Bodyguard Reunion

by Beverly Long

  But now that they were inside, in the well-lit living space, he could tell that Jules did like what she saw.

  “Where should I put my things?” she asked.

  He directed her to the first guest bedroom. He’d had it professionally decorated in blues and greens. “Lovely,” she said again. She looked up at the skylight where just a hint of moonlight slipped in. Most anyone would think it was merely a nice design element, never realizing that it had been installed to provide another means of egress from the structure.

  “I’ll be right next door,” he said. Normally he slept in the master bedroom, but he didn’t want to be that far away from her if he needed to get to her quickly. Sometimes, seconds mattered. They should be very safe in his house, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  She sat down on the bed. He looked away. Thinking about Jules and a bed in the same sentence was a dangerous thing. “Do you want anything?” he asked. “Water? Glass of warm milk?”

  She smiled. “No, thank you. I...uh...guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Yeah. In the morning. Good night.”

  He left her room, but before going to his own, he prowled the dark house. Checking doors that he knew were locked, windows that were undoubtedly secure, weapons that were always loaded.

  When he finally went to lie down, he stretched out in his clothes, on top of the bedspread. This room had been done in bronze and gold—relaxing colors, his decorator had said. But it did nothing to relax him tonight. He was wound tight. He forced himself to close his eyes. To inhale deeply, making his diaphragm work. To let it out slowly, to the count of six.

  To see sheep. With dirty-white bodies and bland faces. Vaulting effortlessly, yet so very slowly, over a gray picket fence.

  And at some point, it must have worked. Because he was sound asleep when he was jerked awake by Jules’s bloodcurdling scream.

  Chapter 19

  “Don’t shoot,” she said.

  She could see just enough to know that Royce was in the doorway, his arm extended, his gun pointed at her.

  “Jules?” he said, his gun still at the ready.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I...I think I had a nightmare.”

  She saw movement near the door and suddenly soft light filled the room. Royce was staring at her, bright spots of color on his cheeks, breathing through his mouth. “I’m going to check the house,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure if he was trying to give her time to get her wits about her or if he was calming himself. Either way, she appreciated the effort. Her heart was racing in her chest.

  It had been so real. So very real.

  “Everything is secure,” he said, once again in the doorway. He was holding a glass of water and he brought it to her. She reached out a shaky arm.

  “Jules,” he said, sinking down onto the bed. “You’re okay. Just calm down.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had a horrible dream. Like before. After the accident.”

  “The accident where your mom died?” he asked, his voice gentle.

  She had told him the story eight years ago. The sanitized version. He’d seen the scar on her knee and asked. She’d told him that she and her mom were in a car accident and that she’d been badly injured and her mother had been killed.

  But she hadn’t told him about the nightmares. They’d been over for years by the time they met and she’d seen no need to bring up such horrible memories. “Did I scream?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Your lungs are healthy,” he said drily.

  She managed a smile. “I really am sorry.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  She closed her eyes. She had never told anyone the truth about the nightmare. But maybe it was time. First, he needed to understand more about the night of the accident. “We lived in New Jersey. That night my mom and I had gone into the city for dinner and the theatre. It had been so much fun. But by the time we left, it was raining. And it was a very dark night. But we were doing okay. We were going slow because the roads were slick and there were lots of hills and trees near our house. We were close. So close.”

  She closed her eyes. Swallowed hard.

  “Jules, it’s okay if you can’t,” he said.

  “My mom was laughing and talking about the play and then suddenly she got quiet and said, ‘that idiot.’ A car had come up behind us and they were way too close. It went on for maybe a mile, them riding our bumper and I could tell that my mom was worried. She reached over, checked to make sure I had my seat belt on. I couldn’t drive yet but I knew that something was wrong. Finally the car decided to go around us. But then it came over into our lane, pushing us off the road. My mom did her best but the shoulder was soft, that’s what people said later on, and when her wheels hit it, it was enough to flip the car.”

  Her leg, the injured one, started involuntarily twitching, as if it could remember the pain. He gently put the palm of his hand on it. “It’s okay.”

  “I was unconscious when they airlifted me from the scene, with a serious concussion and a compound fracture of my right leg. I...I didn’t realize that my mom was dead until I awoke in the hospital after surgery with my dad at my side and he told me that we were going to have to go on without her.”

  Now the tears came.

  “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” He scooted closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “I always feel cheated when I have the dream. Because it never starts in the beginning. It never starts with us at dinner, or the play, or with my mom laughing and talking. It always starts with the lights of the car coming around the back end of our car and me thinking that he’s going to pass. And then he doesn’t. And it’s slow motion, as he crowds us off the road. And then we’re rolling and rolling and it hurts.”

  “Don’t think of it,” he said, leaning back against the headboard. She allowed herself to be pulled close. She had to tell him all of it.

  “I can hear my mother screaming. The noise, it just stays in my head. And then the car stops and there’s no more screaming. And I look down, and my mother’s head, it’s been severed from her body, and it’s in my lap. Her eyes are open. Wide-open. And then I start screaming. I think that’s when I usually wake up.”

  “That’s what you dreamed tonight?” he asked softly.

  She nodded. “Intellectually, I know that my mother was not decapitated. That never happened. We struck a tree on her side of the vehicle. She died of blunt-force trauma to her head. But tonight, like before, I’m holding her head in my lap and...blood and brains and all kinds of things, start to pour from her eyes and her ears.”

  “I don’t think anybody understands how or why our brains process things the way they do. Did you ever talk to anyone about the nightmare?”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t tell my father. He’d lost his wife. He didn’t need to worry that his only child was going crazy.”

  “It had to have been an incredible strain on you. That’s probably why you had the dream tonight. Because you’re under strain again, with the attacks, this new letter, and Charity being MIA and maybe in trouble.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “That’s not why,” she said. God, she was pathetic. “I had the nightmare tonight because of what I was intending to do.”

  He frowned at her. “Not following.”

  She rubbed her forehead where a hell of a headache was gathering. “After the accident, I had the nightmare. Multiple times. And then after a few months, it went away. But then every time I either did something I shouldn’t have or even thought about doing it, it would come back. It got to the point that I started thinking that my mom was watching out for me, that she was stepping in to guide me using the only tricks she had.”

  He wa
s silent for a long moment. “You don’t really think that’s the case, do you?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I intended to do something tonight that, with the perspective that comes from—” she paused and squinted at the bedside clock “—three twenty-three in the morning, I’m not too proud of. I think the nightmare was payback. You know, I wasn’t paying attention to my moral compass and it jumped up and bit me in the butt.”

  He smiled. “Now you’ve lost me.”

  “I wanted to give you a reason to stay.”

  He sat up, his back ramrod straight. “Uh...”

  She’d made him speechless. “I was going to wait until you’d fallen asleep and then I was going to crawl into your bed naked. I figured it might be hard to resist the temptation if I was right there.”

  “Try impossible,” he said.

  “I was being selfish. I know that after this is over, you will walk away. The same way you walked away eight years ago.”

  He removed his arm from around her shoulders. “I didn’t walk away eight years ago. I was practically bagged up and put on the sidewalk, like kitchen garbage.”

  She’d made him angry. Well, fine. She was a little angry, too. “I caught you by surprise that night. I know that. But...” She had to tell him. She had to say what had been bothering her for eight years. “But you didn’t fight for me. It was so easy for you to simply move on.”

  * * *

  Simply move on. Nothing about that time had been simple and he sure has hell hadn’t moved on. That implied that he’d put a line through an item on a list. Juliana Cambridge. Check. What’s next?

  “How was I supposed to stay and fight for you?” he asked. “You made it clear that you were accepting Bryson Wagoner’s proposal. I believed you when you said that you were done with the guy.” He’d been a sap.

  “I was,” she said. She pushed her hands through her short hair. “It all happened so fast. I hadn’t heard from Bryson for over six months. And then right before the Labor Day weekend, he contacted me, said he couldn’t live without me and begged me to marry him.”

  “And that was all it took?” Royce said sarcastically. “He wagged his finger at you and you came running.”

  Her pretty blue eyes filled with tears. “It wasn’t like that at all,” she said, her voice soft.

  He was not going to let her off the hook. Maybe he hadn’t realized it, but he’d been waiting eight years to have this conversation. “Then what was it? What did he say that convinced you? I mean, I get that his offer was a lot more attractive than any I could have made.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you’ve always been a smart woman. I think it was pretty clear that your life was going to be better with Bryson than with me. I didn’t have a job, an education or a family fortune.”

  “How could you say something like that? How could you even think something like that? You don’t know me at all. I would never have married Bryson for those reasons,” she said, her voice cold.

  That didn’t make it better. His chest hurt. “Then you must have really loved him,” he accused.

  She shook her head, looking sad. “No. And that was unfair to him. I believed I could love him. I was confident that I could make it work. I’d been making situations work for a very long time.”

  His head was spinning. If she hadn’t loved him and she hadn’t married him for his money, then why the hell had she changed her mind? “There’s something that you’re not telling me,” he said.

  She sank down on the end of the bed. As if all the life had gone out of her. “No. Nothing.”

  She was lying. That left an awful taste in his mouth. “Listen, Jules, you have to know that nothing you could ever say changes the commitment that I’ve made to you. I’m not leaving you alone to deal with this crap.”

  She waved a hand. “Is that what you think I’m concerned about?”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s...it’s nothing,” she said. “Look, I’m tired.”

  She probably was. But there was one more thing he had to say. “Listen, you did the right thing.”

  “Marrying Bryson was the right thing?” She sounded incredulous. “We were divorced within eighteen months.”

  What could he say to that? “Still,” he said.

  “Still what?” she snapped. “How could it have been the right thing?”

  “Because I was the wrong thing. Wrong background, wrong education, wrong job prospects, wrong social skills. I’d have embarrassed you. Held you back.”

  She looked at him as if he was crazy. “What are you talking about?”

  “I didn’t know anything about your world. Hadn’t gone to college. Hadn’t spent a year in Europe. Had never sat at a table where there was more than one fork. Didn’t know anything about wine or art or music. Had never had more than a couple hundred bucks to my name. And had no prospects of changing any of that.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it. “I have no words,” she said finally.

  What else needed to be said? He’d named the elephant in the room. “I hope you’ll be able to get back to sleep,” he said, his words sounding stiff and formal.

  He got to the doorway.

  “Wait,” she said. “Actually, I do have something to say.”

  Neither of them had had enough sleep. Now probably wasn’t the time to have more conversation. “Let’s just leave it, okay? And try to get some sleep.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “How damn shallow do you think I am?”

  Huh? “I’ve never thought that about you.”

  “Mean-spirited, then?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m lost,” she said. “Why do you think I cared about any of that?”

  “Because you’d have been a fool not to. I didn’t even have a damn job.”

  “You were transitioning back after military service. I thought you deserved a little down time.”

  “I was drinking too much.”

  “You were,” she said. “But you never drank too much when you were driving or when you were in any way responsible for my well-being. You didn’t even drink too much if you knew we’d be out late, walking home. You wanted to stay sharp. For me.”

  What could he say? It was true. “I embarrassed you when you got your award.”

  “That guy was a jerk. Who monopolizes a woman’s time when she’s there with a date? I was just being polite because my work friends were at the table.”

  “I could have handled it better.”

  “Probably. Who hasn’t done something and later thought, wow, I wasn’t at my best with that?”

  She was going to argue every damn point. He’d known he wasn’t good enough. She had, too. “Leave it, Jules. It’s the past. Concentrate on the now. Staying safe and finding Charity.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not until you know the truth.”

  He didn’t know how much more he could take.

  “I married Bryson—” her voice was very soft “—because my father told me that he was sick. Very, very sick. And he wanted to see me married to Bryson before he died.”

  What? Her father had looked as healthy as a horse that night. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “When you stepped out of the room, my father told me that he was dying and that his last wish was for me to marry Bryson.”

  He had the crazy urge to laugh. “And you believed him?”

  She pressed her lips together. “He showed me the test results, showed me the referral he’d gotten to see an oncologist at NYU medical center. He said there was a strong likelihood he wouldn’t survive it.”

  None of this was making any sense. “But he’s alive and well today?”

  “I know.”

/>   “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  “He asked me not to. The banks, they were in such an uproar at the time. Senior executives were losing their jobs every day. He said he was afraid that if it got out that he was sick, that he’d be an easy cut for them to make. He was really scared about that. His work meant a great deal to him. Plus, I couldn’t do that to Bryson. If I was going to marry him, I certainly wasn’t going to take a chance that he’d ever discover the reason that I’d said yes.”

  Would he have been the type to throw it in the other man’s face? He didn’t think so but he could understand her concern. And he knew Jules. She would have wanted her marriage to have the best chance of success. “But your dad made it,” he said, stating the obvious.

  “He went through treatment and responded much better than anyone anticipated. Of course, I’m grateful for that.”

  There was something else. “But...”

  “But I recently learned that he was never sick at all.”

  “No way.” Who lied about something like that?

  “You know, political candidates are vetted very carefully by their own parties before there is any public support.”

  “Right.” He was trying to track with her.

  “Part of the vetting is a medical questionnaire.”

  He had a crazy idea of where this was going. “You saw it?”

  “I was...looking at some things in the condo. Something I found made me start to look in places that I would normally have stayed out of. My father’s office. His files. When I found it, it became readily apparent to me that he had either lied to me eight years earlier or he’d lied on the questionnaire.”