Keeping Her Safe

by Myrna Mackenzie

  Her heart nearly flipped out of her chest when she realized what might have happened the other night if Vincent hadn’t been with her to chase away the guy who was outside the newspaper office waiting for her. She hated the fact that Vincent was beating himself up for leaving her alone. Didn’t he know that she knew he had to go after the bad guys of the world? It was his nature, as much a part of him as his gray eyes or his sexy grin. And having the scumbags know that she had a protector who could chase them down and beat them to a pulp made her feel so much safer.

  Who was she kidding? Just being in Vincent’s presence made her feel safe. It also made her feel dangerous, because when he had come back from that chase and she had finally realized that he was okay and the world had righted itself, she had felt such a rush of desire. All she had wanted to do was to burrow into his skin, to taste him, to touch her lips to the hard muscles of his chest. She had wanted his arms around her, his naked body against hers….

  “Agh!” She threw down the piece of paper she was holding.

  Vincent strode in from the next room. When he looked around and didn’t find any intruders, he raised one brow. “Problem?”

  Only that she wanted to make love with her bodyguard. Oh no, that wasn’t a problem. That was proof that she was certifiably insane because if ever two people didn’t belong together, it was Vincent the Protector of Women and Natalie the Woman Who Would Not Be Protected.

  She took a deep breath, dared a look into those gray eyes that haunted her nights. “I need to go interview some of the people on this list. I didn’t exactly obtain it legally, or at least not ethically, and I don’t want to drag you into a situation where you’d be compromised.”

  He gave her a long, assessing look that melted her bones, and crossed his arms over that impressive chest of his. “You’re not putting your toe outside the door without me beside you, and if you feel that you have to speak to a few of those people on that list in order to be happy and satisfied, then I’m with you.”

  Would interviewing these people satisfy her? Hardly, when she was denying herself the right to touch Vincent. But at least conducting these interviews might bring her closer to being able to help her friends, and it might keep her mind occupied for a few hours.

  “Let’s go, then,” she said. She led the way out of the building.

  Thirty minutes later, she and Vincent knocked on the door of one Henry Dallford. Mr. Dallford came to the door using a walker, and he looked frightened when he opened the door and saw two strangers.

  For the first time, Natalie wondered if she was doing the right thing.

  “I’m from the San Antonio Express-News,” Natalie began to say, whipping out her ID and waiting for the man to study it. “I wonder if I might ask you a few questions for a story I’m planning.”

  Mr. Dallford backed away slightly.

  “Maybe you’d like to see an example of Ms. McCabe’s work first, Mr. Dallford,” Vincent suggested. He pulled a newspaper out of his back pocket and showed the man a copy of an article Natalie had written on a children’s after-school program.

  She gave Vincent a confused look.

  He smiled. “I snagged it on the way out the door just in case we needed it.”

  “Who are you?” Mr. Dallford barked, craning his neck to see all of Vincent.

  “I’m her bodyguard.”

  Natalie’s eyes widened. If they wanted to make the man feel safe, telling him that he was talking to a woman who needed a bodyguard probably wasn’t the way to do it.

  Mr. Dallford’s eyebrows were in danger of climbing right off his head, they were raised that high. “Think I’m a danger to her, do you?” Mr. Dallford gave Vincent a knowing look.

  Vincent held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I can’t be too careful with her safety, Henry. How do I know that walker isn’t a ruse?”

  Henry gave a raspy chuckle. “A woman with a bodyguard wanting to interview me. That just about beats it all. You want to come in?”

  Instantly Natalie wanted to reach out and protect Henry. “Maybe we could talk out in the garden I saw when we came in. There are some tables, and it didn’t look as if anyone would come by and disturb us.”

  “That’s because everyone here is too old to appreciate a nice day. ’Cept me, of course. A bodyguard,” he said again, smiling and shaking his head. “Let’s go.”

  Natalie started to reach out and help Henry, but Vincent put his hand on her arm and stopped her.

  Henry instantly stood taller. “He’s right. I’m not too old to get around yet. A man does what he can for as long as he can, ain’t that right, Mr. Bodyguard?”

  “Absolutely the gospel truth, Henry. And you can call me Vincent.”

  “Well, Vincent, this bodyguard stuff…do you ever get to kiss her?”

  Instantly, Vincent froze, but he quickly recovered. “Not as often as I’d like to.”

  At first, Natalie thought Henry was choking, but then she realized that he was laughing.

  “Men,” she said, and both men laughed again.

  They finally made it out to the tables, and Natalie prepared to take notes. “I’ve been speaking to a group of seniors in the area who have invested some of their money and have not been happy with the results. I know this is a very personal area, but I was wondering if you’ve had any recent experiences with Starson Investments.”

  Henry sat up straighter. “I might have,” he said reluctantly.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have dealt with Brad Herron, would you?”

  It was as if all the air went out of the old man. He slumped in his chair and covered his forehead with one shaky hand. But when he finally pulled his hand away and revealed his face again, it was Vincent he turned toward. “A man saves his whole life to leave his kids and his grandkids something, you know?”

  “That’s what a man does,” Vincent agreed, his voice filled with understanding.

  “You don’t want to get old. You don’t want your grandkids to remember you as old. You want them to look up to you, to think that you did something with your life, something good.”

  “A man who feels that way has already done something good,” Vincent commented.

  Henry made a slashing motion with his fragile, bony hand. “It’s not enough. I want to go out feeling like a man. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

  “Women don’t understand that sometimes,” Vincent commented.

  Natalie frowned, but she didn’t interfere when Henry nodded and suddenly looked tougher. “Exactly. The nurses that come to see me…some of them just think of me as a patient. They think I should be happy just because I’m getting enough fiber or because I managed to eat all my oatmeal without dropping any on my shirt. They don’t see me as a man anymore.” He cast an angry look Natalie’s way.

  “She’s not like that,” Vincent said. “She cares. She knows a lot of people in the same situation as you, if your situation is what I think it is. She’s going to try to do something about it. To give you and the others back your dignity. If she succeeds, you’ll get justice, maybe even vengeance. If I were you, that’s what I’d want.”

  “Damn straight,” Henry said, banging his hand on the patio table so hard that Natalie was afraid he might break something. But she refused to show her concern. Vincent was right. Henry needed to feel like a man, and she needed to give him that gift if she could.

  “Tell me what happened with you and Brad Herron,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you what happened with me,” Henry told her. “I wasn’t in my right mind after my wife died. Lorelei was everything to me. So when Herron came and offered to make things easier, to take over all the decision-making about my investments, I let him do it. I don’t know what happened. I know that there was a lot of back and forth, trades and such, but I didn’t handle any of it. Maybe I said yes to some things. I don’t really know. I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. When it was over…” He covered his eyes with his hand again.

  “You
r money was gone,” Natalie said gently.

  “Almost all of it. By the time I’m done living, there won’t be one good thing to leave my grandkids.”

  “Except the knowledge that you fought back and you fought hard,” Vincent suggested.

  Henry looked up, his eyes filled with tears he tried to blink away. Natalie tried not to look. She didn’t want to embarrass him, but she couldn’t escape the look that passed between him and Vincent. It was the look of men who burned to see justice done, no matter the cost.

  “Do it if you can,” Henry told her. “I’ll tell you what little I know. Not that anyone will listen. People just think that an old man like me is stupid. Once you’re past a certain age, you become easy to ignore. Invisible.”

  “People like that make me want to kick them in the teeth,” Vincent said. He and Henry exchanged a look. Then Henry turned to Natalie.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing Brad Herron kicked in the teeth.”

  Natalie gave him a half smile. “I’m only a reporter, Henry, but if he’s done something wrong, I’ll see what I can do about kicking him around with words.”

  Henry shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.” And he took a deep breath to begin his story.

  When they finally left Henry at his door, Natalie didn’t have much more information, but she had a glimmer of a suspicion starting to gather speed, one that had taken root some time ago and had gained a little more credibility after she found that file on Brad’s computer. Now she was pretty certain she was on the right track.

  And Henry was standing a bit taller, his handshake firm.

  “Don’t let her get hurt,” he told Vincent. “She’s got important things to do. And she’s not bad-looking, either,” Henry added with just a hint of a twinkle in his eye.

  “She’s worth protecting on a number of levels,” Vincent agreed.

  “Hope you get to kiss her again soon.”

  Vincent grinned. “You’re a devil, Henry.”

  “Used to be.”

  “Still are,” Natalie said with a pained expression. “Men.”

  Both Henry and Vincent laughed. Natalie was glad Vincent had helped Henry regain some of his dignity. The more she saw of him, the more she was forced to admit that Vincent Fortune really was a remarkable man.

  But there was one thing bothering her. When Henry had prompted Vincent to kiss her, he hadn’t said that he would.

  And he hadn’t said that he wouldn’t, either.

  Fourteen

  Natalie had been wonderful with Henry, Vincent thought. She really had a talent for getting people to talk about themselves.

  It was because she cared so much, he realized. To Natalie, the people she interviewed weren’t subjects. They were real people with hopes and dreams and disappointments, and she worried about them.

  “I don’t know for sure what Brad Herron did, but I know that he did something bad,” she said when they were back in her apartment. “To think that anyone would take advantage of an old man right after he had lost his wife of sixty years. That weasel! He cares so much about looking good and scoring, but I’ll bet he doesn’t even remember Henry’s name. I’ve got to find out the whole story and write about it, Vincent.” She had paced up and down the room and had stopped right in front of him, her head tipped up, her green eyes flashing with passion.

  Vincent took a deep breath. He tried to think logically instead of thinking about the way Natalie looked right now, as if she would turn to flame in a man’s arms.

  He shook his head. She was looking as if she wanted to march off right now and slay dragons, or, at the very least, kick Brad Herron.

  “I’m with you one hundred percent, Natalie, but be careful about backing a man like Herron into a corner. Rats tend to attack when they have nowhere to run.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to back him into a corner. At least, not yet.”

  Without thought, Vincent cupped his palms around Natalie’s shoulders. “You make me crazy. You know that?”

  She looked up into his eyes. “I…” she began, but he wasn’t through with her.

  “And what was that about Herron only caring about looking good and scoring? What exactly has he said to you?”

  “Nothing I wanted to hear,” she whispered as Vincent leaned close. “Not from him, anyway.”

  Vincent fought for control when there was none to be had. “Natalie…”

  “You think I want a man like Brad trying to paw me? A man without a shred of honor or decency?”

  “A man with a sense of honor and decency wouldn’t touch you when he knew that he had nothing to offer you,” he said, fighting the desire that threatened to overpower him.

  “Maybe I don’t want that much tonight. Maybe all you need to offer is—”

  “Natalie?” Vincent gazed into her eyes.

  “I was never any good at this kind of thing,” she suddenly whispered. “I spend my days getting people to tell me things they don’t always want to tell me. I don’t want to convince you to do something you don’t want to do.”

  “Who says I don’t want to kiss you?”

  She shivered in his grasp. “Were we talking about kissing?”

  “I was,” he said, even though he had been thinking about doing a whole lot more. He really wasn’t sure that he could stop once he’d started something with Natalie.

  It was as if the air went right out of Natalie. “I was talking about kissing, too,” she confessed. And as if to make her point, she suddenly rose up on her toes, curled her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.

  Vincent’s senses exploded. He gathered her to him and tasted her. He slid his hands up beneath her shirt and slicked his palms over the clean, velvet planes of her back. She was honey and sunshine and passion that drove him to the edge.

  He nipped at her lips, licked them, his tongue finding hers. Her body was taut against his, her breasts against his chest, and he wanted to slick her out of those soft jeans and expose her even softer skin. He wanted to devour her, to lay her down and feast on every inch of her.

  “You make me crazy, too, you know?” she whispered against his lips, her voice husky. A tremor ran through her and he started to carry her to the nearest flat surface and take this thing to its logical conclusion. To hell with tomorrow. To hell with the fact that he had to go back to being the man who kept her safe in the days to come.

  “It’s a good thing we’re only going to be together short-term,” she said. “You make me feel weak.”

  She made him feel weak, too, at a time when he had to keep his senses about him. He couldn’t keep her safe if he was obsessed with making love to her. Not that he wasn’t already burning to have her, but Vincent was pretty damn sure that once they actually made love he would think of her night and day. He might make mistakes. She might pay the price.

  It was never a good idea for a bodyguard to get involved with his client…or for a man to let his emotions run rampant.

  He kissed her once more, gently. He slid his hands away and patted her clothing back into place.

  “You’re not weak,” he told her. “You’re the strongest woman I know. And you’re right about the short-term. We’d probably kill each other if we had to spend too long together. You’d always want to lead and so would I.”

  Even as he said the words, he hated himself for saying them. Natalie’s eyes registered a glimmer of pain at his withdrawal.

  He wanted to punch something hard, hit something with his fists. But mostly he wanted to kick himself. If he hurt her or let her get hurt in any way, there would be hell to pay, and he would be the man who would be administering the punishment.

  “Tomorrow we’ll both be happy we didn’t do this,” he said, half to himself.

  Natalie nodded. “You’re right. I’m glad we didn’t go through with it. It was just that emotional encounter with Henry that caused us to need some kind of release.”

  She was ta
lking nonsense just as he had been, and both of them knew it. Vincent only hoped that by tomorrow, the heat would have died down.

  He hoped like hell that tomorrow was an easier day.

  Lily had just left Ryan’s office the next morning when his secretary knocked on the door. “Excuse me, Mr. Fortune, but I was just opening the mail and this—” She held out one hand in a helpless gesture, staring with fearful eyes at the piece of paper in her other hand.

  Unease shifted in Ryan’s chest, but then he dismissed the emotion. In his position, lots of bad news as well as good came over the transom. And nothing in a piece of paper could be as bad as the news he carried in his heart, the knowledge that he was dying.

  Reaching for the paper, he read the note. Carefully controlling his expression, he thanked his secretary and asked her to locate Patrick and Blake. He needed to see them right away.

  Within the hour, the men arrived, both wearing troubled expressions.

  “Look at this,” Ryan said. He held out the missive with its dark type cut and pasted crudely in position.

  Watch out. I remember everything, and I’ll never forget or forgive.

  For a moment there was silence. Then Patrick looked at Blake. “Do you think it’s from Jason?”

  Blake ran a shaking, weary hand through his hair. “It could be. My son killed his own brother, he killed twice more, and the second transporter is still in the hospital. I—I don’t really even know him. It could be him.”

  “It could be anyone,” Ryan insisted. “Do you think Jamison is still in the area?”

  “Maybe not, but this isn’t something we can ignore,” Patrick argued.

  “All right, let’s decide what needs to be done,” Ryan said, “but I don’t want Lily to know. She was just here before the note was delivered. If she had seen it…Well, that’s my one request.”

  The truth was that a threat didn’t mean much to him right now. He’d lived through his share, and death was going to come to him soon, anyway. If it weren’t for the fact that Lily would be frightened by such tactics, and the fact that Natalie McCabe had also received another note and was still in danger, Ryan might have ignored it.