by Dana Marton
“In my world, you can’t hold up your own tail, you get no prize,” he told Ivan and they shared a manly laugh.
Predictably, Kayla glared at them.
He cleared his throat. “Excellent showmanship.” He’d heard the phrase a few times while they waited all morning for their turn.
Ivan was shaking his head now. He was short and round, bald, a genial black man in his late thirties. He was a family man through and through with little twin girls and a toddler son. A dyed-in-the-wool hockey fan. He was in the middle of having a new house built in the suburbs, trading in his condo so each of the kids could have their separate bedrooms when they were older. He did have a mortgage, but nothing unmanageable. Nash could find no financial motive for him to be involved in anything against the Landon family. He handled a lot of money for Kayla, and as far as Nash could tell, not a penny of it was missing.
For this show, between Ivan and Fisk, they had scared up about a million dollars worth of advertising gigs with nothing left to do but finalize details. They had a couple of meetings that afternoon.
Tsini had nothing else to do for the rest of the day. The afternoon Group Ring belonged to the Sporting, Working and Toy categories. Whatever that meant.
Kayla was leaning forward in her chair, drawing Nash’s attention to the ring.
The judge called four dogs out of the lineup. Tsini was one of them. Was that good or bad?
Good, he figured when Kayla grabbed Greg’s hand with her left and his with her right. She was squeezing as she waited, perched on the edge of her chair as if she were about to fly away, oblivious to everything else.
He couldn’t say he minded her touching him. He could have stood a lot more of it, in fact. Sleeping on the couch, being up half the night and watching her sleep in her sprawling bed, had put a few improper and unprofessional ideas in his head.
Images that he tried hard to forget.
She was a client, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time.
He’d already done the whole celebrity-heiress thing and it had led to nothing but trouble. He’d lost his head before, and because of that, Bobby was dead. He was never going to forgive himself for that.
The last thing he needed in his life was Kayla Landon. They had nothing in common. She was bossy as hell. Flashy. She’d want everything her way for sure.
He was definitely not going to go there.
And to make sure of that, he was looking straight ahead, not at her, not at her low-cut shirt and her breasts that were about spilling over as she leaned even more forward, holding her breath.
The four dogs had to walk another circle around the judge who only looked at them this time. She’d touched them all over when they’d first started. Even examined their private places, which struck Nash as rather odd, not that Tsini seemed to mind. She took everything like a pro.
He’d been skeptical about the whole show, feeling sorry for the dogs, to be frank. But watching closely all morning, he had to admit most of the animals seemed to thrive under all that attention.
Even now, Tsini practically pranced around the ring, her head held high, eating up the attention. She must have known on some level that all the excitement was about her, that she was doing well. She was eating it all up.
Then the judge pointed at her. “First.” Then at the dogs that walked behind her, a Dalmatian and a Boston terrier. “Second, third. In that order.”
Kayla was on her feet.
He jumped up to pull her back to her seat. Security was pretty tight, but he personally knew a number of snipers who could have easily gotten by the hotel security that worked the event.
“You need to sit. Don’t make yourself an easy target.”
Instead, she flew into his arms and folded her slim arms around his neck.
A couple of cameras flashed.
Great. Just what he needed.
“She won!” Kayla jumped up and down while still holding on to him, creating more frontal friction than he was comfortable with and a lot less than he needed. “She’s Best of Group!” She let him go, then turned to hug Greg who was grinning from ear to ear.
Then Nash succeeded in pulling her back into her seat at last.
“Oh, my God. Wasn’t she fantastic? Did you see that?”
People were still clapping as Tom took Tsini for her victory lap.
“She’s great.” If the judge said so, who was he to argue? Frankly, he thought all the dogs looked pretty good. He couldn’t really tell any difference. Not that he was stupid enough to tell Kayla that. “Definitely the best.”
He watched her clap her heart out, practically jumping out of her seat again. It was the first time he’d seen her face light up with true joy. If he weren’t sitting, that smile could have knocked him off his feet.
No wonder A-list celebrities stood in line to date her.
The announcer congratulated the morning’s winners and released everyone for lunch. The spectators began to file out. Kayla wanted to go and see Tom and Tsini. Nash and Mike went with her. Dave was going up to the room with Ivan and Greg where they were all going to have lunch together.
They pushed through the crowd and then Tom and Tsini were there and Kayla was hugging the dog. “What a good girl you are. You’re a champion!”
“Not bad,” Nash said when Tsini pranced over to him. He produced a treat he’d stashed in his pocket earlier. He petted the dog, then pulled back, embarrassed when he caught Kayla beaming at him.
Then the treat was gone and Tsini went back to Kayla, jumping on her in excitement. Kayla was grinning from ear to ear, the dog’s paws on her shoulders. She hummed some song as they went around in a small circle. Craziest thing he’d ever seen.
“She loves to dance. Want to try?” she asked.
Dancing in public with a poodle? Not for a million dollars. “I think I’ll pass.”
Was that hurt in her eyes? Did she think he would?
He cleared his throat. “Ready to go up?”
“I need to stay a few more minutes for pictures and to sign paperwork,” Tom said.
Nash looked at Mike. “You stay with him.” The death threats had been for Tsini after all and, at this stage, he didn’t want any member of the team going anywhere alone, not even Tom, who looked like he could more than take care of himself. There was definitely a bad apple among them, but Kayla was right. The others should be protected.
“I’ll take Kayla up,” he told Mike, who glowered at him, but didn’t protest.
Now that the event was over, Nash wanted her out of that crowd as soon as possible. The location would have been extremely hard to control if someone had tried to do her harm here. Coming to see Tsini was one thing. Needlessly lingering was just plain stupid.
He took the shortest route to the elevators. Two elderly ladies got in with them, but they got off on the twentieth floor.
Kayla was still grinning, rocking to the tips of her toes and back. “I’m so happy for her. I know you think this is all craziness, but she likes to win and she knows when she does.”
“I believe you,” he said, surprising himself, as he considered the enigma of the woman in front of him.
So far he’d seen her act the complete bimbo in front of the cameras when they’d filmed in her apartment. Then he’d seen a tough, mature woman who stood up to him, defending her staff. And now she was like a young girl, carefree and happy as could be because her dog had won a ribbon. She was a complex woman. Trouble was, he never even understood the simple ones. He definitely had deficiencies in that department.
The elevator jerked, cutting off his musings.
He put a hand out to steady Kayla.
“She has a chance at Best of Show. I think this is her year,” she enthused as the elevator came to a complete halt.
But the door didn’t open.
“What’s wrong with this?” She pushed the open door button.
“We’re not there yet. We stopped between floors.”
“Oh.” She sounded a little b
reathless.
“It happens. They’ll restart it in a second.”
Two minutes later, he pushed the call button. That wasn’t working either. “They’re working on it,” he reassured Kayla, but his instincts prickled.
He called Mike on his cell while Kayla fidgeted next to him. “We’re stuck in the elevator. Call building services.”
“Which elevator?”
“Last on the right in the main lobby. We’re above the sixtieth floor.”
“Okay. I’m on it.”
He pushed his phone back into his pocket.
“How long do you think this is going to take?” Kayla sat on the floor cross-legged, her back resting against the wall. She wrapped her arms around herself, nervous but doing her best not to show it.
“Ten minutes.”
“Do you think we’ll have to climb out on top?”
“That only works in action flicks and with really old elevators. These new ones are fully secured.” He hid a smile at her look of utter relief. “Ten minutes. Tops,” he said again, and sat next to her.
They weren’t touching, but he was close enough to catch the faint scent of her barely there perfume. He would have lied if he’d said he wasn’t aware of her as a woman. He had been from the beginning, and it had ticked him off back when he’d thought her all fluff and no substance. Now that he was getting to know her better and like her a hell of a lot more, his awareness spelled trouble.
To their right, there was a mirror, to their left a poster of a famous singer who was performing that night at the hotel. She was looking at that, leaning ever so slightly closer to him. The elevator seemed to have shrunk all of a sudden.
She had an annoyed look on her face as her gaze ran down the show-time listings on the poster.
He understood how much she hated to give up her freedom, but he needed to keep her secure. “It’d be better if you stayed in your room. Whoever is after you, we know he’s here and we know he has the ability to get close. You can go see as many shows as you want once this is over.”
She shrugged as she turned to him. “I’ve seen him in concert more than enough. We’ve dated.”
Her admission didn’t surprise him in the least. “You date a lot.”
“Past tense. I’m not my reputation.”
“But you have one,” he observed, and it bothered him to think of all the men she’d belonged to in the past. Which was really stupid. But not half as stupid as wanting Kayla Landon for himself.
She was a high-class, high-society woman. She was one of the “pretty people” and went out with others from that circle. Anger flashed through him for a split second. Not at her, but at himself because even knowing all that couldn’t stop him from wanting her.
He should know better. He’d made that mistake before, a mistake that had cost the life of his best friend.
“Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids.” She closed her eyes for a split second. “Or do. Everyone does anyway.”
He hated the resignation in her voice. And he hated that as much as he’d watched her in the last two days, he still couldn’t pin her down, although he was beginning to have a basic understanding. “I know you’re not a brainless socialite.”
She turned to him. “Since when?”
“Since I read your file after signing up for the job. You have an MBA. From a damn fine university. I don’t think even your daddy could buy that.”
“I tried to prove to my father that I was fit for the family business.” She leaned her head against the wall. Her neck was slim and long, her skin like smooth cream, the definition of kissable.
Focus. “Did you impress him?”
“Nobody could ever impress him but Lance.”
Her older brother who’d died in the skiing accident. He’d been an up-and-coming star of the business world according to Forbes magazine.
“Lance was the golden boy,” she was saying, her tone thoughtful, her eyes looking into the past. “I was free advertising, once I started getting into all the tabloids.”
“Your father should have protected you from that.”
“It was the only thing I’ve ever done that my father liked. Any publicity was good publicity for him. He loved when they started calling me the Popcorn Princess. He brought me into the business because of that. I was the face of the company all of a sudden.”
“And Greg?”
She looked down at her hands. “Greg was his one mistake. He actually said that. He was embarrassed by Greg.”
And Kayla fiercely loved her brother because of that. Nash was beginning to understand the family dynamics. Hell, he’d always thought rich people had it easy. But from what she was telling him, her family was almost as messed up as his.
Almost. Her mother hadn’t driven her father to drink himself to death. He pushed his own dark memories away.
“If he liked publicity, he must have really loved you.” He’d read every piece of news he could get on her, going back a couple of years. Every gossip rag covered her. According to them, she was a hellcat in high heels. That side of her hadn’t come out yet, although he would have been lying if he said he wouldn’t have liked to see it.
“People know my family’s name. Landon Enterprises is a big deal. Back in college, boys figured out that if they took me to wild parties where there were paparazzi, they could get their pictures in the papers the next day.”
He didn’t like her tone of voice. He hadn’t considered before that maybe she hadn’t sought the limelight on purpose. “So you got taken to a lot of wild parties.”
“I guess I wasn’t as smart as I thought. I kept thinking they liked me for myself.”
They should have. She was bright and she was tough. She was loyal to the point of blindness. She had plenty to offer a man. That they had used her when she’d been young and didn’t know better ticked him off and awoke his protective instincts. He exhaled, letting that go. Maybe she was just giving him the poor-little-rich-girl act. Could be that was how she always got what she wanted. He’d known another woman like that.
His expression must have said as much, because she launched into an explanation.
“I was raised in a sheltered environment. Industry leaders tend to stick together and socialize together. College was very different. Took me a while to figure it out and find a way to fit in.”
Okay. He could see that. “You were too trusting.”
“And now I don’t trust anyone.”
He had to laugh at that. “I don’t trust anyone,” he told her. “You don’t trust some imaginary boogeyman stranger. But the second you get to know someone and like them, you give your full trust without reservations.”
She’d defended her friends and staff against the slightest suspicion on his part and had reasserted over and over how much she trusted them.
“Name one person that you know closely and don’t trust,” he put out the challenge.
She struggled. “I don’t trust any man who asks me out.”
“That’s a good start.” He bit back a grin. “Babe in the woods.” He shook his head.
“I have you to protect me now, don’t I?” She rolled her eyes at him.
“And how long did it take to talk you into that? From the moment we met and were complete strangers until you trusted me with your life…twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe I should take that trust back and fire you,” she mumbled.
“You’re too smart to do that. You might cultivate the dumb-blonde image, but you’re far from it. You found a way to become director at the company. You raise millions for charity each year. You were smart enough to figure out that you were in danger and smart enough to keep up the clueless socialite act so whoever went after your parents and Lance wouldn’t know that you had a clue, wouldn’t come after you.” He’d figured that out at one point in the last twenty-four hours.
She pulled up her legs and rested her arms on her knees. Her short skirt slid up to reveal enough of her creamy thighs to make him swallo
w hard.
For a second he considered whether she was doing it on purpose, to distract him. But she seemed completely unaware of the hunger that had been building in him, her face guileless.
“But he did come after me,” she said.
“So you slipped up somewhere. Were you still pushing a police investigation?”
“Gave that up. Figured out that they were never going to believe me and if I kept insisting, I’d place myself in the killer’s crosshairs.”
“But you talked to someone about it.” Now that he knew her better, he didn’t think she was the kind who could give up something like this. She was too loyal for that. She would want to know what had happened to her older brother and her parents.
“I told my uncle so he could keep an eye out.” Her expression changed. She closed her eyes while she drew a long breath. Then looked at him with hesitation in her gaze. “Okay, I haven’t told you everything.”
He tamped back his annoyance. She trusted everyone around her except him, the one person who could keep her safe. How messed up was that? “I’m listening.”
“I might have something to do with—I might be the reason why my parents and Lance died.” She pressed her lips together, a pained expression on her face, misery sitting in her blue eyes. “When my father hired me, he gave me a low-level job in finance.” She paused as if still undecided about how much to say.
“We’re on the same team here,” he reminded her.
“I found a bunch of old travel-expense reports in a drawer and they weren’t stamped. So I wanted to make sure they’d been claimed by the tax coordinators on the other side of the finance department.”
“And?”
“They didn’t have time to bother with what they thought was a negligible amount. To keep me busy and off their backs, one gave me access to the system so I could check it out for myself.”
“You found that money was missing somewhere.”
Her azure eyes went wide. “How did you know that?”
“Money and murder go hand in hand. How much?”
“A little over a million dollars.”
“And nobody noticed?”
“It was taken in small amounts, disguised as travel expenses and on-the-spot employee bonuses. We give those out for good work throughout the year.”
