Ty cut her off and continued speaking to the older woman. “I’m sure Mr. Washington would appreciate it if you made it home this evening, so we’ll ensure your safety by leaving immediately.”
Ashley opened her mouth, he even heard her intake of breath, as if she were readying a barrage of angry retorts. He imagined she was quite capable of that. It seemed to be intrinsic among those who ruled the world—or fancied they did. But suddenly she stopped. She looked at the librarian’s horrified expression and shut her mouth again.
Well, well...maybe she’s not quite as self-absorbed as I thought.
“My own apologies, Mrs. Washington,” she said with exquisite grace and warmth. “It’s not a true threat, you’re not really in any danger, but perhaps caution is wisest. I’ll come back at a better time for all concerned,” she added with a sideways glare at Ty.
She waited until they were back in his car before she held out her hand. “My phone,” she said icily.
“No,” he said again.
“I don’t know what authority you think you have over me, Mr. Colton, but I assure you it does not include stealing my personal property.”
“My authority includes doing whatever is necessary to keep you safe. Including saving you from yourself. What were you thinking?”
“That your fellow Kansans needed to know what they risk losing.”
“And to do that, your parents have to risk losing you?”
She gave a dismissive wave of one slender hand. “It’s just talk. People bluster when they’re able to hide behind the anonymity of the internet. I get threats all the time. They’re not real.”
“So you’ve said. But your family’s own security staff’s analysis deemed this one more valid. Elite agrees.”
She blinked. “My family’s security staff? They have nothing to do with me. I told my parents long ago I didn’t want them trailing after me.” Her chin came up. “And I don’t want you.”
He couldn’t help it, he grinned at her. “I’ve been told that before.”
“I’m sure you have,” she said tartly.
“Not usually by a beautiful woman, though.”
She ignored the compliment and stared at him a moment before saying, as if she were merely pondering the question, “At what point, do you suppose, does self-confidence become arrogance?”
He smothered another grin. He was starting to like the way she talked. But he answered her with dead seriousness, “At about the same point someone decides that just because she says so, her loving parents will stop worrying and looking after her.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and something flickered in the dark brown. They really were amazing, those eyes. Deep. Endless.
She let out a long audible sigh. “Point taken, Mr. Colton.”
She’d surprised him now. Apparently, the loving in the Hart family went both ways. He filed away the knowledge that he was already certain would be a key weapon in the battle to keep her safe.
That the battle would mostly be with Ashley herself, he already knew.
Chapter 6
“I should have known they wouldn’t leave it alone,” Ashley said rather glumly, staring out the windshield as they pulled away from the library. “What exactly constitutes a threat analysis, beyond looking at the person making the threat?” And going over this vehicle with a fine-tooth comb and a couple of electronic devices I don’t even recognize, even though it was parked in a nearly empty lot at a library, of all places?
“Do you mean generally or in this case specifically?”
She gave the man in the driver’s seat—in more ways than one, since he still had her phone—a sideways look.
“Yes?” she suggested.
He smiled at that. It wasn’t quite as heart-stopping as that unexpected grin had been, but it was a close thing.
And you need to stay focused or he really is going to end up running your life the entire time you’re here.
“In a case like this, where we’re not certain of the identity of the person behind the threat, it involves analyzing the reason for the threat, the specificity of it, studying the language used, the method of conveyance, what history we have of possible prior threats. And in cases like this, we work on tracking location through ISP or carrier identification, although that’s not particularly reliable without further data.”
“My parents are certain,” she said. “They’re convinced it’s William Sanderson, that man who wants to build his tract of luxury homes, and thinks I stopped him from getting his permit.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I hope so,” she said proudly.
“So you’re proud of stopping someone from pursuing their livelihood?”
“I’m proud of stopping him from destroying an important wetland for migratory birds.”
“So birds take precedence over humans?”
She’d heard variations of this often since she’d found her calling a few years ago. Although she had to admit, he was calmer about it than most. “They can coexist, with some care. That’s all I ask for.”
“What you’re asking for,” he said quietly, “is control over what someone does with their own legally purchased private property.”
“No, I’m asking him to understand and control what he does with it.” They’d reached a stoplight and he looked at her, so she turned in the passenger seat to meet his gaze. She spoke earnestly now, warmed to her beloved subject. “People just need to understand, to know what effect their choices will have. Then they almost always do the right thing.”
“The over-optimism of that assumption is boggling,” he said, as he glanced back at the traffic light. His words were laced with a cynicism that surprised her. “But even if that were true, there’s still the biggest question.”
“What question?” she demanded, stung a little by his optimism comment, given she’d often heard it, especially from her parents.
He looked back at her and said flatly, “The right thing according to who?”
She blinked. “Well it’s obvious what the right thing is, isn’t it?”
“Not to me. The right thing according to who? You? What gives you the right to decide that?”
He was surprising her. She hadn’t expected to have to defend her beliefs with the man hired to protect her.
Then why are you?
Speaking of obvious questions... “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“No, you don’t. I’m just the hired help, after all. And worse, from flyover country. So I couldn’t possibly be as smart as you. We hicks need elites around to tell us what we’re doing wrong.”
She wanted to retort sharply, but had so many things tumbling through her mind she couldn’t pick one to start with. This conversation was sliding downhill rapidly, which bothered her. She thought about that for a moment. Wondered if it was because she’d gotten out of the habit of actually arguing her case. So often now she went places, gave a speech and left. If there were questions, they were generally from people who already agreed with her. And more recently, the discussions took place on social media, where she had time to think and lay out her best and most persuasive arguments. She actually hadn’t engaged in this kind of rapid give-and-take in a while, and it showed. She was rusty. And how odd that it was this man of all people who made her realize that.
Or maybe it was just him. This man, who had quite literally stopped her breath the first moment she’d seen him.
We hicks...
She grimaced inwardly. She didn’t think that way, truly she didn’t, but she also couldn’t deny that many of those she associated with did. She’d warned them time and again that not only were they wrong, that kind of attitude only antagonized people they were trying to persuade, but it seemed innate in so many. No wonder he assumed she was the same.
It was a moment before she responded, with every stereotype
she could think of. “Yes, you hicks, in your bib overalls, chewing tobacco and spitting, smoking corncob pipes, speaking with a drawl and dropping g’s all over the place.” He was gaping at her now. “Yes, you seem just like that. And by the way, you’ve got the green.”
As she said it, the faintest of polite honks sounded behind them. Unlike the blare you got in a big city when you missed the instant response to the signal changing, she acknowledged.
His head snapped back forward, and they started moving again. And, she noticed, he gave a wave of apology to the driver behind them. As opposed to the rude gesture she was more used to in the city.
When they were clear of the intersection, he said, in a musing sort of tone, “Just like you coastal elites are all arrogant, presumptuous, look down your nose at everyone not from there unless they’re from an acceptable place on the opposite coast, and carry your Ivy League college degrees around with you to show off?”
“Exactly,” she said pointedly.
He smiled. It looked somewhat rueful. “Point taken, Ms. Hart,” he said, echoing her earlier words.
“So can we agree to drop the assumptions?”
“And just get along? A city girl from the upper crust and a guy from farm country?” He lifted one hand and rubbed at his chin as if deep in thought about her question. It was so perfect, so exaggerated. She knew he was being as mocking as she had been. And a smile played around the corners of her mouth.
“Sounds like the tagline for a fish out of water movie,” she said. Or a romantic comedy.
That thought rattled her completely, as did the realization that for all the mockery, even that chin he was rubbing was attractive. And his hands, hands that were strong, capable...
He laughed, and it sent that little ripple through her that she’d felt at the first sound of his deep rough voice. She again had to yank her mind off a path she had no intention of traveling.
When she finally spoke again, she did it quietly. “You may have that backward, Mr. Colton. In 1648, one of my ancestors, along with four others, settled on land purchased from the Pequot people. They had to get permission from the town of Fairfield to do so. They were all farmers, Mr. Colton. I’m descended from farmers who worked as hard as the farmers of Kansas. Harder, most likely, given the advances in modern equipment and methods.”
“And I live in Wichita, about fifteen times the size of your Westport,” he admitted.
She wasn’t surprised he knew that. Her parents wouldn’t hire a firm who didn’t do their homework. “So in truth, I’m the small-town girl, and you’re the city boy.”
“Consider the assumptions overturned,” he said.
“Agreed,” she said, smiling. But then what she’d just thought about them doing their homework went through her mind again. “What about this threat made you—your company decide that this one among all the threats I get is serious?”
“The specificity in part,” he said. “And timing. The responses to your posts are always quick enough that we can surmise he follows you on several platforms.” He gave her a sideways look. “And the posts he made about your talk at the library last night were almost simultaneous with your remarks.”
It took her a moment to realize the implication. “You...You’re saying you think he was there?”
“It’s a definite possibility. And why your parents are so adamant you lie low until the threat is identified and eliminated.”
She lapsed into silence. She had to admit the thought of someone who wished her ill—even dead—sitting in that room within feet of her was unnerving. Perhaps she did need to take this a little more seriously.
They were pulling up to her hotel before he spoke again. “Let’s get you packed and checked out of here.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You should do it in person at the desk, and mention that you’re heading home.”
“What?” she said again. She was not used to feeling behind, but this man was annoyingly short on explanations for his rather dictatorial orders.
“Just in case. Since we don’t know for certain who this person is, or where he might have contacts, it can’t hurt to plant a false trail.”
That did make sense, but she still felt a step behind. It was not a sensation she liked; she was usually the one in the lead. “But why am I checking out? I still have—”
“You’re checking out because you announced to the world that you’re staying at this location,” he said. Then, with that sideways look again, he added, “You know, that post about your surprisingly well-appointed room?”
She felt herself flush. She wasn’t easily flustered, but somehow this man catching her expressing something that fairly reeked of those assumptions they’d agreed to discard did it. Her mind raced as they crossed the lobby, trying to remember if she’d posted anything else that could be interpreted that way. Looking at her timeline through that lens, she was afraid she had. She needed to look, assess and determine if she needed to make a post explaining and apologizing. She needed to—
She’d been digging into the outside pocket of her leather bag, where her phone lived, without even thinking about it. Without remembering it was no longer there. And why.
“May I have my phone back, please?” she asked, very politely to contrast with her earlier imperious demand.
“When we get to the safe house.”
She drew back sharply. “The what?”
“You’re not familiar with the term safe house?”
“Of course I am. That’s ridiculous.”
“It will only be until the threat is neutralized.”
“I have a hearing in front of the county planning commission in three weeks about this, and I have organizing to do. Supporters I need to mobilize. I will not stay locked away—”
“You will if I say so.”
Talk about imperious demands! “I will not.”
She heard him let out a long sigh. “Your parents told me you were exceptionally bright, with a killer memory, but a bit naive. They failed to mention the stubborn.”
“A bit naive?” she repeated, taken aback.
“They take the blame for that themselves, by the way. Said they probably sheltered you too much.”
She was gaping at him now. “They...actually said that?”
“They did.”
She was going to have to have a word with them. She was not naive. She just chose to think the best of people. And that if given the choice, they would do the right thing. Most of the time.
She consciously unclenched her jaw. “Because I love my parents, I will go,” she conceded, but added firmly, “for now. But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”
“Not my job to keep you happy. Just alive.”
For some reason that set her off even more. A reason she didn’t care to analyze just now. “Two weeks,” she said warningly, as they reached the elevator alcove. “I’ll tolerate it for two weeks.”
He hit the up-arrow button. “We’ll start with that,” he said mildly.
She bit back a retort that it wasn’t a negotiation. They stepped into the elevator and she turned to face the front. And as the doors slid shut, she couldn’t help thinking about the moment just this morning when it had been reversed, when those same doors had slid open and she’d seen a tall, built, gorgeous man coming into the hotel.
She hadn’t realized that moment would end up being something that would disrupt her entire life.
Chapter 7
She packed with much less care than Ty would have expected of a Hart. She simply tossed everything from the small closet onto the bed and then loosely rolled each thing up. But the carry-on-sized bag had a designer label, and he was guessing the clothes did, too.
“Want some help?” he asked, more out of reflex than anything.
She paused with a sweater nearly the same color as her eyes in her
hands. And those eyes were fastened on him in a rather intent way. Then she gestured toward the dresser near where he was standing and very sweetly asked, “Want to get my underwear out of the drawer?”
For an instant, he was taken aback. But only an instant. She was testing him, of that he was sure. He just wasn’t sure what she was testing for. So he merely reached out and tugged open the top drawer. He was met with a froth of lace and silky-looking fabric, in about three different colors. He gathered the whole lot and walked the two steps to set it all on the foot of the bed. And if he noticed the size and shape of the lacy bras in the process, well, what did she expect?
She was looking at him as if waiting for...something.
“Was I supposed to recoil? Or maybe start drooling?”
“No. I just expected you to tell me to do it myself.”
He shrugged and said easily, “I’ve got three sisters. I’ve done their laundry. Doesn’t faze me.”
Now she was staring at him in an entirely different way. “You’ve done your sisters’ laundry?”
“And they’ve done mine. My mom’s kind of equal opportunity that way.”
Suddenly she smiled, and it hit him like a runaway freight train all over again just how beautiful Ashley Hart was. “I like the way she thinks.”
“She’s the best,” he said succinctly.
“What does she do?”
“She’s a nurse, at the hospital in Braxville.” Ashley looked surprised. “What? You expected a socialite who dabbles because she’s a Colton?”
She gave him that too-sweet smile he was already learning to be wary of. “As you expected of me? No, I try to be more open than that.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to break the truce.”
“I’ll forgive it, since it was in defense of your mother. And by the way, the reason I reacted was that my mother was a nurse when she and my father met.”
He blinked. “Oh.” He hadn’t expected that. Realized he should have read the family background part of the file Eric had sent him a little more closely instead of focusing mainly on the subject of this operation.
Colton Storm Warning Page 4