Bodyguards Boxed Set

by Julianne MacLean

  “Well, I don’t feel the same way.”

  “I think we’re always harder on ourselves.”

  “Cord?” Stacey’s voice was weak. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart.”

  She looked at his sling. “Your shoulder?”

  “It’s okay. How are you?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “I’ll bet it does.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Hi, honey.” Webb came to the edge of his chair. Cord watched the man dam up his emotions.

  “Don’t be mad at Cord. I couldn’t find him, so I--”

  “I’m not mad at anyone.”

  Her face tensed. “Who…who was it?”

  Gifford glanced at Cord.

  “Please, don’t keep anything from me.”

  “We still don’t know, Stace,” Cord said.

  “You didn’t beat him to a pulp?”

  “Ah, no. He caught me in the shoulder with a boot. By the time I’d recovered enough to reach for my gun, he’d gone.”

  “We still don’t know who he is?”

  “Nope.”

  Stacey bit her lip. “He was the same size as Mark Dunn.”

  “Yes, I know.” Cord heard the strain in his voice.

  This time, Stacey shivered. “Where’s Lauren?”

  “Judith is with her.” Gifford turned to Cord. “What do we do now?”

  “We push the police to put more effort into this case. Then, we wait, again.” He paused, looking to Gifford. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  Gifford glanced from his daughter back to Cord. “I want you with us. Stacey needs you.”

  * * *

  STACEY STARED AT her mother’s coffin.

  It should’ve been pink. Mommy’s favorite color, or green like her eyes. Why was it that ugly black? She’d touched the box in the big red building with the funny name—some kind of home—and it was cold and hard.

  Her father said the coffin was dark to show respect, but Mommy wouldn’t have wanted that. Stacey knew, like she knew other things about Mommy. When she was sad. When she cried for no reason.

  Reaching down, her father smoothed his hand over her hair. It made her feel bad because Mommy always did that when Stacey couldn’t go to sleep. Her father told her she’d never see Mommy again, that she was in heaven. But she knew better. Mommy had told her she’d be back. Just before she left. She hadn’t come back yet, but she would. Mommy always did what she said she would.

  “Come on, honey,” her father said, tugging on her hand.

  “No, we can’t leave Mommy.’’

  “Honey, we have to leave Mommy.”

  “Please, please. Mommy...Mommy... don’t leave.’’

  Her father squatted and scooped her up.

  She buried her face in his neck as they walked to the road that was covered with stones. She yelped when her dad squeezed her too tight. “Daddy.”

  But he didn’t let go. She looked up and saw her father staring at someone.

  The boy/man that used to come and see Mommy was standing on the other side of the road. She called him that because once, when she asked Mommy if he was a boy or a man, Mommy said he was a boy in a man’s body. Whatever that meant.

  “Stay here,” her father said, handing her to her grandmother. His voice sounded like it did when he got mad at Mommy. “Ana, watch her,” he told Grandma.

  Then he walked real mad-like to the boy/man.

  But before he got there, the boy/man was gone.

  * * *

  STACEY AWOKE IN a sweat from the most realistic dream she’d ever had. Her chest heaving, she scanned her surroundings to make sure she knew where she was. Her bedroom was dimly lit, and she was alone. Lauren was asleep in the sitting room and Cord had bunked down at the other end of the house. Limply, she fell back against the pillows.

  The dream was still with her and Cord had been in it. He was the boy /man on the road. But it had been so real...

  “Stupid,” she said aloud. Everyone knew that dreams were like edited movies, often combining various parts of a person’s life. Her unconscious had put her childhood nightmare together with the man she loved. Still, it disturbed her.

  Rolling over, she tried to quell the sense of unease the nightmare had left her with. For twenty-two minutes she eyed the progression of the numbers on the red digital clock. Unable to endure one more flip, she threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. Her satiny pink chemise and tap pants were damp from sweat; she shivered despite the balmy summer night. Stopping to get a matching robe—Lauren had given her the ensemble for her birthday—she padded out of the room and down the hall to Cord’s door. Since he’d moved out of her suite, he’d insisted both her bedroom door and his remain open during the night. She peered in.

  The moon cast crisscross patterns on his back. Half of his face was buried in the pillow that he gripped with his big, strong hand. His breathing was deep and even—until she stepped into the room and walked to the bed.

  Without warning, he bolted up and grabbed her. She was on the mattress, pinned beneath him, before she could take another breath. Not that she minded.

  He did. “Damn it, Stacey, what are you doing?” His breathing was rapid, his eyes wide and alert.

  “I needed to see you.”

  His touch on her gentled. Lifting a hand to her hair, he brushed some strands off her face. “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tempt me.” His hand strayed to the open v of her robe. “Make me want you so bad I ache. I can’t sleep. When I finally manage to doze off, I dream about you. Our situation is bad enough. Please don’t make it worse.”

  “I didn’t come to tease. I came because I had another nightmare.”

  Easing off her, he laid his head on the pillow and pulled her close. “Like the last one?”

  “Worse. I remember it all. The funny thing is, it wasn’t really a dream. It was another flashback. Except you were in it.”

  She felt his heart thudding in his chest.

  Stacey wondered why. “I know how things filter into dreams. What’s going on in real life intrudes on your unconscious. But this one was eerie.”

  Cord still didn’t say anything.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Tell—” he cleared his throat “—tell me about it.”

  “I was at my mother’s funeral. Crying for her not to leave me. That’s all I usually remember, and not even that until lately. Anyway, my father is carrying me, and then he stops and looks out over the cemetery. That’s where you came in this time. He’s looking at you.” She buried her face in his chest, letting the hair tickle her nose. “It’s dumb. Must be because I miss you so much.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “I don’t want to spend my life missing you, Cord. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  “But you’ll let me go.”

  “I have no choice.”

  She leaned up on her elbow. “Why? Tell me why you have no choice. And don’t lie to me about it being our age difference, my youth, my lack of worldliness.”

  “No, I won’t lie.”

  “Then tell me, Cord.”

  His sigh was heavy. “All right. I’ll tell you tomorrow. There’s something I have to do first.”

  * * *

  CORD KNOCKED ON the library door the next morning before they all left for work.

  “Come in.” The older man stood when Cord entered. “Is something wrong? Stacey?”

  “Stacey is fine, at least physically. It’s her emotions that concern me.”

  “Sit down,” Gifford said, indicating a chair as he took one himself. “What’s going on?”

  “She had a dream about Helene’s burial. Only it was more of a flashback.” Gifford’s forehead creased as Cord spoke. “And I was in it.”

  “No!” Slapping his hand down on the desk, he repeated, “No!”

  “It’s true. Apparently,
she recalls the whole incident at the cemetery, except that she thinks my being in the dream is just her unconscious playing tricks, juxtaposing the present and the past.”

  “So she doesn’t know the truth?”

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Obviously Stacey has remembered things about Helene consciously because of my presence here. Now it’s happening unconsciously. Each time she has this dream, she remembers more and more. Gifford, she’s too bright not to piece it all together. She’s going to guess—or remember.”

  “How can this have happened?”

  “Because you let me back into your lives.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We have to tell her the truth.”

  “No! Absolutely not!”

  “Then you’re risking her physical safety as well as her emotional state.”

  “How?”

  “I’m afraid if she finds out about me and Helene indirectly, she’ll be so angry with both of us that she won’t let me protect her. I don’t want to risk that.”

  “Do you know what we’re risking the other way?”

  “I know what I’m risking. She’ll kick me out of her life. You’ll still have her.”

  “And you’re willing to give her up?”

  “To keep her safe, I’d do anything. Even have her hate me.”

  “I don’t want to do this, Cord.”

  “By God, neither do I. But, as you said before, sometimes we don’t have a choice.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  AS THEY CROSSED town and headed for Cord’s house, Stacey smiled to herself in the dim light of the truck cab. The breeze rustled her hair, and his, while the scents of late-summer enveloped them.

  “Your mother and Megan are still at your aunt’s?”

  “Yeah. They’ll be home Sunday.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “My house is a good place to talk. We won’t be interrupted.”

  And we can make love in your bed afterward, Stacey thought but didn’t articulate. He’d just knit those dark blond eyebrows together, and the sad look in his eyes would turn bleaker. But Stacey wasn’t worried. She entwined her fingers with his, feeling their callused tips, rough on the back of her hand.

  She knew tonight was some kind of crossroads for him. Cord was finally going to tell her what he’d been holding back all these months. And she was so sure they could get past whatever it was, she’d stashed some condoms in her purse—to celebrate afterward. And maybe, when she proved she could forgive him anything...she spun a delicious fantasy of being his wife and a mother to Megan.

  When they pulled into the driveway, he shut off the engine but didn’t open the door. In the sudden silence, he turned to her. “Stace, you’ve got to promise me two things before we go inside.”

  She sensed his somberness. “Anything.”

  “That after we have this conversation, you won’t do anything to jeopardize your safety.”

  His comment irritated her, but she ignored it. “I won’t, Cord.” This time, she squeezed his arm, the soft cotton sliding beneath her palm. “What’s the second thing?”

  “That you’ll try to believe I love you, I’ve always loved you.” She thought his eyes glistened.

  A cold premonition swept through her, but she suppressed it. “I believe it now, and I’ll believe it later. But I want you to remember something.”

  “What?”

  “There’s nothing you could say, nothing you could tell me, that would change how I feel about you.”

  Roughly, he grasped her neck, yanked her close and gave her a hard, possessive kiss. Then, he opened the truck door. She climbed out her side, circled the front, took his hand and held it rightly until they were inside. He flicked on a muted light in the corner of the living room and sank onto the couch. Following him, she bent over and lightly kissed his cheek. The smell of the woodsy after-shave she’d come to associate with him soothed her. Plunking down beside him, she turned to face him fully. “Okay, shoot. What’s this deep dark secret that’s going to keep us apart?”

  He reached out and caught a few strands of her hair in his fingers, lightly rubbing them. The slight tug made her lean toward him. “Do you remember when the issue first came up about me being your bodyguard?”

  “Yes, you resisted the idea. You said you weren’t suitable.”

  His laugh was raw. “I wasn’t. I’m not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have a connection with your family that you don’t know about.”

  Stacey recalled her early impressions that he knew her father...

  “Cord, I know you didn’t want to do this. Because of your daughter especially. But I sense there’s another reason. Does my father know you from somewhere?”

  “No, your father doesn’t know me at all.”

  She said aloud, “I asked you if you knew my father, that very first day.”

  “I did know him.” He drew in a deep breath. “And I knew your mother.”

  Another conversation came into focus. Helene? he’d asked. My mother, she’d answered. Stacey clasped her hands in her lap. “But you acted like you didn’t even know my mother’s name when I told you about the dreams.”

  “That’s right—I was acting.”

  Stacey shifted restlessly on the sofa. She scrutinized his face, noting the high color in his cheeks and the lines bracketing his unsmiling mouth. He’d lied to her. Tension, and a niggling hurt, came with that knowledge. “How did you know her? Them?”

  “When I was in high school, I worked as a bag boy at the Food Mart. I also delivered groceries. Sometimes to your house. That’s how I met your parents. The summer after I graduated, your father hired me to do yard work, take care of the pool, stuff like that. As he got busier and busier, I took on more responsibility around your place.”

  “Our house? You spent time at our house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you knew me? When I was... what, five?”

  “Yes.”

  The dream came out of nowhere, like a monster in a grade B movie. The boy/man at the cemetery. That had really happened. A sixth sense of foreboding curled through her. The slight breeze from the open window chilled her arms and legs, bare under the short T-shirt dress she wore. She rubbed her limbs, but couldn’t get warm.

  He continued, “That summer, I spent a lot of time at your house. Things at home for me were bad—my father and I fought all the time, and it was getting horrible for my mother.” His jaw clenched, the way it did every time he discussed his father. “They’d argue about me, then she’d cry, later, when he left to go to the station.”

  “So you spent time at my house?”

  “Yes. Your mother was a warm, understanding person. She sensed early on things weren’t going well for me. Little by little, over a glass of lemonade or some cookies, she drew it out of me. She was sympathetic, insightful.”

  Stacey sat back and cocked her head, sending waves of too-long hair into her eyes. She finger-combed it back. “Cord, I don’t understand why you kept this from me. It sounds like you knew my mother well, like you knew a side of her I’d never remembered. Why on earth wouldn’t you tell me this, especially since you understood how confused I was about her?”

  Cord stood and crossed to the window. Pulling back the sheers, he stared out. His shoulders were rigid, his whole body poised, as if expecting a blow. She could just make out the bulge of his gun in its leather holster. Stacey waited.

  When he turned around, that strained, haunted look was on his face again. “I didn’t tell you because something happened between...between Helene and me that I never wanted you to know about.”

  Icy dread slapped Stacey in the face. “What?”

  Cord cleared his throat. “That summer, at the end of August, my father and I had a terrible battle. All along, I’d resisted the idea of going to college, though I’d applied and gotten accepted at a few. He told me to shape up and get those
school forms in, or to get out of his house. My mother intervened, as usual, and told him she’d leave with me if he forced the issue.”

  “What does this have to do with my mother?”

  “When I came to work that afternoon, I was really bummed. Your mother picked up on my state of mind right away. You were out for the day with your grandmother, and Helene spent hours talking to me about my options. That was the kind of person she was. Unselfish, caring.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your father came home about six. I was cleaning the pool, and I heard them arguing from their bedroom above the patio about a trip he had to take. He was packing and your mother begged him not to go. Apparently, this was an ongoing bone of contention between them. He raised his voice and told her to stop nagging him. Her response was quiet, subdued, like always. Then he said...”

  Cord stopped and folded his arms over his chest. The skin stretched tight across his cheekbones.

  “He said what? Tell me, Cord.”

  “He said if she didn’t stop nagging him, he might just decide not to come back.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Stace, he was different then. Work was everything to him. He was young and ambitious and foolish. Don’t judge him too harshly.”

  Something clicked for Stacey. “Cord, this was the day she died, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She and Daddy had a terrible fight the day she died?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He left. She stayed in their room. At first it was quiet, but then I could hear her sobbing through the open window. I couldn’t stand it, Stacey. She’d been so kind to me. I couldn’t keep cleaning the pool while she cried in her bedroom.”

  Another image of Cord, standing before the master suite, just three days ago, flashed through her mind. He’d jumped when she came up behind him, then turned around. His face had been white...

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “You were a million miles away.”

  “Years away,” he’d said, and glanced back at the room.