The Accidental Bodyguard

by Ann Major

  She gave him an uncertain look that said she didn’t quite believe him.

  Amnesia, he reminded himself. She had amnesia. She could be anybody. She could be married. What if there was—

  Suddenly he was terrified of all the horrendous possibilities.

  God. No. He couldn’t bear the thought of another man possessing her, touching her. Or of her loving someone else.

  His grip tightened around her waist.

  He would cross those bridges later—if it came to that.

  Now she was his. Totally and completely his.

  He kissed her again, harder, in a fury to stake his right of possession.

  But it wasn’t necessary. With every answering kiss, she told him that she was already his and would always be his.

  He panicked, afraid of where this was taking him, but he couldn’t stop kissing her even when tears spilled from her lashes as she kissed him back just as fearfully.

  Four

  Lucas’s spacious L-shaped office—done in dramatic marble and pale parquet floors and furnished with Oriental rugs and antique porcelains—exuded understated wealth and power.

  Stinky stared at Lucas hard. His voice was measured and deliberate. “Frankly, I expected more from someone with your ruthless, hard-boiled reputation. You haven’t done a damn thing.”

  Lucas’s jaw tightened at the slur, but his gaze didn’t waver. “Because what you want isn’t in your best interests. You say the cops have a murder weapon and they’ve found drugs in the burned van and more drugs in one of her partially built houses in Mexico. An eyewitness says she was at the wheel of the van when it hit that other car and rolled. The police think she was trying to find a place to dump Miguel Santos’s body. He was her driver. You ought to like the way this thing is heating up. The longer Bethany’s on the run, the worse it will be for her.”

  “Exactly. That’s why you have to find her.”

  “But—”

  “Chandra couldn’t be involved in drug-running or murder.”

  “I’m not talking about innocence or guilt.”

  Stinky’s bloodshot black eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. The heavy scent of cologne wafted with him, as did the fainter odor of booze.

  It was early yet, but Stinky had already had a drink or two. Maybe more.

  Stinky had plenty of surface charm. Most women probably found his rugged body and his classically handsome face perfect. He had reddish-brown hair with a widow’s peak and a chin with a deep cleft in it. In his dark, custom-made suit, he had the sleek, pampered look of a movie star playing a rich businessman. But neither acting nor business was his trade. Lucas had researched the man. One way or another, Stinky had always made his living off wealthy women.

  “No, counselor. We’re talking about life or deathChandra’s.”

  “You’re trying to tell me your only concern here is for her welfare?”

  Lucas’s dark brows arched cynically as Stinky sank back into his leather chair and began rummaging in his briefcase. His trembling tanned hand closed around a file folder, pulled it out and thumbed through it. With a tight smile, Stinky tossed it onto Lucas’s desk.

  “What—” As Lucas opened the folder, three eightby-ten glossy photographs of a beautiful blonde fell out.

  Stinky grabbed them and spread them face up on top of Lucas’s papers. “I ask you—is this the face of a killer?”

  Lucas was about to argue that that was hardly the point, but as he lifted a photograph, he found himself staring into a pair of vivacious blue eyes that drank too deeply of his soul.

  Oh, my God—

  His tongue thickened. Had his life depended upon it, he couldn’t have uttered a word.

  He was stunned that even a mere picture of her generated that strange, awesome power over him.

  Panic began to rise in Lucas as he studied the scintillatingly luxuriant yellow hair, the inviting lips that were parted in laughter, the flawless, full-bosomed, slender-hipped figure.

  Chandra Moran was the girl he’d met naked in his shower less than an hour ago. The girl whose lips he’d kissed. The girl who’d haunted his every waking thought and had even haunted his dreams for days.

  So—this was what she looked like in full glory when she was happy and unafraid and completely healthy. When her skin was golden from the sun.

  She was really something. Hell, as if he didn’t already know that.

  In another shot her hands were splayed open on her hips as she stood halfway up the gray steps of a Mayan pyramid. In tight jeans and a halter top, with her golden hair streaming in the wind, laughing at her photographer, she looked younger and more carefree than she had looked in his shower. In another photo she had laid her head on a sacrificial stone chopping block and was sticking out her tongue at the camera as if she was taunting her executioner.

  Fully clothed, she was every bit as sexy as she was naked.

  Cute butt. Long legs. The three pictures were all it took to make Lucas’s desire for her well up. Only now she had a name, a very dangerous name. Now his desire for her was laced with fear and danger because he had a head full of questions that he was suddenly afraid to ask.

  His hands clenched, wrinkling the edges of the photos before he dropped them on his desk. He knew he was behaving stupidly, that he had to say something fast. Somehow he managed a hoarse whisper.

  “This is…Bethany Ann Moran?”

  Stinky’s hard, bright eyes locked with his. “I’ll grant you, she’s a looker.”

  Reluctantly Lucas forced a disinterested nod. “I imagined her differently. More like a straight-laced nun or a schoolteacher type.”

  “Not our Chandra. She’s had dozens of wild boyfriends.”

  Lucas flushed, angry at the mention of other men.

  “I was her first.” Stinky reddened, too. “She dumped me.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your damned business. You just find her, counselor, before the wrong guy does.”

  “You mean—the cops?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  The only ethical response was to admit he already had her. But as he watched Stinky rise from his chair, some raw, gut-level instinct stopped Lucas.

  The silence between the two men lengthened and grew strangely uncomfortable, at least for Lucas.

  “You okay, counselor? You seem kind of nervous all of a sudden.”

  Lucas finger-combed his inky hair and tried to act casual. “Worked late. Big new project. Very big.”

  “Hope it won’t distract you from Bethany.”

  “Oh, er, no chance of that.”

  “Good.”

  Stinky’s black eyes fastened on Lucas as Lucas hastily jumped up and ushered him to the door.

  The minute Stinky was gone, Lucas canceled the rest of his morning’s appointments to consider this new information.

  Bethany Ann Moran was living in his house. She had been in a car wreck. She had been brought to the hospital with head injuries; she’d also been high on drugs. She was wanted by the police. His own kids had played savior and doctor.

  The legal ramifications of not giving her up were horrendous. If anything happened to her, her family could sue him for every dime he had. He didn’t want to think about the police. Then there were the financial aspects. He would lose his shot at the Moran will.

  So be it.

  Was she or wasn’t she innocent? Was someone trying to kill her? Until he knew more, Lucas had to protect her.

  What the hell had really happened in that accident? Lucas couldn’t believe Chandra had murdered Santos, her driver, and had planned to dump his body somewhere.

  So, damn it, what had happened?

  He got up and went to a window. His office was on the seventeenth floor and commanded a view of the bay. In no way did the brilliant sunshine and clear blue sky reflect the growing darkness of his mood.

  He went back to his desk and ran his hands through his hair. Suddenly he remembered something that had seemed insignificant at the time.
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  There had been a van at the Moran ranch. A blue van with a dark man in a Stetson waiting patiently in it while the sky turned black. The van had still been there when he’d driven away from the mansion.

  But not the driver.

  Lucas’s mind raced.

  He remembered that he’d felt a strange empathy for Chandra even when he’d been in the library. Then, when he’d stepped into the foyer, he’d sensed that weird connection to some powerful otherworldly presence.

  He had felt Chandra.

  Chandra had been there..

  He knew it in his bones.

  That night in San Antonio he had that nightmare about her that had kept him up till dawn.

  God.

  Had she been in trouble, crying out for help? Had he somehow sensed it? This whole thing kept getting weirder and weirder.

  Lucas phoned his top private investigator, Tom Robard, and told him to come over. When Robard got there, Lucas spit out rapid-fire demands. He wanted to know everything about Chandra Moran. Everything about every other Moran, too. Everything about anyone living on the Moran ranch or on the Moran payroll, as well. Everything about Casas de Cristo and the people who ran it. And the investigation had to be kept hush-hush. Lucas had Robard send two bodyguards out to his own house to make sure nobody could get to Bethany, and to make sure she couldn’t wander away, either.

  Lucas was about to go home when he remembered he still hadn’t called Pete.

  The answering service said Pete was tied up in surgery.

  Damn.

  Later.

  As Lucas hung up, a woman with a cap of shiny dark hair, a nervous young staff attorney in a black suit, stopped by his office.

  “I was wondering if you’d heard, Mr. Broderick?”

  Lucas looked up and saw that she was pale and had a dazed look in her eyes. Which meant trouble.

  Wearily he shook his head.

  “A guy claiming to be the serial killer phoned our office and said you’re next.”

  “Good God. Just what I need.”

  Five

  Lucas froze as he got out of his car and heard his sons’ excited shouts, quickly followed by peals of warm, feminine laughter. He heard the clang of a heavy iron horseshoe against an iron stake. And Peppin’s triumphant cry as he pitched another horseshoe.

  His sons.

  Her laughter.

  She even sounded beautiful.

  The three of them seemed so happy together as they played behind the house somewhere near the pool.

  Lucas caught his breath. Drugs? Murder? Could such a gorgeous, innocent-looking woman be capable of such heinous—

  Then he remembered Joan. Joan, who had lied to him with a smile. Joan, who had neglected and abandoned her own sons. Joan, who had been so undeniably beautiful and passionate in his bed but in so many others, as well—even that of his best friend.

  Bitterly, Lucas wished he was wrong about Chandra, and if she was truly evil, that he could exorcise her from his fevered brain and heart before it was too late.

  She emitted another silvery peal of laughter that tugged at his heart.

  It was already too late.

  He loved her.

  And so did his sons.

  The foundations of his logical life were crumbling. He could feel everything he’d worked so long and so hard for going down the tubes, even his career, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. If Joan had gutted him and left him for dead, this girl might be about to deliver the coup de grace.

  Warily he prowled around to the back of his white mansion where he found Peppin, his outstretched hand still in the air as he watched the horseshoe he’d flung arc high against the darkening opalescent sky before falling, ringing the iron stake with an awesome clatter. Chandra clapped as the boys ran to gather up their horseshoes.

  “Hello—again.” Lucas’s deep cynical drawl sounded lazy, but he felt as tightly strung as piano wire.

  Chandra, who was standing against a mass of fuchsia-colored bougainvillea, whirled, her face flushing with delight when she saw him. Tiny blue flames began to blaze in her eyes as hotly as bonfires. A similar answering excitement coiled warmly around his heart.

  She was so beautiful. He held his breath, his eyes unable to leave her face. He stood motionless, as one enchanted. She dominated his field of vision with her yellow hair gleaming as brightly as pure gold.

  In that sparkling moment all his doubts melted away, and she was everything to him. He had missed her acutely in the brief hours they’d been apart.

  He was too cold and too cynical and too smart to feel this way.

  He was inflamed by her beauty and caught by the sweetness of her fragile smile and radiant face as she looked at him.

  With that bright hair falling softly around her shoulders, she was a vision in his old chambray shirt and Peppin’s too-tight jeans. He was heartened that the shadows beneath her eyes were lighter and that her cheeks were rosier. One look was enough to tell him that no matter how he fought it, he would never be released from the hold she had on him.

  Still, he raged against it inwardly.

  She stiffened and grew shy of him, too, somehow sensing the exact moment he started to recoil from her.

  Two sea gulls swooped down, fighting for a tidbit of fish, circling, squawking. Distracted by the birds, she laughed nervously.

  Peppin picked up one of four huge, bulging plastic garbage bags. “Hey, Dad, look what we did!” Peppin dropped the bag and pointed toward three other overflowing bags lined neatly in front of the pool house.

  “She hid a treasure on the beach under a piece of driftwood. She said we were pirates who couldn’t remember where we’d buried our treasure and we had to pick up trash while we looked for it,” Montague explained.

  The beach was constantly littered with bottles, foam cups, plastic bags, boards with rusty nails, pieces of fishing equipment—every imaginable sort of debris that could be thrown overboard from fishing boats or swept from the city streets via the storm sewers.

  “That’s great. Just great,” Lucas said grumpily. Usually the boys threw tantrums at the prospect of picking up so much as a single bottle cap. Lucas resented having still another fresh reason to admire her.

  “I have supper waiting,” she said, her slanting eyes having grown warily hurt.

  “Let’s go inside, then,” he said. It was all he could manage.

  It was a first—the four of them eating together— and she had worked hard to make it special. Dinner was a warm, golden, candlelit affair in his normally white, sterile dining room. She’d had the boys set the table with a melon-colored cloth and matching napkins. Roses scented the room from a crystal vase. Romantic piano music tinkled faintly—Schubert. She had cooked a roast and mashed potatoes and green beans. She’d even made flan—Peppin’s favorite.

  His, too.

  How had she known?

  Why was he even surprised? She seemed to know everything about him.

  He watched her avoid the beef and pick at her vegetables, while he ate lustily. The roast, which she had flavored with garlic and delicate spices, seemed to melt in his mouth.

  The boys chattered about some redheaded friend named Jeremiah who had been sent to the principal’s office three times that day. The adults nodded, speaking only when necessary and only to the boys, although each was acutely conscious of the other.

  Lucas’s tension grew as he sensed the boys watching the two of them, especially him. Finally Peppin, who could never be quiet for long if he was bothered by something, blurted out the question foremost on everybody’s mind. “Are you going to be mean to her like you were to Mom and make her go away?”

  Like you were to Mom? Was that how they saw it?

  “Or can she stay?”

  All three of them peered at him in the flickering candlelight. Even in the golden light Chandra was ashen, her gaze wide and frightened, like a doe at bay, not wanting to pressure him and yet pressuring him more than the boys’ dark avid faces.r />
  “I hadn’t thought much about it.”

  Liar.

  Lucas cut off a piece of roast, inserted it into his mouth and began to chew methodically.

  “We like her, Dad,” Montague asserted.

  “You don’t know one damn thing about her.” Lucas kept his gaze on his potatoes, but he felt the betrayal she felt when he uttered that lie.

  Damn it. He didn’t believe in extrasensory perception or whatever this weird bond was between them.

  “We know all we need to know, Dad,” Peppin said. “She’s pretty and nice…and patient. She fits in. And she says she likes you a lot.”

  “Thank you, Peppin.” She flushed. “But I really don’t think—”

  “And,” Peppin continued, “she listens when we talk. She doesn’t raise her voice when she gets mad. She doesn’t just shout orders and treat us like children. She makes us mind, too. She senses what we want or need to do even before we do.”

  Incredibly, it was all too true. She had woven her spell on them all. Lucas speared another piece of roast and jammed it defiantly into his mouth. Again it melted on his tongue.

  “So—how. long do you expect this cozy arrangement to last?” he asked Peppin between succulent bites.

  “She’s already done a better job and lasted longer than any of the nannies or housekeepers you hired,” Montague said.

  “That might not be so true if you two hadn’t sabotaged—”

  “We want to keep her, Dad.”

  She said nothing, but he felt her soul-to-soul plea even more powerfully than either of his sons’.

  Please, Lucas, just for a little while.

  Okay. Okay, he shot back at her, using ESP just to see if she was tuned into his frequency, too.

  Bingo.

  Cheeks glowing, her bright gaze lifted to his, and she smiled in astonishment and pleasure as she read his mind.

  Her pleasure filled him, saturated him, thrilled him.

  This was weird, he thought vaguely, right before he thundered, “All right! You win! She can stay!” He shoved his chair back, stunned. “But that’s only because I can’t fight everybody.”

  He got up, furious at himself, at her, at all of them, and stalked to his liquor cabinet, where he made a martini. He tossed it down and made another. With a grimace he tossed that one down, as well, and poured and stirred still another.