VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2)

by Glenna Sinclair

  The letters had become steady, coming every few days. They continued to be gushing words of admiration. But the pictures…they were of Olivia playing in the yard at her school. It was as if the author was saying he knew where I was, what I had to lose. It felt like a threat against everything I’d built for myself, a threat against the only thing that truly mattered to me. It felt like a threat against Olivia.

  I checked around and everyone said Dragon Security was the way to go.

  “My daughter…she doesn’t know anything about this. Not about my work, or my studio, or the threats. And I’d rather she not find out.”

  Vincent glanced at me, as he guided the SUV into my neighborhood. “You realize I’ll be escorting the both of you to and from home for the next few weeks, and I’ll be staying with you.”

  “I was hoping we could tell her you’re a distant relative. A cousin, maybe?”

  He didn’t say anything until he pulled the SUV into my driveway and the engine was off, the humidity already beginning to seep inside with the air conditioning off.

  “The only way I can protect you is if I have full control over you and your daughter. You have to do what I say…when I say it. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t like it. But I understood.

  His dark eyes—hidden slightly below those thick lashes—studied me for a long second.

  “Cousin. If you think that’ll work…”

  “Thank you.”

  Chapter 3

  Vincent

  She was not what I expected. When Megan said my target was a porn star, I expected a woman who looked twice her age, as though she was used up before her time. But she was youthful. Beautiful. So petite that she could almost pass for a teenager—which I’m sure she’d used to her advantage a time or two in her movies. I found myself watching her as she led the way into the house, watching her body move, remembering the sight of her as she lay on that massive bed in the middle of the studio.

  I hadn’t signed up for this when I agreed to work for Dragon Security.

  “Beth?”

  Quinn led the way into the kitchen where a middle-aged woman sat at the kitchen table, leafing through a fashion magazine. Her face brightened considerably when she looked up at Quinn. For a minute, I thought they might be lovers, her joy at seeing Quinn was that intense.

  “How was work? Boring, as usual?”

  Quinn shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Not terribly exciting.”

  “I suppose insurance can be that way.”

  My eyebrows rose, but I didn’t say what came to mind. It wasn’t my business to comment on the lies Quinn chose to tell the people in her life.

  The joy in the woman’s face tempered a little when her eyes fell on me. Quinn glanced at me, too, almost as if she’d forgotten I was there.

  “This is my cousin, Vincent. He’s going to be staying with us for a little while.”

  “Oh?”

  I thought I saw a flash of anger cross the woman’s face. But then she smiled quite pleasantly, stepping into me with her hand raised.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too.”

  “Where’s Olivia?” Quinn asked.

  “Upstairs. She’s been a little reluctant to do her math homework. I think she might be struggling with those algebraic equations they’ve been introducing.”

  “Yeah. Math isn’t her strongest subject.”

  Quinn reached into her back pocket and slipped something into the older woman’s hand. “Thanks, Beth. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  The older woman’s face lit up once again. “Anytime.”

  I stepped out of the way as she left and then watched Quinn climb the stairs. I took the opportunity to walk around the ground floor of the house, checking it out for security purposes. It was a nice house, a Victorian with a rambling floor plan. There was a long hallway that split the first floor, a sitting room off to the right of the front door, a small playroom to the left. There was a powder room, access to the basement, and a large living room toward the back of the house. And a huge kitchen with French doors that opened onto the small backyard. It was a lovely home that was tastefully decorated. If I wandered in here without knowledge of the owner, I would assume it belonged to a low-level executive, not a porn star. But it wasn’t ideal when security was a priority. There were too many windows. Too many corners. Too many places for a stalker to hide.

  I was standing at the French doors off the kitchen, looking out into the growing gloom of the backyard when Quinn came back downstairs.

  “You need to have dinner and take a bath first,” she was saying.

  “But Mom,” a softer, higher voice was saying, “my friends all get an hour of television every night. Why do I only get half an hour?”

  “You’re lucky you get any television on a school night at all.”

  “Mom—”

  “Please don’t argue with me, Olivia. You know the rules as well as I do.”

  I turned and found the most beautiful little girl staring at me. She had these huge eyes that seemed even bigger as she studied me. She looked like a miniature version of her mother, down to the same curly blond hair and green eyes. But there was something about the shape of her chin, the width of her jaw, that was clearly inherited from her father. She’d be a knockout when she was older, but for now she was simply a precocious child in need of protection.

  “Hello.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Olivia, be polite,” Quinn demanded.

  “But who is he?”

  “I’m Vincent,” I said, squatting down so that I was just below her eye line. “And you must be Olivia.”

  “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a child. I’m mature for my age.”

  “Olivia!”

  She glanced at her mother, irritation flashing through those expressive eyes. “I am,” she insisted.

  I straightened, stepping back slightly so that she didn’t have to crane her neck to look up at me.

  “Who are you, Vincent?” she asked as politely as she could.

  “He’s my cousin,” Quinn answered for me. “He’s going to stay with us for a couple of days.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “But I thought you didn’t have any family?” Olivia frowned, the wheels clearly spinning in her head. “You told me that I didn’t have any grandparents because your parents died when you were young and you didn’t have any other family.”

  “Yeah, well, Vincent is a distant cousin I forgot I had.”

  “Where are you from?” Olivia demanded.

  “California.”

  “What part?”

  “San Diego.”

  “That’s near Camp Pendleton. Were you a Marine?”

  “Olivia! Really, you’re being rude, asking so many questions,” Quinn said.

  “Yes, I was,” I said, squatting down in front of her again. But this time it was to reveal the tattoo on my shoulder, the Marine insignia that I had placed there when I was on leave after basic training. It was the most painful thing I’d ever done, not because of the tat itself, but because my drill sergeant had every man in the squad punch me on the healing tat in punishment for disobeying rules that stated that a Marine’s body belong to the Corps and should not be altered in any way. Never mind that every other man in my basic’s class had the same tat when we returned to base that spring afternoon.

  “That’s cool,” Olivia said, reaching out a finger to touch it, but not quite making contact. “Do you have any other tattoos?”

  “A few. Why?”

  Olivia shrugged. “There’s this show on cable, LA Ink, and they have some pretty neat tattoos on there.”

  “When do you watch that?” Quinn demanded.

  Olivia looked a little sheepish, as she stole a glance at her mother. “Beth lets me watch sometimes.”

  Quinn’s expression tightened even as Quinn focused on me again.

  “Can I see the others?”r />
  Quinn had enough.

  “Olivia Elizabeth, go get washed up for dinner!”

  Olivia was clearly disappointed, but she leaned in and whispered, “Maybe you can show me tomorrow.” Then she ran off to the powder room. I straightened, aware of Quinn’s displeasure.

  “I don’t know where she gets that stuff. I didn’t even know she knew what a tattoo was.”

  “It’s hard to protect a child in this day and age.”

  “But I do everything I can, yet she still manages to surprise me.”

  Quinn reached into the fridge and pulled out a glass casserole dish, the sound of the aluminum foil coming off the top drowning out her next words. She was clearly annoyed, though I wasn’t sure if she was annoyed with me, or the world in general.

  She was a porn star…and she was annoyed that her daughter knew what a tattoo was.

  Interesting.

  Dinner was a concoction of tortilla chips, hamburger meat, and lots of cheese. It was the first home cooked meal I’d had in a long time, and for that reason, it tasted better than anything I’d had in a long time. Afterward, Quinn took Olivia upstairs. I stuck around the kitchen, washing up the dishes mostly because it was something to do and my mother had ingrained in me the idea that a guest did all he could to make the life of the hostess easier. I was drying my hands, thinking about the weak lock on the French doors when Quinn came back.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  She looked uncomfortable, like she wasn’t used to accepting help from someone.

  “I don’t know how much Megan and Sam explained to you about our services,” I said, hanging her hand towel back on the handle of the oven door.

  “Not a lot. I didn’t have a lot of time to talk to them.”

  “Dragon has a set protocol for bodyguard services. They’ll come out here tomorrow and set up a security system in the house that will be wired not only to the computer systems at Dragon’s main offices, but will also relay information to an app on my cell phone. I’ll be able to monitor the house from almost anywhere in town.”

  She pulled out a chair and settled in it, her hands folded in her lap as she listened.

  “I will escort your daughter to school and drive you to work. Since you are the target, I’ll remain with you. However, you’ll have to end your work day in time to pick your daughter up from school so that the two of you—”

  “We have a very strict shooting schedule for the next three weeks. I can’t alter it now. Too many people are involved. The logistics…”

  “But you don’t want your daughter spending time at the studio, do you?”

  “Why can’t we follow our regular routine and have Beth take care of Olivia after school?”

  “Because I would prefer not to have anyone here at the house when I’m not around.”

  “But—”

  “Like I said in the car, you need to follow my rules to the letter, or this won’t work.”

  Quinn’s jaw tightened, a muscle popping just below her right ear. But she simply nodded.

  “You don’t leave the house without me, not even to go check the mail. You need to go shopping, you need to attend a meeting, then you let me know ahead of time so that I can make arrangements. From now until the danger has passed, you clear everything past me. Do you understand?”

  Again that muscle popped. She clearly wasn’t used to depending on other people for much of anything. That was something I could almost admire about her.

  “You must think that I’m overreacting. I guess they showed you the letters…”

  “Megan showed me one.”

  “I get fan letters. The production company I worked for before, and now mine, has a website and a post office box where fans can send letters. I’ve gotten letters before. But these…I’ve never gotten anything like them. And when the pictures came—”

  “Pictures?”

  She got up and took a couple of Polaroids from a drawer and handed them to me. Megan hadn’t mentioned pictures, and she certainly didn’t mention that they were of the kid. That bothered me, making me wonder if maybe I should be spending my time watching over Olivia instead of wasting it on Quinn.

  “Someone knows who I am, and that’s impossible. My face hasn’t been shown on any of these movies in six years. For someone to connect my face with my professional name…they’d almost have to have inside information. I used a different name before I stopped showing my face, and now I use a professional name—Milly LeBouche—that has absolutely no connection to my private life. I have no idea how they found my daughter or me. It’s…it’s creepy.”

  “Megan has her investigators tracking the letters. We’ll figure out who’s doing this. Probably by the end of the week.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t seem convinced.

  “You don’t trust easily.”

  She glanced at me. “Neither do you.”

  That caught me by surprise. “What makes you think that?”

  “You give off this aura, like a wall between you and everyone else. People who do that, in my experience, have been deeply damaged by something.”

  “Haven’t we all?”

  A quick smile burst over her full lips, but then disappeared just as quickly.

  “Let me show you to your room.”

  I followed her upstairs, trying not to watch the way her ass moved under those tight jeans, like perfectly round melons bouncing just slightly in a sling. She had legs that were slender and delicate, but also ripe with muscle, the kind of legs a runner might have. And there was this gap between her legs that gave me thoughts I shouldn’t be having. And that ass…she was incredibly sexy. She could probably sell millions of copies of her movies with just stills of that erotic body.

  “I don’t really have a guest bedroom,” she said, directing me to the left of the stairwell. “I use this room as an office, but there’s a couch that pulls out into a bed.”

  She flipped on the light and exposed a large room with an antique roll top desk in front of a tall window, several bookcases laden with dozens and dozens of titles, and the couch she’d mentioned pushed off to the back of the room.

  “This is fine.”

  “The bathroom is across the hall. You’ll have to share with Olivia, so don’t mind the bubble bath and the Cinderella toothpaste.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “I guess you’re used to this sort of thing.”

  I wasn’t, really. She was the first client that Megan was allowing me to take on alone. But Quinn didn’t need to know that.

  “What time in the morning?”

  She turned and regarded the closed door of Olivia’s room. “She has to be at school no later than seven forty-five. So we’ll need to leave about seven thirty.”

  “No problem.”

  She turned again, her eyes moving slowly over my face. “Just…thank you for being so nice to Olivia earlier. But, please, don’t encourage her to get too attached. She already had to leave all her friends behind when we moved from Austin. I don’t want her to lose someone else she considers a friend.”

  I wanted to ask why they’d moved, but I didn’t. It really wasn’t any of my business.

  She said a curt goodnight and disappeared behind the heavy wooden door of her bedroom. I waited a minute or two, then slipped back downstairs. I wanted to take a walk around the perimeter of the house and look for anything unusual. It was an old neighborhood in a part of the city that was making a comeback. There were houses a block away that looked like they were ready to be torn down, but then there were her neighbor’s houses and most of them were newly renovated, sporting fresh paint jobs and energy-efficient windows. There was some distance between them, more so than in most modern neighborhoods, but it was still a residential area in a large, overcrowded city.

  I walked between the houses, checking windows and window screens, making sure everything looked secure. The French doors at the back
of the house still bothered me, but there was a lock on the back gate. Someone would have to climb the eight-foot fence to get to the doors, so I figured they were okay for one more night.

  I was crossing the backyard, headed back to the front of the house and my personal belongings in the back of the SUV when I happened to look up and catch Quinn’s shadow in an upstairs window. She lifted off her shirt as I watched, the sheer curtains blurring detail, but not everything. Her breasts were full, her nipples wide. That I knew from seeing her at work. But the way she stood in her bedroom, her arms lifted as she took down her ponytail, made her breasts seem even more erotic than the bare flesh had been. I felt a stirring deep in my belly as I watched her cross the room, lifting some other kind of garment over her head. I was almost ashamed of it, that need that burst through me. She was my client. It wasn’t my place to have such feelings for her—no matter what it was she did for a living.

  I rushed around the side of the house and grabbed my things, stopping in the bathroom long enough to brush my teeth before locking myself in Quinn’s office. It was late and I was exhausted, but my thoughts…I lay back on the couch without bothering to pull out the bed, my arm resting across my eyes. I didn’t even know what I was doing here in Texas. I should have gone home; I should have stayed in California. But home without Sydney wasn’t home.

  Cole was a good friend. It was kind of him to set me up with his sister’s security firm—even if it was for selfish reasons. He’d begged her for a job, but then he fell in love and found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t want to let his sister down, but his new woman wanted to travel, so he compromised and called me. He knew I’d just left the military and that I was looking to do something other than brood about Syd. He knew everything because that’s what brothers did. They told each other all their dark secrets in the middle of the night when they were hunkered down by enemy fire.