The expression carved deep grooves into his tan cheeks and set his eyes sparkling. But he did not look sexy, she promised herself. Even though his T-shirt was pressed smooth over his chest and his faded jeans clung to his thighs like a possum on a limb, he wasn’t the least bit appealing. Irritating was what he was.
She repeated that in silence and came up with a reasonably effective scowl.
He grinned, then paced to the bathroom and squinted inside as if nearsighted. “The glass is frosted. There might be someone in there.”
“There’s no one in there.”
He twisted around to look at her again. “She might be really little.”
Gritting her teeth, Brenna let the door swing closed and returned quickly to the bathroom. Pressing past him, she slid the tub door open and peered inside.
“No one,” she said.
“Phew!” He shook his head and let his shoulders drop as if he’d been holding his breath. “That’s a relief.”
“Uh huh,” she said, but when she exited the bathroom, he still hadn’t moved, forcing her to brush past him again. She pursed her lips, refusing to acknowledge the spattering of feeling caused by the contact. “What time will you be leaving your room in the morning?”
“Gee. I hadn’t decided,” he said and stuck both hands into his back pockets. “What sounds good to you?”
That innocent act was hardly going to work on her. Not now that she knew his real reasons for hiring her. Not now that she knew he was a male chauvinist oinker who didn’t believe in her abilities any more than the other men in her past.
“Call me as soon as you wake up,” she ordered.
“What?”
She stopped at his shocked tone and turned to glare at him. “I need to know when you’re no longer safely in your room. Call me before you open this door. I’ll be in 1027.”
“You mean…” He widened his molasses eyes as if shocked. “You’re not going to sleep in here?”
Her jaw dropped. He thought…He believed…
But in an instant she saw the gleam in his eye. She gritted her teeth, but she couldn’t stop the color that diffused her face.
“Hook the chain,” she said and turned away.
“What about the window?”
“What?” she snapped, pivoting back around.
He stepped back as if frightened, but his grin was bigger now, not little boyish but full-blown. “You didn’t check the window.”
“Yes, I did.”
He shook his head. “You just moved the one curtain a little. There might be someone hiding behind the other one.”
She tightened her fists. Violence was never the answer, she reminded herself. But that old saw had never seemed less true. “If there was someone hiding behind the curtain, wouldn’t he make a bulge?”
“Maybe it’s a really tiny woman. Them little ones…” he eyed her up and down, as if noting her small size “…they can be tricky.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he raised a palm. “Sarge hired you in good faith. I’d hate to give Bartman Security a less-than-stellar report about you, B. T. O’Shay.”
Brenna snapped her mouth shut Bartman Security! Roger Bartman didn’t know anything about this. In fact, she’d told her boss she was quitting, was leaving Jackson to marry a cotton farmer near Mobile. She’d gone to great pains to type up an official-looking contract that told Sarge she was to be paid directly. All was going smoothly—sort of. But if Fox called Roger all hell would break loose.
“I’ll check the window,” she said, and turning, marched across the room.
“I appreciate this, B.T.,” Nate said.
Pushing the curtains aside, she glared at every inch of the wide panes. Everything was perfectly in place.
“By the way, what does the B.T. stand for?”
“You can call me O’Shay,” she said coolly. In a moment she was by the door. She pursed her lips, waiting for him to speak again, but he didn’t
She turned the latch.
“Miss O’Shay?”
“What!” She jerked back toward him, her nerves stretched tight.
The right corner of his mouth quirked up in unison with one eyebrow. “Sleep tight,” he murmured, and she fled.
INSIDE THE SOLACE of her own private room, Brenna paced. She must be out of her mind! What had made her ever believe she could be a bodyguard? And why in heaven’s name had she chosen Nathan Fox’s body to guard? He deserved to be attacked. Besides, he resented her very existence. He was never going to accept her presence here. She’d told him to call before he left his room, but she couldn’t trust him to do that, and if she couldn’t trust him, she couldn’t do her job. She stopped and scowled at the watercolor seascape above the bed. Master Leong used to say that trust was like the sea. It could go out as fast as it came in.
Brenna had no idea what that meant. Never had. But the fact was, she was lying to herself. She didn’t require trust to do her job. In fact, maybe she’d be more effective if she didn’t trust him, if she was suspicious of everything and everybody. Glancing at the bedcover, she narrowed her eyes and made a decision.
BRENNA SQUIRMED. Her youngest brother twisted her arm more tightly behind her back. “Say uncle,” he demanded in his pubescent voice.
But Brenna O’Shay never said uncle. She jerked forward…and awoke with a start.
It took her a moment to remember her circumstances, to realize she was scrunched up in a padded chair in a strange hotel room. She’d propped her door open with a phone book to allow herself an unobstructed view of Nathan’s door.
Or it would be unobstructed if that man would get away from Fox’s door.
Hey! There was a man by Nate’s door! His hand was on the latch. The door was swinging open.
Brenna launched into the hall like a loose cannon. Mind foggy, eyesight blurry, legs unsteady, she slammed into the intruder’s back, but managed to grab his arm, twist it upward, and yank him back into the hall.
“Hey!” he squawked.
“What are you doing here?” she growled, pushing his arm up higher.
“Let me go!”
He tried to wrench away. They scuffled sideways and bumped into the wall, but Brenna’s adrenaline was pumping. She hung on like a bulldog.
“What are you doing here?” she rasped again.
“Let me go!” His voice was rising.
“Who gave you the key?”
“None of your business!” he cried. Spinning, he jerked his arm from her grasp and made his escape.
He didn’t get twelve inches before she tackled him. He landed with a muffled grunt, her knees in the small of his back, and her grip already hard on his bent-up arm.
“Lie still and I won’t hurt you.”
He lay panting hard beneath her, but didn’t try to struggle.
“I’ll have some answers.” Her own body was trembling, whether from excitement or fear, she wasn’t certain. She could only hope he couldn’t hear the quaver in her voice.
“O’Shay?” Nathan’s voice startled her.
She jerked around to see him standing in the doorway, his eyes sleepy and his hair tousled.
“Get back inside!” she snapped.
“Okay,” he acquiesced. “But…why are you sitting on Ian?”
She blinked. Adrenaline drained from her body like water down a drain. “Ian?”
Nathan nodded. “Ian. One of the road crew. He, uh…” Nate nodded toward the right to a pair of suitcases she hadn’t noticed. “He brought up my luggage.”
She squinted at the suitcases. Her stomach flipped over. “Oh.”
Nathan nodded. “Maybe you should let him up.”
She hesitated. How did she know what this man’s intentions were? She took a long slow breath and remained where she was.
“Where’d you get the key, Ian?”
“Sarge gave it to me.” His voice was muffled by the carpet and broke when he said it.
Poor Ian was neither very large nor very old, Brenna noticed suddenly. Guilt settl
ed in. But, dammit, she’d been hired to do a job, and do it she would. If this man habitually brought up luggage in the wee hours of the morning, she sure as hell should have been informed.
“Why?”
“Sarge likes Nate to have it first thing in the morning. I just set it right inside his door. That’s all.”
“How long have you been in Mr. Fox’s employ?”
“Huh?”
“How long have you been working for Fox?”
Brenna felt him tremble beneath her. “Two years going on.”
“Oh.” Brenna slipped off his back, feeling stupid as a drowning duck and refusing to admit it.
Ian rolled over and pushed his white-blond hair away from a face plagued by acne.
“Do you always bring up Mr. Fox’s luggage, Ian?” she asked, still crouched beside him.
He nodded jerkily.
“Well, you won’t be doing that anymore. From now on you bring the suitcases to me. I’ll make sure Mr. Fox gets them.”
“To you?” He shifted his gaze to Nathan as if for affirmation, but now was not the time to lose her edge. If she was going to gain the crew’s respect she’d best start now.
“That’s right. I’ve been hired to see to his security.”
“But Sarge—”
“I’ll talk to Sarge,” she interrupted abruptly. “I’m sure he’ll see things my way.”
“I…I believe y’,” Ian said, then scrambled to his feet and fled.
The hall went silent. Reaching forward, Brenna retrieved the card key from where Ian had dropped it She rose more slowly.
Not surprisingly, Nathan’s brows were somewhere in his hairline again. She made a valiant effort not to blush and reminded herself that she was here to protect him.
“So when were you going to tell me about this, Mr. Fox?”
He leaned up against the doorjamb. His gray sweatpants rode indecently low on his hips, his torso was bare, and she noticed without meaning to that there was a crescent-shaped scar in the center of his chest. She tried not to wonder how he’d gotten it. “Tell you what, Miss O’Shay?”
She gave him a peeved look and hoped it wasn’t ruined by her blush. How was she supposed to know somebody delivered his luggage in the middle of the night? It was a stupid practice, stupid and dangerous. She had nothing to be embarrassed about.
“You agreed to call me before this door opened,” she insisted.
“Did I?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes.”
He grinned and caught her gaze with his own. “Then you’re not very trusting, Miss O’Shay.”
She stiffened her back. “What does that mean?”
He broke eye contact, shifting his gaze to the bedspread that had trailed into the hallway in her frantic lunge for Ian. “You were watching my door.”
Her face felt warm, despite knowing she had nothing to be ashamed of. “I was merely trying to keep you safe from any potential threats.”
“Or maybe you thought I would try to sneak out without telling you.”
She pursed her lips. That was exactly what she thought, but there seemed little reason to admit it. “And why would you do that, Mr. Fox?”
The smile slipped slowly from his face. Even his eyes became somber. “Maybe because I don’t want to be followed around like a damned winged grouse,” he said softly.
Her emotions were getting all muddled—guilt, empathy, frustration. “I didn’t come begging for this job,” she said, knowing better than to try to defend herself to him.
“Didn’t you?” His eyes were deadly earnest, and too damned knowing.
She refused to look away, although if the truth be known, she could easily have begged if she had thought it would do her any good. “No,” she said, “I only came for an interview.”
His gaze skimmed from her face, down her body and back up to her eyes. “Why?” His tone was breathy with honest amazement, but she’d heard that kind of tone too often. It was always followed by sneers.
“Because it’s my job,” she said, her voice rising. “Because I’m damned good at it. Because—”
A door jerked open. “Y’all don’t shut up out here I’m gonna call the cops,” a man growled. Unshaven, he scowled aggressively. His pajama shirt barely covered the gut hanging over striped trousers.
“Sorry.” Nate grinned apologetically, then turned back to Brenna. “Come back to bed, honey,” he said, conjuring up an exaggerated Southern drawl. “You’re disturbing the folks. I’ll play the wild stallion and the cowgirl again if you really want to.”
Her jaw dropped.
Nate’s grin broadened. “Come on.”
Anger boiled up inside her. “You—”
“Now, now,” he tsked, stepping into the hall to gently draw her forward. “How would it look if you got us in trouble for disturbing the peace…again?”
She wanted to give him a good solid knuckle punch to his ridiculously square jaw. But she’d just jumped poor Ian, and hotel security might not find a second attack really amusing, so she allowed herself to be drawn inside.
“Sorry,” Nate said again, peeking around her at the pajama man. “Sleep tight.” He turned away, then changed his mind. “Oh, if you hear any whinnying, just ignore it.”
Stepping back, he let the door swing shut, pitching them into absolute darkness.
“So,” his tone was low and amused. “Big night?”
She snorted, then reached for the light switch. Unfortunately, he was in the way. The muscles in his abdomen felt hard as sculpted marble against her fingers.
“Why, honeybunch!” he said, using that infuriating borrowed drawl. “I hardly know you.”
Brenna yanked her hand back, suddenly grateful for the darkness to cover her infuriating embarrassment “What do you want?” she asked.
“What do you want?”
She wanted him behind bars for sexual harassment. Or did they give the death penalty for that? “Mr. Fox,” she said, pleased that her voice sounded relatively normal. “I know you think yourself quite irresistible. But let me assure you, I have no interest whatsoever in that regard.”
“I’m so relieved,” he drawled. “So why are you here?”
If she could just slap him once she would feel immensely better. “I’m here because you threatened me with hotel security,” she said.
“I mean…” She could hear the grin in his voice. “Why are you guarding my body?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Isn’t it? I think I have a right to know a little something about my employees.” He paused. All was silent “Or should I call your agency?”
No! She almost screamed the word, but managed to remain quiet for a moment, stilling her panic. “It seems to me that if you had doubts about my abilities you should have voiced them before you hired me.”
“I didn’t say I doubted your ability.”
“But you do,” she said softly, and even now the realization hurt, but only because she had allowed herself to hope for a moment.
The room was silent again. Fox cleared his throat and shifted away slightly, perhaps to lean against the wall, though she couldn’t tell for sure in the darkness. “Maybe I did doubt you,” he said, “but that was before I saw you with your knee jammed into Ian’s back.”
There was laughter in his voice again. It should have irritated her. Instead, it seemed to soften the room somehow. But she could hardly afford to be softened.
“Are you saying you’ll let me do my job then?” she asked.
He straightened abruptly and flipped the light on. Her eyes adjusted slowly, but when they did she was painfully aware of his state of undress. The darkness had seemed intimate, but somehow the light seemed even more so, for she could see every hard curve of his chest, every shadowed dip of his rippled abdomen.
“Do I look like the kind of man who needs a bodyguard?” he asked softly.
Sweet Mary! “No.” The word came out a bit breathier than she had intended. “But what s
eems and what is can be as different as a caterpillar from a butterfly.”
He was silent for a moment “What the hell does that mean?”
She had no idea. “The fact is you do need a guard,” she said, and turning, walked into the sitting room. Best to keep some space between them. His guitar was leaning against a wingback chair. She smoothed a finger along a single string and turned. “Appearances don’t matter.”
His gaze skimmed her. She hadn’t changed her clothes from the day before, and felt wrinkled and gritty. But his expression suggested other things. “They do to me,” he said softly.
She scowled and reminded herself to be offended. It didn’t matter that his coffee-bean gaze made her feel warm all over. She was here for the job and nothing more. “Listen,” she said, pleased by the gruff sound of her voice. “I’ve been hired to do a job and I’m going to do it.”
“Goddamn it!” he swore, pacing up to glare down at her. “I need a bodyguard like I need a hole in my head!”
“And if you don’t have a bodyguard you may very well have a hole in your head!” she snapped back.
He snorted. “You’ve been spending too much time with Sarge.”
“You forget that I read the letters.”
“Do you have any idea how many letters I get a month?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“Hundreds.”
“So?”
“Thousands a year. And out of them thousands I’ve got…what? Ten, maybe twelve letters that are even a shade off center. I think that’s pretty safe odds.”
“So you’re saying you’re not worried that ten or twelve guys have it in for you? You think you can handle them?”
He straightened to stare at her from his full height “So tell me, little Miss Sashay, do you think you could do better? You think you could hold twelve guys off me?”
She lifted her chin slightly. Perhaps a roundhouse kick to the chops would make him more polite, but it probably would do nothing for her state of employment, contract or no contract. So she shrugged and turned away. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Fox.”
“Doesn’t matter?”
“No,” she said. “Because the letters were all sent by the same person.”
4
NATHAN STARED AT HER. He tried to appear nonchalant—the superstar in control, clever, bored even. But at his best he was, generally speaking, none of those things. And this was definitely not his best, with his mind fuzzy from lack of sleep and little sports socks encasing his teeth. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He didn’t like to talk about the letters. Not with anyone, and certainly not with someone who made his brain go numb and his groin go hard. Because, despite what he said, the letters gave him the creeps—made him feel vulnerable, as if he were being watched by malevolent eyes.
His Bodyguard Page 4
