Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04]

by Over the Line

  He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Besides, how would he have known about the money?”

  She’d been thinking the same thing. He could see that in her troubled eyes.

  “Then who?”

  He grunted. “Wish I had an answer. All I’ve got are more questions. Still topping the list is who killed your mother. I know—,” he interjected when she would have interrupted. “I know we’ve been looking at Grimm for that, but this money . . . hell. It puts another motive on the table. Whoever killed her might have been after the cash.”

  They’d put a lot of spins on things since leaving the bank and checked into a motel to spend the night, since their return flight wasn’t until tomorrow morning. They’d talked about everything except that photo Jase had discovered along with the list and the cash in the lockbox.

  It was safer for her, he supposed. Safer and easier for her to talk about and think about who had tried to access her mother’s lockbox. Safer to think about the $1.3 million Mr. Haley had verified was inside and had already wired to her bank in L.A. than to dwell on the photograph Jase had found.

  She had to be thinking the same thing he was. Was it a picture of her father? Why else would Alice Perkins keep the guy’s picture in a bank lockbox? He had to have been important to her. So important, she kept the photo under lock and key. Along with the names of the four women. None of whom lived in Tupelo. Or if they did, they had unlisted phone numbers; Jase had already checked the Tupelo phone directory back at their motel, where they’d showered and changed before coming here.

  “The four names on the list,” she began, her thoughts evidently paralleling his, “what do you think that’s about? Do you suppose they were . . . I don’t know . . . maybe women in need? Maybe she was planning to give them the money.”

  Hope was an amazing thing. Hard to explain sometimes, easy to latch onto. It was a little sad that Janey still had hope for her mother. Hope that a woman who had been a helluva drinker but not much of a mother might have had some redeeming quality. Charity. It was a stretch and Jase didn’t believe it for a second. But Janey needed to believe it.

  “Sure. Yeah. It’s possible,” he said. “Look, we’re not going to find any concrete answers tonight, so why don’t you just eat your ribs?”

  He nodded toward her plate when he realized she’d done little more than toy with her food. She hadn’t eaten anything but fruit at breakfast and she’d eaten damn little of that. “You need fuel. And you need to just not think for a while.”

  “Oh, right. Not think. I’ll get right to work on that,” she said, but at least she managed a small smile.

  It had been several hours since they’d left the bank with Officer Rodman, who had questioned every employee who might have gotten a look at Lemans. Of course, Jase had no doubt that Lemans wasn’t the guy’s real name—and as he’d suspected, “Lemans” had been very careful to avoid looking at the security cameras. They’d gotten very little from the tape.

  Jase had driven Janey to a budget motel. “You expected the Ritz? In Tupelo?” he’d asked when she’d given him a “you’ve got to be kidding” look. “We’re trying to keep a low profile, remember?”

  “Low, lower, lowest,” she’d said, glaring at the motel, where the most appealing features were its $29.95 a night rate and free HBO.

  “It’ll be good for your character.”

  “If we’d taken my Gulfstream instead of flying commercial, we could have been in Boston by now,” she’d pointed out.

  “Yeah, and if we’d taken your jet there’d have been an army of sleazebag photographers waiting at the airport when we got here. Think of it as a trade-off.”

  After they’d checked into adjoining rooms—which were surprisingly neat and clean, if not luxurious—they’d both showered and changed into fresh jeans and T-shirts, continuing the low-profile look. Jase had insisted they go out to eat instead of ordering in.

  For one thing, he didn’t need to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary in close quarters with her today. Plus, she needed movement. She didn’t need to sit in a motel room and brood about all the weird things happening in her life.

  Too weird, Jase thought as he dug into his ribs. And she was too wired. He wished she could work up a little more enthusiasm for her own meal. And then it came to him. He was going to be so, so sorry, but he knew exactly how to get her to eat.

  “Tell you what,” he said, knowing he’d regret it. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  She slumped back in the booth. “What kind of a deal?”

  “You were pretty hot to ask me questions on the flight down here. So here’s the plan. You can ask me anything you want. But for every question I answer, you have to eat something.”

  Her eyes brightened marginally. “And if I’m not hungry?” She cocked a brow in challenge.

  He lifted a shoulder. “Then you’re not hungry.”

  Hell, she wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to play twenty questions; he knew that. “But my money’s on you finishing that plate of ribs before it’s all over.”

  “You think you know me that well?”

  He gave her a “get real” look. “No woman I know can resist an open invitation to pry.”

  She smiled. Not offended. And some of the tension left her shoulders.

  “Okay, smart-ass, you’re on.”

  God help him. “Hit me with your best shot.”

  12

  Jase figured she must have had a list already made out in her mind, because she jumped right in.

  “So . . . you went to college before the military. What did you study?”

  He looked straight ahead. “Law enforcement.”

  “So why aren’t you on a police force somewhere?”

  “Same reason I’m not still in the Rangers.” He turned to look at her, working hard not to let her see what he was feeling. “Hearing loss—big booms will do that. Just enough that I can’t pass the physical.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and he realized that she really was.

  He shrugged it off. “It happens. Not a big deal.”

  But it was. It was a very big deal.

  “How long have you been a bodyguard?”

  He grunted. “You might not like the answer.”

  “Backing out already?”

  “Nope. Just warning you. Today’s what? The eighteenth?”

  She nodded.

  “Then it’s been twenty-nine days. If you count my three weeks of OJT.”

  She blinked. Sat up a little straighter. “You mean—”

  He cut her off with a wave of his fork. “Unh, unh, unh. Another bite. Then another question.”

  He liked it that she dove in with her fingers and made quick work of the meat on a rib bone. “You mean you just started?”

  “You’re my first field assignment,” he admitted after she’d swallowed. “Told you that you might not like it,” he added, reacting to the shocked look on her face. “Look, if it’s the hearing or lack of experience that worries you—”

  “No,” she cut him off. Shook her head. “No. I’m not worried about any of that. I figure . . . well, I figure what you did in the Middle East more than qualifies you for the job. How long did you say you’ve been out of the service?”

  He glanced pointedly toward her plate. It was either that or get fixated on the little smudge of barbeque sauce clinging to the corner of her mouth—and how tempting it was to lean across the booth and lick it off.

  She rolled her eyes but pulled another meaty rib bone off the rack and started munching.

  “Six months,” he told her when she’d finished it—and dabbed her napkin to the sauce, thank you, Jesus.

  He didn’t have to prompt her the next time. She ate a forkful of salad. “And for those six months . . . you, what? Trained to be a bodyguard?”

  He could lie to her. He probably should lie to her, but what the hell. Lying had never been a part of his MO. He couldn’t think of a reason compelling enough to change that now—not
even embarrassment.

  “I knocked around a month or two. Hung out in a few too many bars. Drank way too much beer. Got in too many fights.”

  “You don’t strike me as the brawling kind—unless you had good reason.”

  He finished off a rack, considered how much to say. In the end, he just told it like it was. At least like it was for him.

  “For five years I’d been part of a rapid deployment team. Wherever there was action, we were there. Always in the hot zones.”

  He paused, shrugged. “So much adrenaline pumps through your body then . . . it becomes like a drug, you know? You start to . . . I don’t know. Crave it. Even after you come home it eats at you. And you look for ways to get a fix. So I drank. And I fought. Then one night I got the shit beat out of me.”

  “You were hurt?”

  Okay. So she looked alarmed. So he liked it that she was concerned for him. Most of all, he liked it that she was loosening up. For a while anyway, her mind wasn’t dwelling on all the crap that was happening in her life.

  “Mostly my pride,” he admitted. “So I quit drinking.”

  “And fighting,” she concluded.

  He shook his head, smiled. “Not quite. I just did my fighting sober. And I got paid for it.”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “Boxing?”

  “Nothing that respectable. I joined the WWA.”

  “WWA?”

  “World Wrestling Alliance.” When she frowned in puzzlement, he elaborated. “Ever heard of Stone Cold? The Rock? You know—Hulk Hogan types? Grown sweaty men in leopard skins, pounding their chests and flying off the ropes in a ring for money.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Yeah, that’s the reaction I got from my mom, too.”

  “Did you, um, like it?”

  “Does Tweety Bird like Sylvester? No. I didn’t like it. But I got to beat people around, so I thought I was swimming in champagne.”

  “Only . . .”

  “Only it wasn’t my cuppa.”

  She looked thoughtful. “And security work . . . is it your cuppa?”

  He leaned forward, forked another rack onto her now empty plate before taking another for himself. “It’s honest. It’s respectable. So far I haven’t had to hit the emergency room after a day’s work. That’s a plus,” he added with a smile.

  “But you have to put up with—at least in this case—pushy celebrity types.”

  She had the barest hint of a dimple in her left cheek when she smiled. He hadn’t noticed that before. Wished he hadn’t noticed it now.

  “You’re not so pushy.”

  “You are, though.” He was glad to see a smile when she looked up at him, then down to the ribs in front of her. “Did I ask for another rack?”

  “That’s a question.” He notched his chin toward her plate. “You want an answer to a question, you eat some more ribs.”

  “You’re a pretty stand-up guy, you know that, Iowa?” she said after several moments had passed. She’d evidently taken the time to absorb all the things he’d told her. He hoped to hell it didn’t come back to bite him on the ass.

  “I mean . . . it’s not just that apple-pie and Boy Scout look you’ve got going on. You’re . . . real. I appreciate it . . . you know . . . that you’ve been up-front with me.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, telling himself her comments deserved a reciprocal statement. “You’re pretty stand-up, too—for a badass wild-child rocker. Ma’am.”

  He didn’t know why he so liked making her smile, but when she did, he felt sort of pleased with himself. Like he’d done something really good.

  “Maybe that’s because I’m just a southern girl at heart.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed.

  She was Mississippi-born after all. And she’d grown up poor. Probably knew things about poverty and neglect that he’d never know. At least not firsthand.

  “So,” she said, leaning back and looking, he was glad to see, relaxed and mellow, “did you get to wrestle in a leopard skin?”

  He grunted out a laugh at the teasing light in her eyes. “Animal prints were reserved for the stars.”

  As he’d hoped, that made her smile.

  “As ex–Army Ranger Jason Plowboy Wilson, camos and combat boots were my thing. Original, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said, giving him a long interested look that had him squirming. “You’re an original all right.”

  He cleared his throat, felt his face go red, and damned his Finnish-Irish ancestry. She was too damn easy to like. Too damn easy on the eyes. Too damn easy to talk to and tease and . . . well. She was just too damn easy.

  “Plowboy?” she added as an afterthought. “Guess it doesn’t take much to figure that one out.”

  “Guess not.”

  She watched him through brown eyes gone all soft and sultry. “So, do I get any more questions?”

  Not, he decided, if he wanted to get out of here with one shred of privacy left. “Are you done eating?”

  “I’m stuffed.”

  He thanked Jesus again. “Then I guess the answer would be no. No more questions.”

  She leaned forward, propped her elbows on the table, her chin in her folded palms. “Just a couple. Just two ittybitty little questions.”

  She was flirting. Which he liked even though he shouldn’t. Maybe he’d gotten her too relaxed. Time for a rapid extraction.

  “I’ll get the check.”

  She reached across the table. Latched onto his wrist. “Let’s look at the dessert menu.”

  He froze. Looked from her hand, where it felt warm and slight on his wrist, to her eyes. Devil eyes, he thought as she made it clear with a wicked, knowing smile that he wasn’t off the hot seat yet.

  Shit. This wasn’t good.

  But the two pieces of warm homemade pecan pie topped with melting vanilla ice cream that arrived five minutes later sure was.

  She took a bite, swallowed, then hummed with pleasure. And when she looked over at him with a slumberous, seductive look in her eye, he squirmed again.

  He lifted his Coke, sipped—

  “Boxers or briefs?”

  —and damned near spit it across the table.

  He grabbed his napkin, wiped his mouth. “Excuse me?”

  She looked way too damned pleased with herself. “Do you wear boxers or briefs?”

  He got his coughing under control. “What the hell kind of a question is that?”

  “Or do you go commando?” she asked with a little peek under the table.

  “Stop that right now,” he ordered with a dark look.

  “What? Don’t like that question, either? Okay. How about this? What do you like best—missionary position or girl on top?”

  Then she dug back into her pie like she hadn’t just dropped a MOAB—mother of all bombs—in the middle of the table.

  He tossed his napkin on the tabletop. Leaned back and glared. “What are you doing?”

  Dancing brown eyes met his with baleful innocence. “Asking questions. Isn’t that the game we’re playing?”

  Okay. That was it. They were out of here. He angled his weight to his right hip, dug his wallet out of his left pocket. “I don’t know what game you’re playing.”

  Playful changed to sensual in a heartbeat. “Don’t you?”

  Well, okay. Yeah. He knew exactly what she was up to. And the idea held way too much appeal. Appeal, hell. Try he’d-like-to-clear-the-booth-top-and-take-her-right-there appeal.

  He frowned at her over his open wallet. “This is a very, very bad idea.”

  “Is it?” she asked so quietly, he barely heard her. “Is it really?”

  They could not have this discussion. He could not talk to Sweet Baby Jane Perkins about boxers or briefs or favorite positions. He could not talk about it because he couldn’t afford to talk about it, not and keep his sanity and his professionalism and his distance from this woman.

  This woman . . . who was currently looking at him like she found him cute and amusing and s
exy and a very likely substitute for a little nocturnal self-gratification.

  Shit.

  This was so bad. Because he found her cute and amusing and sexy and damn, did he want to take care of that particular need for her and satisfy a few of his own.

  He couldn’t think past the ringing in his ears. Finally realized it was his cell phone and with fingers that felt as thick and clumsy as sausages wrestled it out of the clip on his belt.

  “Wilson,” he said when he didn’t recognize the number on the readout.

  “Yeah, Wilson, it’s Officer Rodman.”

  Jase studiously avoided eye contact with the trouble sitting across from him. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. But I wanted to run something past you. That car—the one we hauled out of the river?”

  The one that hit and killed Alice Perkins. “Yeah?”

  “I think I already told you it was stolen from a collector in Jacksonville the day before Ms. Perkins was killed.”

  “And?” Jase figured there was more. Hell, every time he turned around there was more.

  “Well, look, this is a long shot, but can you ask Ms. Perkins if a nineteen-seventy-nine green Pontiac Lemans holds any significance for her?”

  A green Pontiac Lemans. Lemans. Like the guy at the bank. Jase didn’t like the feel of this.

  He hesitated, then held the phone away from his mouth and met her curious eyes. “Seventy-nine Pontiac. Mean anything to you?”

  Her expression transitioned from curious to wary—and he knew, he just knew, things had just taken another turn toward weirdville.

  “The car that killed your mother. It was a seventy-nine Pontiac.”

  Pale. She suddenly looked very pale.

  “Green,” he said after a long moment. “A green Lemans.”

  She closed her eyes. Folded her hands together on the booth top. Clenched them so tightly her knuckles turned white. “Lemans.”

  “Yeah.” He reached across the booth and covered her hands, concern taking precedence over his misgivings about touching her.

  She looked up at him, her eyes huge and haunted. “Mom had a seventy-nine Pontiac. A green Pontiac Le-mans.” Her alarmed gaze locked on his. “It was the only car we ever owned.”