She knew that Jacob cared for her, but that he burned even more with the quest he needed to fulfill. She understood because she also had a quest—one that she couldn’t give up, either.
As they’d parted last night, snow had been falling, a light dusting under the streetlights of the city. He’d driven her home in his personal car; had parked a block away from her building and walked with her, just because she’d wanted to experience the season’s first snowfall with him.
Her heart was already breaking at the thought of leaving him. They had less than three weeks together.
“Why does Jacob need this particular information with such urgency?” her uncle asked, cutting into her thoughts.
“His organization requires it of him. He can’t advance without it.”
“And why do you suppose that is?”
Isabel stood, leaning her forehead against the cool windowpane. Outside, the snow had stopped. The flakes that covered the ground were already blowing away in the wind. “A psychologist within his department is investigating Jacob’s fitness to guard the president. Without that confirmation, he won’t be approved.”
“Is he fit? Or is he a risk?”
Jacob? She thought of her solid, protective bodyguard. “Of course he’s fit,” she said somewhat peevishly.
“Has he said anything else to you about us?” her uncle asked.
“No.” Isabel tapped her finger against the back of the phone. “Just what I’ve relayed to you now.”
“Given what you know of him,” her uncle pressed, “how do you suppose he’ll react if he is disturbed by the information he uncovers?”
What is the information? she wanted to ask.
But she didn’t. She was so conditioned not to question him.
Isabel sat at her desk chair and looked at the sketch Jacob had drawn for her. She wasn’t sure what her uncle was alluding to. The last thing she wanted was for Jacob to receive news that was any more difficult or upsetting than what he was already dealing with.
“Will he be hurt, Uncle?”
“The relevant question is whether we will be hurt. You and I should be concerned as to whether or not Jacob will stop when he gets his answers. Have you never found, Isabel, that answers to questions often lead to even more questions?”
She didn’t have her uncle’s experience in life or in business. She didn’t know how to reply.
“Beware of getting too close to him,” Uncle John warned gently. “You need to remain objective. It’s the hallmark of a responsible CEO.”
Too late. Isabel was making love with him. She was sharing confidences with him. They were helping each other in their day-to-day lives. She was as close to Jacob Ross as she’d ever been to anybody.
She was dangerously close to falling for him. Or maybe she already had. A part of her wasn’t sure. She loved being with him. He was like no one she’d ever known. And yet, a part of her told her to remain cautious, as her uncle had said. But her reasoning had been different. After Alex, she needed to be sure.
“Isabel?”
“Uncle,” she said, swiveling in her chair and making an impetuous decision, “could you please ask someone in our company to gather together the information Jacob requested? Send me the packet and I’ll deliver it to him before I leave. I’ll make sure that’s the end of it, as far as Sage Family Products is concerned. Jacob will listen to me. He knows me.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “I prefer to speak with him myself.”
Her uncle didn’t trust her. That was what he was saying. “I’ve given you my risk assessment. I don’t believe Jacob Ross is a threat to our company.”
“My invitation for Christmas still stands, Isabel. Please pass that on to him.”
The discussion was over, and she was dismissed. “Yes, Uncle,” she murmured.
There was a pause. And then, “You haven’t asked me about your role when you return to Edinburgh.”
“I...” Hadn’t she? She thought she had.
“We’ll plan to talk about it at Christmas dinner as well, Isabel.”
Was there to be a trade—did she need to show she could handle the “Jacob situation” in exchange for the more important role she desired at Sage Family Products? An either/or solution? “Uncle, what are your plans, honestly?”
“I’ll arrange for the company jet to meet you both at the usual place in JFK airport. Murphy will call you next week with the details.” He hung up.
Isabel listened to the silence on the line for a brief moment before she reached for her laptop. If her uncle meant to deny Jacob’s request, then Isabel was determined to be prepared for it. She wanted to work with Jacob, not against him. She had one more idea, one more avenue that might give Jacob what he needed even without her uncle’s involvement.
She climbed into bed and fired up her internet browser. An hour later, armed with the information she’d searched for, she phoned Jacob before he left for work.
“Hey,” he said in a sleepy voice. “I told you you should have stayed over last night.”
“Yes, I know.” She felt herself smiling. “Can we meet for dinner tonight? I need your clever help with my business law exam. I mean, I really need your clever help. Everything is so tightly scheduled for me before I leave New York that it’s the only time I’ll have left.”
“Sure, I can help.” He paused. “Just you and me, then?”
“Yes, just you and me,” she whispered.
When she hung up, she felt like dancing. But she took a deep breath instead. It was time to get to work, but not the work that her uncle or Jacob or anybody else expected of her. This was what she wanted to do.
Clutching her phone with the subway instructions already downloaded, she quickly grabbed a notebook and pen, and then headed out the door.
An hour later, a television archives clerk seated her in an empty cubicle with headsets and a machine that played videocassettes from the past century.
Kidnapped from the Castle: The Rescue of the Maxwell Children flashed in a fuzzy picture across the television screen. Maudlin music played in the background, and cheesy production values showed not the MacDowall castle in the beautiful Highlands, but another, much larger castle in what she guessed to be either England or Wales.
So far, her efforts weren’t getting her what she needed. She’d remembered that, growing up, her brothers had talked about the made-for-TV movie loosely based on her family’s story. Her brothers had watched it at a friend’s house, disobeying their parents. They’d told Isabel that the movie had changed and substituted all sorts of facts about their family, but that it hadn’t mattered because everybody in Scotland already knew it was supposed to be them.
Even as a child, Isabel remembered the talk and how frightened it had made her. She remembered Malcolm, older than her, being shipped off to school in America so he wouldn’t grow up in Scotland and be constantly reminded of what had happened. She remembered Rhiannon, and how doctors had recommended she be treated at hospital, given her agoraphobia, but her parents insisting she stay and be schooled in her own home—the castle.
Isabel had thought that maybe if she watched the old movie, it would provide some answers. But it hadn’t. After sitting through fifty minutes of the terrible script, she shut off the program that, unfortunately, had played on both sides of the pond.
Her uncle had obviously exerted his influence over the producers. Nothing she’d just seen corresponded to the few facts of the kidnapping or rescue that Isabel knew.
The names of all involved were changed. “Matthew and Sharon” were whisked, not from an Edinburgh street by three men in a white van, but from their beds as they slept in the family’s castle. The family in the movie owned a chain of traveler hotels. Uncle John wasn’t there at all, and several brave Scotland Yard detectives handled the case
from start to finish. One died in a burst of heroics, and she was depicted as a single-mother policewoman with two wee children of her own at home.
The movie’s producers had misrepresented all these facts. But the cruelest alteration had been to Jacob, because while Malcolm and Rhiannon knew the truth of what had happened, Jacob had no idea.
He deserved to know what had happened to his father.
One thing this exercise had accomplished—it made Isabel angry. This was Jacob’s life, and nobody seemed to care enough to help him find answers.
She did.
* * *
JACOB HITCHED A ride from Eddie at the end of the day, hopping out of the SUV at the wrought-iron gates that led to Isabel’s campus. She’d asked him to meet her at the student deli inside the business school, so he walked down a wide lane and turned into the impressive facility that was her current work turf.
He picked her out right away. She was seated at a table with one of her project groups, all four members—two men and two women—sitting with their laptops open. One of the men and both women were dressed for business; the other man was Charles—Che Guevara, himself.
Jacob tensed for a moment, remembering that Charles had invited Isabel to his home for Thanksgiving. Then again, she had chosen Jacob. Isabel was with him, not Charles.
He relaxed a bit, loosening his tie. He was glad he wore a suit because it made him fit in.
The energy of this place wasn’t what Jacob remembered from his own college experience. Instead, this was a rarefied world, definitely a world-center powerhouse of future business leaders, economy drivers, bankers, venture capitalists and entrepreneurial wizards.
He looked around. All these future captains of international commerce in one room.
Out of habit, Jacob checked the layout. No windows and two exits. Securitywise, it was better designed than her residence building.
“Jacob!” Isabel got to her feet and motioned him over to her table. In a breezy style that he was starting to understand was uniquely hers, she introduced him to her colleagues. Two of them, Charles and one of the women, seemed young to Jacob, but he nodded politely without comment.
“So,” Isabel asked him brightly, “would you like to walk to your flat?”
“Yeah. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“You go first.”
It was a long walk, but a half-moon was already out and the sky was clear, not cold. After he transferred her laptop case to his shoulder, they fell into an easy rhythm.
“I called my uncle today,” Isabel said, placing his hand on her arm, “and I relayed your request to him.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did.” She grinned at him, and he couldn’t help smiling back at her. He watched her long hair fan out in the breeze, loving the way the ends of it stuck to her lips.
He reached out and moved a piece, rubbing the texture through his fingers, before reluctantly letting it go.
“Do you want to know what he said?” Isabel asked, a small smile on her lips as she watched him in the dim light of street lamps and shop windows.
“Ah...yeah.” He shifted her laptop to his other shoulder. “What did he say?”
“He said that he prefers to give you the information you asked for in person.” A furrow appeared on her brow, and she looked up at him hopefully, her big blue eyes just cutting him in the heart. “So...do you still want to go to Edinburgh for Christmas?”
“Will you be there?” he said in a low voice.
She nodded. “Of course.” But then her smile faltered.
“Isabel, what’s wrong?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure he’s willing to trust you the way that you might hope.”
No, Sage probably never would. That was fine with Jacob. Sage also wasn’t likely to give him any information freely. Not without leverage.
He stopped suddenly and pulled Isabel close to him. His nose was in her hair, and he inhaled deeply. He hadn’t expected the depth of these feelings for her. He just wanted her with him. As often as possible.
He drew back and gazed at her. “Do you trust me?”
“I do, but sometimes it’s still hard for me.” She looked up at him. “Is there anything you’re not telling me that could hurt my family or our company?”
He shook his head. He still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about Sage’s negotiation tactic. That was Jacob’s final conundrum.
“Just so you know...” He took her hand and interlaced their fingers. “I’ll never have anything to do with the media—newspapers or television—and I don’t post anything on the internet. I don’t do social media, and I don’t want any money from anybody. I’m not going to sue people. My mother isn’t going to sue people. Is that what Sage is worried about?”
She nodded. “Those are the types of risks he’d be considering.”
“Nothing bad will happen,” he reassured her. He kissed her earlobe, and she sighed and laid her head on his chest.
A deep contentment spread over him. “I’m proud of you, you know that?” he said, suddenly feeling effusive toward her, as if they weren’t going full-blown PDA on a New York City street corner, and he didn’t even care. “I love that you’re strong and you’re going after your dreams. Once you’re where you deserve to be, you won’t be subservient to anybody. I’d never want you to push aside your dreams while I live mine, do you know that?”
She’d fallen quiet, growing rigid against his chest as he’d talked.
“Did I just say something wrong?” he asked, pulling back.
“No. You respect me, and that’s lovely.”
“Isabel?” he growled.
She sighed. “Truthfully? I wish we had more time.”
He did, too. But he wasn’t naive enough to think they were going to magically find an alternate universe where he wasn’t a bodyguard at heart, and she wasn’t Isabel Sage of the Edinburgh Sages.
Silent again, they both began to walk.
“I, ah, got some news at work today I need to tell you about,” he said. “Nobody outside my job will know this except you.”
“Hmm, let me guess,” she said. “You’ll be guarding a very important person this week?”
“You’re good. I’m impressed.” And so sad that they’d made it to the point where they were starting to read each other’s minds right before they’d need to say goodbye.
She smiled sadly at him, too.
“It’s because of you, actually,” he went on, “and because you’re helping me with this thing about my father. My, ah, boss—” actually, Diane “—has agreed to approve me for a short-term fill-in assignment with a team that’s guarding a pretty high-profile Washington protectee.”
“You mean you’re leaving now?” There was shock in her voice and in her eyes.
“Not quite. I leave town tomorrow night. I think the whole thing is a test of sorts.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say.” Because it was top secret. He leaned over and kissed her. Her cheek felt cold in the night air. “Anyway, I’ll be out of town for three days total.”
“And nights, too?”
“Yeah, unfortunately.” He paused. He really couldn’t tell her more about the mission, but there was an irony that made him wonder about Diane’s motives. “When I come back, are there any special places in New York that you’d like to visit with me? I want to cram in as many experiences with you as I can, in as short a time as we have left.”
“I do have something in mind,” she said softly.
“Where? We have Broadway, Lincoln Center, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park. Or, knowing you business types—” he snapped his fingers “—the New York Stock Exchange.”
“I prefer your flat,” she said.
“My...”
“Specifically, your bedroom.”
There was a twinkle in her eye that took his breath away.
“I can handle that,” he said, thankful they were almost home. His leaving tomorrow night...this was going to hurt.
“Yes, and you can go on the road knowing there is one person in this world who is thinking about you every day and every night.” She stopped on the stoop of his building and gave him a heart-stopping kiss.
He was the luckiest person he knew. Later, upstairs in his apartment, they ordered a pizza, and Jacob helped her as she wrote out answers to her take-home final exam. In his opinion, she didn’t need his help at all, though he didn’t mind listening as a sounding board while she mused aloud. Hell, he could listen to her read anything in that musical Scottish brogue of hers, even something as mundane as the definition of a corporation versus a business partnership.
After an hour of him behaving himself so she could finish her work, Isabel put away her laptop and curled up in his arms as they sat on the couch. “Take me to bed, Mr. Ross.”
He happily obliged. She didn’t have to ask twice.
* * *
IT WAS A SUNNY Thursday afternoon in Manhattan when the unthinkable happened.
Jacob had been assigned to guard, not quite the president of the United States, but the president’s young daughter, who was leaving town after a dance performance and on her way home to her secondary school in northern Virginia.
Jacob wished he could have conveyed the pride he felt over being chosen to protect someone so vulnerable and so high-profile. This was what he’d trained for. He walked in formation with the escort team, leading the girl from a matinee at Lincoln Center, back to their motorcade.
Jacob’s assignment was to ride in the vehicle beside the girl. It was a routine, everyday operation, planned, ordered and well orchestrated. Every agent was top at their game. Every risk thoroughly researched and contained.
But the shooter broke through a barricade and stepped out suddenly on Jacob’s side. There was no question as to how Jacob would react. All the agents would have done the same.
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