Guarding Laura

by Susan Vaughan

  “If you say so, but you have a shadow. After this morning, I’m not letting you out of my sight.” At that thought, his blood simmered. The clear challenge of her golden-brown eyes and her familiar apple scent reminded him of the power she’d once had over him. No other woman had ever affected him the way she did. Damn.

  Resisting her was essential to her safety.

  Essential to his sanity.

  With a resigned huff, she strode down the path.

  She wore longer dark-blue shorts that didn’t show nearly enough of her elegant legs. Like her peach-striped shirt, the shorts looked preppy perfect.

  And like yesterday, she had the collar turned up to conceal the scars where Markos’s hit man had cut her.

  The thought of the sleazy importer or his goons manhandling her churned fury within him. ATSA had better snatch up Markos before he could try anything more. If Cole ever got his hands on the bastard, there wouldn’t be even a smudge left.

  He shoved away his primitive urges. Relaxing his features, he fell into step with her.

  “The brake failure was no accident,” Cole said softly. “At the garage, I insisted it was corrosion to keep the local cops out of it. But a tool like an ice pick or awl was used to puncture the lines. Sabotage, not pure, but simple. Markos has found you. Or his paid killer has.”

  “Then why make it look like an accident? Why not a…bullet?” Her chin trembled, but her voice remained calm.

  “An accident would let Markos avoid two murder charges—the murder you witnessed and yours. Without you, there’s little evidence against him. The only accidental part was timing. The sabotage could’ve happened anytime in the last few days.” Not knowing how the killer might strike next cranked up the risk factor. And he couldn’t rule out a direct attack.

  When they reached her cabin, he said, “I’m not leaving you at the door again, Laura. We have more to talk about.”

  “You have to talk, I suppose. General’s orders. And I suppose I have to listen.” She unlocked the door and leaned her racquet against the wall inside. “But we don’t have to do it here. Let’s take a walk. If you think it’s safe.”

  “Safe enough.” ATSA surveillance would back him up. But she didn’t need to know about that yet.

  Ignoring her gibe, he surveyed the place through the open door. One great room with a kitchenette. Bathroom and bedroom in the back. He noted her refined touches to the tag sale furnishings—flowered pillows on the faded sofa and a crock of wildflowers on the painted table.

  “Not the Ritz Hotel.” He and Laura may have been in the same high school class in Potomac, Maryland, but a chasm bigger than the Gulf of Maine yawned between them in every other way.

  “It’s adequate.” She relocked the door and pocketed her key. Chin raised, she cloaked herself in cool dignity as she led the way to the lake.

  A smiling man in a warm-up suit came toward them on the path. With his erect bearing and brush haircut, he should’ve jogged to a military cadence. Instead he hobbled with a cane.

  Not bad duty, Cole mused as he barely glanced at the ATSA man. A stroll around the resort two times a day, once at night, report in, relax.

  “Glorious morning, isn’t it?” Snow said, his gaze sliding neutrally over Cole.

  “Beautiful,” Laura sang out.

  Cole gave him a casual salute as he passed them.

  A lazy dragonfly dipped a wing before darting across the glittering blue surface of the lake. Bees hummed in the flower beds, and a jogger passed them, humming along jerkily with the tune playing in his ear. Cole was about to suggest this location wasn’t private enough for their conversation when Laura veered off into the woods on a diverging path.

  “This leads around behind the cabins and west along an old farm road,” she explained.

  On their left, birch, beech and poplar trees leaned over a small stream that babbled along beside the path. On the other side lay a partially overgrown field, dotted with saplings. At its edge, massive branches from a dead elm tree had fallen over a stone wall. The bare hulk stood like a ghostly sentinel, lending the clearing an ominous air.

  Crossing her arms, Laura sat on a boulder. She glared at him down her nose. “You said we have to talk. So talk.”

  Her princess manner peeled away his professional resolve down to the layer of bitterness. But was he angry at things he couldn’t change, or at her?

  “Seeing you on that tennis court takes me back. Sports for rich kids who don’t have to work.” Like that summer after she started college. He’d mucked out stalls for horses he never rode while she and her preppy friends had learned jumps.

  Rolling her eyes, she shook her head. “Are you still hung up on that rich-girl image of me that your…your biker buddy put in your head?”

  He gave a derisive snort. “Hell, if I forgot, my old man reminded me.” She was rich in lots of ways he couldn’t even begin to express. Outta your league, boy. He shoved his dad’s slurred put-down back into the vault where it belonged. “They just voiced what I already knew.”

  He’d lived with his drunken father in a two-room garage apartment smaller and way grubbier than her cabin here. No family. No real home. Two things he yearned for. Had never had. Never would have. He scooped up pebbles and leaned against a poplar tree to toss them into the stream.

  “I know you had a rough time. But you excelled in your AP courses and later at the community college no matter how long or hard you worked outside school.” Her earlier reserve had eased a notch.

  “Yeah, at the stables and the cycle shop. Biker bums don’t get white-collar jobs. Right, Laura?” Hell. That was his old man talking. Seeing her exhumed the defeatist attitude he thought he’d buried.

  Her brown eyes shot gold sparks. “I know all that. You practically raised yourself. But, as the kids say, get over yourself. You seem to be doing all right for yourself these days. And I meant what I said yesterday. General Nolan can send someone else. After the way you treated me ten years ago, why would I want anything to do with you?”

  The unfair remarks heated his simmering enmity to a boil. He dumped his remaining pebbles at his feet. “The way I treated you? I didn’t notice you complaining when we made love in front of the fireplace. Or twice in the bed. Afterward you wouldn’t even accept my calls. When I really needed you.”

  Before he could draw another breath, Laura leaped to her feet. She waved a small fist and yelled back at him. “Needed me? For what? To post bail? Of course I didn’t take your calls. I knew that bike gang was trouble. Did you think I’d help you get out of jail after what you did to me?”

  “All I did was make love to you. And it was love, dammit.” He was rolling now, roaring with all the invective he could muster. “I thought we had plans. But I was just stud service, wasn’t I, babe? So you could return to campus with experience and enjoy the high life.”

  Tears welled in her eyes, and she held her arms close to her belly as if trying to hold herself together. “Stud service? If that’s the way you looked at it, no wonder you decided to pass me around to your friends.”

  The stream burbled over rocks and fallen branches. A light breeze stirred the pale green birch leaves.

  The only other sound was his heart thudding in his ears. “What the hell do you mean, pass you around to my friends?”

  For the first time, a sliver of doubt crept into Laura’s mind. “You know, Ray Valesko—” oh, how could she say the words? “—came to see me that Monday morning. You sent him.”

  The set of his jaw and the fierce scowl that drew his ebony brows together were her answer.

  He stepped closer and grasped her shoulders. “I sent nobody. What did that weasel-faced bastard do? Tell me.”

  She shot him a wary glance and tried to pull away. She’d never told a living soul, not even her cousin Angela, in whom she’d always confided. For ten years, she’d believed the worst of Cole.

  More doubt wedged a painful splinter into her heart. What if Valesko had acted on his own? “We were
supposed to meet at that commuter parking lot beside the Metro stop. Remember?”

  “It’s seared in my brain. Go on.”

  “A guy on a Harley roared up and parked beside me. He had a helmet like yours, the custom one that was stolen.”

  “My helmet. Oh, yeah. And Valesko knew your Porsche.” Cole held her firmly, but with gentle hands. His blue gaze drilled into her as though he could see the scene on her pupils.

  She’d waited outside the car in the fresh air. The old sports car had lacked air conditioning. Valesko had sneered at her as he leaned against the door and lit a cigarette. He’d grabbed her and anchored her to his side. Alarm tightening her throat, she’d focused on a home-done tattoo below the rolled-up sleeve of his dirty T-shirt. A scorpion.

  She shivered at the vivid memory. “He…he said you’d sent him. That you were a real pal.” Tears burned her eyes, and she fought them down.

  “This is tough, Laura, but I need to know.” Cole’s voice was even, but sharp-edged as a sword. “I didn’t send him.”

  She forced herself to look him in the eyes, so she’d see the truth. “He said I should be nice to him. You said I was a great lay and you had me all primed and ready for him. He was quite…graphic about how I should be nice to him.”

  “That lying son of a bitch. I should’ve killed him.” His eyes adamantine with anger, he touched her cheek. “Did he hurt you? Did the bastard—”

  “No. I didn’t give him the chance.” The expression, seeing red, had taken on new meaning as Valesko had pawed her. Rage had spread in a hot scarlet smear, whirling Laura into action. “I think adrenaline kicked in. I pushed him so hard he toppled backward over his bike. Somehow I managed to start the car and drive away.” With her heart cracking apart in an emotional earthquake.

  She drew a deep breath for courage to finish. “Hearing you were in jail delivered the final blow. I was ashamed to tell anyone about Valesko, about us. About any of it.”

  Cole flung away from her and stalked to the edge of the stream. His hands flexed. “It didn’t take much for you to decide I was finally showing my true colors.”

  When he faced her, in his ice-blue eyes, she glimpsed a mirror of her own pain. Valesko had fabricated everything. Cole hadn’t known.

  And she saw a new truth. For years, he’d thought her a snob, but he was the snob, in reverse. His misgiving was that he couldn’t be good enough for her, that a hardscrabble background with an alcoholic father and his biker reputation would slap him down every time. No matter how often he proved himself, how high he climbed, it wouldn’t be enough.

  His mother had died when he was five, and his father, drowning in his own problems, had taught him not to count on people. She doubted he trusted anyone enough to let them past his barriers. Considering how she’d protected her own emotions for the past ten years, she understood.

  She wanted to tell him that she’d loved him and shouldn’t have doubted him. But he probably wouldn’t believe her.

  After all, why should he? She kept secrets from him. She owed him the truth, at least most of it. This little talk had shone light in the dark voids in both their hearts. And if Cole knew the rest of the truth…

  She couldn’t deal with it now. These revelations were painful enough. She dragged in a ragged breath. “Valesko was so…convincing. After being with you, I was so high, and he brought me so low. I thought it was your way of getting rid of me, that you’d gotten all you wanted from me. How else would he know about…us, and that we spent the weekend together?”

  “Hell, they all knew I was with you. Valesko especially. Who do you think framed me?”

  “You mean jail? He was responsible for that?”

  Apparently unable to remain still, he paced to and from the stone wall. “For ten years, I’ve been certain you deliberately let me sweat it out alone. I hated you for it.”

  Anguish tore at her. Cole was right. She’d accepted everything bad she’d heard. Her mistaken beliefs fell away, leaving only raw wounds. “I did refuse your calls. But how could I have helped?”

  “You were my alibi. That Monday morning the cops came to Daddy Bo’s Cycle Shop to arrest me for dealing cocaine. A police informant bought drugs Saturday night at the bike rally from a guy wearing my helmet with the reflective visor down.”

  The news hit her with the force of a punch. She collapsed onto the rock. “The helmet. Oh my God, he didn’t have one like yours. It was yours.”

  He nodded. “The custom-made, one-of-a-kind helmet.”

  “And you were with me.”

  “But because Valesko lied to you, you wouldn’t help me. The cops called your house, but you were gone.”

  She nodded miserably. If only she had known. “I…I didn’t know. After…after that, I was desperate to get away. I was so distraught that Mom sent me to Europe with my cousin. We left right away. I didn’t return home for two months.”

  “I left for Marine basic training before you came back.” Cole stopped pacing and stood expectantly before her.

  She longed to go into his arms, but she couldn’t allow herself to act on the impulse. “Why did he do it?”

  “Jealousy. Envy. Greed. His drug habit. I kept trying to steer the gang away from that stuff, but he went his own way. Like with alcohol, he never knew when to quit. Valesko took my helmet and did the drug deal. Later he ditched it in the garbage bin behind my apartment.

  “I don’t know if he really thought he could have you or if he was just making sure you wouldn’t help me. I sat in that stinking jail for three days before one of the other guys ratted on him.”

  “If only—”

  “Shh, Laura. No if-onlys. We can’t go back. We can only go forward.” Tugging her from the boulder, he cradled her in his arms. With one finger, he wiped a tear from her cheek.

  For her the if-onlys wouldn’t go away. They tore at her heart and squeezed her throat. If only she hadn’t listened to Valesko. If only she’d taken Cole’s phone calls. The tragedy that crippled her life and haunted her every moment, waking and sleeping, wouldn’t have happened.

  Absorbing his scent and his strength, she let him hold her. Only for a minute, for comfort, for old times’ sake. Nothing more was possible.

  No longer arctic, his eyes burned with a laser-blue fire of desire. No mask over his emotions, no barrier between them.

  Except the barrier she must keep between them. The barrier protecting her heart. And her secrets. And Cole.

  Laura allowed herself to exult in the realization that he hadn’t rejected her, hadn’t betrayed her. Perhaps he’d loved her a little. He’d assured her more than once he’d never hurt her. He’d spoken the truth. The shock of those terrible events had blinded her to it.

  In Cole, in addition to the other qualities she’d loved, honor and integrity ran true. She was the one with nothing to offer. No good would result from renewing their failed affair.

  She saw in his eyes that he was about to kiss her. Her pulse skipped.

  In spite of herself, she swayed closer to him.

  Chapter 3

  Before Cole’s lips could touch hers, Laura averted her face and drew away. “You, the self-styled biker hoodlum, were trustworthy after all. Ironic, isn’t it, that I didn’t trust you. And you didn’t trust me. We didn’t know each other as well as we thought.”

  His heart raced from their emotional upheaval. The truth spun his wheels. “I came to protect you, not attack you. But I feel like I just survived a firefight.”

  “I know what you mean.” She smiled, apparently accepting the olive branch. He noted the sheen of tears, the tight mouth. “And I seem to be thirsty. Would you like a cup of tea? Or is that a snobby drink?”

  “I used to think so. That was before I spent months in places like Mazar-I-Sharif where meetings with everybody from shop owners to village elders begin by sitting on rug-covered dirt to sip tea. I drank enough tea for three lifetimes.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t ask. “Well, is diet cola okay?”
/>
  “No problem.”

  They headed back on the path through the sunny woods. He watched the sexy sway of her hips as she strolled ahead of him. Heaviness tightened his groin.

  God, she was beautiful, head tilted to one side, her hair loose around her shoulders. He wanted to run his hands through it, touching it…touching her… She looked delicious in the striped shirt, like a peach sundae. Damn, he still wanted her.

  From the first time he’d seen her, she’d attracted him. Her classic beauty and unconscious sensuality. Her long, lean legs. And surprisingly, her lively intellect. They’d found common ground senior year with their interest in history. That had been the start. In spite of her snobby friends’ disapproval, they’d cobbled together a sort of friendship.

  Then during the summers of her first two college years, friendship had evolved into more. In stolen moments, they’d shared hopes and fears and dreams.

  And finally, their bodies and souls.

  He saw in her now the same qualities that had called to him then. Not much deterred her. The warm glow of her eyes sprang from the vibrant life within her, from her agile mind, from her self-possession and security in who she was.

  But she was right to push him away now.

  He stared past her along the path. Only green shadows stared back. Valesko’s story about him had seemed credible, so she’d felt betrayed. She’d left without giving him a chance.

  Out of your league, boy.

  In his youth, his brain had slipped below his belt. He couldn’t afford to fall for her again. Their lives, their backgrounds differed too much. Her actions then had only reminded him of what he should have tattooed on his chest—that he could trust only himself.

  “Marines and ATSA. How? You were such a rebel.” Laura turned on the gas burner under the dented teakettle. Fine lines furrowed between her brows, a sign she was thinking hard, Cole recognized.