“Okay,” she capitulated. “I’ll text him right now.”
“Good. I’m heading into a meeting but once I get out, I’ll let Trident PR know to add him to your tour. Piper and I will check in with you later, and Lyla—one last thing.”
“What?”
“Be careful. Call 911 if anything strange happens.”
Lyla flinched. “Will do,” she said, and then the line went quiet.
How close was close, anyway? Was Tate five minutes away or thirty? Only one way to find out. Lyla added his information to her list of contacts and sent him the damn text.
While she waited for a response, she tried to envision the next few weeks with him, strong and handsome and close enough to touch.
No! No touching! Under no circumstances could Lyla even think about jumping her new bodyguard, even if it had been way too long since she’d even been on a date. To avoid temptation, however, she was going to have to keep busy—really busy. Busier than Trident’s reasonable tour schedule had any prayer of making her.
Lyla edged around her table, giving the evil letter as wide a berth as she could manage in her dinky apartment, then beelined for her laptop. It would take no more than a couple of clicks to put the word out to her readers. There would be book clubs she could visit in between signings, and maybe—if she was lucky—a local book festival or two she could drop in on.
She dove into her social media accounts with a vengeance, and when her cell phone and the door buzzer sounded at the same time twenty minutes later, it was startling enough that Lyla let out a very humiliating, but very heartfelt, scream.
Oh, yeah. This was going to work out great.
THREE
“SO, THAT’S THE deal,” Red said, pushing aside his plate and leaning back. “Trident’s PR department is working with Marketing to line up the last few tour stops, and I’ll let them know this afternoon that you’re coming on board. Otherwise, you two should be good to go.”
“Sounds like it,” Tate agreed. He and Lyla would stay in side-by-side rooms in a string of nice hotels, and Red had even told him he could have his pick of vehicles for the trip.
“Just a nice, easy loop through the Northeast,” his friend added, for the hundredth time.
“Yup. Got it.”
“And all you have to do is keep any psycho motherfuckers away from my new author.”
“So…basically everyone,” Tate joked. Because honestly—who was Red kidding? They both knew this was a charity case assignment that Tate wasn’t the least bit qualified for.
Red signaled for the check, then slapped his credit card on the waitress’s little plastic clipboard so fast, Tate couldn’t even draw breath, much less offer to go halfsies on their overpriced cheeseburgers.
“You can do this,” Red assured him. “I wouldn’t have called you, otherwise.”
“Your faith in me is heartwarming, but it’s complete bullshit. You get that, right?”
His friend stared him down with an expression that probably terrified lesser men. “No fucking around, Tate. This is the real deal. Lyla’s scared, and I’ve…”
Tate frowned when Red trailed off. “You’re…what?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I don’t know why. I just do.”
Soldiers could be a superstitious group and Tate didn’t question Red’s hunch, or ask him to explain. He just took it as fact and trusted the supporting evidence would show itself in due time.
“Don’t sweat it, brother. I’ll look out for your girl.”
“Piper’s my girl. But Lyla is a friend, in addition to an employee. I’m worried about her.”
“I know. I’ll do my best. I promise.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, Red immediately ducked into a sleek black town car that was idling at the curb, waiting for him. He rolled down his window and offered Tate a ride to the hotel, but Tate declined.
For crying out loud, Tate had once lived here for years. Even if he’d been gone for a while, he could still find his way around—it wasn’t like taxis or the subway had changed so much since he’d been gone.
The only problem was, after Red pulled away, it didn’t take more than five minutes of fumbling before Tate was thoroughly flustered by the midday chaos. He and Red and Luca had gone to school in the Village, and Tate couldn’t seem to get his bearings here in the financial district.
He couldn’t even remember which subway stop was close by, and so he stood there like a dolt, kicking himself for turning down that swanky ride.
Once, he’d found New York energizing—a playground full of possibility, new ideas and experiences around every corner. At age eighteen, he’d taken to Manhattan like a duck to water.
Now, though…now it felt more like an assault on his senses. Tate wanted to make a break for it, not dive right in. When he finally spotted an open cab, he flagged it down and hopped gratefully in the back.
Then, instead of going sightseeing or something, like a normal guy on leave, he just barked out the name of his hotel and hunkered down. What a crying shame.
Tate had to admit—he wasn’t terribly disappointed that the job would take him out of town for a few weeks. And he was even less disappointed that it would be in the company of the lovely Lyla Lawson. Hazard duty, it was not.
He sighed and watched the streets of Midtown streak by. He might not be able to keep the job if Lyla hadn’t liked him. And the truth was, he had no idea if she had or not. He’d never had an interview that was harder to interpret than the one he’d just sat through. Tate had always been good with people and could always tell how he was being received, but Lyla—Lyla had thrown him for a loop from the very start.
Back at the hotel, Tate barely managed to kick off his dress shoes and hang up his blazer before his phone went vibrating across the nightstand, where he’d plugged it in to charge.
It only took a quick glance to see the 216 area code and the Cleveland Clinic name on the caller ID, but given how fucked up this day was turning out to be, Tate was half tempted to let the call roll over into voicemail.
That’d be a pussy move, though.
He accepted the call with an all-business, “Captain Monroe.”
“Hey Tate, it’s Dr. Ross. How are you doing?”
Tate exhaled, somewhat relieved. Dr. Ross had been in charge of his care from the moment he’d been transferred from Landstuhl to the States, and he was a good dude. A straight shooter.
However, it wasn’t like him to call out of the blue, so this call had to have a reason—and Tate wasn’t terribly keen on hearing what that was.
“I’m good, thanks,” he told the man. “How about you?” Like they were buddies passing each other in the park, for crying out loud.
Ross sighed. “Oh, you know. Same old, same old.”
Tate did know. “I hear ya,” he sympathized, then perched on the edge of the hotel mattress, waiting for the first bomb to drop.
It didn’t take long. “Hey, listen,” Ross began. “I got your message about you maybe heading out of town. I figured I’d better touch base today, so we aren’t keeping you in suspense any longer than necessary.”
“I appreciate that.”
The doctor hesitated. “Going anywhere special?”
“Not really,” Tate told him. What he had planned was straight need-to-know, and the Army did not need to know. “A friend’s taking a road trip around the Northeast for a couple of weeks. I might tag along.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Should be. I haven’t decided if I’m going to go, though.”
“All right, well…I’ll cut to the chase. I have good news and bad news and you get to pick which you hear first.”
Oh, they were going to play this game, were they? Tate rolled his eyes and barked, “I’ll take the bad, first.”
“Of course, you will. Okay, here it is—based on the results of your last evaluation, the Med Board is not going to recommend that you return to active duty a
t this time. They’re going to mail you their findings, but I wanted to give you a heads up myself, first.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That was bad news, all right. Tate kept quiet until he was sure he could speak civilly.
When he pulled himself together, he asked, “At this time? What does that mean?”
“Well, that’s where the good news comes in. They do believe that your condition hasn’t fully stabilized yet. They think you might still be improving, so they’d like to schedule you for another evaluation in a week.”
“Next week?” Okay, that had come out loud. Tate took a deep breath before adding more quietly, “That seems…soon.” Even he knew he hadn’t improved enough to pass an evaluation so close to the first one.
“Yeah, that’s on me,” Ross told him. “I know how much you want to get back in the mix, so I figured you’d want to shoehorn this in before you left on your trip.”
Which made perfect sense, if you weren’t a paranoid mess with basically your whole life riding on the outcome. “What if I screw it up again? Is this my last chance?” Tate wondered.
“Not necessarily. Some guys go through this part of the process five or six times before the Board makes a final decision.”
“I see.” And he did, sort of. Tate understood that his career might stay in limbo for many more months if he couldn’t convince those Army assholes he was right and tight again. However, that might be easier to do if he believed it himself.
“Is there a problem I am unaware of?” Dr. Ross inquired. Which seemed like a very classy way of asking, What’re you hiding, you cagey little shit?
God, there were so many problems frying Tate’s circuits right about now, he didn’t even know where to begin. He tackled the easiest first—logistics.
“Not a problem, per se,” he explained, “But I am in New York right now, visiting that friend. Any chance I could do the eval here? I’ll be cutting it close trying to get home and back again if I end up going on that trip.”
“Right. Sure. If you’re okay with me not being there, that shouldn’t be an issue.”
Tate wasn’t okay with that, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Ross took his silence as agreement. He mumbled, “Okay, what’ve we got? Uhhhh…looks like there’re some folks at Weill Cornell who can handle the tests you need. How’s that sound?”
“Not there.” Anywhere but there.
“Why not?”
Because his best friend Luca was a prominent physician at Weill Cornell, and if he caught even the slightest wind of what Tate was going through, he’d never be able to resist sticking his prying Italian nose in it.
“Because I’m staying clear across town,” Tate hedged. It was a matter of blocks, but whatever. “How about Presbyterian?”
“That probably works, too. Mind if I make a few calls and get back to you?”
“Not at all.” And especially not if it kept Tate flying under the radar where his friends were concerned.
“All right, chief. Hang tight and I’ll let you know as soon as I have something set up for you.”
After Dr. Ross signed off, Tate sat there and contemplated his situation. By now, his head was probably as healed as it was going to get. He still got migraines occasionally, if he spent too much time out in the bright sun. Or, as he’d discovered the hard way, in bars with too much neon and loud music.
The Army didn’t need to know about that shit, though.
The times in the field that replicated those conditions were few and far between. Mostly, Tate was hanging out under cover, waiting for someone to show who never arrived, or something to happen that never did.
And frankly, when the whole world was exploding all around you, no one really cared if your head hurt or you felt a little queasy. For Christ’s sake, everyone wanted to toss their cookies when they were being shot at. Tate was no different than anyone when it came to that.
The bigger issue, as Tate saw it, was that his survivor’s guilt was not going away. That motherfucker had dug a trench and installed ramparts in his soul, clearly settling in for the long haul.
The Army wouldn’t know about that, either, if Tate hadn’t been such a touchy-feely blabbermouth in those first few weeks in the hospital.
It’d been a classic case of entrapment. He’d been shell-shocked and hurt and they’d sent in a chick therapist with the biggest, warmest, most understanding pair of brown eyes Tate had ever seen outside of the family dog. How was a dude supposed to guard against those? He’d been conditioned to trust puppy-dog eyes since the day he’d been born.
Without even intending to, he’d stupidly spilled his guts and then some, and he’d been paying for his rash mistake ever since.
People weren’t joking when they said that loose lips sank ships—talking about every negative thought that had grown roots in his gray matter could very well be the mistake that ended Tate’s career.
In retrospect, he guessed it wasn’t so surprising that he’d failed his first Med Board evaluation. Tate had waltzed into it blind, having no idea the Army would come back at him with all the sad-sack crap he’d spewed months earlier.
Now he knew better. When Tate checked in next week, he’d say all the right things, and he would pass their mysterious tests with flying colors.
He had to. The Army was his life, and the sooner he could complete this side mission and get back to it, the better.
Tate loosened his tie, swung his legs up and laid back against the pile of fancy pillows. Between the interview with Lyla, the huge burger he’d wolfed down at lunch, and the Med Board landmine that had just gone off in the middle of his day, he was suddenly inexpressibly exhausted.
INSTEAD OF JUST closing his eyes for a few minutes like he’d intended, Tate must have fallen out cold. When his cell starting ringing for the second time that day, he was so groggy, he felt like he had to claw his way up out of a well just to answer it.
Naturally, it was Red again, the world’s least warm-and-fuzzy person to wake up to.
“Were you fucking asleep?” his friend demanded.
“Small siesta,” Tate mumbled. “Perfectly normal.”
“Christ. What must it be like, to be you?”
Tate scrubbed his face. At least he hadn’t had the nightmare. “Basically, it’s a long, straight road of sunshine and roses, dude. Some honeys throwing themselves at me along the way. You know.”
And Red probably did. Ever since Tate had been back in town, he’d been confronted with the rather inescapable evidence that his old college buddy had grown up to be a bazillionaire—which didn’t make Tate feel like a late bloomer at all.
Red groaned. “All right. Wake up, you tool. The job starts now. Lyla’s going to text you her address any minute now, and you need to get over there ASAP.”
Tate sat up straight, and the room took a long, lazy spin around his cranium before it settled back into place again. “What happened?”
“She found another letter on her door when she got home. I’m heading into a meeting, but if you can get over there and hang with her while she waits for the cops to get there, that would be grand.”
Tate was already tying his shoes and looking around for his wallet. “Anything for you, my love.”
“Save it. I’m out of pocket for at least the next hour, but keep me posted later, okay?”
“Roger that,” Tate told him, pulling on his jacket and finding his wallet still tucked in the pocket.
The hotel keycard was on the dresser, next to his list. He grabbed them both, just in case. With a quick tug to tighten up his tie and a hasty gargle of mouthwash, Tate was out the door and heading for the elevators.
Downstairs, he asked the bellhop to get him a cab, then watched his phone like it held all the answers to the universe.
Sure enough, Lyla’s text came through a minute later—and damn if it wasn’t an address no more than five minutes away. Red had to have planned that, but there was no time to delve into the whys.
Tate was too busy
feeling piqued that Lyla’s text had contained nothing more than an address—like Tate was only a robot, instead of a man who thought she was extra cute.
It wasn’t like he’d expected her to beg him for salvation, or anything…but a simple thank you might’ve been nice.
No time like the present to start working on that little misfire. Tate was hired, and he was going to do his job—but he was also going to give Miss Lyla a big old dose of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to go with it.
FOUR
THINGS WITH TATE got off to a rousing start from the moment he crossed her threshold. Detective Scarletti had beat him to Lyla’s by all of three minutes, but her new bodyguard had a way of filling a room with his presence and immediately trying to take charge.
The officer eyed Tate for a long moment, and dismissed him with a few careless words. “You the boyfriend?” he asked, then turned away to snap on his latex gloves and slip the offensive letter into a large plastic sleeve.
Tate slouched and fired back with, “Nah. Just the hired help.”
Lyla stared at him. Since Tate apparently didn’t plan on being forthcoming with Scarletti, she felt compelled to elaborate.
“Detective, Captain Monroe is my new bodyguard. My publisher is taking this business pretty seriously, so they hired him to accompany me on my book tour.”
Implicit in that, of course, was that the NYPD might try getting a bit more serious about their end of things, too. If Lyla had to hear one more time about how many murders they had to deal with, she was liable to blow a gasket.
“That so?” Scarletti looked Tate over once more. Lyla wondered if maybe the “Captain” she’d thrown in there had caught his attention.
In answer, Tate only shrugged and smirked, insouciant as could be. Lyla scowled at him. He’d been on the job five minutes and he already couldn’t play nice?
“Captain of what?” the officer demanded, just like she’d hoped he would. Scarletti could try to brush off this soldier, Lyla thought—but she had to bet he wouldn’t get far.
Her bodyguard snapped to attention and belted out, “United States Army. Sir.”
The Hero Was Handsome (Triple Threat Book 3) Page 3
