“So he’s not just a big rascal trying to get away with something?” Cindy bent and patted Sir Giggles on his side.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to play, that’s what dogs do. Dogs don’t have hidden agendas, and they don’t hide what they want. They’re always truthful. The problem is, we don’t always understand what they’re saying. Dogs aren’t like people. They don’t know how to lie or manipulate, the way people do.”
Cindy’s hand stilled, and she gave Rachel an uncharacteristically grave look. “Oh honey. You’re breaking my heart.”
Rachel bit her lip. Had she revealed too much about her take on the world?
Cindy stood up and hooked Sir Giggles’s leash onto his collar. “Thanks for your tip, Rachel. You’re amazing. Here’s a tip for you, because I love you. Ditch Bradford and bring Fred to my wedding.”
While Rachel was busy doing whatever she did with her “clients,” Fred used the time to explore the Refuge. More specifically, to scope out the security. The place had ten staff members, four of whom were security guards. Two were veterinarians, and the rest were called “techs,” but their jobs seemed to be mostly feeding animals and tending to the structures and grounds.
A small stuccoed bungalow from the pre-earthquake safety era served as the headquarters of the Refuge’s security team. Fred thought about introducing himself, but he didn’t know if the guards knew they were responsible for the daughter of America’s third richest man. Instead, he avoided that building and wandered through the compound, noticing hidden cameras scattered throughout.
In the medical wing, he joined a small group watching the newly arrived three-toed sloth. The creature huddled in the corner of its cage, ignoring the pile of leaves collected for it.
“We can’t keep it,” one of the techs was saying. “It belongs in the rain forest. It’s not warm enough here.”
“Rachel won’t send it away until it’s feeling better,” said another.
“It’s feeling bad because it’s cold. We need to put it on a plane to Costa Rica.”
“You tell the princess.”
Someone cleared his throat, and Fred caught an embarrassed look from the tech. “Didn’t see you there,” the guy said resentfully. He had long hair held back in a ponytail with a leather thong.
“Don’t mind me. I’ve never seen a three-toed sloth before. Just came to check it out.” Fred wasn’t surprised at the tech’s comment; everyone at the Refuge treated Rachel as if she was one step away from royalty. Conversations in the kitchenette stopped when she walked in. No one cracked a single joke about the skunk with the scent gland disorder. It seemed strange to him. He didn’t find her intimidating; why should they?
But the incident made him wonder how much she knew about the staff. When Rachel finished with her appointments for the day, he broached the subject while she locked up her office.
“Does the staff have to go through a security check?”
“Is the pope Catholic?”
“Hey. I’m just trying to be thorough.”
Rachel closed the front door, locked it, and went around back to the little fenced-in yard where Greta played during working hours. At the sight of them, Greta bounded across the grass in great leaps.
Fred persisted. “Kessler Tech owns this place, right?”
“Wrong. It’s a private nonprofit. Kessler Tech helps fund it. There’s a big difference.”
He flung up his hands. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend you.” After a pause, “What’s the difference?”
Rachel opened the gate and Greta rubbed against her legs with nearly orgasmic joy. “The Refuge was my idea. I had to fight for it. My father thought it was too risky. But I had some money left from my mother, and I lined up a board of directors, so Dad didn’t really have a choice.” She shot him a gleam of a smile as she lavished caresses on Greta’s head. “I’m a lot more stubborn than I look.”
Fred knew she was stubborn; he’d seen it in the limo. But he probably would have called it something else. Determined, or brave.
Rachel continued. “Dad eventually got on board, but he doesn’t really understand why animals mean so much to me. As long I leave the security to him, he leaves me alone.”
“So everyone gets vetted?”
She let out a huge sigh. “Up the ying-yang, yes.”
“And you trust them all? You’ve worked with them enough to be sure they’re safe?”
“What are you getting at?” She closed the latch of the gate and swung to face him.
“Well, I’ve been shadowing you for almost a week now. Your apartment building is more secure than the Pentagon. The only other residents are two elderly couples and a widow, all extensively vetted by the Kessler security team. Your car has bulletproof windows and a double-reinforced body. The big weak spot I see is this place.”
“It’s surrounded by an electrified fence and has twenty-four hidden cameras.” She waved her arms at their surroundings. A slight breeze made the leaves of the aspens quiver. A small olive-drab bird rose into the air, then landed with a flick of its tail on a fencepost. Fred had to admit that the Refuge seemed too peaceful to harbor any danger. “You’re being paranoid. Maybe Dad’s insanity is catching.”
She stalked away from him, followed by the capering Greta. He hurried after her. His intention wasn’t to tick her off, but he’d been hired to protect her, after all. These questions seemed important.
“What about when people bring in their pets, or injured animals? Do those people get checked out?”
“Yes! The security guards don’t let anyone in here unless they’ve gone through a weapons check.”
“But what about the staff? How well do you really know them?”
“Fred! I trust my staff. I don’t hire anyone who isn’t a hundred percent committed to helping animals. Now will you stop this?”
“I’m just trying to—”
“I know what you’re trying to do. Stop it . . . just stop it.” She reached the small gravel parking lot and started scrabbling through her purse. “Damn it.”
“Hey. Hey.” Fred gently took the purse from her and held it open so she could search inside. “Why are you so upset?”
“I’m not upset. Everything’s fine. We’ve never had any problems here. It’s a refuge. A safe place. Do you know what my father would do if you start making a fuss about the security?”
That brought him up short. He hadn’t thought of that. “I’m just asking for my own information. I’m not going to say anything to your dad.”
“Aren’t you? Don’t you work for him? Do you have any idea what—” She broke off, grabbing her key out of her purse, then snatching back the bag. Before she could open the door, Fred blocked it with one hand.
“Finish your sentence. Do I have any idea what . . .”
She angled her head away from him, the dark strands catching amber light from the sinking sun. “Forget it,” she choked.
“Let me guess. Do I have any idea how much this place means to you? Do I have any idea how crushed you’d be if your father shut it down?”
Her slim body went still. The breeze caught at her spring-green blouse, made the thin material press against her back, outlining the clasp of her bra. The little detail tugged at his heart. He noticed that a whisper-slight strand of hair had caught in the chain of her necklace. Rachel might be rich beyond his wildest dreams, but she was also painfully vulnerable.
He cleared his throat. “Listen, Rachel. Remember how I set that condition when your dad wanted to hire me?”
She sniffed, lifting her head a tiny bit. The delicate tendons of her neck shifted under her baby-soft skin. He wanted to taste her there. He wanted to taste her everywhere.
“I told him I wouldn’t take the job unless you knew the whole story. I’m not sure I ever explained why that was so important to me.”
She fiddled with her car keys. He really wished she’d look at him, but didn’t press her.
“So here’s the reason. It’s your li
fe. You deserve to be completely informed about it. You’re not a child.” Thank God she wasn’t, or he’d have to have a long talk with his lust-crazed body.
“No, I’m not a child,” she said in a husky voice that seemed to communicate directly with his hormones. “But my dad worries, and I can’t blame him.”
“How about this. I’ll make you a promise. I won’t say anything to your father until I say it to you first. If I see something that alarms me, I’ll tell you. Then we can both consider what to do. But I won’t do anything without you knowing about it. What do you think?”
Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned. Leaning one hip against the door of her specially altered Saab, she raised her eyes to meet his. The wariness in those violet depths nearly broke his heart. The wariness, and the longing to trust. “That sounds fair,” she said cautiously. “Aren’t you sending reports to my dad, the way Marsden does?”
“Nope. I’m leaving that to Marsden. I wouldn’t want your father to suffer from information overload.”
A smile twitched at her lips. Her full, down-turned lips. The lips he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind since their two sizzling kisses. “I wish you could understand . . . what it feels like to have one tiny bit of freedom, and to be constantly worried it might get taken away.”
He touched her cheek, very quickly and lightly, because he just couldn’t help it. “I’m on your side. I promise.”
He thought about that promise during the entire drive home. His week of guarding her had made him realize that he’d never choose her life, no matter how much money it came with. Kessler was such a maniac about security that he insisted on vetting everyone who got close to Rachel—or even got close to getting close. No wonder she stuck with a very small, tight group of friends that she’d known since college. She was lucky to have those friends.
Rachel had confided that her father hadn’t even wanted her to attend college. “You can get the same education or better online,” he’d told her. But she’d stuck to her guns until her father agreed to San Gabriel College because it was so “small and dull.”
As a native San Gabreleño, Fred didn’t appreciate that description, but he could see Kessler’s point.
With all those restrictions on her social life, Rachel didn’t get out much, at least compared to most girls her age. Like Lizzie, for example, who had boys trailing after her like toilet paper on her shoe. But Rachel didn’t seem to mind. The Refuge was her passion, and when she wasn’t at work, she was reading books about animal behavior and training techniques. Twice a week she took a ballet class at Move Me Dance Studio, where Cherie worked. Marsden told Fred he’d discreetly done a check on every student in the class. Fred thought that was going overboard, unless some ballerina planned to take her out with a wayward pirouette.
Rachel might be content with her existence, but Fred kept thinking about the first time he’d seen her, that giddy, devil-may-care girl who’d waltzed up to his table and snatched his trophy. And he couldn’t forget the look he’d seen in her eyes as she’d talked about her lack of freedom.
So that night, after they’d consumed a pepperoni mushroom pizza for dinner, and after Marsden had dropped in for his nightly check-in, Fred decided to spring a surprise on her.
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Um . . . the usual?”
“Studying up on three-toed sloths?”
“I think we can create an acceptable environment for it, if we just—”
“I have a better idea.” He strode to the couch and swung her to her feet. “We’re going out.”
“Out . . . what? Where? I can’t go out.” She pulled her hand from his.
“Why not?”
“Because . . . work and . . . Dad wouldn’t . . . Marsden already—”
He gave her a wicked smile. “But you’ll have your bodyguard with you. You’ll be perfectly safe. That’s what they hired me for, right?”
She gazed at him with something dawning in her eyes. Something wild and hopeful, daring and gut-wrenching. “What are we going to do?”
“Whatever you want. Whatever you’ve always wanted to do, but never gotten the chance. Sky’s the limit, baby.” He threw open the drapes, revealing the star-spangled indigo sky and pulsating lights of a busy Friday night. He tilted his head back and pretended to howl at the golden sliver of moon. “The night belongs to us.”
Chapter 14
The Kesslers hadn’t always been rich. Rachel could just barely remember the deliriously manic time of Kessler Tech’s IPO, when her father became an overnight billionaire. The next day her mother had taken her to a toy store and said she could buy anything in the place. She’d dashed from Barbies to toy pianos, to a miniature cotton candy maker, finally settling on a sparkly silver bike with blue fringe on the handlebars.
Now, with San Gabriel’s nightlife spread before her like a buffet of fun, she remembered that kid-in-a-candy-store feeling. It started with her outfit. When she’d first gotten to college, she’d bought a bunch of crazy outfits, but she’d put them away after the frat house incident freshman year. She dove into her closet and came out with skin-tight black vinyl pants and a belly shirt with the words “She’s So Vain” written in sequins. She added sparkly eyeliner and shook out her hair into a wild, fizzy black halo.
The expression on Fred’s face made her want to turn pirouettes across the floor.
“It’s a damn good thing you have a bodyguard,” he grumbled as he set the security alarms.
“Seriously, I don’t know why I ever resisted the idea,” she said cheerfully, which made his face go dark.
“It’s a good thing you have me as a bodyguard,” he corrected.
The possessiveness in his voice made her shiver.
“What’s the grungiest, nastiest dive bar in town?” she asked after they’d settled into her Saab.
Fred started up the car. He’d insisted on driving, so she could have a drink if she chose. “That’s easy. Beer Goggles. Used to be Katie’s bar, Hair of the Dog, but it burned down.”
“Beer Goggles? Yes, let’s go there. That sounds perfect.”
“No.”
“Why not? You said anywhere I want.”
“Because it’s . . . and you’re . . .” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, stealing a sidelong glance at her outfit. “Should have kept my big mouth shut,” he grumbled, turning the car around. “The minute I say we’re out of there, we’re out of there.”
“Fine,” she said meekly.
Inside Beer Goggles, it took crucial minutes for her smoke-induced coughing fit to subside and her vision to adjust to the murky darkness. By then she was seated in a booth, clutching a Sierra Nevada and shrinking under the weight of a bar-full of speculative male eyes.
“I thought smoking in bars was against the law.” She barely managed to hack out the question before another coughing fit struck. She downed most of her beer as if it were water.
“Beer Goggles claims to be on tribal land,” Fred explained. “There’s a whole lawsuit going on. Here, have some bar snacks.” He pushed a dirty dish of shriveled pea-like objects that might once have been pistachios. Or gallstones, for all she knew. Her stomach roiled. “Ready to go yet?”
“She just got here.” A giant wearing a black leather jacket and a Cyclops-eye tattooed on his forehead loomed over them. He had the voice of an emphysema patient. “Trying to keep her to yourself, kid?”
“Just giving the lady what she wants.” Fred didn’t seem intimidated by the man’s bulk, but Rachel sure was.
“We were just leaving,” she said quickly. Fred rose to his feet and faced off with the giant.
“Can you step aside, please?” His manner might be pleasant, but Rachel could sense the tension radiating from him. The man stepped aside a mere half inch, enough so Fred could squeeze out of the booth. He did so, his back to Rachel, his entire focus on the Cyclops-man. The next thing happened so fast, Rachel barely saw it through the smoke. The man reached for Fred, as if aiming to
pick him up by the back of his jacket. Fred ducked, used the man’s momentum to flip him around, and toppled him to the floor. Then he twisted the giant’s arm in such a way that the man couldn’t budge without pain.
“Come on, Rachel. Step right over him.”
Just to be safe, Rachel grabbed for the only thing that felt like a weapon, the dish of bar snacks. Gingerly she stepped over the spitting, cursing man.
“Stay close, Rachel,” Fred warned her. “I don’t want anyone else getting stupid ideas.” He addressed his immobilized opponent. “Are you going to be good, or do I have to tear a rotator cuff before I let you go?”
“I’ll sue.”
“You attacked first. Right now there’s no damage, but I can change that.” He gave one more little twist, then released the man.
“You’d better stay away from this place,” Cyclops threatened.
“I can live with that. Come on, Rachel.” Fred took her arm and hustled her toward the door. Everyone was watching them, peering through the haze. It wasn’t just cigarette smoke, she realized. Several customers were openly smoking weed. Maybe that’s why no one seemed very motivated to get up and make a brawl out of it.
When they were almost out the door, she glanced back and saw the gigantic Cyclops-man stumbling after them. “Fred!” She cried, then did the only thing she could think of. She flung the dish of pistachio-peas across the floor, where they made a skittering sound like a hundred tiny marbles. “Run!”
They ran for the door, hand in hand, and the last thing she saw was the Cyclops slipping on the rolling bar snacks, helplessly windmilling his leather-clad arms.
She collapsed into the Saab. Hysterical laughter came bubbling out of her mouth. “Did you . . . see his . . . face?”
Fred, breathing hard, started up the car. “I’m glad those snacks were good for something. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
She bounced up and down on the seat. “That was . . . I know it was dangerous and I hope he didn’t hurt you, but that was totally awesome.”
The Night Belongs to Fireman Page 14
