“All right, I’ll take you to Starson,” he promised.
“Will you agree to wait outside? Your presence is distracting and disruptive to being able to get good information.”
“I’ll wait for a while.”
“Two hours,” she said.
“Forty-five minutes.” He crossed his arms.
She crossed hers, too. “An hour and a half.”
“Forget it, Natalie. I’ll give you an hour, and that’s being generous. And if anything happens that makes me think you’re in trouble, you’re out of there in five. And you’re carrying a radio. I want to be able to reach you if I need to.”
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. His cheek, damn it, when she knew he wanted her lips. “Thank you, Vincent,” she said. “I promise not to get in trouble.”
But he was beginning to think that maybe her parents and brothers had had good reason to worry about her. Natalie was trouble, pure and simple. Unfortunately for him, she was trouble that he couldn’t have.
He just knew he was going to regret his decision to let her go forward with this plan. Who in hell at Starson was just going to let her walk in there and start asking questions about whether the company had committed illegal acts?
And anyone who suggested that such a thing might have happened was going to be less than welcome.
Vincent cursed himself for promising to give her an hour. That had been a huge mistake. Of course, agreeing to be Natalie’s bodyguard had been a big mistake, too.
The woman drove him nuts.
A short time later, he drove her to Starson’s. It was almost closing time. He wondered what she thought she would accomplish at this late an hour.
Briefcase in hand, Natalie walked in the front door, asked to speak to someone in Personnel, asked a question about employment and was given the sorry-we’re-not-interested treatment, as she had known she would. Especially when she told the woman that she had majored in art appreciation. She thanked the woman, wandered to the side entrance of the building, checked herself out, confessing that she had come in the front, and then left the building through a different door than the one she had entered.
She hated doing this, because it was lying to Vincent, but there was no way she could get the information she needed by simply asking. She needed to gain access to the building by other means, means that wouldn’t involve asking questions, and she couldn’t have Vincent see what she was up to.
“Darn,” she whispered, looking at her watch. Ten minutes had already passed. She slipped into a building next door, went to the restroom and donned the skirt and blouse that she carried in the briefcase. The clothes that resembled those worn by the cleaning ladies in the Starson building. She’d watched and seen them days ago, and she hoped this would work. Ten minutes later, workers streamed out of the office building, and cleaning personnel shuffled in through the back door, Natalie in their midst.
Walking purposefully, she took the elevator to the eighth floor where the directory she’d read earlier had indicated Brad Herron had his office. It didn’t take her long to figure out which space was Brad’s. A photo of several long-legged women flanking him was on the corner of his desk.
She flipped on his computer, not sure what she was looking for.
Thirty-five minutes had already passed. Twenty-five more and Vincent would be radioing her and storming the place. Maybe twenty. She had a feeling that Vincent wasn’t picky about the details when justice was on his side and he felt a woman was in possible distress.
For several seconds, she wished he was here with her. His presence made her feel stronger, she had begun to realize. But this wasn’t his quest. It was hers, and she had to make at least an attempt to find out something that would help her friends.
Clicking through the documents, Natalie found her way barred in most cases. No client files were available. That wasn’t exactly a surprise. But in the few times she had met Brad, she had realized that he was a little sloppy, and it was sloppy that she was looking for now.
Natalie looked at her watch. Only ten minutes left. Damn! She couldn’t leave now, but she couldn’t stay, either.
A file marked Memos caught her eye. She double-clicked on it.
Nothing much here. No, wait. What was that one? A file with the subject line Senior Study. The memo itself didn’t say much, just something about a journal article that suggested that some seniors might develop difficulty multitasking when instructions were given in rapid succession. Nothing more. It didn’t mean a thing, but beneath it was a messily scrawled list of names, addresses and phone numbers, and—
Natalie glanced at her watch. Damn, damn, damn. Any minute now, Vincent would be tearing down the walls demanding to know where she was.
She hit the Print button, grabbed the paper, closed everything and made sure the desk looked as untouched as it had when she had come in, and flew down the hall. The squeak-squeak of a bucket on wheels came to her, and she frantically glanced around, looking for someplace to hide. No doors were open.
Natalie slipped off her shoes and sprinted in the opposite direction, running on her toes on the tiled hallway. Thank goodness for all those workouts at the club. She rounded the corner and plastered herself against the wall.
The squeaking grew louder. Natalie could hear her own breathing loud in her ears.
She didn’t even want to think about the passing of time and that Vincent might be ready to muscle his way into the building.
She tried to squeeze herself more tightly, make herself smaller and more invisible.
The squeaking grew more faint. The worker must have turned the corner. Natalie held her breath and waited until the noise had almost disappeared down the hall.
Then she quietly and as quickly as possible retraced her steps. She put her shoes on and left via the same entrance she had come in, rounding the building and heading toward where Vincent had parked his car.
When she reached the car, no one was there.
Her heart started to thud frantically. Had he gone inside looking for her?
Or had Jason Jamison decided to take out another person who was standing in his way? If Vincent had had all his attention trained on the building, he would have been an easy target.
Natalie’s heart thudded in her chest. Fear rose inside her. Pressing her fingertips to her lips, she tried to think, but thought was impossible. Where was Vincent?
Panic clawed at her. She struggled to retrieve the radio Vincent had given her from her pocket.
A shoe scraped behind her. She whirled, nearly stumbling.
“Looking for someone, Natalie?”
Tears of relief misted her eyes. Her breath came back in a whoosh, and she launched herself at Vincent and threw her arms around him. “Where were you?” she demanded. “I was worried.”
When she looked up at him, she almost thought he was going to smile, and she was prepared to slug him if he made fun of her for worrying about a guy who looked as if he could bring down a tank if he had to.
“I was worried, too,” he said, his voice a harsh rasp as his hands settled on her waist. “And I was here the whole time. I only slipped out of sight when I heard footsteps. Where were you, damn it? And what in hell were you doing?” He looked down at her, and she remembered that she was wearing different clothes, clothing that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what it was.
She bit her lip, her mind racing fast. Then she opened her mouth.
He shook his head. “No, never mind,” he whispered in a ragged voice. “You’re here now. It’s probably not a good idea for me to know what you’ve been up to, especially if it wasn’t strictly legal or ethical.”
Yeah, there was that, wasn’t there? Natalie was surprised to discover that she was disappointed about not being able to tell him everything. For some reason, she wanted him to know, to share in what she had found, to ask him what he thought that memo might mean, but telling him would put him in an uncomfortable predicament. He was sworn to protect, not to encoura
ge people to break into corporate buildings under false pretenses.
Unable to share her find, she said the next thing that came to mind. “I’m really glad to see you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Were you really worried that something had happened to me?”
“I’m a target,” she said simply. “That makes you a target. I don’t want you to choose my life over yours. I don’t ever want to put you in a position of danger.” Which was probably pretty stupid, given his profession, but there it was, and she couldn’t pretend she felt differently. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because you’re protecting me. I won’t let you do that.”
“You don’t get to decide about that,” he said, “and I’m sorry if that sounds too much like your overprotective family. You know, you might be more like your family than you want to believe.”
She blinked. He was right. She had been on the verge of doing her darnedest to protect him from his chosen profession.
She flounced around to the other side of the car. “I hate knowing that, but you may be right.”
“It’s not a sin to worry about someone, Natalie, and…”
When he didn’t finish his sentence, she looked up at him. “And…?” she whispered into the gathering darkness.
“And frankly you’re a hard woman to guard. You’re—”
“Trouble,” she supplied.
“Determined,” he substituted, and she laughed.
“You, Vincent, are a diplomat,” she told him, “because I am trouble, and you’re the unfortunate person who has to deal with me.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll deal with you.”
She certainly hoped so.
Twelve
Vincent paced the living room the next morning, unspent energy and anger coursing through him. In spite of the night that had passed since the incident at Starson, he still felt like putting his fist through a wall. He had smiled when Natalie had finally emerged from that building, he had even joked with her, but that had been a front. He didn’t even want to think about reliving those moments when he had stood outside Starson waiting for Natalie to reappear. It had been all he could do not to go running into the building and renege on his promise to wait for her or to risk compromising her position by calling her on the radio. He had wanted to inflict some serious damage on someone.
Like his father had done on a regular basis. There had been so much rage inside that man.
Vincent knew that kind of frustrating anger. He didn’t want to admit to it. He’d fought it all his life, but there it was.
Things bothered him, and he had to battle like a bear to keep from striking out.
What if someday he failed to hold the anger at bay? What if someone like Natalie was in his path when that happened?
He closed his eyes, refusing to allow himself to continue that train of thought. Instead, he breathed deeply, concentrating only on breathing until the moment had passed.
She had come back. She was safe, no thanks to him. He remembered the moment when she had reappeared all too well.
Her body had been soft and pliant beneath his hands. Her arms had wrapped around his neck—
“Damn, don’t go there, either, Fortune,” he whispered to himself. With Natalie, he was damned anyway he turned. It didn’t matter if he allowed his anger about her situation to dominate or if he allowed himself to think about her when she wasn’t in danger, when she was magic beneath his fingertips and lips.
Vincent groaned. He paced the room again, scrubbing his hands back through his short hair.
“Vincent?”
He turned to see Natalie standing in the doorway to her bedroom. She wore a pair of faded jeans and a soft white shirt that hugged her curves. Her feet were bare. She was beautiful, but her eyes were worried.
Vincent simply stared at her.
Natalie bit her lip. He tried not to let that affect him, but heat spiraled through him nonetheless. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain to watch over,” she said. “I’ll bet your other clients don’t give you such trouble.”
They didn’t. Most people were simply grateful for the protection. In fact, most of them pretty much stopped noticing he was there after a few days.
Vincent looked into Natalie’s pretty green eyes, and he knew that she was always aware of him. She didn’t like having a bodyguard and so she never forgot that he was there.
And there was one more thing, he noted as he continued to stare at her and her eyelids flickered.
She knew he was a man who wanted her. That certainly made things more difficult. And that was entirely his fault.
He made a slashing motion with his hand. “I’m not regretting this job, Natalie,” he said. To his surprise he realized that he wasn’t lying. She might disturb him on many levels, he might be losing tons of sleep over her, but to trust her safety to anyone else?
It wasn’t going to happen. He wanted her safe and alive. When this was over and he walked away, he needed to know that she would have no more reason to fear and that she would start every day with a smile.
Even if she was the client he never forgot.
She firmed her chin. “You’re not regretting this job, Vincent? Well, you should be. I certainly haven’t been very helpful, and I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’re right about my family. I am more like them than I want to admit. What’s more, I’m willing to concede that I’ve probably given them reason to worry over the years. And just for the record, I absolutely hate admitting that.”
She sounded so forlorn, Vincent couldn’t help but smile.
“Don’t laugh, it’s true,” she said. “I was always a difficult child. My brothers were all older than I was, but I never let that stop me from trying to do everything they did or even doing a few things they wouldn’t have considered doing. Like riding my bike down a hill far too steep to control the speed, or trying to break up a fight between two people bigger than I was. When I was ten, I decided I wanted to join the circus and tried to walk across my mother’s clothesline.”
Vincent raised one brow. “Did you make it?”
The fact that Vincent had expressed interest rather than immediately telling her how reckless she had been, as her family would have done, made Natalie blink. She couldn’t help but grin. “I made it more than halfway there. Of course, I broke my arm when I fell and just missed cracking my head open, but it was fun while it lasted.”
“And you never tried it again, did you?” Vincent crossed his arms. Natalie could swear he was trying to keep from smiling.
She shrugged sheepishly. “Only two more times.”
His laugh seemed to come from deep in his chest. It was a low, masculine sound that made Natalie’s breath halt somewhere between her lungs and her throat. “I noticed you didn’t condemn me,” she ventured.
“That’s because I didn’t have to watch you. You obviously survived it and are here to tell the tale, so I can appreciate your sense of adventure.”
“But if you’d been there…”
“I would have tied you up before I let you risk injury again.”
She frowned. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bit of a bully?”
Vincent’s expression froze. “I’ve been told I’m a bit heavy-handed, yes,” he said, his voice emotionless.
But she remembered that he had kept his promise not to follow her into the Starson building even though she knew that it was the last thing he had wanted to promise.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said. “I’ll bet you were the kid everyone turned to for protection when you were young.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he answered, and then he didn’t say anything more. It was clear that he wasn’t going to tell her any stories of his childhood. Perhaps she had offended him by seeming to pry.
But later, when she walked over to a window and partially pulled the shade up, Vincent gently closed his hand over hers and nudged her away from the exposed glas
s.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she heard genuine regret in his voice.
Without thought, she turned away from the window. She marveled that she didn’t feel suffocated by his protective gestures when she had always hated having anyone suggest that she be more careful or less headstrong. No doubt that feeling would return full force if she allowed herself to think about it long enough, because there was no way she could ever be a woman who would allow herself to be led by someone else.
Maybe she hadn’t minded Vincent’s gesture because he had sounded so apologetic. For that reason, she needed to let him off the hook.
“It’s okay. I realize you have to do it, but I do hate being so cooped up,” she said wistfully.
He studied her for a minute. “I know.” And then he picked up the phone and made a call. Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
Vincent answered it, took a package from the small man standing on the threshold, thanked him and shut the door behind him.
“I thought we might do something terribly rash and incredibly headstrong,” Vincent said, walking toward her. “Something reckless.” His voice sounded like that of a man about to make love to a woman.
Natalie swallowed. Parts of her body she had been unaware of seconds ago came to full, tingling life.
“You’re mocking me,” she said, “because you know how often I’ve been called those things.”
Slowly he shook his head as he kept advancing. “Not at all, Natalie. I understand how stressful this situation is for you. We’ve been several places recently but most of them have been inside a building where I have some control over watching the entrances and exits. Your tightrope story showed me how much you probably miss the outdoors. I thought we might go outside for a short time.” He handed her the package.
She peered inside. A pair of loose men’s overalls, a flannel shirt, a jacket and a cap were inside. She smiled. “For me? Where are we going?”
“Someplace where you can have a few moments of freedom.”
He smiled, and Natalie wanted nothing more than to move into his arms, to ask him to kiss her. But as she gazed at him, he came no closer. She remembered the bleak look in his eyes when she had tried to get him to talk about his childhood.
Keeping Her Safe Page 13
