Reach for a Star

by Kathryn Freeman

  Ben grunted, trying not to smile. ‘Just waiting for you to let me get a word in edgeways, Floss.’

  ‘Ball’s in your court, Crackers. Entertain me with tales of life in the field. Shoulder still standing up?’

  ‘Yeah. Right as rain.’ A lie – it ached now and again – and it pissed him off that instead of doing the job he loved, he was now left doing pansy duties, like babysitting a scientist. A woman probably in no more danger of being abducted, or shot at, than the old dear who lived opposite him.

  Ben was suddenly hit by a rush of longing for the life he’d known. He’d not admitted to anyone, even Floss, how much it had hurt to leave the squadron. The one place he’d actually felt he’d belonged. ‘Sorry to disappoint, Floss, but I’ve got to dash. Can’t be late on my first day.’

  Kelly’s first reaction when she opened the door was a very female one. Away from the formal, rather feminine surroundings of her parents’ home, Ben’s blatant sexuality slapped her straight in the face. And immediately made her aware of her own shortcomings in that department. Men with powerful intellects, she could handle. Ben’s particular brand of powerful masculinity, made her feel horribly unbalanced.

  But then he smiled. It was the same warm, boyish grin he’d thrown in her direction several times on their first meeting and her unease began to fade.

  Until she noticed the large khaki green holdall he was carrying.

  He lowered the bag and sighed. ‘I take it your father didn’t mention the part about me staying with you?’

  ‘Err, no.’ Her mind jammed and all she could think was how could she possibly let this man, this hulking lump of maleness, live with her. Under the same roof.

  Another sigh, this time with an underlying edge of frustration. ‘I can’t guarantee that anybody wanting to harm you will only do it during daylight hours. You’ve already had a suspicious caller.’

  ‘I know. It’s just I hadn’t thought …’ She trailed off, too rattled to finish the sentence. She hadn’t made the leap. Hadn’t twigged she’d have to spend all day and all night with him. Twenty-four seven.

  Again, he read her mind. ‘I’ll keep out of your way. Be as unobtrusive as possible.’ The green eyes twinkled and a dimple flashed in his cheek. ‘I’m housetrained and at a push I can even find my way around a kitchen. If you feel I’m getting in your way, you can always shove me out to watch from the car. The alternative is for you move to a hotel until the threat is over. And I stay in the next room. Or you stay at your parents’ house and we up the security there.’

  Great. Crappy choice after crappy choice. Have a stranger, a male stranger, sharing her apartment with her, live like a nomad in a hotel, or stay with her parents and potentially put them in danger. If, of course, there was any danger. ‘You said it would only be you?’

  ‘Yep,’ he replied cheerfully, clearly not fazed by the prospect of putting himself in her space. ‘But we’ll see how it goes. If I’m spending a lot of time watching from the car, we might need to bring others in or I’ll be knackered.’

  Dumbly she stood in the doorway, trying to make sense of it all. Her life was dull, but at least it was hers to live how she chose. She didn’t want this man poking his nose into it, making judgements.

  Reminding her she could be in danger.

  To her utter embarrassment, she started to tremble.

  Ben let go of his bag and lightly held her shoulders. ‘I know this is a lot to take in but it isn’t the first time I’ve done this,’ he told her quietly, his face turning serious. A hint of the soldier behind the friendly mask. ‘I know how to watch out for you while maintaining your privacy. It’ll seem awkward at first but you’ll get used to me.’ His lips curved. ‘I’ll be like a wart. At first you can’t stop seeing it, but after a while you forget it’s there.’

  ‘Warts can be hard to get rid of.’

  He laughed, the sound low and easy. ‘You won’t need to freeze this one out. I’ll go when you say, as long as your safety isn’t compromised.’ His hands dropped to his hips. ‘Look, just give it a try. I don’t expect, or want, to be entertained, or waited on. Just to do my job.’

  Kelly inhaled a long, slow breath. Okay, so when he put it like that. Stepping aside, she let him in. ‘There’s a second bedroom just down the hall. You can put your bag in there.’ She hesitated, feeling at once hot, then cold. ‘I presume I can at least sleep on my own.’

  He chuckled, heaving his bag back onto his shoulder. ‘I’m a very light sleeper so I won’t need to share a room with you. Give me a second to dump my bag and then we can go through your schedule for the week.’

  She watched as he disappeared down her hallway. A tall, broad shouldered hunk of a man with lean hips and an easy gait. He carried himself like a soldier, yet when he grinned he looked like a cheeky schoolboy.

  ‘And yeah, thanks for asking.’ His deep, slightly rough voice travelled down the corridor from the end bedroom. ‘I could murder a brew. White, no sugar.’

  Kelly huffed. What had he said about not expecting to be waited on? Typical man. Well she’d make him this one, just to be decent. After that, he could flipping well make his own.

  They sat opposite each other at her small kitchen table. A table that hadn’t looked small the last time she’d sat at it, when she’d been alone.

  Ben dragged a small notebook out from his trouser pocket.

  ‘Before I start, I want to emphasise there are no rules about how we do this.’ He leant back casually against the chair as he thumbed to a blank page. Self-consciously Kelly unclenched her hands and tried to imitate him. ‘Somewhere in Panther security there’s probably an obnoxiously long list of set procedures I’m supposed to follow.’ He cocked her a grin. ‘But I’m not a great one for following the rule book. As far as I’m concerned, how we do this is up to you. If you want, I can be the big, overt close protection officer. I’ll dress in black, always wear shades and fold my arms across my manly chest while looking dangerous.’

  Kelly guessed he was using humour to try and relax her. ‘And the alternative?’

  ‘You’re not digging the showy big, bad bodyguard idea?’

  ‘I don’t …’ She paused, not sure she could say dig without sounding insincere. She hadn’t been brought up to use slang. ‘I don’t like the idea of everyone knowing I’ve got a bodyguard. Can’t you just fade into the background? Act like you’re not with me.’

  ‘Sure, I can do covert, if you prefer.’

  ‘Can you really?’ The question shot out before she could stop it.

  His lips twitched in a lazy smile. ‘I can, really.’

  ‘But you’re—’

  ‘Too outrageously handsome not to be noticed?’ he cut in when she hesitated, his grin taking the edge off his arrogance.

  ‘I was going to say too tall.’

  ‘Ah, I suppose I’m that as well,’ he conceded, ‘but there are tricks I can do to blend in if I need to.’ Leaning forward he glanced at the still empty page of his notebook. ‘Why don’t we make a list of what you’re going to be doing? You know, where you need to be and when. Then we can decide how to play it.’

  ‘Well, on Monday I’ll go to work as usual. I try to leave here by seven. I guess if you’re going to be hanging around, we’ll need to tell Richard why you’re with me. He’s my manager.’ She bit into her lip, imagining the conversation.

  ‘Whoa.’ He held up his hand. ‘What happened to the weekend? Let’s start from today. What are you planning to do this afternoon? This evening?’

  Kelly threw a hand to her head. Damn it. Thanks to all this talk about hiring a bodyguard, she’d clean forgotten about her conversation with Stuart earlier in the week. The one in which she’d agreed to meet him for dinner.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘No,’ she muttered. Not unless you counted going on a date with a bodyguard snapping at your heels as a problem. It made telling her rigid, authoritarian boss she was so scared she’d hired a bodyguard seem like a doddle. ‘I’m meant to be seei
ng a friend for dinner this evening.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll just tag along. I don’t have to sit at your table. Depending on where you plan on eating I can probably make do with observing from the car.’ Kelly shifted on her seat, which he instantly picked up on. ‘Ahh, you mean friend as in boyfriend?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly.’ Why wasn’t the phone ringing? Or the building being struck by lightning? Anything to stop this conversation. ‘Stuart works in the same lab as me.’

  ‘Okay,’ he drawled, pulling out a sheet of paper and glancing down it. ‘That would be Dr Stuart Jennings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He cocked his head slightly to one side, studying her. ‘From the way you’re looking as if you want the ground to swallow you up, I’d say there was more to this dinner than a work catch up?’

  Kelly stared down at the table. In truth, she wasn’t sure if there was. She liked Stuart, but after three ‘dates’ and one uninspiring kiss, she was pretty sure she didn’t like him in that way. Certainly he was easy on the eye and charming when he wanted to be, but in the two years since she’d started to work in the lab next door to him he’d never made her pulse race. In fact she wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to go out with him again, other than the simple fact that he’d asked. As so few men ever did, she was loathe to turn down the invitation. He might grow on her.

  ‘Sorry, I bet it feels like I’m prying into areas that are none of my business.’ He rubbed a hand over his jaw and gave her a wry smile. ‘The thing is, if I’m going to do my job properly, I need to know who you’re hanging around with. Trouble can come from any direction.’

  Kelly gaped at him. ‘If by some remote chance there is trouble, you can’t possibly believe the people I work with would be behind it?’

  He shrugged those ridiculously broad shoulders. ‘You say remote, yet you’ve already been followed.’

  ‘I said I might have been.’

  ‘Jacobs’s survival tip number one: trust your instincts. If you thought you were being followed, you were.’

  ‘Right.’ And wasn’t that reassuring?

  ‘As to your work colleagues, danger can come from unexpected sources.’

  ‘Trust no one,’ she muttered under her breath.

  He leant back against his chair, put his hands in his pockets and laughed. ‘You’ve got it.’ As quickly as the light rushed into his vivid green eyes, it vanished. When he spoke again his voice was softer, but there was a ring of steel about it. ‘I’m more than happy to have a laugh about some of this, because life is sure as hell too short to be taken seriously, but your safety isn’t a joke.’

  She looked into his hard, determined face and felt a real sense of fear.

  This man, who was supposed to be making her feel safer, was actually starting to scare the pants off her. And as he started to make notes of the names of her friends and work colleagues, and where she – read that as they – would be going during the week ahead, it finally dawned on her.

  This wasn’t all an inconvenience that she had to get through. She might actually be in danger.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Kelly walked back into the sitting room later that evening, Ben gave her a wide, appreciative smile. And a long, slow whistle. ‘Wow.’

  She froze, her startled expression causing him to curse silently. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I have this habit of blurting what I’m thinking without engaging my brain.’ And if he’d taken just half a second to consider how his clumsy comment might be received, it would have dawned on him that the revered scientist wouldn’t want the man she’d hired as a bodyguard to make a personal comment on her appearance. Or to whistle at her.

  Hell, she probably didn’t want any man to whistle at her. She’d consider it sexist and degrading, when all he’d wanted to convey was an appreciation of how hot she looked. He just didn’t have a sufficiently elegant vocabulary to do that.

  ‘It’s okay.’ She gave him a wary look and … was that a blush on her cheeks?

  Embarrassed? Or irritated, and boiling into anger? ‘Are you sure? Because you kind of froze on me there for a moment.’

  ‘You took me by surprise, that’s all.’

  Yeah, he could imagine. The last thing a female client needed was to think the guy hired to protect her, was actually coming on to her. Kelly wasn’t to know it was just his way. He appreciated women, and couldn’t imagine not letting them know he appreciated them. Until she got used to his ways though, he had to learn to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Well then, Cinders.’ He reached for the jacket he’d hung on the back of the kitchen chair. ‘Time to get you to the ball. Don’t want to keep Prince Charming waiting.’

  He led her to the door, opened it. Then collided with her as they both started to walk out at the same time.

  ‘Oh.’ She halted, giving him a confused look.

  ‘Sorry.’ He stepped out, checking the corridor before glancing back at her. ‘I’m afraid manners get shoved aside on the job for the sake of your safety.’

  ‘Seriously? I can’t even walk outside my front door?’

  ‘Not without me giving you the all clear. No.’

  Her expression told him she wasn’t happy, but Ben let it roll off him. If he had to upset her to keep her safe, so be it.

  Signalling for her to keep behind him, he ran his eyes up and down the street before tucking her tight to him as they walked to the car. He’d talked a good talk in front of her father, but he wasn’t totally convinced she was in danger. Far more likely that once she’d told her father about being followed, he’d become paranoid, which in turn had made Kelly extra aware. Still, until he spent more time with her, he had to assume the threat was real.

  ‘Are you really going to stay in the car, watching us eat?’ she asked as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  ‘I’m not much of a bodyguard if I bugger off and leave you.’

  She let out a huff of frustration. He’d like to bet it was a noise he’d get used to hearing. ‘But we’re in a public place. And I’m with someone I know.’

  He slid her a glance, briefly catching her eye before fixing his gaze back on the road. ‘You need to think of me as an object. Like your handbag.’ Jeez, he was really bigging himself up now. Bet that made her feel really protected. ‘What I’m trying to say, is I’m like part of the furniture.’ Nope, that didn’t work much better. Sofas didn’t leave the house. He tried again. ‘Just ignore me. Forget I’m there. Focus on your date.’ Suddenly he realised what she might be saying. ‘Are you thinking of continuing this beyond the dinner? Because if you are, it would be best to invite him back to yours. I can watch your place from the car—’

  ‘No.’ Her cheeks flushed as she shook her head. ‘God, this is awkward. I should have just cancelled.’

  He sighed, understanding. He wouldn’t want anyone watching him cosying up on a date, either. ‘If it helps, I’ll be watching the road outside, the people walking in. The other diners. Not you.’

  Her face lost a little of its tension. ‘Yes, that does help. Thank you.’

  After Kelly had shown Ben where the restaurant was, he manoeuvred the car into a space opposite. His movements were quick and sure. It would have taken her five goes, and then she’d probably have ended up four feet from the kerb.

  When he turned off the engine, the car fell into silence. Somehow it made the interior feel more intimate, and Kelly became extra aware of Ben’s presence. The smooth leather of his jacket, the hint of his cologne. The sheer male bulk of him.

  ‘I’m guessing you’d rather I didn’t walk you in.’

  ‘You guess right.’ Heavens above, she’d had enough embarrassment already this evening. She hadn’t known how to handle Ben’s wow remark, but it was hard to think of anything she could have done that was more mortifying than freezing, then blushing like a virgin.

  Then there had been his assumption that she’d wanted to invite Stuart back to her apartment afterwards. An entirely reasonable assu
mption. A man like Ben would of course go back to the woman’s place. Spend the evening in her bed.

  Unbidden, an image flashed through her mind of Ben bending to kiss a faceless woman. His big, muscular body leaning in to her, his hands clasping her face, running down her arms. Picking her up as if she was weightless …

  ‘Is your date here yet?’

  She jolted, feeling horribly flushed. And terribly guilty. Where on earth had that come from? She was here to spend the evening with Stuart. Thinking about another man was incredibly rude.

  Hastily she stared into the restaurant, spotting Stuart sitting at a table near the window.

  Great. They’d be fully on show.

  ‘Yes, he’s here.’ Kelly climbed out quickly, before Ben decided to change his mind and escort her across the road.

  Stuart stood as she walked up to the table, and bent to kiss her cheek. His aftershave was stronger than Ben’s, she noted. More expensive. Less earthy.

  ‘I didn’t see your car pull up.’

  ‘No.’ She debated with herself, then went with honesty. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but Dad’s worried I’m in danger.’ Stuart’s eyebrows snapped up. ‘He’s hired a bodyguard for me.’

  ‘Good God. Danger from what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess he’s being paranoid because of what I’m working on.’

  He frowned. ‘I suppose I can see where he’s coming from, but it’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? You don’t get many bad guys threatening to vaccinate people.’ He started to laugh at his own joke, making Kelly feel even more foolish.

  ‘That’s what I told him,’ she mumbled as she sat on the chair he pulled out for her. Not the best start to the evening but hey, it could only get better. ‘Please don’t tell anyone. It’s embarrassing enough without everyone at work knowing.’

  ‘I can imagine. My lips are sealed, though if he’s going to be hanging around, you’ll have to think of a good reason.’

  ‘I know.’ The thought of Ben trailing around after her was mortifying. Not because of the things he would witness, but the things he wouldn’t, like dancing in nightclubs, sessions down the pub with her friends. Things a man like him would expect a single twenty-nine-year-old woman to be doing.