Guardian of Her Heart

by Linda O. Johnston

  “No need,” she said with a shrug. “I won’t stay late, and as I told you before, I used the parking valet.”

  “Call me,” Travis repeated, keeping his tone level. This time. But if she kept on contradicting, he would raise it till she got the message.

  “I—”

  She didn’t get to finish her objection this time, as her office door burst open. It was Julie Alberts.

  “I thought you were going to help me with my homework, Dianna,” she complained. “Instead, I had to sit in my dad’s office after my ride dropped me off from school and meet some of his business friends, like always.” She made a face.

  “Didn’t your dad tell you I had to…” Dianna faltered, obviously unwilling to tell the girl that she’d had to show a cop, the man Julie believed was a juggler, where Dianna had seen a bad guy.

  “He said you had some ‘business to attend to.’” The singsong tone of her voice made it clear she repeated her father’s words exactly.

  “That’s right. But I can look at your homework now, and then I’ll take you home.” She stared defiantly over Julie’s head toward Travis, as if challenging him to contradict her.

  He would have, if Jeremy Alberts hadn’t come in just then. “We can all leave together,” he said, looking at Dianna. But Travis knew the comment was intended for his ears as well.

  The cop was dismissed. He wasn’t needed by the civilians.

  That was all right for tonight. After all, one of his men was under orders to follow Dianna home and surveil her home till she returned to work the next day.

  But these citizens, and especially Dianna Englander, were going to learn that this particular cop wasn’t about to be dismissed by them.

  Not when one of them was probably in mortal danger.

  Chapter Three

  There were no messages on Dianna’s answering machine when she got home that evening. Of course she hadn’t expected any.

  The machine, which sat on the vast, carved antique walnut desk in her office, was turned off.

  It wasn’t that she had received any threatening messages. It was all the damned hang-ups.

  Which was why, after she dropped her purse onto a kitchen chair, she checked the ringer on the white wall phone near the refrigerator. It was turned off, too. The caller didn’t seem to discriminate about calling when she was home or when she was gone. Or maybe he was checking her schedule.

  All the more reason not to answer. Or even allow her machine to do it.

  And hardly anyone had her cell phone number. She kept it off most of the time anyway, except when she was at work.

  She glanced at the digital clock on the microwave oven mounted beside her stove. Dinnertime. The rumbling of her stomach had already told her that.

  Her kitchen was certainly well-enough equipped for her to prepare herself a feast. It had been the one room she had remodeled when she had bought this place.

  While married to Brad, she had loved to entertain and had cooked most of their party food herself, though they could well have afforded caterers. Brad had been so proud of her that sometimes it hadn’t even mattered that her life had become his.

  “Don’t go there,” she demanded, almost startling herself by the sound of her voice in a room silent except for the refrigerator motor and muffled traffic noises from a distant freeway.

  She had bought this home almost a year ago. It was located in a nice section of the San Fernando Valley— Sherman Oaks, a community next to Van Nuys, where she worked. She hadn’t realized, when she bought it, that houses like this one, south of Ventura Boulevard, were considered more prestigious, and were therefore more pricey. But she had been surprised to find a Tudor-style house in this area where mock-Spanish adobes reigned. And to find one with a Valley view… She had fallen in love with it, and, fortunately, the seller had been motivated to lower his price to one she could agree to.

  She opened the freezer and extracted a frozen dinner extolled in TV ads as delicious yet healthy. The picture on its carton didn’t excite her. The idea of eating yet another dinner alone, even in the home she loved, didn’t excite her, either.

  Maybe she should have bought a hot dog from the pushcart from that damned good-looking undercover cop….

  “Shoot,” she muttered aloud. She didn’t want to think of Lt. Travis Bronson now. Her thoughts were turning to him much too often.

  She wondered what he was doing for dinner that night…

  “Shoot,” she repeated, even louder.

  She was always as comfortable with her own company as she was with a crowd of people. Why did she feel so lonely tonight?

  Well, she didn’t need to eat alone.

  She called her next-door neighbor Astrid, a lawyer and single mom raising two young children alone. But Dianna knew the answer when she heard wailing in the background. “Sorry,” Astrid said, “but both kids are coming down with something. I don’t know which to blame for bringing it home, but I can’t consider even fast food tonight.” She turned down Dianna’s offer of help. “I’ll probably catch whatever it is, too. No need for us both to, but thanks.”

  Disappointed, Dianna hung up. She considered who else to call, realized why this was a bad night for each of them, then gave up. She could always stick an old movie into her DVD player and watch while she ate.

  Except— “Julie,” she said aloud. She’d promised the child she could call for further input on the essay she was writing for her English class.

  Dianna hadn’t considered before that, if she encouraged the child to call, she had to turn her phone ringer back on. She decided to call the Alberts preemptively. If they hadn’t grabbed dinner on their way home, she’d suggest that she join them.

  But their phone kept ringing. And their answering machine was not disconnected.

  Dianna left a message, then resignedly turned the ringer back on her kitchen phone. She’d be able to hear it from elsewhere in her house, too.

  She unwrapped the frozen dinner, stuck it into the microwave, then headed toward the stairway to the second floor. The meal should be ready by the time she changed her clothes.

  She had barely reached the stairs when she heard the phone ring. The closest extension was in the antique-laden living room. She hurried in there.

  “Hello?” she said, expecting to hear Julie’s breathy, childish voice on the other end, babbling about what they’d done for dinner, asking questions about her essay.

  Instead, she heard only silence.

  Until a click signified that the person on the other end had hung up.

  A chill inched up Dianna’s spine. She forced herself to walk slowly back into the kitchen, where she again turned off the phone ringer. She would call the Alberts later.

  TRAVIS CHECKED IN first thing the next morning at the Van Nuys LAPD station. He had already called the undercover guy outside Dianna’s house the night before. All had been quiet.

  After greeting some cops he was beginning to know there, Travis went through the break room into the station’s report-writing room. Empty for the moment, it was lined with narrow tables along the walls, where computers were available for any cop who needed to use them. It was a little less cluttered than many areas of the busy station.

  He logged onto a computer to make some notes. When he was done printing them, he used one of the many desktop phones and called his supervisor.

  Captain Hayden Lee answered on the first ring. “What have you learned so far?” he asked when Travis identified himself.

  Captain Lee, of Asian descent, was head of the special “L” Platoon of the LAPD Metro Division, the undercover unit where Travis worked. He had been tapped by the Chief of Police for that assignment. Now that “L” Platoon was running as smooth as a well-maintained engine, the chief wanted to promote him to start up another new unit. But until the captain found a worthy successor, he refused to leave.

  He had approached Travis to succeed him. More than once.

  But, hell, Travis didn’t want a damned desk job. H
e’d had to sit too much as a kid—that or get laughed at for his awkwardness after the accident that destroyed his family. Too many times, he’d been called “Cripple.” Eventually, he’d taught himself what he’d needed to know—on his feet. Boxing. Wrestling. Football. No one laughed then.

  Now, fieldwork was what he knew. Investigating crimes, catching bad guys and saving lives were what he did.

  Except when he failed…

  “I haven’t learned much,” he admitted now to Hayden. He gave a run-down of meeting Dianna Englander and the managers of the Englander Center the day before. Plus, he described the reaction of the turf-conscious private security chief Flynn.

  “I’ll run a check on his outfit,” Lee said. “He sounds like a pain in the butt, but maybe you can find a way to use him.”

  “Right,” Travis said. “You might also check on my request for DMV info on the beginning of a license plate.” He explained that he had called one of the detectives at Parker Center, the main police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, requesting a follow-up with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Maybe they’d come up with a white sedan or two with license numbers beginning like the one Dianna had jotted down. Better yet, they might even find one with the owner’s address in the L.A. area. Unlikely, but stranger things had happened.

  “Right,” Hayden said.

  They’d known each other for a long time, and Hayden had helped him put together his cover for this assignment. He knew a lot of Travis’s talents. And many of his flaws as well.

  “Now get out there and keep the Van Nuys civic center safe for mankind, Bronson,” Hayden finished. “And watch all those knives in the air.”

  DIANNA WENT TO WORK early that morning.

  Why not? She hadn’t slept much the night before. She was wide awake, despite the heaviness of her eyelids. And she certainly had plenty of work to do.

  She drove upstairs into the garage and parked her prized little red vehicle in its assigned space, right beside Wally Sellers’ black imported sports car that was surprisingly small, considering his girth.

  Jeremy’s space, on the far side of Wally’s, was empty. He hadn’t arrived yet, but that wasn’t surprising. He always arrived later than they did, since he had to drop Julie off at school. This morning they might even be later than usual, since it had been past Julie’s bedtime yesterday when she had finished her school report, with Dianna’s help over the phone.

  She had called the Alberts house a couple more times before reaching them. But she hadn’t turned her phone ringer back on.

  Still, today, for the first time in two weeks, Dianna had defiantly shunned the valet.

  But she breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator door closed behind her, and she hadn’t spotted Glen Farley.

  There was always that evening…

  “Cut it out,” she whispered vehemently in the confines of the otherwise empty car. She felt her face redden as she looked around. Had the new security measures implemented by Flynn and his crew included hidden cameras in the elevator cars?

  She hoped not.

  Involuntarily, she glanced down at her clothes. As usual, she wore a professional-looking outfit. Today’s was a deep-olive pantsuit. She wore a purse over her shoulder and carried her briefcase.

  The elevator took her down to the lobby, where she needed to change elevator banks for a car that would take her up into the Center’s office building.

  She made the mistake of glancing out the vast expanse of glass toward the plaza outside. Sure enough, there was the same pushcart that had been there yesterday.

  Travis Bronson stood beside it. A crowd had gathered around him. All Dianna could see of him was his head, for he stood taller than all the people surrounding him.

  What was he doing to attract attention now? Juggling those vicious-looking knives again? She thought undercover police were supposed to be inconspicuous.

  He was certainly not what Dianna would have expected, had someone told her to watch out for an undercover cop. But, then, to her knowledge she had never met an undercover cop before.

  Security details, certainly. Uniformed police, bodyguards, FBI, even Secret Service—they had been part of her old life in Washington, D.C., as the wife of a U.S. Representative.

  The life she had left behind, when Brad had died.

  Without stopping to analyze the origin of her impulse, she pushed open one of the glass front doors and exited onto the plaza.

  He seemed immediately to be aware of her, for their eyes met. For being so preoccupied with the crowd, and whatever tricks he performed for them, he was undeniably alert. And observant.

  That, undoubtedly, was part of his job.

  As he looked at her, a corner of his mouth curved slowly upward, as he acknowledged her with a lazy half smile.

  Damn. Her pulse rate had no business speeding up like that, for no reason. Just because a too-handsome man full of his own importance smiled at her…

  Forcing herself to chill out, she approached the “Cart à la Carte.” The man who’d handed Julie a sandwich yesterday was busy pouring coffee, passing out sweet rolls and containers of juice— “Fare to keep you awake and alive,” as written on the cart’s side—and taking customers’ money. What was his name? Manny?

  Like many in the surrounding crowd, Manny appeared to be of Hispanic background. His smile was broad. No half grins from him. But why should he be anything but happy? He probably owned the cart, and Travis was undoubtedly drawing a huge crowd. Garnering plenty of tips, too.

  Keeping her attention on the line in front of her, she waited impatiently until she reached Manny. “A medium black coffee, please,” she said.

  “Give her a sweet roll, too,” commanded a voice from behind her. “She looks like she needs a boost of energy this morning.”

  She whirled, only to find herself facing the chest of the tall man who, only a short while before, had stood beyond the cart surrounded by an audience. She hadn’t been able to discern then what he was wearing. Now she could see that he was clad much as he had been yesterday: too-tight jeans and a snug T-shirt. This one was maroon instead of white, but it outlined the muscles of his chest as distinctly as the other. Quickly, she looked up into his face.

  He wasn’t smiling now. In fact, he seemed to regard her critically. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said sweetly. “And I’ll be glad to buy a poor juggler a donut or something, if you’d like, but I don’t need the sugar hype.”

  “Then why do you look like hell this morning?”

  Shocked, she glared at him, then turned away. “Now that’s the way to get someone to buy more food, isn’t it, Manny?”

  “I think you are very pretty myself,” the man said as he handed her a cup filled with aromatic coffee.

  “Thanks. At least someone around here has manners.” Dianna pulled money from her wallet and handed it to the real pushcart peddler. She gave him a generous tip, too. Then, without looking again at Travis, she headed for the building.

  She wasn’t surprised to find him at her side. She didn’t even glance at him as he opened the door for her.

  “See,” he said. “I do have manners.”

  “Only when reminded.”

  Inside, she showed her ID card to a security man and was permitted to go through a separate line, for those who worked in the building. She scrambled to get her purse off her shoulder and put it on the metal detector’s conveyor belt. Some uniformed people she didn’t recognize were conducting the search of those entering the building this morning. Flynn wasn’t there.

  After showing a card similar to hers—not his official police ID—Travis followed her through the machinery’s arch. It appeared that the apparatus was temporarily shut off—to make sure a weapon he carried did not set off the alarm?

  Dianna soon found herself alone with him in the elevator car. Did this one have a camera? Would someone observe her incivility as she snubbed the undercover cop?

  He didn’t let
her. “So, Ms. Englander, let me rephrase what I said before. As my astute boss Manny Fernandez pointed out, you are a very pretty lady.”

  It was her turn to give him a half smile. “Gee, thanks.” But there wasn’t a look of sarcasm on his face now, as she’d expected. She swallowed, as his deep blue eyes gazed unflinchingly at her. He looked earnest, damn him.

  She didn’t want compliments from him. She wanted him to leave her alone.

  “The problem,” he continued, “is that this morning you do not look as chipper as usual. As lovely.” This time he grinned at her. Good. His roguishness she could deal with much better than his sincerity.

  “How would you know? You only met me yesterday.”

  “Ah, but I’ve seen your picture. A lot.”

  She inhaled deeply. “You did your research, then.”

  “I always do my research.” He did not seem uncomfortable alluding to his undercover job here in the elevator.

  “Fine. Then you’ll know I don’t scare easily.”

  “Could have fooled me yesterday, in the parking lot.” The car reached her floor and the door opened. He blocked it from closing but did not let her leave. “And this morning. What are you afraid of, Dianna?”

  “What makes you think I’m afraid?” She forced her words to emerge slowly and coolly, and she painted disdain on her face as she regarded him.

  “You obviously didn’t sleep last night. Heavy date?”

  She felt her arm tense, as if she were preparing to slap him. And she didn’t do such things. “That’s none of your concern.” She pushed her way past him out of the elevator.

  The problem was that she literally had to push him. She hadn’t wanted to touch him, but he stood right in her way. As a result, she felt the substance of his arm as she shoved it aside. And then she had to edge out between his body and the protrusion of the elevator door. She tried not to touch him, but couldn’t avoid it. The tips of her breasts just skimmed his chest. They responded to the contact. She felt them harden. Thank heavens she was wearing a substantial bra and opaque cotton blouse. They concealed her reaction. She hoped.

  Even so, the contact wasn’t lost on Travis. His half smile returned, and this time, it twinkled in his eyes.