Krystal's Bodyguard

by Molly Rice

  Lake changed the subject abruptly. “Why don’t you follow me out to Berrigan’s? I’ll buy you a drink to wash the taste of politics—and old man, Carter—out of your mouth.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Dana said, grinning, “but Mrs. J. isn’t back yet so I have to get right home to Krystal. At those prices, I can’t afford to use Scalia as a baby-sitter.”

  Lake looked surprised. “He’s still there?”

  “Sure. A couple of days, remember? Your idea, if memory serves.”

  “Yeah.” Joe frowned. “Wish I could say we’ve got the thing wrapped up and you can let him go.”

  “Nothing yet, huh?” Dana let a little of the fear she was feeling into her voice. “You think it was one of my cases, Joe?”

  Joe shook his head and gave a gusty sigh of frustration. “Not a clue, but we’re not ruling anything or anyone out, Dana. Ballistics reports aren’t back yet, we’re hoping there’s at least a fingerprint on that bullet we dug out of the cabinet.”

  She turned the key in the ignition. “Keep on keeping on, Joe, I’m counting on you guys to lift the veil. And now I’d better get home to my daughter.”

  He nodded and stepped back from the car. “Say hi to the kid for me.”

  “You got it” She smiled and put the shift in gear. Joe stood and watched as she backed out of the space. She stopped the car just before turning and called out of the window, “As soon as this is all over, the drink’s on me, Joe.”

  He grinned, nodded, waved.

  Dana pointed the car toward home.

  ONCE AGAIN, Nico had the kitchen awash with delicious aromas and Krystal setting the table and happily chattering about starting school again in two weeks.

  “I could get used to this,” Dana said, grinning, as she headed for the stairway off the kitchen.

  “It’s going to cost you,” Nico said, his voice rife with innuendo.

  Dana, one foot on the stair tread, stopped and looked over her shoulder. Was that sexual innuendo? Did he mean…

  He laughed at the expression on her face and shrugged his shoulders, his hands held out, palms up.

  “My bill,” he said, looking innocent. “I was referring to my bill.”

  Dana glared and continued up to her bedroom. His bill. Yeah, right.

  She found herself humming in the shower, an edge of excitement fluttering in her stomach. She turned off the faucets and looked down at herself, water sleeking her skin. What was going on here? Her nipples were pebbled and she reached for a towel to cover herself though no eyes but her own were exposed to her shameless reaction to…

  To what? To a man in the house? To a particular man in the house? To Nico Scalia? She slumped against the wall and put her face into the towel.

  How many men could appear even more masculine while cooking? And what kind of mind did she have that had registered—in just the few seconds it had taken to pass through the kitchen, say hello, and head for the stairs—the way his muscles rippled in his arm as he stirred something on the stove, that his Dockers clung enticingly to a very sexy butt as he bent to check something in the oven, that squinting against the steam from something in a pot made his jawline even stronger than usual.

  “Okay, so he’s gorgeous,” she muttered aloud, tossing the damp towel aside and reaching for another. She worked in a world populated with men, most of them attractive to some degree or other, so why now, with this man, was she having all the responses of a teenager involved in her first flirtation?

  She toweled her body and as she applied lotion, she thought about Krystal. She, too, was reacting in an obvious way to Nico Scalia. Truly, she had never seen the child happier. And once again she worried about the effect on Krystal when it was time for Nico to leave. It wasn’t as if Krys didn’t have plenty of male attention in her life. All of the detectives who’d worked with Zack were more than willing to include Krystal in any of their family gatherings. And Joe Lake was always willing to stand in as a surrogate dad. Krystal was a favorite with all the guys, but it was clear that it was Scalia who was a favorite with her.

  Dana moved into the dressing room that separated bathroom from bedroom and began to dress in the culottes and T-shirt she’d laid out. Her first instinct had been for a flowered, spaghetti-strapped sundress in honor of Nico’s culinary skills and the formality of Krystal’s table setting, but caution, or self-consciousness, prevailed and she decided to play it casual.

  Despite her earlier musings, Dana was surprised when, after dinner, Krystal offered to clear the table and then announced that she was going to take her bath and then get into her pajamas.

  “Then I’ll be ready for bed when my programs are over,” the little girl announced.

  Dana held the coffee cup to her lips, not drinking, just staring over the top at the stairs up which Krystal had just disappeared.

  “Maybe she’s coming down with something,” she murmured, stunned.

  “She has a crush on me,” Nico said, chuckling.

  “Oh?” She turned to stare at the man. Something in his blithe tone of voice needled, rousing her maternal instincts. “How do you know that?”

  Nico shrugged. “I come from a big family. I pretty much understand kids.”

  Dana relaxed, slumping back against her chair, lifting her cup back to her lips. She took a sip of the hot brew and then looked into the cup.

  “Did you buy a new brand of coffee?”

  “No. I just used what you had in the canister.”

  “Well, did you add something?”

  Nico grinned. “Water.”

  “Very funny.” She shook her head and brushed her hair back from her face. “I don’t get it,” she said, sighing ruefully. “My coffee doesn’t taste like this.”

  “I’ve had your coffee. It’s pretty good.”

  “Yeah, but not great.”

  “And mine is?”

  She stared at him across the table. The sun had already begun to set and darkness was imminent. The candles Krystal had insisted on lighting were sputtering in the slight breeze from the open window beside the table. In this half light, the shadows that crossed Nico’s face made the finely etched planes harsher, stronger, dangerous.

  “It’s not appealing, this business of being better at everything than everyone else.”

  He didn’t smile. “You don’t know that I’m better at everything.”

  She forced a smile. “You’re certainly better at coffee.” She gestured at the remains of dinner. “Not to mention cooking.”

  “And I didn’t know you wanted me to be ‘appealing.’”

  I don’t.

  When she didn’t respond to that, he said, “The counselor at a loss for words?”

  Dana cleared her throat and tightened her resolve. “Don’t go there, Scalia, I don’t intend to play games with you, word games or otherwise.”

  “Ah, then my warning met its mark.” He grinned. “Rules of living together, eh?”

  “We aren’t ‘living together’!”

  His chuckle had a mixed effect on her nerves.

  She stood and began to clear the coffee things from the table. When she moved around the table, he stood, too, and they almost collided.

  “Sorry,” they said in unison.

  In the kitchen they both reached for a pot at the same time, again apologizing, with Nico bowing to Dana’s murmured, “You cooked, I’ll clean up.”

  But he didn’t leave the room. He sat on a counter and ‘watched as she scraped leftovers into refrigerator containers, filled pots with soapy water and began stacking the dishwasher.

  “Are you going to sit there and monitor me?” Dana wondered why she sounded so rude where there was no call for rudeness, but she didn’t apologize.

  “I was getting my thoughts organized. Seemed like a good time to report what I’d accomplished today.”

  For a moment she was taken aback. How could she have overlooked so completely what the man was really here for?

  She turned around, reaching for a
dish towel to dry her hands. “Yes, I’d like to hear,” she said, moving to the table where she could give him her full attention.

  “Well, first of all, I brought the contracts back. They’re on your desk and after you read them and sign them, you’ll officially be represented by our agency. Meanwhile, Stella Martinson and I went over my notes and sketched out a tentative working plan. First order of business, we put in a caller identification box. If you get another of those phone threats, we’ll have access to the number it came from.”

  “Good idea,” Dana agreed. “Wonder why I didn’t think of that? The phone company called and offered me the service a few months back, in one of their routine marketing calls, but I couldn’t see the need, at the time, and I’d forgotten about the service.”

  “Well, they don’t always work. The caller can request to have his or her number blocked. Or he could be making the calls from a different pay phone each time. But there’s always a chance and we don’t want to overlook any possibilities.”

  He leaned back, his head against a cupboard door, and closed his eyes. “Stella suggested backup and I’m inclined to agree.”

  “Backup?”

  “Yeah.” Nico opened one eye and looked over at her warily. “Someone to back me up with Krystal so I’m free to spend more time working directly with you.”

  Dana thought that over and then a light of suspicion sparked in her mind. “You mean, do guard duty on me!”

  Nico pushed himself upright, giving her his full attention. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean work with you while letting certain people get the impression that you have someone at your back.”

  Nico held his breath. He was all for making sure Krystal was safe, but it wasn’t the little girl who was receiving threats. Why did Dana refuse to see that she was the source of the author’s malice? Some of it, he knew, was pride, some of it her unwillingness to trust the police, that much she’d admitted. But he sensed there was something more. It seemed to him that finding out what that was would be as rewarding as finding out who was threatening her.

  “Strictly an illusion, right?”

  “At least until and unless it should become necessary to make it more.”

  Dana’s reluctance was a mystery to her, as well. The idea of having her every move shadowed by a bodyguard felt just as intrusive as having someone out there trying to scare her off.

  She finished the thought aloud. “But I suppose if I’m going to hire you, I should go along with your game plan.”

  Nico nodded, trying not to let relief light up his face. “No sense spending the money otherwise.”

  “What next?”

  Dana suddenly needed to be on her feet, putting distance between herself and the detective. She went back to the sink.

  “We thought we should set up surveillance on Caprezio and Charlie Donegan, catch one of them in the act of mailing one of those notes. We talked about doing the Carters, as well, but that seemed hopeless, given that the defendants are still in jail and the Carter clan is so big and diverse, that we wouldn’t know where to begin. Stella reminded me if Caprezio and Donegan came up clean, it would finger the Carters, anyway, by process of elimination.”

  It reminded Dana that she hadn’t told Nico about her scrape with Henry Carter. She put a bowl of leftovers in the refrigerator and turned to him.

  “I should probably tell you what happened just before I came home, today.” She repeated the details of the incident as nearly verbatim as she could recall.

  Nico got off the counter while she was talking, moving around until he finally settled at the table. When she got to the part about Joe Lake showing up, he interrupted.

  “Did Carter see Lake? Do you think that’s what scared him off?”

  Dana considered and shook her head. “No. Carter had his say and took off minutes before Joe came on the scene.”

  “And what was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. He said he was on his way to his car and spotted me. I guess I assumed he had some business with someone in the government center. Or that he just happened to use the same parking lot as I. The police department’s just across the street in the courthouse.”

  “Hmm. You don’t use the ramp in the government center?”

  Dana flushed and bent to rub at an imaginary spot on the sink with a rag. “I haven’t felt safe in the ramps or the underground where I have an assigned space,” she said in a low voice.

  Nico got the impression she hated admitting that. “I think you’re wise to stay as much out in the open as possible,” he commented. He was about to move on to another subject when the phone rang.

  They both stared at it and then Nico nodded and Dana went to answer it.

  It was Shelly Kouros, one of Dana’s best friends and a one-time co-worker. As was her wont, she started speaking the minute she heard Dana’s voice.

  “Sweetie, your new baby-sitter is gorgeous!”

  “Baby-sitter?” Dana rubbed her forehead and glanced uneasily at Nico who was clearly listening to every word.

  “Yes, that adorable hunk who delivered and collected Krystal today. I tried to lure him in for coffee while Krys and Diane were rounding up Krystal’s stuff, but he seemed in a hurry to get away.”

  Substitute “coffee” for “gossip,” Dana thought, turning her back to Nico. She loved Shelly, they’d been friends since before their daughters were born, working together as clerks before Shel gave up her law career to become a full-time wife and mother, but her friend loved a good gossip and anybody was grist for her mill.

  “Um…yes. Well, he’s just a fill-in until Mrs. J…”

  “Oh, I know all about that and I was thinking maybe you’d like to come for dinner, you and Krys and of course Mr. Scalia, while Mrs. J.’s out of commission.”

  “Oh. Well, um, gee, that’s sweet of you, Shel, but you see, actually…”

  She turned around and shrugged helplessly at Nico who was frowning at her, trying to figure out what had her so rattled.

  “I know you’re very busy, Dana, probably tearing home to get a meal on the table after a long day, and here I am with the leisure to start dinner anytime I feel like it. You know how I love to help out when I can.”

  Another Shelly trait, making it sound like she’d be doing you a favor if she got her own way. She could envision dinner with the Kouroses, Shel pumping Nico through every bite he swallowed.

  “I am busy, hon. I appreciate your invitation, but things are so up in the air just now that I really can’t think ahead to when I’m free,” she said firmly. She quickly changed the subject. “But I do appreciate your having Krystal over to visit. We’ll have to have Diane here when Mrs. J. is back.”

  “Oh…well, of course we love having Krys. Anytime. She and Di are like sisters. Anyway, if you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure,” Dana said. “Let’s talk about it when I’m out from under, so to speak.”

  She got off the phone with a sigh that mingled relief and disgust.

  “Mrs. Kouros,” Nico said, grinning.

  Dana slumped on a chair at the table, forgetting her need to keep physically distant. “Yeah. Shelly means well, but I suspect her motives when she invites the three of us to dinner.”

  Nico laughed. “She struck me as someone who might be writing a book,” he said. “You know, all research, never mind the amenities.”

  Dana’s laughter joined his. “That’s Shel. Right to the point and right to the heart of the scuttlebutt. If there’s romance afoot, she’s the one to always sniff it out first.”

  She was sorry she said that as soon as the words were out and she saw the expression that lighted Nico’s eyes.

  His voice, though low, hummed with innuendo.

  “You know what they say, love, ‘if there’s smoke, there’s fire.’”

  Chapter Seven

  Dana stared at Nico and then shook her head. “In your dreams, buddy.”

  She was sure she appeared perfectly cool as she got up and re
turned to the sink, but she had to fight to keep from telling the man off. She had worked in a field dominated by men long enough to learn that the best way to deal with the arrogant male ego was to simply ignore it. Her ability to keep her emotions hidden from view had worked in her favor in the courtroom, as well.

  Behind her she heard Nico’s soft chuckle and her hands found the dishcloth and wrung it until her knuckles grew white. There was some small satisfaction in pretending the cloth was Scalia’s neck.

  He muttered something about adding Shelly to the suspect list, which caught her off guard.

  She turned to face him, her eyes wide. “What?”

  Nico shrugged, his expression even. “Just a thought, Harper. You know your friend better than I do.”

  “I can assure you, Shelly is the last person in the world to wish me harm. She’s a bit of an airhead at times, and yeah, she loves a good gossip, but she is my friend, Scalia.” Her voice underlined the word “friend.”

  She punched Wash on the dishwasher with more force than was necessary. “I suggest you keep your suspect list limited to my professional life. There are no skeletons in my closet, nothing in my personal life to warrant scrutiny or suspicion. No secret animosities among my friends.”

  Nico’s experience warned that this was not a given. Despite her protests, most people’s lives overlapped. Friendships were often formed in the workplace, enemies made over back-fence slights. Still, he kept his counsel, merely nodding in agreement.

  “Okay.” He got up, planning to go up to the guest room to retrieve his briefcase. He stopped with one foot on the bottom step, remembering what he’d meant to ask her. He stuck his hand in his pocket, withdrew the matchbook.

  “By the way, have you been out back in the last twenty-four hours?”

  Dana frowned. “Out back?” She shook her head, puzzled. “No. I don’t think so.” She saw that he held something in the palm of his hand. “What’s that?”

  “Do you have a yard service?”

  “Yes. What is that?”