Arrested by Love

by Virna DePaul

  It’s my job to drive men like Weasel Face off the lawn.

  Oh, crap. She should have known. The black SUV with tinted windows, his body, his self-assurance—Caleb was a bodyguard. Of course he was. “Who do you work for?”

  “I work for myself. Camelot Security. But Breckenridge brought me in.”

  Breckenridge was the company Jamie used. Which meant that Caleb wasn’t a friend of Carly’s at all. Her brother had hired him. And Ellen knew Jamie well enough to guess he wouldn’t have brought in security just for Carly. Not when he knew exactly how many times Ellen had called the police in the past week.

  Caleb was here for her.

  “I don’t need you.”

  This earned her a smile she found considerably less charming than its predecessors. “Seemed like you did a minute ago.”

  “I did, and I already said thanks for that. But I don’t want a bodyguard.”

  “I’m not a bodyguard.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “I’m a security specialist.”

  “I don’t need one of those, either.”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly toward the cul-de-sac.

  Damn it, he didn’t even need to speak to make her see it. He was right—Ellen had no way of keeping the invaders at bay. Dumping her tea on the photographer had been stupid. If Weasel Face had wanted to, he could have done a lot worse to her than just step on her plants.

  “Okay, fine,” she admitted. “You have a point.”

  Caleb glanced past her to the house, his eyes jumping from one feature to another, panning across the front lawn. Surveying her domain. His lips kept twitching at the corners, as if it took some effort to keep his satisfied expression from crossing over to smug. “When was this place built?” he asked. “Sixties?”

  “Mid-seventies.”

  “It’s a nice house. If you’ve got the plans, I’m going to need them—architectural drawings, schematics. That’ll make it easier for the alarm installer. We’ll have to find the survey stakes at the property lines, too, or else get a new surveyor out here.”

  “Why?”

  “How attached are you to this tree?” He started walking toward the front yard, and Ellen hurried to catch up. “It’s not supposed to be that close to the road. The county wants a ten-foot easement along the street side of the property to keep the electric and phone wires clear. Didn’t the guys tell you that when they planted it?”

  “No.” She’d dug the hole herself after she bought the tulip tree for Henry’s first birthday. It had never occurred to her that she wasn’t allowed to put it wherever she wanted.

  She felt as though she ought to say something about that, but she was having trouble keeping up with him. He walked fast, and her thoughts kept whirling around, a tornado that flung little bits of verbal flotsam toward her mouth, words like no and what? and stop and fuck and help.

  “Sorry, I’m not sure … what does the tree have to do with anything?”

  “It’s going to mess up your fence line. I can have it moved back, though. No worries. First things first, I’m going to do a circuit around the house. I’d like to see—”

  “Stop.” He was getting away from her, his long legs eating up the ground, and an air raid siren had started going off inside her head. “Stop walking. Stop looking at things. And for the love of God, stop talking.”

  He actually had the audacity to grin at her again, as if they were still allies, and this was all an enjoyable game rather than the second wave of a hostile incursion.

  “There’s not going to be a fence,” Ellen said firmly.

  “Your brother is crazy-famous, and you have a kid. You need a fence. I can get it painted any color you want. Or stained. Cedar would look nice with your siding.” Caleb looked at his watch. “Are you free in about an hour? I’m supposed to be meeting with Carly, but after that I’d like to come back by here. In the meantime, it would help me a lot if you could pull together your itinerary for the next few weeks. I need names and contact information for all your friends, too—family, boyfriends, anybody who comes over to play with your son—so I can let my team know who it’s okay to let on the property. Oh, and does your cell phone have a radio function, by any chance?”

  Ellen’s fingers had begun to ache deep in the joints, so she opened her hand to stretch them, and the iced tea glass fell onto the lawn. She gawped at it, unable to collect her thoughts over the ringing in her ears.

  Trouble. This man was trouble. Far bigger trouble than a few photographers.

  Caleb leaned over and scooped up the glass. Then it was in front of her face again with his hand wrapped around it, and her eyes traveled the length of his forearm and over the rolled sleeve at his elbow, up to the rounded cap of his shoulder, his collar and neck, his jawline and that bump in his nose and those twinkling, confident, conspiratorial eyes. Heaven help her, he looked good. Why did misery always come in such attractive packages?

  She took the glass from him, and his fingers bumped hers, and it was terrible the way she felt it. Just terrible.

  “What?” she croaked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll get you a new phone with a radio. Comes in handy as a backup. You’ll have to let my team know every time you leave the house, and they’ll decide whether you need an escort. I’ll get that set up by tomorrow morning. In the meantime—”

  “Stop,” Ellen whispered.

  Not loud enough. You had to be loud—she’d figured that out with Richard. You had to be louder than they were, stronger than they thought you could be, and so mean and cold and unforgiving, they called you names.

  She knew how to do this. She’d done it before.

  “Stop,” she said, and this time the word came out at a satisfying volume. “You’re not putting a fence up on my property. I’m not giving you schematics. I don’t want your help.”

  “Didn’t we already cover this a minute ago?”

  They had. But she’d been a fool, and she knew when to change tactics. If she gave this man one more inch, he would take over. She’d seen it with Jamie. One day, she and Jamie had been ordinary teenagers, and the next thing she knew her brother had his own armed escort. He was ostensibly an adult now, but he reported his comings and goings to a team of people who monitored his food, screened his friends, and installed an alarm system in his house that had a habit of going off a three a.m. in irritating bursts of shrieking that no one knew how to stop.

  Security guards oversaw Jamie’s whole life. They told him where he could go and when, controlled him, choked him. Ellen couldn’t handle that. Not after Richard.

  So she folded her arms over her chest and stood up straighter. Caleb’s gaze locked with hers. Let him try, she told herself. Just let him try.

  But he only smiled, his eyes too kind and a bit bewildered. “I’m here to help you. The way I see it, Breckenridge put me under contract, but I work for you.”

  “Excellent,” she said. Because it didn’t matter whether he was kind. It only mattered that he would wreak havoc with her life if she let him. “In that case, you’re fired.”

  Read on for an excerpt from Megan Frampton’s

  Hero of My Heart

  Chapter 1

  Alnwick, 1814

  “She’s a virgin, gentlemen. And she’ll be sold to the highest bidder.”

  Alasdair raised his head from the worn wooden table, struggling to open his eyelids. He lifted his hand from where it had been dangling by his side and pried his left lid open, propping his head up on his right hand. The words had registered only vaguely, but they were enough to pull him from his miasma.

  The man who’d spoken was standing on the largest of the tables in the pub, his loud, checked waistcoat and overoiled hair proclaiming his gentlemanly aspirations. The man bowed, spreading his hands wide and smiling.

  “Allow me to introduce myself; my name, fine sirs, is William Mackenzie, and I am in the fortuitous position of offering something very rare, very special to
you this evening.” His overdone accent almost disguised his Scottish burr. “If you’ve got the blunt,” Mackenzie added, clearing his throat. The clamor in the pub did not abate. “Gentlemen! If I may have your attention,” the man repeated in an even louder voice.

  Alasdair wished he’d just shut up. It wouldn’t be possible to slide back into oblivion, not while the loudmouth was yelping. At least the rest of the customers had quieted, waiting to hear what it was the Scot was selling.

  Alasdair watched as Mackenzie leaned down and pulled on something—an arm? While he pulled, another man—a younger one, his face contorted in a sneer—shoved a woman onto the table where Mackenzie held her, tightly, around the waist. She didn’t struggle, just gazed at the assembled crowd with a blank expression on her face. Too blank.

  Alasdair sat up. His head throbbed from the effort.

  “What’ll you bid?” Twenty or thirty men were watching—no, inspecting—the woman on the table. Alasdair wiped a hand over his face, clearing his bleary eyes.

  She was medium height, with dark, curly brown hair. Her gown was modestly cut, but tight, as if it had belonged to someone else, and her breasts strained at the fabric. Her figure looked lush and inviting, the kind of figure men slavered after.

  The kind of figure that would make every man in the room want her.

  “Untouched.” Mackenzie winked, a grotesque leer, and then bent down and inched her skirt up slowly until her entire ankle and part of her shin was showing. She wasn’t wearing shoes or stockings, and the pale, white flesh of her leg gleamed in the candlelight.

  Alasdair stared, transfixed by the lovely curve of her calf, the delicate bones of her ankle. His eyes traveled up, taking in the much-washed fabric of her gown, her luscious breasts, the graceful column of her neck.

  He noticed a dark area on her shin. A trick of the light? A birthmark marring that otherwise perfect skin?

  He glanced at her face, dreading what he would see there, but knowing he had to look anyway.

  As he’d expected, no emotion registered there. Her eyes were dull, her pupils huge and dark.

  It was worse than if she’d been frightened or trembling—she was so distant from what was happening, he doubted she even comprehended it. And that blankness, that empty gaze, cut through to the heart he’d thought was blackened forever.

  Damn it. He was going to have to do something.

  “How do we knows she’s a virgin?” a voice asked. “Who’s to say she ain’t just pulled a fast one on you?”

  Mackenzie let go of the woman, who wobbled unsteadily as her skirt tumbled down. The Scot rolled his head back and laughed, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. He bobbed forward and eyed the crowd. “ ’Cause she’s a vicar’s daughter, my lords. And she comes straight from church, pure as an angel. God’s honest truth,” he finished, chuckling at his own wit.

  There was a moment of silence—Reverence? Appreciation?—and then the bidding started.

  “Two pounds!” a gruff voice shouted from behind Alasdair.

  “She’s worth more’n that,” the younger man said from behind Mackenzie, his voice tinged with desperation. Mackenzie turned around to shush the man, and then faced the crowd again with that patently false smile plastered on his face. He clasped the woman to his side.

  Not that she was struggling. Alasdair doubted she even could.

  “Two pounds three shillings!” A large man to Alasdair’s right flung his hand in the air, then swept off his hat and bowed toward the table. “Although the lady might want to consider paying me after I’m done with her,” he added. The men in the room laughed. A few derisive comments followed.

  The woman didn’t react at all.

  Anger roiled in his gut, anger at the crowd, the greasy Scot who had her on the table, the man standing behind her, even anger at her for allowing herself to be put in this position.

  She needed rescuing. And he was the furthest thing from a knight in shining armor anyone could possibly imagine.

  “Three pounds, gentleman, for the pleasure of taking this dell’s virtue. For the pleasure,” Mackenzie said, running his hand from her waist up her side, “of owning her.” He slid his hand forward and placed it on her breast, squeezing it, stroking it, his eyes closed in exaggerated ecstasy, his other hand reaching toward his crotch.

  She remained still. Not looking in any particular direction, just—placid. Calm. As though she weren’t being eyed by a group of lusty farmers while being fondled by a crass, pretentious Scot with suspect fashion choices.

  Alasdair jumped up before he could stop himself. “Five pounds!” he barked, thumping on the table with his closed fist. The men in the room glanced around in surprise, obviously wondering where the real gentleman had come from.

  Alasdair hadn’t spoken more than a few mumbled words since arriving at the pub—he hadn’t wanted to be noticed. But now every man in the place was gawking at him, his accent giving him away as Quality.

  There was a low murmur as hands were shoved back into pockets and the men began to shuffle from side to side. Alasdair had won the bidding, as much with his accent as with his money.

  The auctioneer’s eyes opened and his hand dropped back to the woman’s waist. “Well, then, my lord,” he said, “she’s all yers. Provided, of course, you’ve got the ready?”

  Alasdair didn’t bother replying to Mackenzie’s implied insult. He shoved his fingers in his pockets for his money as he stepped forward. He’d planned exactly how much to spend tonight—enough to get deliciously deadened, but not enough to actually kill him. And then, because old habits die hard, he’d stuck some more bank notes in his pocket in case of emergency.

  This, he reasoned, was an emergency.

  He strode up to the table, unsteady on his feet at first. The room was silent, so quiet the rustle of the money in his hand echoed like a hammer in Alasdair’s brain.

  The man waited for Alasdair to place the note on the table, then removed his hand from the woman’s waist, pushing her forward until she teetered on the edge of the table. She stepped forward so that one foot dangled off the table, then Mackenzie gave her a push, and—

  She fell into Alasdair’s arms.

  It was not an elegant rescue, the kind where the noble prince gathers the humble milkmaid gently in his arms and consecrates the moment with a kiss. Her elbow landed smartly on his head, his arm muscles stretched and protested under her weight, and for a moment he was convinced they were both going to end up in a heap on the sawdust-strewn wood floor.

  He staggered, sliding her down his body until her feet touched the floor and she was able to stand on her own. He reached up to rub the sore spot on his head, and then clasped her by the arm to keep her from falling over. “Are you all right?”

  She shook his hand off and nodded, but he wasn’t sure she had really heard the question. He needed to get her out of here before she emerged from her stupor.

  Before she realized what had happened to her.

  And then what the hell was he going to do?

  “Come along,” he said. He could hear his own rough tone, the voice he’d used with green recruits. He was lucky he was staying in the inn upstairs—she had clearly been drugged, and was unsteady on her feet.

  They mounted the small wooden staircase in silence, Alasdair holding her upright as she shuffled along. He dug into his pocket for the room key, and then held her close to his body as he opened the door.

  He held the door open for her, then slammed it behind them and gestured toward the narrow bed. “Sit down there.”

  The covers were in disarray from where he’d thrashed about in the throes of one of his nightmares, but of course she didn’t notice. She sat where he’d indicated, her hands folded demurely in her lap, her eyes fixed on a point in the distance. Some of his men had worn that same look in battle. He sat down beside her, unutterably weary. So much for his glorious plans of oblivion.

  He could tell when she began to emerge from whatever it was that had
possessed her—her eyes, the stormy dark blue of an angry sea, began to focus. Her pupils narrowed. Her entire body began to tremble.

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She was shaking so hard it jarred him, and he put his other arm across her chest to gather him to her. Then he began to lie down, still holding her, wrapped up in his body.

  “Shh,” he said, wishing that she had someone else to take care of her. The bed was narrow, barely big enough for his large frame, much less another person. He tried to make himself as small as possible—not easy, considering his size—while also trying to keep himself as distant from her as he could.

  He had no idea how to calm her. He could hear her teeth chattering, even though her body was warm next to his. He tried not to think about how warm she was, in fact, nor how soft her skin was, nor how her bottom was tucked into his groin.

  He was not doing a very good job of not thinking, he knew. But at least he wasn’t acting on his thoughts.

  He could do nothing but lie there next to her, holding her as she began to thrash in earnest. He instinctively flung his leg over hers, holding her down, and clasped her even tighter in his arms.

  She felt so good there. So right. Though he knew it was wrong to imagine it, he thought of her turning to him, offering him her mouth, allowing him to caress her breasts, her stomach, allowing him to pleasure her.

  And he would find solace in burying himself inside her, her warm sheath offering a welcome respite from his pain.

  He slid his hand down her arm—so soft, her skin. Her hair tickled his nose. It was redolent of some sort of floral, but of course he didn’t know what.

  And her body lay against his, the warmth and softness and utter femininity of her causing his senses to whirl.

  And still he did nothing but murmur and try to soothe her.

  Eventually, the shaking eased, and she lay still in his arms.

  “Did I do … was there …?” She spoke in a quiet voice.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing happened.” He took his leg off hers, and she turned her head, regarding him with a steady, serious gaze. Not timid, then, despite what she was going through. Frightened, of course, he could see that in her eyes, but not terrified or weak. He could bet she hadn’t gotten herself into this situation—it had been forced on her. He felt a grudging sense of admiration for her.