Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04]

by Over the Line

  “I figured it was that way with you two,” Max said as he stood and headed for the door. “Three’s a crowd, so I’ll just let you duke this out without an audience. Don’t beat him up too bad, snooks. After all, he did save your life.”

  “You don’t have to leave,” Janey insisted. “We might need a referee.”

  “I have a feeling you’ll do just fine. Besides, got a meeting to go to. I’m expected.”

  Jase glared at the door after Max left; then he glared at Janey.

  “I’m proud of him,” she said, adding the bouquet to the dozens that already filled the hospital room. “He hasn’t missed a Gamblers Anonymous meeting since he joined.”

  “Okay, yeah, fine. I’m happy for him. Happy that his ticker is on the mend. I’m not happy with you.”

  “Guess what? I don’t care. Now, did you eat your dinner?”

  “Hell no. The food is crap. It’s like they lost the salt-shaker or something.”

  “Poor baby. They’ve abused you terribly in here, haven’t they?”

  “Damn straight,” he grumbled. He hated this. Really, really hated being an invalid. Two weeks in a hospital bed was two damn weeks too long.

  “Word on the street,” she said, easing a hip onto the side of his bed, “is that if you’re a real good boy, you might get sprung tomorrow.”

  “Then there isn’t a need for you to hang around another day and play nursemaid, is there?”

  An evil and intimate smile tilted her beautiful lips. “I thought you liked it when I played nursemaid.”

  Oh, God, did he. Just last night, she’d shown up wearing a nurse’s uniform and nothing else under her long jacket. Then she’d proceeded to crawl up onto the bed, straddle him, and administer a little first aid of the mind-numbing variety.

  “Janey, we have to talk.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Here we go with the talking again.”

  “You refuse to take me seriously.”

  “What I refuse to do is let you talk me into believing what that pea-sized brain of yours has convinced you is the right thing to do.”

  He let his head fall back. Closed his eyes.

  “What are you so afraid of?” So much confusion, so much frustration, so much everything, colored her tone that he realized it was past time he was straight with her.

  Straight with himself. He’d had a lot of think time in here. And he’d finally figured things out.

  “Okay, listen. Just listen. And give me a minute to get this out.”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world,” she said gently.

  “It’s going to sound . . . whiny.”

  “I don’t care what it sounds like. I just want to know.”

  He let out a deep breath. Winced when it burned like hell and got it together. “Look . . . things don’t work out for me.”

  “Don’t work out how?”

  “No questions. Just let me do this in my own time.”

  She lowered her head, nodded.

  “Okay. It’s just . . . I let people down, you know. Not just people. Important people. I don’t mean to. It just . . . happens. I let No down—when I first got out of the Rangers. He wanted me to come work for him then. But I walked away.

  “I always walk away. My old man. I let him down, too.” He felt tears burn his eyes. He angrily wiped them away.

  “And you,” he continued, determined to get this out. “You’re . . . important. Real important. I . . . I can’t take the chance.” He looked up into her beautiful brown eyes and felt his heart swell and burn. “I can’t take the chance of letting you down, too.”

  She was silent for a long time. Thought for a long time.

  “That’s it?” she finally asked, sounding dumbfounded.

  “Janey,” he said with a measure of desperation, “did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard. And I understand. I do. You’re scared.”

  Damn straight. His big bad self was scared to death.

  “So let me ask you a question.”

  He looked at her beautiful face. Waited.

  “What scares you more, Baby Blue? The idea of letting me walk away without ever giving us a chance, or the idea of taking what we’ve got to the limit, risking it all on the possibility that I’m the one who’s going to break your streak?”

  She searched his face, waited. And he couldn’t, just couldn’t, make himself say what she wanted to hear. Finally, she eased off the bed and walked out the door.

  And didn’t come back.

  Not that night.

  Not the next day when they released him.

  It was for the best, he told himself as he hailed a cab to take him to the airport. Break it clean. Break it now.

  “Where to?” the cabbie asked.

  “LAX.”

  “You got it.”

  Yeah. He got it. He got it right this time.

  And getting it right hurt like hell.

  When her doorbell rang, Janey told herself to get over it. Told her heart to stop with the clank, clank, clank already. Told her hands to stop sweating.

  It wasn’t him. He wasn’t coming.

  Making herself breathe deep, she walked to the door, flung it open.

  And almost launched herself into the arms of the man looking uncertain and miserable and like he was about to leap out of a plane without a parachute.

  “I was going to leave,” Baby Blue grumbled, shouldering past her and into the house.

  She closed the door, resisted the urge to lock it. “But you didn’t.”

  His scowl was as black as a thundercloud. “I should have.”

  “Maybe.”

  He turned toward her, his expression grim. “You called me a pea brain.”

  Oh, God. Leave it to him to avoid the main issue. She shouldn’t, but she grinned. “I may have, yes.”

  He glared at her. “Take it back.”

  Poor, poor baby, she thought, fighting the urge to go to him, take him in her arms, and promise him it was all going to be okay. But this was a fight he had to fight himself.

  She squared her shoulders. “Give me a reason.”

  He looked antsy and itchy as he paced to the sliders and looked out over the ocean. “You’re taking a big chance on me.”

  There it was. Surrender. Joy scored a direct hit to her heart. “I live for danger.”

  He expelled a heavy breath. “You know that I love you.”

  So it was true. A heart could actually swell. Hers filled her chest. “I do.”

  “Well?”

  “Well?” She drew out the word, savoring the moment.

  “I could stand to hear it, too, you know.”

  So much joy. So much relief. So much love embraced her as she walked to him. Framed his beautiful face between her palms and searched those baby blue eyes. “I love you, Iowa. Don’t you ever doubt it.”

  Epilogue

  West Palm Beach, two weeks later, Wes Garrett’s backyard

  Jase had heard about the Garretts’ ongoing competition that they waged at family get-togethers—but until he’d been dragged into one, he hadn’t believed the stories.

  Cutthroat croquet. Lord Jesus God. It was one for the books.

  “So, the indictments are coming down on the Blacks next week, right?”

  Beside him, No held his newborn son, Conner Wesley Garrett, in one arm, a mallet in the other.

  “Last I heard,” Jase said. “They’ll never see the light of day. Neither will Grimm.”

  “Ought to get the death penalty for ruining that Mustang alone,” No mumbled. He’d almost cried when Jase had told him what shape it was in. “How’s that videographer doing?”

  “Chris Ramsey?” Jase grunted. “She’s going to be fine. She finally came clean that she’d been trying to stir up trouble with McCoy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But only after her conscience had gotten the best of her. She also confessed to feeding Black’s camp information about Janey’s schedule.”

  “She bei
ng charged, too?”

  Jase shook his head. “No. She had no idea that Black and his wife had targeted Janey for murder. She’d just been doing her damnedest to create drama for her video.”

  “Which will never see the light of day,” Janey added as she walked up behind Jase.

  Small concession for what Ramsey had done, in Jase’s mind, but at least she wasn’t going to profit from her own subterfuge.

  “Hey. What am I supposed to do with this?” Jase asked with a rising panic when No unceremoniously handed him the baby.

  “Just hold on,” Janey said, grinning. “Just hold on.”

  Jase smiled down at this woman who had become his life. “I plan to,” he whispered, and bent to kiss her. “I plan to.”

  “Okay, no kissy face on the court.” This from Eve, who was the reigning croquet champion and never let an opportunity pass to remind her brothers and her husband.

  “She’s a die-hard,” Tyler “Mac” McClain said in an aside. “Leave ’em be, lady. You remember what it’s like to be young and in love.”

  “Remind me again. When was that?”

  McClain grabbed Eve around the waist, spun her toward him, and planted her with a huge, smacking kiss.

  “Oh yeah,” Eve said, looking dazed. “It’s all coming back to me. Wait,” she sputtered when McClain set her aside, then knocked her ball into the rough. “You just did that to distract me.”

  “Like putty in my hands,” McClain announced to the group at large, which had his lovely wife calling him names that would make a Ranger blush.

  “I like these people,” Janey said, taking the baby from Jase when Ethan, the oldest of the Garretts, announced that it was Jase’s turn.

  “Don’t hold up the game and you’ll stay on our good side,” Ethan said, and promptly scooped the baby out of Janey’s arms. “Your turn, sunshine.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Susan Garrett, the mother of this amazing group of competitors, eased the baby into her arms, “have a care with this child. You can’t just pass this sweet boy off like he’s a football.”

  “But it’s croquet,” all four Garretts pointed out in unison.

  Susan, an older and just as beautiful version of her daughter, shook her head, then walked off with the baby, cooing her way across the yard to Wes, who was busily grilling hot dogs and burgers.

  Ethan’s soon-to-be wife, Darcy, and Nolan’s wife, Jillian, had draped their beautiful selves in twin chaise longues. They sat with their heads together sipping lemonade and grinning at their guys.

  “They are both so beautiful,” Janey said, standing under the shade of a palm tree with Jase.

  “That would be one of the reasons you fit right in.”

  “You think? You think I fit in?”

  He pulled a face. “You can’t be serious. Eve did everything but drool over you. And Jillian and Darcy—well, it’s obvious they think you’re great.”

  The Garretts had all accepted both Jase and Janey like they were part of the family. “It’s all a bit . . . noisy, isn’t it?”

  “By ‘it,’ you mean the Garretts?”

  She grinned. “Yeah. I guess I do. They’re so full of life. Well, all except Dallas. He seems pretty quiet.”

  Jase looked Dallas’s way. He was in the thick of the game, but Janey was right. Dallas was quiet. “You know that mission I told you about? The one where the three of them and Manny Ortega rescued Darcy?”

  She nodded and, as she had when Jase had first told her the story of Darcy’s rescue, remarked on how amazing it was.

  “Well, something happened between Dallas and the other captive.”

  “Amy, right?”

  “Yeah. She more or less disappeared after they got her back to the States. No says Dallas has been brooding ever since.”

  “You think he has a thing for her?”

  Jase shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Sad,” she said with a thoughtful sigh. “And Manny. Where is he?”

  “Boston. He’s a detective on the police force there. At least he was. Ethan said he called the other day, though. Kind of got the sense that Manny might have been feeling him out about the possibility of coming on board with E.D.E.N.”

  “Really?”

  Again, Jase shrugged. “Guess time will tell.”

  “Speaking of time,” he leaned down and nuzzled her neck, “do you know how long it’s been since I made love to you?”

  Her eyes flared with fire. “You make our excuses. I’ll go kiss the baby good-bye.”

  “Hey, everyone. Thanks for the great party. We’re going to split and go have wild monkey sex.”

  “You call that an excuse?” Janey sputtered when Jase led her out of the backyard toward the car.

  “No. I call that taking a chance. You wanna make something of it?”

  She snagged his hand and pulled him to a stop. “Yeah,” she said and kissed him until his knees damn near buckled. “I’m going to make it darn hard for you to get home.”

  I could get used to this,” Janey said as she stretched and snuggled deeper into the king-sized bed of the master bedroom of their rented condo overlooking Lake Worth.

  Yeah, she could get used to waking up rubber-limbed and wasted from great sex and the memory of a hard warm body holding her through the night. A hard body that was currently standing in the bedroom doorway holding a breakfast tray and wearing only boxers and a slow smile.

  She liked that smile. She loved that smile. It was spontaneous. Unguarded. Didn’t set limits. Was open to possibilities. Ready to take chances.

  And the list went on and on. They’d decided they needed a place in Florida, too, so Jase could be close to his job. A job he loved and intended to keep even though she had no immediate plans to renew her tour.

  She found an amazing sense of peace with that decision. She wanted to write. She wanted to produce. The new home under construction would include a studio to provide those options. She planned to use the money from her mother’s lockbox. Had even let herself take some comfort in concluding that her mother may have intended the money as a gift, a form of apology for what she hadn’t been able to be for her.

  She sat up, stretched her arms above her head, knowing full well that the sheet had dropped to her waist and she was giving Baby Blue an eyeful.

  “Hey, cowboy,” she purred when his eyes glazed over. “Wanna get lucky?”

  His grin was cocky and slow. “Are we going to play Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty again?”

  “Yeah, and to show you what a sport I am, this time I’ll let you play the marshal.”

  Eyes dancing, he walked toward the bed. “You’re trouble, you know that?”

  She snatched a slice of melon off the tray when he set it in the middle of the mattress, aware of his gaze on her breasts. “No trouble at all,” she assured him, rose to her knees, and leaned over to tuck a piece of melon in his mouth.

  His gaze on her, he chewed, swallowed, and opened his mouth when she leaned closer to kiss him.

  “Umm. Sweet,” she murmured, and slipped her tongue inside his mouth. “Fruity.”

  “Bite your tongue,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’d rather bite yours.”

  He pulled away, looking pleased and smug. “Stockpiled a lot of energy the last two years, haven’t you?’

  She laughed. “So it would seem. Am I wearing you out?”

  “Never happen.”

  And then he proved it by taking her to the moon and back with the slow sweep of his hands, the warm glide of his body into hers.

  Later, while she lay drifting, he propped himself up on an elbow, touched his fingertips to the tattoo on her biceps. “Why ‘Crazy Force’?”

  “Hm?”

  “Why did you have ‘Crazy Force’ tattooed here?”

  Her eyes popped open. “ ‘Mad Power.’ It says ‘Mad Power.’ ”

  He chuckled. “Umm . . . sorry. I checked it out. Those are kanji symbols for ‘Crazy Force.’ And this one.” He swirled a fingert
ip over the tattoo on her neck.

  “ ‘Naughty Girl,’ ” she said, looking defensive when he laughed. “What? What’s so funny?”

  “ ‘Closed-minded woman.’ ”

  “No,” she fumed.

  “ ’Fraid so. Fits somehow though,” he said, then grunted when she punched him in the ribs.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me this one,” she touched the tattoo above her right breast and looked like she was heading for a deep pout, “doesn’t mean ‘Soul.’ ”

  “No,” he said softly. “That one’s right on the money. You have more fire and more soul than any other woman I know.”

  She touched his face. Cupped his cheek. “So. All this risk taking. How’s this all working out for you?”

  He knew what she meant. He knew exactly what she meant. “Been a bit of a letdown.”

  When she slugged him, he rolled her beneath him with a laugh that made her eyes shoot a different kind of fire his way.

  “It’s working out fine,” he said, kissing her. Loving the way she softened and moved and melted underneath him. “It’s working out just fine.”

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next stunning novel

  in the Bodyguards series

  UNDER THE WIRE

  Coming from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  in Fall 2006

  Managua, Nicaragua, 17 years ago.

  Manny Ortega awoke from a dead sleep. Fully alert. All senses vibrating with awareness.

  The sharp crack of breaking wood splintered the night silence like a gunshot. A blinding light pierced his eyes. Then the glint of a gun barrel pointed directly at his chest.

  Four Sandinista soldiers stood over his bed, guns drawn. General Jorge Poveda’s men, he was certain. Which meant he was in deep, deep trouble.

  Yet Manny’s first thought was to protect his lover. But Lily was gone. He was alone in the bed. And the tangled sheets beside him and under his palm were cold. All of that registered peripherally as a hard boot hit him mid-thigh.

  “Get up, traitorous dog, or we will kill you where you lay.”

  Manny shifted from shock to self-preservation mode. He raised his hands, smiled and did what he did best. He lied through his teeth. “Traitor? Amigos. You’ve got the wrong man. I’m one of you.” He nodded toward their Sandinista uniforms—it was the same uniform he wore although his reason for wearing it was much different from theirs. “I am Manolo Ortega. Lieutenant Ortega.”