to Valencia and paid more attention to his surroundings. No, scratch that; he should have never left that room without her. She had told him to take this seriously and that one action, leaving without his protection detail, showed just how seriously he wasn’t taking things. He just wanted to buy her something nice to apologize for being such an idiot. He couldn’t surprise her with a gift if she was attached to his hip while he was buying it.
He heard the door lock turn and then the handle, followed by squeaking hinges. “WD-40,” he said. “You definitely need some of that.” He couldn’t see the person yet, but that didn’t stop him from voicing his opinion without reservation. For all he knew the person could have been coming in with a gun in hand or an axe like in that movie he saw all those years ago. Good Lord he hoped this wasn’t one of those type of situations.
“Hello,” she came to stand at the foot of the bed. She was beautiful, deranged, but beautiful. Her skin was a deep brown like she was from India. Her hair was smooth and silky, but cut short into one of those pixie cuts. The cut didn’t do justice to her face, to her dark eyes or her voluptuous lips, but he’d seen worse cuts on women.
“You want to untie me?”
“No,” she shook her head. “First I have to make sure you understand. Of course you must have a few people after you if you felt the need to hire a bodyguard to protect you.”
“She’s protecting me from the person who wrote those letters; you I presume.”
“She doesn’t need to protect you from me. We love each other.” She said so honestly and sincerely that he could tell she truly believed that. Would bursting her unrealistic bubble be detrimental to his life, or should he just play along until he could get untied and get the hell out of there? “Who are you?”
She smiled at him. “I’m Shaz. Well, my full name is Shazzara Rae Mitchell, but my friends just call me Shaz.”
“Shazzara,” he repeated. “Interesting name.”
“I like it when you say my full name,” she blushed. “I’m glad we love each other.” She came to the bed and sat down beside him. “I knew it the moment I saw you on television talking about your opera. The moment I saw one of the shows I knew that you had written those words for me. I knew you loved me, Harrison.”
“Lady, I don’t even know you. Those words are made up words for a fictional story. You need help—more help than I can give you.”
Her face turned from sweet honey to stone in two seconds flat. �
�Don’t you dare say that. Nobody says that to me. You love me.” She stood abruptly and pulled a knife from behind her back.
“I don’t know you,” he said firmly. “I’ve never even seen you before. How could I love you?”
“How can you say that? You have seen me before. I was outside of the opera house at the shows in Detroit, and the one in Orlando, and the one in Austin. How could you not remember? You looked right at me.”
He shook his head the best he could. “I never saw you.” If she had been at all those shows he hadn’t seen her.
“You looked right at me. At one of the shows back east I was in the balcony across from you and you looked over there at me!”
“Lady, in most of those theaters the balconies are so far across from each other that I don’t bother to pay attention to who is on the other side.”
“I saw you,” she hissed. “I saw you through my opera glasses. You looked over and you smiled.”
“If I smiled it wasn’t because of you,” he stated flatly. Yeah, she had the knife, but hell he wasn’t going to be a part of her delusional state. She needed to hear the truth. “I don’t love you. I don’t know you. And honestly, I don’t want to know you. You need help, lady. My suggestion would be that you get it.”
“You bastard! You’re like all the rest of them.” She paced the room. “I thought you were different. I thought you were special.” She stopped and looked at him. “No matter.” She shook her head. “I’ll just have to kill you then.” She gripped the knife and lunged forward just as the vent above her fell down; distracting her and making her turn around. Not even a second later Valencia was dropping into the room wearing stiletto boots and a black skin hugging jumper. God, if she got killed or hurt because of him he would never forgive himself.
He watched in horror as Shazzara lunged forward, wielding the knife while Valencia evaded her. Valencia didn’t have a weapon on her…no, he was sure she did somewhere. The woman didn’t go anywhere without one, but right now she was fighting with her bare hands, or more like evading a crazy knife wielding psychopath.
“It’s because of you,” Shazzara lunged forward, threatening to drive the eight inch blade into Valencia’s chest. Valencia sidestepped, turned and got the upper hand. In less than five seconds she had Shazzara disarmed, but she didn’t stop there, she didn’t just knock her out. She pulled one long blade from the casings holding her hair up and she went in for the kill. This time she wasn’t going to let him stop her. This time she wasn’t going to leave an enemy behind alive—and she didn’t.
“Are you okay?”
“Me?” He looked at her eyes wide. She had just had a battle to the death—if he could call that a battle—and she wanted to know if he was okay. “Is it that easy for you?” He shook his head and watched her as she approached the bed and sat down in front of him. She took the other blade from the casing in her hair and set herself to work cutting the ropes binding him.
“It is that easy for you; isn’t it?”
She looked in his eyes. “Yes,” she said effortlessly, smoothly as if she was confirming a drink order.
“How did you find me?”
“I put a tracking device in the watch there. You really don’t pay attention, Harrison. If you did you would have realized that’s not your watch.” She shook her head as she cut the last remaining rope. “The cops will be here shortly.”
“You tracked me?”
“I couldn’t take a chance that we would get separated and I wouldn’t be able to get to you. I won’t apologize for that.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he exhaled slowly.”
“I’ll return your watch to you once we’re back at the hotel.” She stood as he sat up. “Now that this is basically over you won’t require my services any longer. I’ll be sure to refund Drake the remaining portion of his money.”
“Valencia,” he shook his head. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Don’t go, no; he couldn’t say that. They were clearly two different people, in two different worlds. He wouldn’t ask her to stay. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said instead. She had done that for him at least and he couldn’t be angry with her over that. But she had killed as easily as she breathed. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to accept that. He didn’t know if he wanted to try.
He thought it was easy for her, and in a way it was. She hadn’t had to kill anybody in a long time, but at the same time she had no problem killing to save somebody she loved. And no matter what he thought, no matter what she tried to tell herself, she did love him. She just wished he could love her too. But he couldn’t love her. She knew that the moment he said the things he had said that fateful night, and so she, despite the ache in her heart, decided to let him go. This was for the best.
She closed her end of things by giving statements to the police. They had received another letter that morning, one they had tracked back to a Lorelei Carol and right now they were trying to decipher whether Lorelei or Dianne was the culprit. Since Shaz was Lorelei’s best friend she was in the hot seat. She blamed her sister, but Dianne hadn’t taken ownership of the responsibility yet so there was no real closure on that end. But for Valencia, her job was done. The stalker was gone and there was nothing more she needed to do here. She stuck around for as long as she was needed, but the moment they released her travel restriction she packed her bags and flew back to Hawaii. She missed him before she even walked out the door, but he didn’t miss her. He didn’t come after her. He didn’t even stick around to say goodbye. He hopped on a plane back to D.C. the moment the police told him he was free to go. He was free to go a few days before she was and he didn’t waste a second of time waiting around to even see if the district attorney might decide he wanted to press charges. Sure she was doing a job and clearly she was defending herself, but at the same time the kill hadn’t been a necessity. She could have broken some limbs and immobilized her, but a split second thought told her if she let that woman live then Harrison would never be safe. He would always have to look over his shoulder. That wasn’t a life she wanted for him. So she did what she knew she had to do. She killed to keep him safe. She would do it again if she had to. He would never understand that. She couldn’t make him understand that. And that meant they would never truly be able to be together. The loss saddened her, but she had suffered loss before and she survived—she would survive this one too.
EPILOUGE
~
Nine Months Later
“So what do you want to do?” Valencia tapped the sleek silver pen on her notebook.
“I want to go after him,” Thomas said. “And I want to make him pay for what he did to those men, for the betrayal that took the lives of dedicated men. I want him to pay.”
“He will,” Valencia assured him. “I know where we start and this is closer than any of you have ever been. Get your team together, Thomas because you’re going to need backup. You can’t do this on your own.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’ll meet you in Boston.”
“I can’t ask you to get back in the game, Valencia. You’ve been out of it—happily. I won’t ask you for this.”
“You didn’t ask,” she said. “I’m offering. I’ll meet you in Boston. You just round up the warriors because we’re heading into battle.”
She hung up the phone thinking about the task ahead of all of them. Sabian had a team of skilled men ready to die for him, for the money he offered them. They weren’t just fighting one man; they were fighting a small army. They would be severely outnumbered—a place they had all been before, but the stakes were higher now. If they didn’t stop Sabian then nobody else would. If his actions went unchecked much longer the entire world would suffer. This went beyond the betrayal of one team. This was about the betrayal of the human race. She could sit back and twiddle her thumbs. Or she could get in the game and help stop this maniac. She chose to get in the game. She chose to be a warrior first, assassin second, bodyguard third. She wouldn’t let an
ything happen to Thomas. If that meant she went in and killed Sabian herself then she would. She wouldn’t let anything happen to Thomas—not this time.
She was deeply in thought when the knock on the door interrupted her planning. She approached with caution. She wasn’t expecting anybody. Of course her brother and mother had been coming by a lot since she returned home. They couldn’t leave her alone when they were sure she was suffering the heartache of losing Harrison. She assured them there was no heartache, even though she knew there was. She just wanted to forget the man and move on, and if they would stop coming by treating her like she had a broken heart maybe she would be able to move onward.
When she looked out the security screen she saw Harrison standing on her doorstep. Why was he here? He had let her walk away. He had said everything he needed to say. Why was he here now? She realized a closed door wasn’t going to give her answers so she opened the door. “Harrison,” she nearly whispered his name.
“I missed you,” he said without provocation. “Nine months without you has been hell. I tried to let you go. I tried to forget you. I assured everybody it was for the best. We were just too different to make it work. I thought I could walk away and never look back, but I couldn’t. I love you, Valencia. I love you and I want forever with you. I don’t care who you were, what you did or what you have to do now to save a life. I realize now that I just don’t care about any of that because I know you’re a good person. I know you’re human and you care, and you feel—you feel a lot more than you show. I love you,” he looked at her seriously pleading with her to listen to him. “I love you and I want forever with you. So unless you don’t feel the same way about me then I’m here to stay.” He pulled a ring from his shirt pocket, a beautiful diamond and emerald marquis cut engagement ring. “I want forever with you, Valencia. Will you allow me that?”
Seducing the Bodyguard Page 14
