Christmas Cowboy

by Claire Adams

  “Just what?” he asked quietly.

  “Just bad memories,” I replied distractedly. Telling Brian about Dominic’s experience with surveillance could wait until we had something to eat. “Let’s go get some breakfast, okay?”

  “Alright, let’s go,” he replied warily. I knew he didn’t believe me and that he was waiting for the right moment to ask the questions that would give him a better sense of what was going on, but right now, I was too hungry to worry about it, so I smiled and headed toward the door.

  On the way down to breakfast, Brian resumed his eagle-eye scanning habit and gave every person that passed us the once-over. I wanted to tell him to chill out, but somehow it didn’t seem like he would find any humor in it, so I kept quiet and walked toward the restaurant. We’d decided not to leave the hotel, but rather to have breakfast downstairs in the relative safety of the hotel.

  Brian chose a table in the back where he could monitor the comings and goings of everyone. I didn’t care what he did, I just wanted waffles.

  I ordered a big breakfast and then sat back and watched Brian watching people. I wondered what was going through his mind as his eyes scanned every person entering and exiting the restaurant.

  “You must get tired,” I said.

  “Huh?” he gave me a confused look.

  “You must get really tired using your eyes as tracking devices,” I repeated.

  “Don’t start hassling me, Ava,” he warned.

  “I’m not hassling you,” I replied. “I’m just making an observation. There’s a big difference.”

  “In semantics,” he said with a warning note in his voice.

  “No, it’s not just semantics,” I shot back. “It’s an observation about the fact that you are scanning faster than a grocery store checker, and I thought it must be tiring to always be scanning everything.”

  “I don’t even notice I’m doing it,” he replied. “It’s just part of who I am.”

  “Still,” I said.

  “Still, what? Dammit, Ava!” He raised his voice in irritation.

  “Don’t get irritated with me,” I warned. “I’m tired of all of this cloak and dagger crap.”

  “Lest you forget, this cloak and dagger crap is all about protecting you,” he hissed.

  “I did not ask you to —”

  “Are you ready for a big Belgian waffle with strawberries?” chirped the waitress as she began to set plates in front of us. Brian and I lapsed into a polite silence during which we only spoke to the waitress. She giggled nervously as she asked if there was anything else we needed, and when we both replied that we were fine, she slipped out of sight and left us to eat our meal.

  I said nothing as I smeared butter on my waffle and then covered it in a thick pool of syrup. Brian cut up his eggs, mixed them with the potatoes and then poured catsup over the entire mix. I tried not to roll my eyes as I watched him scoop up a forkful of the mess and shove it in his mouth. He continued scanning the restaurant as we ate, once stopping his fork in midair as he closely watched a man who was paying his bill at the register.

  “Let it go,” I hissed through a mouthful of waffle and strawberries. “Just eat your damn breakfast!”

  Brian shot me a look that clearly indicated I was to shut the hell up. I ate my breakfast, but the longer we sat in silence, the angrier I got. I didn’t ask to be cleared out of my dorm room! I didn’t ask to be sequestered in a stupid hotel far, far away from my friends and classes! I didn’t ask to be stuck in the middle of a psychotic ex-boyfriend and the bodyguard assigned to protect me! I didn’t ask for any of this!

  Suddenly, I felt incredibly sorry for myself. All of this was a mess that I had never wanted nor asked for, and now my life was being ruined by a man who had left me with nothing but a host of invisible wounds. I needed to take control of the situation and get myself out of this mess, not rely on a guy who was clearly in over his head, and was overwhelmed by the task.

  “Brian?” I ventured.

  “What?” he said in a short manner, not looking at me.

  “I want to go back to the dorm,” I said.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Ava?” he demanded.

  “Don’t you yell at me!” I cried. “I’m sick and tired of you making all of the decisions and I’m sick and tired of letting that psycho rule my life!”

  “Me making all the decisions? Me?” Brian raised his voice as he pounded a fist on the table, making the plates jump and causing the other guests to look over at us. He raised a hand in apology and leaned back in his chair.

  “Yes, you’re making all the decisions about how to manage this situation and I’m tired of it,” I replied.

  “If you recall, you were the one who refused to involve the police and left me hanging out to dry,” he said.

  “I know! But I didn’t want to give my father the impression that you couldn’t handle it!” I cried.

  “Why? If he knew I needed help, he would get it, right?” he asked.

  “No, he’d fire you and find someone else who could handle it and then…” I trailed off not wanting to say what I was thinking.

  “And then what?” he pressed.

  “And then I’d have to break in a whole new person and it’s a pain in my ass!” I said dryly. Brian shot me a dirty look as he reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone for the 10th time since we sat down.

  “I need to take this call,” he said as he got up and moved out of earshot.

  I signaled the waitress that I wanted to pay the bill and she quickly rushed over to take the credit card I held out. I needed an outlet for this frustration, and I knew just the thing.

  *****

  When Brian finally returned, I shot him a questioning look. When he shrugged in response, I picked up the receipt for breakfast, shoved it in my purse, and got up from the table.

  “I need to work out this morning,” I said matter-of-factly. “Let’s hit the gym.”

  “Ava, I don’t think that’s the best idea,” Brian replied.

  “Oh, stop being such a worrywart,” I scolded. “We’ve had zero problems thus far, and I don’t imagine that Dominic and his henchmen have any idea where we are.”

  “You don’t know what they know,” he warned.

  “Oh my God, you are such a nervous Nellie!” I laughed. “Get over it; I need to work out, and that’s what we’re doing.”

  Brian shot me an annoyed look as we walked to the elevator and headed back to the room. I ignored his dark scowl and even whistled a little as the elevator lifted us to our floor. Once in the room, I headed to the bedroom and changed into my workout gear. It made me feel good to think about moving my body since we’d been sitting around in rooms for almost a week now.

  “Ready?” I asked as I emerged from the bedroom. Brian was still scowling as he nodded and then headed out the door to check the hallway. I rolled my eyes dramatically as he checked both sides of the hall and the motioned for me to follow him back to the elevator.

  “This spy routine is getting old,” I said sarcastically.

  “Ava, if you can’t get on board with the protection plan, could you at least have the courtesy to not make sarcastic remarks about it?” he asked. There was something in the tone of his voice that made me stop and look at his face. He didn’t look happy at all, but I wasn’t happy either. In fact, I was pretty miserable at the moment. My whole life had been upended and he was acting like it was an inconvenience for him, when he’d been hired to ensure that this exact thing didn’t happen. As I thought about it more, I realized I was really angry.

  “You know what? I’m tired of being told what to do and how to do it,” I asserted. “From now on, I’m running this show and you will do as I say. Got it?”

  If looks could kill, I’d have been well on my way to the morgue, but he nodded and backed off as I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly. I didn’t care if he did have my best interests at heart, I was sick and tired of people trying to control me. When the elevator finally a
rrived, I stalked into it and crossed my arms over my chest. Brian entered the elevator and turned to face the front. I shot dirty looks at the back of his head as we descended to the ground floor. When we reached the bottom, Brian stood aside as the doors slid open, and held out his arm like I was royalty. I shot him a look as I exited and marched toward the gym.

  I quickly located a treadmill and hung my towel over the bar before stretching out. Brian positioned himself at the free weights and I watched him in my peripheral vision as he stretched and began pumping iron. It was hard for me not to be distracted by the sight of his bulging muscles, but I fought the urge to turn and watch and began my own workout. I set the treadmill to mimic a slow but steady hill climb, and began jogging to warm up. I soon lost myself in the rhythm of my feet pounding on the treadmill and let my mind wander to the places where I hadn’t wanted to go.

  I thought about how far I’d come in the past year since leaving Dominic, and I tried to puzzle out what would have caused him to want to start stalking me after having left me alone for so long. Why was he so obsessed with me? What triggered the obsession? Why did he want me back after all this time? None of it made any sense to me, but I knew there had to be a reason. People didn’t just start stalking for no reason. Did they?

  As I ran, I noticed someone climbing onto the treadmill next to me, and I quickly looked over and nodded, and then did a double take. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I quickly looked over to where Brian was working out and saw that he was furiously tapping the screen of his phone as he shook his head. He hadn’t seemed to notice the guy next to me, and if he had, he wasn’t worried, so I relaxed and told myself that I was imagining things.

  I picked up my pace for the last few miles and tried to run a fast time rather than slack off and get lost in my mind. It worked for a bit, but soon, I got the nagging feeling that I was being watched, and when I looked over at the neighbor treadmill, I saw that the guy who’d been there was gone. That’s weird. He wasn’t there long enough to work up a sweat. I shrugged and figured he must be a businessman who got called away by his boss or something.

  As I began my cool down, I noticed that Brian was now lifting some seriously heavy weights and the veins in his neck were popping out. I made a note to tease him about “hulking out,” and then slowed to a brisk walk as my workout came to an end. I took a big swig from my water bottle and then wiped my face with the towel before hopping down off the treadmill and heading over to Brian.

  “You about done?” I asked casually. “I need a shower.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he sighed as he put the weights back in the rack and grabbed his towel. I could tell he was irritated, but I’d be damned if I was going to dig into his psyche again. All I wanted now was a hot shower and a nap.

  As we exited the gym, I felt someone staring at me from across the lobby, but when I turned to see who it was, there was no one there. I stood staring at the space where I swear someone had been, then shook my head and turned back toward the elevator. I stole a glance a Brian, who was quickly tapping out a message on his phone before tucking it back in his pocket.

  “Do you ever put that thing down?” I asked.

  “Do you ever stop asking ridiculous questions?” he shot back.

  “Wow, did someone mess up your workout or did you just not get enough to eat at breakfast?” I snapped.

  “Ava, let’s don’t do this…” he trailed off as he watched a man getting off the elevator. Brian turned and followed the man with his eyes, then quickly pulled out his phone and snapped a photo.

  “What? Do you recognize him?” I asked.

  “Him? Oh, no, just something…” he mumbled as he tapped out another message and then slipped his phone in his pocket as he followed me onto the elevator.

  “You’re being so secretive,” I observed. “Is there a reason you aren’t sharing information with me?”

  “No, there’s no reason,” he parroted.

  “You are so maddening!” I cried as I stomped my foot on the floor of the elevator. “You drag me away from my life and then tell me nothing about what’s going on! I’m sick of this! I want to go back to the dorm!”

  “Ava, you can’t go back to the dorm right now,” Brian said in a calm voice. “It’s just not safe.”

  “Oh God, not this crap again! I’m so tired of being treated like some delicate hothouse flower!” I yelled.

  “Could you keep your voice down?” he asked, with no more emotion than if he was asking me to do something as simple as press the elevator button.

  “That’s it, I’m done with your condescending attitude and your overly protective bodyguard service,” I said calmly. “I’m going home.”

  “You can’t,” he said definitively.

  “I can do anything I want to do,” I said in a snotty tone. “And you can’t stop me.”

  “No, but I can ask you,” he said as he put a hand on my shoulder and turned me toward him. “Ava, please? Just give me a few days to have someone set up enough security in your dorm room so that I can properly monitor what’s going on?”

  I stood staring up at him with a defiant look on my face. He waited. His eyes softened as he looked into mine, and my defiant stance wilted a bit as I thought about all the ways in which he’d tried to protect me, and all of the ways in which I’d tried to slip out of his protection. Then I thought about how angry my father would be if he found out that Brian had failed to do his job properly, and I realized that I couldn’t let him take the blame for my frustration and anger. I sighed and nodded.

  “Two days,” I said. “That’s it. Two more days and I’m going home.”

  “That’s not reasonable,” he replied. “I need at least a week!”

  “A week?” I yelled. “Oh, hell no!”

  “Ava, a week is the best I can offer you,” he said as he reached up and ran his fingers through my hair, making me shiver a bit. “It’s a small amount of time to ensure your safety. Give me seven days and you can go home.”

  “Fine, as long as we agree,” I said gruffly to try and cover up the effect he was having on me. “Seven days, and not a day more!”

  “I just want to find him, and put him away so that you’ll be safe,” he said softly as he ran his fingers across my cheek before lightly brushing my lips with the tip of his index finger. That was too much, and I backed up against the elevator wall as I looked at him warily.

  “Don’t try and manage me,” I warned. “I might have had sex with you a couple of times and enjoyed it, but do not try and manage me because you think you have some kind of advantage over me.”

  “I’m not managing you,” Brian sighed as his shoulders slumped. “I’m simply trying to keep you safe.”

  At that moment, the elevator reached our floor, and the doors opened. I quickly walked out and headed down the hallway, failing to even notice the room service guy who was cleaning up the dishes left outside rooms until Brian said, “Hey, can you get us a few more glasses?”

  “That’s housekeeping, man,” the guy replied. “Call 611 and ask Jeannie for more glasses. She’ll bring them right up.”

  “Thanks,” Brian replied with a pensive look on his face as he walked through the door I held open. “I’ll do that."

  He walked into the room, turned around, closed the door, locked it, and went about putting all of the safety mechanisms back in place as I watched with wide eyes.

  “Just being safe,” he said as he stacked glasses near the door and then jammed a chair under the door handle. “Just being safe.”

  *****

  The next several days were uneventful as we hung out in the hotel fitness room, ordered room service more often than going down to the restaurant, and watched every movie offered on the pay-per-view channels. I spent time trying to get my assignments from Jessie and Lara who, by this time, were well aware of the situation and had agreed to run interference in class without letting on what was happening. God forbid that one of my instructors should decide to intervene
and alert the police, so Lara had concocted a lie that involved me traveling to some exotic location for some campaign event that my father was hosting. The professors were wary, but once they received apologetic emails from both me and, after Jessie tapped into the ISP my father’s campaign was using and set up a fake email account for me to email people from, from my father, it seemed that everything would be okay.

  The irony of all of this was that my father did everything he could to keep me away from his campaign. He didn’t believe that I should have to suffer the consequences of his decisions, so he’d done his best to eliminate the need for me to attend any events or functions, and he rarely mentioned me in any of his stump speeches. He said it was an attempt to preserve my privacy, so out of a sense of loyalty, I tried to do the same. I rarely talked about my father or my family anywhere other than with my closest friends, and I never gave interviews. At times, I’d even denied that I was his daughter in order to avoid nosy reporters who were digging around looking for some angle. I knew eventually they’d catch me in the lie, but I didn’t care. It was none of their business.

  The upside of the isolation was that it had given me time to formulate a solid plan for how to approach the anti-war action, and I’d spent several hours every morning writing letters and sending emails to people I thought might be able to offer support to our burgeoning movement. I’d gotten a couple of responses, but they’d been far from what I’d hoped for in terms of support and organizing power. On the third morning, I typed out an email to the members of the group asking them to contact a list of people I’d gathered and told them that we needed the support of the community in order to make our plan work. I assigned two of the committee members the task of contacting veterans, and told them that we definitely needed their support if we were going to make this work. I hit send and crossed my fingers, hoping that they’d be able to do what I’d asked.

  I looked up from my laptop and saw Brian sitting on the window ledge furiously tapping on the screen of his phone while he frowned.