Protect Me

by Margaret Watson

  A faint smile flickered over Mia's mouth. Her breathing slowed, and in the blink of an eye, she'd regained her composure. Which was too bad. He'd been enjoying flustered Mia.

  "Part of the persona," she said easily. "I'm selling myself as a lightweight. An airhead. People don't take you seriously when they think you're a few colors short of a full crayon box."

  "Great acting," he said. "You almost fooled me." He nudged her with his elbow. "You want to be an extra in the movie?"

  "If I have to be," she said, her voice cool. "I'll be in any crowd scenes with a lot of people milling around if I think it's the best way to protect you. Personal protection is tricky when there are so many unknowns."

  "Wow." He studied her, fascinated by the intricacies of her mind. "I didn't even think about that."

  "Good thing I did, then. Nothing like using a chaotic scene in a movie to create even more chaos."

  The elevator groaned to a halt, and the doors slowly creaked open. "How did you jump from a note and a ring to someone going berserk during a mob scene?" he asked.

  She shrugged. "It's my job to consider all possibilities. That one was pretty obvious."

  He waited for her to exit the elevator, and got an approving nod in return. He smiled to himself as he followed her out. He'd waited for her to go first for politeness' sake. But he'd let her think he'd been paying attention.

  He followed her onto the main floor, moving slightly ahead of her. He stopped abruptly when she stepped in front of him, put her palm on his chest and held him in place. After a long moment, she let her hand drop and stepped to the side.

  "Never get ahead of me," she said, her eyes flat and her mouth tense.

  "Jeez," he said, rubbing the place on his chest that had collided with her hand. "You look like a good wind could knock you over. But you're damn strong."

  One side of her mouth curled up. "Part of my real persona."

  "Speaking of your fake identity, are you going to tell me what that scene with the set decoration woman was all about?"

  Mia glanced around, then led him to a bench against the wall. "Sit down for a moment," she said quietly.

  When he'd seated himself, she eased onto the bench beside him. There was no one in sight, and she finally relaxed against the wall. "Her name is Ginny. She came up on the elevator while your meeting was going on. Acted shocked to see me. Wanted to know what I was doing there. Questioned me aggressively. She’s the one who opened the door during your meeting."

  She shifted to face him. "The room she went into just now is empty."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because after Ginny left, I checked all the doors in the corridor. She said she worked in set decoration, so I wanted to see if they had an office on that floor. They don’t."

  "Don't you mean set décor?" he asked. Yanking her chain was surprisingly fun.

  "Oops." She grinned, her eyes twinkling, and need stirred inside him. "Yeah. Set décor."

  "Easy enough to find out if she's part of the production. What's her last name?"

  The grin disappeared. "I don't know. Couldn't really ask her, since I didn't want to give her my last name."

  "There can't be that many people in that department. Let's go check it out."

  "Right now?"

  "Sure." He held her elbow as she stood up. "You can do your Valley girl impression again. I like that one. It's hot."

  She'd started walking, but at that, she stopped dead in her tracks. Swung around to face him. "You're not taking this seriously, are you?"

  He shrugged. "My opinion? Doug is over-reacting. Some random crazy doesn't like me, but so what? They need to get in line behind everyone else in the country. So, no. I'm not losing sleep over this stalker thing."

  She jerked him around to face her. Got too close to him. As he inhaled her scent, she narrowed her eyes. "Too bad, because I am, Finn. Maybe you have a death wish, but if you get hurt, it's my job on the line. My career. So I'm taking this assignment very seriously. Things will go much more smoothly if you do, too."

  "You think I have a death wish or something? That I don't care about my safety?" He got even closer, until he felt the heat pouring off her body. Until he inhaled her sweet orange scent. Until he wanted to bury his hands in her hair, see if it was as soft as it looked.

  Then he saw the pity lurking in the blue depths of her eyes.

  Damn it all to hell. Mia was an attractive, interesting woman. The first woman who'd ignited even a spark of interest since the debacle with Gemma. The last thing he wanted from her was pity.

  He hated that she felt sorry for him. That she saw him as an object of sympathy. Anger at Gemma, anger he'd pushed down for the past year and a half, flared up like a brush fire.

  "You think I'm crushed that Gemma dumped me?" He moved close enough to bump her, surprising her into stumbling backward. "That I don't care if I live or die? Here's a news flash for you. When Gemma pulled that…when she walked out on me, it was the best day of my life. So I don't need your pity. And I damn well don't have a death wish."

  She stared at him steadily. "You don't want to die? Then act like it. Don't pretend this is a big joke. Pay attention and do what I tell you to do."

  "I think I've been pretty damn cooperative with your ninja routine. I've stayed behind you. Let you get out of the car first. Went along when you crowded me into the wall when your buddy got off the elevator. Have I complained about any of that?"

  "No. Not in the," she glanced at her watch, "four hours I've been on the job." She put her hand on his chest and tried to shove him backward. But he was prepared this time. He braced himself. Held her gaze as he manacled her wrist.

  "Maybe, instead of pushing me around, you could try, oh, I don't know, talking to me. I'm capable of grasping simple instructions."

  "I know you are, Finn." Her voice had softened. She extracted her hand from his grasp, and her soft, delicate skin slid against his like silk. "I don't think you realize how this could go down. A stalker isn't going to look like a crazed person. He or she will look normal. Like anyone else on the street. And bad things happen in a split second. Knives. Guns. Acid. Two hands on your back, shoving you in front of a bus.

  "I may not have time to talk. I have to react. Stop the threat. So when you think I'm pushing you around, I'm really talking in shorthand. 'Stop.' 'Stay behind me.' 'Get down.' Sorry if I'm hurting your delicate feelings.

  "I don't really care what you think of me. You can dislike me. Resent me. Be angry at me for disrupting your life. I don't give a damn. Let me do my job for the three weeks that you're here, and we're good. Once you're done filming, I can go back to my job. Take the…" She clamped her mouth shut. "Get back into my routine."

  Take what? But he was too focused on his pissed-off-ness to ask. "And what if this nut job follows me back to California?" He hadn't meant to say that. The words had just slipped out of his mouth.

  "Not my business," she said. "You're my business while you're in Chicago. Once you leave, you're on your own."

  "Fine. I'm glad we know where we both stand."

  "Me, too." Mia tugged down her jacket and smoothed down her pants. "Let's check the set decoration staff."

  Finn's breath sawed in and out. He was jacked up. Wanted to go another round or two with Mia. But she looked unruffled. Serene. As though their argument had rolled off her back like water off a duck.

  "You always this good at hiding your feelings?" he asked.

  She glanced at him as she started down the hallway. "I know how to keep my private life separate from my job."

  "And your feelings are part of your private life?" Again, the words had somehow fallen out of his mouth without conscious thought.

  "Damn straight they are." She pointed to a door half-way down the hall. "That's the set decoration office."

  "How the hell do you know that?"

  "There's a chart on the floor where your meeting was held. I had plenty of time to study it."

  She shoved her hand through her
hair, disturbing the dark waves. It looked as if she'd done that more than once already this morning.

  She was so damn composed. So self-contained. What would it take to agitate her?

  The memory of the touch of her hand, sliding through his, made his skin tingle. The scent of her dark mass of hair flowed around him like a drug. Images of her with far less clothing, in a much more private setting, scrolled through his head. He could think of a lot of ways he'd like to agitate her.

  He hadn't expected this reaction to Mia. Since Gemma, he'd been a monk. The thought of getting involved with a woman again made him cringe. The day he'd walked out of their house, he'd sworn he wouldn't be that vulnerable ever again.

  And here he was, thinking about getting naked with his bodyguard.

  Great timing, genius.

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and heard the click of a door opening. His eyes flew open, and he saw Mia stepping into one of the offices. He followed her and closed the door.

  Reaching behind her, she tugged on his arm until he was beside the door instead of in front of it. As she let him go, a woman walked around the corner in front of him. "Can I help you?" she asked.

  Her eyes scrolled to Finn, behind Mia. "Mr. O'Rourke. What can I do for you?"

  Show time.

  He stepped up beside Mia and threw his arm over her shoulder. The momentary tensing of her muscles wouldn’t be visible to the woman standing in front of them, but he felt a stab of satisfaction. She'd felt the undercurrent pulsing beneath their little disagreement, too.

  Then she leaned into him. "I'm looking for Ginny," Mia said in that high-pitched, breathless, grating voice. "She works in this department."

  The woman's gaze lingered on Finn's arm around Mia's shoulder, then she shifted to Finn's face. "What's her last name?"

  "I have no idea," he said coolly. "I think Mia was asking the questions."

  The woman flushed and she turned to Mia. "Sorry. What was Ginny's last name?"

  "She didn't get a chance to tell me," Mia said. "She was so nice to me when I was waiting for Finn to finish his meeting. I wanted to thank her."

  The woman tilted her head. "There are two Ginnys in our department. Ginny Gaugher is here this morning. It must have been her. But she's not in the office right now. She's somewhere else in the building."

  "That's too bad," Mia said, pouting a little. "But will you tell her thank you for me?"

  "I can do that. Your name was…?"

  "Mia." Mia's giggle made Finn want to laugh. Damn, she was good. "She'll remember me."

  "Okay, Mia. I'll tell her." The woman's face softened. "It was kind of you to stop by."

  "Thank you, Ms…" Mia peered at the name badge hanging from a lanyard. "Ms. Laine. I appreciate it."

  "You're more than welcome." Ms. Laine's eyes lingered on Finn's arm over Mia's shoulder. "Glad I could help."

  "Me, too," Mia said with a bright smile.

  Finn opened the door for her and stood to the side as she exited. As soon as the door was closed behind them, she dropped the simpering smirk. "Where do you need to go now?"

  "I have a meeting with the wardrobe people next. They want to check the fit of my costume one last time before we start shooting." He shook his head. "They've checked about twenty times already. But, hey, I might have put on ten pounds in the last week. You never know."

  "Been eating too much? Drinking too much beer?" she asked, raising one eyebrow.

  He began to bristle at her judgmental tone, then he saw the twinkle in her eyes. "Yeah, I've been pigging out," he said, deadpan. "I like being a diva, you know? Making everyone scurry around at the last minute to fix things I've screwed up."

  Her gaze moved slowly down his body, lingering at his waist, then back up. Instinct made him suck in a breath. He didn't miss the tiny flicker of amusement that came and went in her gaze.

  "Okay. They're letting your costume out. How about after that?"

  "Smart ass." He liked that she went toe to toe with him. Liked that she teased him, too. "Script writers are next. That one shouldn't take long. They made a few last minute changes I need to okay."

  "You get to do that?" she said, turning to study him. "Okay script changes?"

  "Yeah." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "My agent put it in my contract. Because of the recent, ah, situation, I needed to have some control over my lines." He looked away from Mia and stared at the door to the writer's room down the hall. "I want this part. Badly. And I want to be taken seriously. Last thing I want is to have the writers playing with the Gemma crap. Throwing in lines to make the audience smirk about it. It was hard enough to get this part. I don't want lines that will hurt my career more than it's already been damaged."

  "You've had a hard time getting parts because of your…thing with Gemma Radley?"

  "Yes." He didn't want to discuss it. "So wardrobe first, then the script writers. It'll take about fifteen minutes to make sure the costumes still fit. And less than that to go over my lines and make sure they haven't been changed."

  "You've already got your lines memorized?"

  "Yeah." He smiled at the surprise in her voice. "You know what you're supposed to do on this job, don't you? You know, how to protect me?"

  "Of course. That's my job."

  "Well, this is my job. And I come prepared."

  "Glad to know I'm working with a pro. It'll make my job easier," she said.

  He glanced at her again as they walked down the hall. He might not want her here, but once he'd regained control of his temper, he'd realized she was right. She had a job to do, and her job was protecting him. Needling his godfather Doug by getting in Mia's way was only going to hurt Mia.

  So he'd do his best to cooperate. And if his fascination with Mia Donovan was growing by leaps and bounds, he'd learn to control it.

  Which shouldn't be a problem, since he'd learned a lot about control since he and Gemma had ended. The vindictive Gemma had manipulated their break-up to give her career a huge boost. And tried to crush his beneath the heel of her stiletto boots. But she'd taught him two important lessons.

  The first was 'be in control'.

  The second was 'don't trust your lover.'

  Both of them were burned into his brain.

  Chapter 5

  Mia leaned against the wall and tried to figure out what Finn was saying behind the closed door. It should have been easy enough – he'd been yelling for the past ten minutes.

  But the walls in the old building – she'd found a plaque describing the place as a former candy factory – were too thick to hear clearly. She could identify Finn's voice, though.

  Really? Through those thick walls? After only a few hours with him?

  It was part of her job. Nothing more.

  He was in with the screenwriters. Half an hour had passed, and, if she had to guess, the script people had made changes he didn't like.

  His voice stopped suddenly. No sounds leaked out of the room. She could feel the weight of the silence, even through the walls. She leaned closer to the door, as if that would make it easier to hear through the thick wood.

  The moments stretched longer. Tighter. She curled her fingers around the door knob.

  Finn had insisted he knew the screenwriters. That he'd met with them a number of times in the past months. That if one of them was the stalker, they'd had a lot of opportunities to confront him already. But if the quiet in that room continued for another ten seconds, she'd go in and check on him.

  Without warning, the door opened and she was yanked forward. As she stumbled, Finn caught her elbow. "Let's go," he barked. "We're done here."

  Mia tugged her arm away from Finn's grasp and stepped away from him. She glanced in the room and saw two men and a woman seated at a table. One of the men, a guy with a shaved head and a goatee, grabbed a pen off the table and hurled it across the room. The woman at the table glanced at the pen thrower.

  "Are you finished?" she asked calmly. "Or is there something else you
want to throw around? Besides your weight?"

  "Shut it, Hildy." The guy glared at the woman, and she stared back at him.

  "You lost the lines," Hildy said, folding her hands on the table in front of her. "He," she pointed at Finn, "has veto power. Get over it, Andrew." She jerked her head at Finn. "You won, O'Rourke. Now get lost."

  "Happy to. And if you try to sneak those lines back into the script overnight, or give them to someone else, I'll call you out in front of Sean, in front of his AD's, in front of the rest of the cast. We clear?"

  "As crystal," Hildy said.

  "Those were good lines, O'Rourke." Andrew puffed up his chest. "You're destroying that scene by taking them out."

  "Maybe so. Maybe not. But they're gone. My contract says I can cut your stupid-ass lines, Owens. And I just did."

  Owens opened his mouth to say something, and Hildy waved Finn away. "Get out of our room, Pretty Boy." She shot a look at Mia. "And take your friend with you."

  "Fuck you, Hildy." Finn slammed the door so hard that it rattled in its frame. Then he leaned against the wall, closed his eyes and exhaled.

  Mia catalogued the red flares on his cheeks and the way his chest rose and fell too fast. His throat rippled once, then again. It didn't take a genius to put together the tell-tale signs of anger. "Bad meeting?" she murmured.

  "You have no idea." He opened his eyes and pushed away from the wall. "Hildy was mostly interested in busting everyone's balls. Owens wanted to add some soulfully crappy lines to give the film deep symbolism and make it 'matter'." He swiped quotes in the air. "And Teddy? He'd added some lines that were snide references to the Gemma situation. But he didn't care that I cut them. All he was thinking about was getting out of the meeting so he could snort some blow in the john."

  "Wow. Sounds like fun," she said. She glanced at him as she began to walk, pleased when he stayed beside her.

  "It was a real laugh riot." His face darkened. "Until Hildy gave me that parting shot."

  "Which parting shot was that?"

  "You heard her." He scowled down at her. "Pretty Boy."

  "Really? That's what upset you? 'Pretty Boy O'Rourke' is the favorite phrase of every tabloid on the planet. You must be used to it."