by Debra Webb
She chewed her lower lip and tried to decide if that was good or not. “So if anyone really does try to kidnap me, you’ll know where I am all the time.”
He nodded. “That’s right. It’s our latest technology.”
What did she say next? Eddi clasped her hands behind her back and searched for something else to say, finally deciding upon a question she’d already asked. “You’re sure that the document I signed doesn’t obligate me to anything I’ll regret later?”
“Absolutely not. Our agency attorney reviewed the confidentiality agreement. I wouldn’t have encouraged you to sign it had there been any question. Mr. Thurston has an excellent reputation but we always double-check everything.”
As he spoke, Eddi found herself cataloging the details of her new shadow, Doug. The white shirt looked good against his tanned skin and the navy slacks were neatly pressed and well fitted. The only accessory he wore was a gold watch that looked incredibly expensive. The black loafers were polished to a high shine. Every thick, wavy hair was in place. He stood at least five inches taller than her five-seven and looked to be quite muscular beneath the starched cotton shirt. Since he was trained as a bodyguard, she imagined that he was well versed in self-defense and other necessary skills. And, of course, there was the gun.
Were all his clients women? she wondered. Did all of them get tongue-tied and feel all tingly inside when he was near as she did?
“Don’t you agree?”
His question jerked her from her silly musings. “Excuse me?”
The expression of amusement on his face told her unquestionably that he had read her mind, had noted her preoccupation with his numerous physical assets. Heat scalded her cheeks, only making bad matters worse.
“I was saying that it was merely good business practice for any company to require those with intimate knowledge of assets and so forth to sign an agreement stating that the knowledge will be kept confidential and not used for personal gain.”
She nodded adamantly. “Sure. I understand. I guess I just hadn’t considered that I would be privy to those kinds of intimate details.” Eddi retreated a step, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
As if suddenly aware of her discomfort, he moved away, taking a seat on the sofa.
Weak with relief, Eddi did the same, only she chose a side chair across the coffee table from him. This was much, much better.
“Now that you’ve signed the agreement, I can be a bit more frank regarding Mrs. D’Martine’s wishes.”
Uh-oh. And she’d thought she knew everything going into this. At least the conversation kept her mind off him. Eddi braced for the rest of the story.
“Your grandmother isn’t simply looking for an heir on to whom to pass her vast fortune. She’s looking for someone who will truly care about what the D’Martine family name really stands for. Their international jewel-trading business has been more than a hundred years and several generations in the making. It’s very important to her that this becomes important to you as well.”
Eddi threw up her hands. “Wait just a minute. I told you that I already had a business to run and that I wasn’t interested in another, no matter how exciting it sounds.” She snapped her mouth shut, barely suppressing the urge to slap her hand over it. Darn it. She hadn’t intended to say exciting. She didn’t want him to know she’d decided the whole thing sounded exceedingly exciting on certain levels. She’d lain in bed last night unable to sleep knowing he was right out here on her sofa. She’d tossed and turned and thought this whole thing through. Maybe being an heiress wasn’t completely bad.
“And I,” he said patiently, a smile lingering just beneath the surface and manifesting its presence in a sexy twitch of his lips, “explained to you that D’Martine Exports has a board of directors and an extremely competent CEO. You won’t be expected to run any aspect of it. However, you will be expected to be aware of the operation of your company.”
Her company? Now things were really getting bizarre. “Wait a minute!” She was on her feet before realizing she’d even moved. “I’m—”
A sudden banging at the front door cut off the rest of her intended tirade. “Eddi!”
“Ms. Mattie?” she muttered, a frown of confusion adding to the headache that had suddenly begun right between her eyes. Before she could get to the door, Doug was there checking it out, doing the bodyguard thing. His interference only made her headache that much worse.
Mattie Caruthers stood at Eddi’s threshold, her twin sister, Minnie, as well as Ella Brown, clustered behind her. “Eddi, you have to help us. It’s Irene, she fell and I think she’s hurt.”
Fear surged inside Eddi as she followed the ladies across her yard and around the row of hedges to her neighbor’s driveway. Doug stayed right on her heels. Ms. Irene was no spring chicken anymore. If she’d fallen it could be serious. Vaguely, Eddi wondered what the ladies were doing at her neighbor’s since he was out of town for the week.
“My dear, are you still with us?” Ella knelt next to Irene and took one hand in hers.
Irene groaned loudly.
Eddi’s heart banged anxiously against her sternum. She rushed to the elderly lady’s side. Mattie and Minnie were already gathered around her feet.
“Ms. Irene, tell me where it hurts,” Eddi urged placatingly. They needed a phone. To call 911. An ambulance. That’s what they needed.
“Oooooh,” she wailed. “I can’t breathe.” Her right hand flew to her chest. “I think I need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
Baffled, Eddi leaned forward a bit. “You want me to—”
“Not you,” Irene said petulantly. Her gaze shot to Doug, who was crouched next to Eddi. “Him!” she said with surprising fortitude.
Why, the woman wasn’t hurt at all! Eddi glared at her. “Would you like some help getting up?” She should just go right back home and leave her lying there. Surely the former actress hadn’t put on this whole shenanigan just for the attention.
Irene adopted a look of genuine displeasure. “Can’t you see that I’m at death’s door? I could go at any moment.”
No wonder she’d won so many awards, Eddi thought wryly. But at the moment, she was not amused or impressed.
“I’ve had emergency medical training,” Doug offered. “How about I make sure there are no broken bones and then we help you to your feet.”
Ms. Irene smiled like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “That sounds like exactly what we should do,” she cooed.
Eddi wanted to shake her. She glared from one adoring face to the other. All four women were utterly and completely enamored of Mr. Douglas Cooper.
With Irene’s skirt already hiked to the tops of her thighs, it was no problem for Doug to thoroughly check her limbs. Eddi was pretty sure she would have to stifle a gag reflex if the four uttered a gasp just one more time. One would think that each time Doug touched Irene he was laying hands on all four of them. By the time he was finished with his infuriatingly painstaking examination, Eddi wanted to barf.
“You feel just fine to me, ma’am,” Doug said with that gracious charm that made Eddi’s heart skip a beat even as annoyed as she was at the moment.
He assisted the smiling lady to her feet and made a show of helping her to dust away the leaves clinging to her clothing. “Dropping by your personal physician’s office after taking a tumble like that would be advisable,” he suggested when all was as it should be.
“Oh, I agree,” Ella put in quickly. “That was quite a fall you took, Irene.” She patted Doug on the back. “Why, what would we have done if this fine gentleman hadn’t come along to help?”
Minnie and Mattie were next. Making over him as if he were the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread. As they bantered through the necessary introductions, it suddenly struck Eddi again that they were all standing in Mr. Curtis’s driveway and that Irene’s car was parked there.
“Ladies,” Eddi said, breaking into the Dougfest, “what are you doing at Mr. Curtis’s? Isn’t he out of town?
”
The hesitation that lasted less than a split second told the tale. They were spying on Eddi.
“Well, I…ah…we…he asked us to water his plants!” Mattie said, looking inordinately pleased that she’d come up with a plausible explanation.
Eddi braced her elbow on one arm and tapped her chin. “That’s odd. He asked me to water his plants, too.”
“Well,” Mattie said nervously. The foursome exchanged doubtful glances and Minnie suddenly took up where Mattie had left off, “He knows how busy you get. We’re just the backup plan in case you forget.” Nervous laughter jittered back and forth between the four storytellers.
“You know how much the old goat loves those plants,” Irene added for good measure. She turned her serene gaze back upon Doug then. “You must let me repay your kindness, sir,” she urged in her best Scarlet O’Hara voice.
“That’s not necessary, ma’am.” Doug looked a little unnerved himself now. Eddi couldn’t resist a smile.
“Oh, I won’t take no for an answer.” Irene’s gaze flitted from Doug to Eddi and back where she batted her lashes dramatically. “You and Eddi come along over to my house tomorrow evening around six and we’ll have dinner.”
Doug looked to Eddi for an answer but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She shrugged and left it at that.
“It’ll be our pleasure,” he responded, arrowing a little warning at her from the corner of his eye.
That’s what he got for making such a production of examining the woman. Eddi’s triumph died a sudden death when she recognized the feeling she’d just experienced—jealousy.
“Well,” Ella piped up. “We should get you over to Doc Mathers.” She ushered Irene toward the Cadillac. “He’ll probably need to take X rays.”
The ladies called their goodbyes as they loaded into the old yellow vehicle that was in as close to mint condition as a car could be as it approached the half-century mark. Ms. Irene babied that car as if it were a child. Since she hadn’t had any children of her own, Eddi supposed that was the why of it. She kept her gaze carefully glued to the ladies until they’d disappeared from sight. She needed to do anything but think about the man standing next to her, and the last thing she needed was to be alone with him.
“Do they generally check up on you like this?”
Eddi nodded jerkily. “All the time.” She had to regain her perspective here. She couldn’t walk around behaving as foolishly as the matchmakers had. The fact that they had been spying on her lent credence to her fear that Doug’s remark to Ms. Ada about dinner last evening had gone straight to the grapevine. If they ever found out he was staying at her place now—on the sofa, of course—she’d never convince them that he was just a bodyguard. Her anxiety moved to a new level. And then she’d have to tell them everything… How else could she explain having a bodyguard? Or a man sleeping at her house? She didn’t know why she worried so. No one would ever believe that good girl Eddi Harper was being bad. She self-consciously straightened the suspenders of her overalls. Men didn’t look at Eddi that way; everyone knew that.
This was getting too complicated. What did she need with a bodyguard? This D’Martine business wasn’t even real to her. She was certain the whole thing had gotten blown out of proportion. What happened all those years ago had nothing to do with her. Well, okay…the man had been her biological father, but she hadn’t even known him. She wasn’t a D’Martine, not really. She should simply go meet her grandmother D’Martine, tell her how she felt and be done with it.
“I really have to get to work,” she said, hoping to be rid of him for a while so she could think properly. Something about him interfered with her ability to process thought. “I’m behind from yesterday as it is. I’ll check in with you at lunchtime, if you’d like.”
“Sorry, Eddi, but it doesn’t work that way.” He splayed his hand in a gesture for her to precede him. “When I’m assigned to protect someone, it’s 24/7. Don’t you remember? We discussed that last evening along with your request for proper instruction.”
Yesterday was one big, long blur of emotion. She scarcely remembered her own name, much less all that he’d told her. Okay, well, he had insisted on staying close by during his time here. Which, she supposed, made sense. If she was going to be vulnerable, nighttime would be the most likely time, she guessed.
She huffed a breath of impatience. She didn’t like feeling vulnerable and she sure didn’t like feeling all hot and bothered by some guy she barely knew. As for instruction, that might not even be necessary. Mrs. D’Martine might not even want her once she saw her.
“Heiress lessons will have to wait,” she told him flatly. “I have real work to do.”
EDDI HAD INSISTED THAT they take her truck. Her tools, after all, were in there. She couldn’t work without her tools. Doug was reasonably sure after the first stop that she should learn a new line of work. She worked entirely too hard for too little. The fees she charged seemed woefully inadequate. But that was none of his concern so he kept quiet about it.
“Good morning, Mrs. Fairbanks,” Eddi said cheerfully as they entered the home of her second customer of the day.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me,” the elderly woman complained. “Called your daddy this morning and he said you’d be along.” She spotted Doug then. “You training a new helper?”
Eddi smiled widely. Too widely. “Yes, ma’am, I sure am. This is Doug Cooper.” She gestured to him and he nodded a hello. “He’s learning the trade to supplement his income.”
One gray eyebrow rose above the other as Mrs. Fairbanks divided a look between them. “You just make sure he does it right. I can’t tolerate a faulty flusher.”
“Not to worry,” Eddi assured her. She patted him on the back then. “I’ll watch every move he makes.”
That statement instantly evolved into something else altogether. Him coming toward her…her lying naked on the bed waiting for him. Doug shook himself. He was relatively certain that scenario was not what she’d had in mind. Just as the next scenario to transpire had not been what he’d had in mind when he’d told her he would be her full-time shadow during this assignment.
“Hold it like that,” she instructed.
The tiny closet in which the toilet was located simply had not been constructed for two. That Eddi had squeezed in beside him overseeing his first-ever flush-valve transplant was not conducive to productivity.
“This can’t be the proper procedure,” he protested, sweat rolling down his forehead. If she leaned forward and pressed her breasts against his arm just once more…
She did exactly that.
The tension in his muscles ratcheted up another notch.
“Just slide it into place.” She leaned in closer still, putting her face nearer to his as he stared into the tank. “Just like that.”
More words that made him think things he shouldn’t. Forcing his attention to the task at hand, he pressed downward, locking the gadget into position.
“There you go.” She beamed a smile up at him. “That was easy enough, wasn’t it?”
He managed a curt nod. The temperature in the little closet shot up another ten degrees and he wondered if she had any idea how her proximity affected him. Mere centimeters separated their bodies and only in certain areas. Others were even closer. Not more than an inch or two stood between their faces. All she’d have to do is tilt up that determined little chin and he could kiss her.
He blinked, startled by his plunge toward doom.
“Are we finished?” The question was strained, but, considering he could hardly breathe much less speak, he thought he’d done fairly well.
“Just put the lid on the tank and that’ll do it.”
She left him to the chore and the temperature in the room dropped considerably, but the tension tightening his every muscle refused to abate. He would need a long, cold shower after this. He glanced at his watch and it wasn’t even noon yet. How could a woman dressed in overalls and wielding a toolbox sti
mulate this much lust?
It simply didn’t make sense.
Doug finished up and washed his hands in the basin before going in search of his charge. Well, at least now he knew how to replace a faulty fill valve. If he’d known one existed before today, it had escaped his memory. Or, more likely, he had banished the entire concept.
When Mrs. Fairbanks had settled her bill, Eddi loaded her toolbox into her truck and they headed toward the next stop of the morning.
“This is the sort of thing you do all day?” He really tried to keep the disbelief out of his tone, but he wasn’t completely successful.
The grin on her face served as indication enough that he’d failed miserably. “Pretty much. It really gets interesting when you have to make a repair to the pipes in the crawl space under the house.”
During his extensive personal-protection training he had been required to crawl through much worse than simply a dark place beneath someone’s house, but the idea that this waiflike, fragile-looking young woman who could make him hard with just a look had done something vaguely similar, blew him away.
“I can imagine,” was all he could think to say.
She turned right at the next street and parked in front of a small two-story frame house. When she’d shut off the engine, she turned to him and asked, “I know I don’t represent the average sort of person who needs a bodyguard, but is this how you learned all about the way rich people behave? Being a bodyguard, I mean.”
Here was another sticky part. He didn’t avoid her watchful gaze or she would know he wasn’t being completely honest. Instead, he looked directly at her. “In my work as an investigator and sometimes as a bodyguard, I often associate with the socially elite.”
She nodded as she assimilated his answer. “So, I can take your advice to the bank. You know what you’re doing? I won’t end up looking stupid or anything?”
He had to smile at her utter innocence. She’d been thinking about what she needed to do. That was a step in the right direction.
“Trust me,” he allowed. “I know all about the behavior patterns of the rich and famous.”
