by Lisa Childs
Cole quickly holstered the weapon he’d instinctively drawn when he’d noticed the shadow beneath the back door. But the client continued to stare at him, her green eyes wide with fear. “It’s okay,” he assured her.
Manny didn’t speak at all. He just stared at her like she was staring at Cole—with almost as much fear. That was what Cole had suspected, that she’d already started getting to Manny, or he would have demanded last night that Cooper pull him from the assignment.
He probably should have demanded that.
Nikki Payne pushed him and Manny aside and said, “Like Manny, we’re with Payne Protection.” She held out her hand. “I’m Nikki Payne. This is Cole Bentler. My fiancé, Lars, and his bestie, Dane, flew up with us, too, but they’re out searching the woods right now.”
“Manny?” The redhead repeated the name, her brow furrowing with confusion.
Nikki glanced back at Manny. “Jordan Mannes—everybody calls him Manny.”
Obviously the redhead had not been aware of that. Usually Manny shared his nickname with everyone. Had he been trying to keep things more formal—more professional—between them? That had probably been a good idea.
“Are you all right?” Nikki asked the question of Teddie Plummer. But Cole wanted to ask Manny, who had still not spoken. He couldn’t remember his garrulous friend ever staying quiet for so long.
Teddie nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m—I’m a little disoriented. I just woke up and haven’t had my coffee yet.”
“I’ll make some,” Nikki offered as she followed the supermodel into the cabin.
Cole pulled the door closed behind the women and remained standing outside with his best friend. “Looks like you could use some coffee, too.”
Manny ran a hand down over his face; it shook slightly. “Yeah, I could. I was up all night making sure he didn’t try for her again.”
“If he’s out there, Lars and Dane will find him,” Cole said.
Manny snorted. “Then who will find them? They’re city boys like me. They’re bound to get lost out there.”
His getting lost had scared the hell out of the team the night before, especially Cole. But he’d be damned if he’d admit it. Such an admission would only embarrass them both. So he shrugged. “Nikki’s probably planted a GPS locator on Lars like people do their pets.”
Usually Manny would have been the one to make the joke about their friends being whipped. But he didn’t even laugh.
“You really are tired,” he said. “Why don’t you go in the house and get some sleep?”
Manny shook his head. “I’m fine. It’s not like I’ve never been sleep-deprived before.”
“Yeah, when we were being tortured,” Cole said. “That must be what this entire assignment is to you—torture.”
Manny glanced at the closed door. Maybe he was worried that the client was going to overhear them. “It’s fine. You can stop feeling guilty for going along with the joke.”
Cole couldn’t deny that he had been feeling guilty. His friend knew him too well. That went both ways, though. He knew Manny just as well. “I can take over as primary bodyguard for you,” he offered.
Manny shook his head. “I told you it’s fine.”
“You said she maced you,” Cole reminded him.
“Then she pulled a knife on me, too.”
Cole had had the misfortune of knowing some dangerous women—some that he’d loved—but it sounded like Teddie Plummer could give them a run for their money. “What the hell—”
“That’s what makes this such an easy assignment,” Manny said. “She protects herself.” He sounded impressed—maybe too impressed.
Cole was glad he had waited out the fog and flown out as soon as the weather had cleared. Because it was obvious—whether from the stalker or their beautiful client—that Manny needed protection.
* * *
Manny had been glad to see his friends—even though he’d pulled a gun on them the minute they’d arrived. Of course they’d expected it. He wouldn’t have been doing his job if they had managed to sneak up on him.
The entire night he’d stayed alert to movement outside the cabin, to shadows shifting in the night and the fog. He’d also stayed alert to every sound Teddie had made as she murmured and shifted in her sleep.
His body was still tense, on edge with desire for her. God, she was beautiful. When he’d opened that door to see her glorious red hair tangled around her face and her features soft with sleep, he’d lost his mind for a moment. He hadn’t been able to speak or even think or breathe.
He wanted her...
He wanted her to be safe. And the only way to do that would be to find the sick son of a bitch who was after her and destroy him.
Cole was talking to Manny as they stood outside the cabin. He didn’t hear anything his friend was saying. Instead he heard the rustle of brush. And he drew his weapon, pointing it toward where he’d seen the brush rustle the night before. But the man emerging between the trees and underbrush was bigger than the one who had swung the stick at Manny near the campfire. Lars Ecklund was a blond giant of a man. And he was not alone. Dane Sutton walked out of the trees behind Lars.
“Well, they found their way back,” Cole muttered as he reholstered the gun he had drawn, as well. Then he called out to them. “Did you guys find anything?”
Lars sighed. “Probably just poison ivy.”
Dane snorted but surreptitiously scratched at his arm despite wearing long sleeves. “We found an old campsite,” he said. “Looks like the fire had been out for a while, though. The ashes of it were all that was left behind.”
“He’s gone,” Lars said.
Manny shook his head. He knew he’d seen something outside that window—someone. “He’s not far.” Hell, he was probably watching them right now—if the skin prickling between Manny’s shoulder blades was any indication. “I doubt he’s ever very far away from her.”
Dane glanced uneasily around the area, as if he felt it, too, that they were being watched.
“We need to bring her back to River City,” Cole said, “and get her into one of the safe houses with around-the-clock protection, each of us taking a shift. You can’t do this alone.”
How bad did he look that his friend was so worried about him? Of course Cole was the worrier of the unit. He knew the worst that could happen. Probably because it had already happened to him.
“I don’t intend to do this alone,” Manny said. “I need your help to track down this guy. And it might be easier to do that here than in River City.”
“How’s that?” Nikki asked the question as she opened the door behind them.
“It’s a remote area,” he said with a faint shudder as he thought of all the woods around here and how easy it was to get lost in them. “So a stranger is going to stick out here. He’s going to be memorable to the locals for buying his camping gear, for asking for directions to this place. He also got a set of keys to her place somehow.”
Nikki stared at him in surprise. As he glanced around, he noticed the guys staring at him the same way, with their mouths just about gaping open with shock. They weren’t the only ones. He had surprised himself, too. But he’d had the entire sleepless night to strategize how to catch this stalker. Otherwise he probably would have left it to everyone else, like he usually did.
He pulled the keys from his pocket and held them out to Nikki. “Teddie swears she hasn’t given out any keys to anyone but her mother.”
Nikki nodded. “Maybe he was there—when she had the keys made for her mom. Or he bribed a locksmith or something to come out and make a key for the lock.” She studied the keys, her dark eyes narrowed. “We might be able to get prints off these, too.”
“So you’ll check the locksmith angle,” Manny told her.
Then he turned toward Lars. “How about you check out the stores in town? See if any strange
r bought some camping equipment lately.”
Then he turned to Dane. “Gas stations?”
But when he turned toward Cole, Bentler shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “You’re not sending me anywhere. I’m staying right here. You need backup.”
“I’m alert,” Manny said. There was no way he would be able to take the nap Cole had suggested. He was too wired, too close to catching this bastard to miss any opportunity. “And it’s daylight. I’ll see him coming if he’s stupid enough to try again.”
“He’s right,” Dane said. “The fog’s burned off. It’s easy to see now.”
“You need to check at the airstrip,” he told Cole, “see if anyone else has flown in recently. A stranger.”
Cole sighed but nodded.
Nikki stepped closer to him and patted his cheek. She was so much like her mother—from the auburn curls to the warm brown eyes in appearance and the warmth and affection in personality. “Good work, Mannes,” she said with approval. “Cooper was right to make you the lead bodyguard on this assignment.”
“It was a joke,” he reminded her. “Cooper was playing a joke on me.” And everybody else had been in on it. He probably should have been furious with them, but they weren’t like Teddie’s friends. They hadn’t sold him out for money or for fifteen minutes of fame. And they had his back when he needed it.
It also wasn’t like he had never pulled a trick on any of them before. Sometimes kidding around was all that had gotten them through the tough missions. Actually, the tougher the mission, the more they had goofed around.
Nikki pulled a folder from the laptop bag strapped over her shoulder. “This is no joke,” she said as she fanned through the stalker’s sadistic threats. “Cooper wouldn’t have sent you if he hadn’t thought you could handle it.”
Manny had thought he could handle whatever the assignment had entailed—before he’d learned the client was Teddie Plummer, the woman of his former fantasies. It wasn’t just her distracting him that he had to worry about. He had to worry about her stalker, how sick and twisted and determined the man was to get to her.
Manny held on to the facade of confidence until they were all gone. But when he stepped into the cabin and found Teddie waiting for him, his doubts resurfaced. Oh, he knew he would find her stalker. He just wasn’t certain what stopping the guy would cost him.
His life.
Or his heart...
Chapter 8
Hearing the engine as a vehicle pulled away had given Teddie a moment’s panic that she had been left alone. Unprotected.
When the door opened and Jordan walked into the cabin, relief rushed over with such force that her knees nearly weakened. And she realized she hadn’t been afraid of being left alone.
The Payne Protection Agency was too professional to leave her without a bodyguard. Her panic had been that she’d thought he had left her.
He must have seen her panic because he drew his weapon and peered around the cabin. “Are you all right?”
She jerked her head up and down in a quick nod, as emotion choked her. Maybe it had just all caught up with her—all the months of being watched, threatened, nearly grabbed...
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She was not going to fall apart now. She was like her mama—tough. Drawing in a deep breath to calm herself, she nodded again. “Yes, I’m fine.”
He holstered his weapon and reached for her, closing his arms around her. “You’re not fine,” he said as he drew her against his chest. “You’re shaking.”
Had the shock of the night before—of nearly being attacked—finally caught up with her? She was trembling, but she realized it had less to do with shock and more to do with being this close to Jordan Mannes. He was so big, so strong, so hard and warm.
She lifted her arms and linked them around his neck then tipped her head up toward his. She wasn’t used to having to look up this much. At five-ten, she was nearly as tall if not taller than most of the men she met—except for him and his mammoth friends.
Only the female bodyguard had been small—petite even—but her personality had been larger than life. Despite the woman being a little younger than Teddie, Nikki Payne had reminded her of her mother. Shrewd and strong.
“Thank you for staying,” she told him.
He tilted his head and his brow furrowed with confusion. “You thought I left?”
“I heard the engine start up,” she said. “Then I heard the vehicle driving off.”
“The others left,” he told her, “but just for a little while. They’re going to do some investigating. See if we can figure out who this guy is.” While he kept one arm wrapped around her, he moved his other hand toward her face and ran his big fingers along her jaw. “And I’m not leaving you—not until this guy is caught.”
But he would leave her then. She was just an assignment to him. She knew it was foolish to think otherwise. He was getting paid to protect her. She was paying him, just like she’d paid agents and assistants who had betrayed her.
Would Jordan Mannes betray her, too?
The night before she had been so vulnerable she had told him things that she’d shared with no one else—about the friends who’d betrayed her, about how she’d grown up with just her mom, about how she wanted to get her degree for her mama. Would she read those things in a tabloid someday?
She shuddered as she considered it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he stared down into her face.
Other men rarely looked at her face. They stared instead at her oversize breasts and hips. They didn’t bother looking into her eyes like Jordan was looking now. But she wondered if it was just her eyes into which he was looking or if it was her soul...
He seemed to see her in a way no one else had.
“I’m just scared,” she said.
He drew her closer. “You can stop worrying,” he told her. “I will protect you.”
But at the moment it wasn’t her stalker she was scared of; it was Jordan Mannes and the feelings he had rushing through her. Her pulse raced; her skin tingled. She wanted more than his protection.
She wanted him.
To close the distance between them, she only had to rise up on her toes. Then she pressed her mouth to his. His lips were cool and somehow both soft and hard beneath hers. And unmoving...
Embarrassed, she pulled back. “I’m sor—”
His mouth swallowed the rest of her apology as he kissed her back. His lips nipped and nibbled at hers until she opened her mouth. Then he deepened the kiss. Their breath mingled. He tasted fresh and minty. She probably tasted like coffee. He didn’t seem to care.
His tongue slid over hers, teasing, stroking...
She wanted him to touch her like that other places, her breasts, her core...
But he held only her chin in one hand while he clutched the back of her sweatshirt in his other hand. He used her shirt to pull her away from him as he lifted his head away from hers. Then he dropped his hand from her face and rubbed it over his. “God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
The apology stunned her for a moment. Then she reminded him, “I kissed you.”
“But I shouldn’t have crossed the line.”
“And I should have?” she asked.
Did he really not believe everything he’d read about her? Or did he think she was the wild woman the tabloids had painted her to be?
“You’re upset,” he said. “You’re vulnerable. I’m here to protect you—not take advantage of you. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
He had put his arms around her first—before she’d kissed him. But apparently he’d only been comforting her.
Her pride bristled. “I am not some weak damsel in distress.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he assured her. “You’ve maced me and pulled a knife on me.”
&
nbsp; And then she’d kissed him. No wonder he had been taken aback. He probably thought she was losing her mind, especially since she’d misconstrued his comforting her as an invitation for her to kiss him. She groaned as embarrassment washed over her again.
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “I’ve just proved again that my judgment is impaired. I’m sorry—”
He pressed his fingers over her lips this time.
She would have preferred that he had pressed his mouth to hers. Her lips tingled from the contact with his skin, though. She could still taste him.
And she wanted more.
“Stop beating yourself up about this,” he said. “That kiss had nothing to do with your judgment. I would know. I am an expert on bad judgment.” He moved his fingers quickly away from her mouth, as if he considered touching her to be bad judgment.
“You?” she asked. “What mistakes have you made?”
He shook his head. “Not personally. I learned from the mistakes the other men in my family have made. My dad and brother are both in prison.”
“Wow,” she murmured. “That must be hard.” And harder yet for him to escape that life and join the Marines.
He shrugged. “They made bad choices. First in women and then in the things they did to make those women happy.” He shuddered. “That’s why I have vowed to stay single. The Mannes men have very bad judgment when it comes to women.”
Was he warning her off?
Her face heated as her embarrassment returned. She’d just kissed him. Not proposed. But she had wanted more than a kiss. She wanted more than that now.
“So since you’re not in prison,” he told her, “your judgment isn’t that bad.”
“Not bad enough to get me incarcerated,” she agreed.
But if her stalker was someone she knew, it might have been bad enough to get her killed. Or if she fell for Jordan Mannes despite his warning, her bad judgment could get her heart broken.
* * *
Manny was an idiot. He should have let Cole take his place protecting her—because he had totally lost his objectivity. What the hell had he been thinking to kiss her?
