“I think he’s been supplanted as the wizard of record,” she said.
“You mean that kid with the round glasses? Yeah, I think so.”
They both laughed. Hers was light, genuine, and Ty felt... He wasn’t sure how to describe how he felt.
Because he’d never felt it before.
Chapter 12
“That was some really good spaghetti sauce,” Ashley said. She was looking at him across the table. The meal hadn’t been fancy, but it had been warm and filling, and the sauce had indeed been delicious.
“Thank my mother. It’s her specialty.”
That surprised her. “Was she just here?”
He shook his head. “She makes it at home, a huge batch, and bottles it up.”
“That’s quite a process.”
“She learned it from her mother, so she sees it as a sort of tribute to her to keep doing it.”
“That’s lovely.” She gestured at the bread. “And that’s one of the few times I’ve actually had garlic bread with enough garlic. Is that hers, too?”
One corner of his mouth went up. “No, you can blame me for that.”
“Ah. A fellow garlic lover.”
He nodded. “In my view, many foods are improved by a suitable application of garlic. Usually I’d tone it down for a guest, but your mom said you loved it.”
Ashley drew back, startled. “You talked to my mother about my taste in food?”
He shrugged. “Of course. So besides the basics, there are bagels and cream cheese—” he gave her a smile “—peanut butter, green tea and a few other things. The purpose here is to keep you safe, not miserable.” He paused, gave her a sideways look. “She did mention something about you using the garlic as an excuse to keep from kissing boys in high school, though.”
Ashley felt her cheeks heat. Her mother had told him about that long-ago discussion they’d had? But she lifted her chin and shrugged in turn. “If they didn’t want to kiss me badly enough to overlook the garlic, then I didn’t want to be kissing them.”
“Sounds like a good operational plan,” he said, as if they were discussing the weather. “At least, until you run into a garlic lover.”
Like you?
Had he done that intentionally? Made such a comment after acknowledging he was just that? Because that would imply—
She broke off her own ridiculous train of thought. What was wrong with her? She’d met this man mere hours ago. There was no way her mind should be careening off in that direction. She’d spent a great deal of time and energy fighting stereotypes, and she wasn’t about to become one—the helpless female who falls for her bodyguard.
Bodyguard. What a ridiculous word, as if a person’s body was all that mattered. But somehow protector seemed...too intimate. Or too close to another kind of protection that only came up during preludes to the kind of encounter she had been wary of ever since that flirt Aiden Schmidt had proven himself the worst kind of liar.
This man would not lie. She wasn’t sure why she was so certain, but she was. He might dissemble or postpone—like not telling her until they were here that there was no internet—or he might not answer at all, but if he did answer, it would be the truth. There would be no little fibs, no outright lies, no sweet nothings coming from this man. And no false flattery.
Again, she caught herself reaching for her phone. She stopped the motion with no small amount of irritation. She should have done what had occurred to her on the way to the library and run a check on Ty Colton. She’d done so on his agency, Elite Security, the moment her father had told her they’d called in the local firm. But the only person profiled on their website was the founder, Eric King, a retired Marine and full colonel with an almost staggering résumé. Which was only to be expected, she supposed.
So now all she knew was he was a partner in a private and well-respected security company—which, if it had passed her father’s vetting, was no doubt top-notch, despite the troubles his family’s business was having—and was distantly related to the former president. She stifled a grimace at the connection. Her parents would have had the Secret Service looking after her if they could have. For all she knew, Dad had gotten the recommendation from Joe Colton personally. She should call Dad and—
Yet again, she found herself reaching for a phone that wasn’t working. Her jaw tightened.
“Dependency is a tough thing to shake,” Ty said, his tone neutral.
She started to give him a glare, but it wouldn’t form. Because she was starting to realize there was more than a little truth to his assessment. She enjoyed and depended on devices and the internet to stay in touch, and more importantly for her work to get out the word. She had built a large platform over the past five years, ever since she had sat down with her father and told him what she wanted to do.
But she didn’t like that she had apparently become the stereotype of her generation, someone incapable of surviving without those admittedly multiple-times-removed connections. The majority of them people she didn’t personally know and likely never would.
She’d never kidded herself about that. At least she thought she hadn’t. But she also hadn’t really realized until now just how much those distant connections, many of them hiding behind screen names they thought cute or cutting-edge, had filled her life. How often they had crowded out other things, how often she had chosen composing an important—or so she thought—post over other things she could be doing. Things involving actual human contact.
And she had to admit, she didn’t like the thought.
“You really don’t like social media, do you?” she asked him, even though he’d already made his feelings quite clear.
“I don’t like that it allows people to hide who and what they are, which gives them the comfort of anonymity as much as wearing a mask while rioting in the streets and beating up people you disagree with, or robbing a bank.”
Since she’d just been thinking something quite similar, she couldn’t argue with that. “But you use the internet,” she said instead.
“It’s a useful, powerful tool, with proper precautions. But it’s only that, a tool. Just like a vehicle or weapon.” He leaned back in his chair. “Which do you think is more effective, your online interactions or the meeting you had at the library last night?”
Had it only been last night? It felt longer. Probably because her entire life had been upended by this man. But she had to admit, he’d asked an important question. “They’re both important. The internet gives me a much broader reach, but the personal interaction is crucial. It makes people feel personally involved, makes them feel like they themselves can actually do something.”
“What’s your measure of success?”
Her brow furrowed. “Action taken?”
“Does that mean the compromise you mentioned or protests organized?”
He was making her think about things she hadn’t in a while. And she found, to her surprise, she liked it. “Protests have their place. Sometimes they are the only thing that will catch the attention of those ignoring the problem. But those assaults you mentioned do not. We gain nothing by resorting to violence, except turning many who might support an acceptable compromise against us.”
“What about those who find no compromise acceptable? The ones who do that assaulting?”
“Those people,” she said flatly, “are living in a fantasy. And I suspect many of those who turn to violence do so because that’s what they wanted to do all along.”
“Well, well. Reality.” His brows had risen in surprise. She counted that as a win, since he’d kept his expression so detached throughout this conversation, as if he were merely curious.
And why would he be anything more than that? He’s just trying to pass the time. This is a job to him, nothing more. You’re a job to him, nothing more.
She didn’t like the fact that she had to continu
ally remind herself of that. It made her voice a little sharp as she retorted to his reality crack.
“I do live there.”
“Apparently. More than I expected.” He held up a hand before she could speak. “Yes, I admit, another assumption. Don’t shoot me.”
Suddenly she found herself fighting a smile. Her oddly tangled reaction to him aside, she had quite enjoyed this conversation. It was always good to have to state her beliefs, if only because it kept them clear in her own mind. It was too easy to slide into the surface stuff, thinking that making a post made a difference. It might lead to that, but in itself it meant nothing without that action taken.
Later, after they’d cleaned up, she walked over to peruse the large bookcase she’d seen. She saw on a lower shelf the wizard books they’d talked about earlier and looked over her shoulder at him. “Yours?”
“Started out as mine, but all of us read them.” His mouth quirked. “My mother had quite the battle to ration them out when the triplets all wanted to read them at once.”
She laughed. “How did she resolve it?”
He rolled his eyes. “She made me choose. Since they were mine first.”
“Oh, nice dodge!” She had the thought that she would probably quite like his mother.
“She thought so. I wasn’t so happy about it.”
“So what did you do?”
“I wanted to let them fight it out, but that didn’t go over well with Mom. Then I thought Bridgette because she was the fastest reader so the others would get them sooner, but the guys didn’t like that. So I went with a double coin flip.”
“Sounds fair. Who won?”
“Bridgette.”
She laughed. “So you got your second idea anyway.”
“Much to her glee.”
Still smiling, she turned back to the bookcase, scanning the shelves. Everything from nonfiction on one to a wide expanse of novels on the other. She saw a couple of titles that appeared to be Kansas history, but also a novel she’d been meaning to read for ages.
“No checkout required,” he said from close behind her. She imagined she could feel his breath against the nape of her neck and had to suppress a shiver of response.
“Thank you,” she said, hating that she sounded a bit unsteady. “I’d like something to read tonight.”
She didn’t hear him move, but when he spoke again, it seemed he’d backed up a step or two. And it was in that level, professional voice.
“When you go up, don’t close the door.”
“That seems...counterproductive.”
He shook his head. “I told you, they’ll have to get past me. And I need to hear, just in case somebody decides to try and scale that outside wall to your window.”
She blinked. “That wall is straight up-and-down.”
“Doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Or that a drone couldn’t blast out a window and get in.”
She gaped at him. “A drone? Really, Mr. Colton, don’t you think that’s—”
“A possibility. A distant one, admittedly, but we didn’t build our reputation on overlooking even distant possibilities.”
She stopped her retort before it was spoken. She’d agreed to this for her parents’ sake, and she would gain nothing by arguing every little point. So she merely said, “Fine,” and grabbed up the novel, thinking she would have trouble focusing on history at the moment. Then, too sweetly, she asked, “Do I have your permission to go upstairs?”
For an instant, he looked weary, and she regretted the jab. “Good night, Ms. Hart.”
She was five steps up when she looked back at him. “And when do you sleep, Mr. Colton?”
“Not your problem.”
“It is if you’re too tired to react.”
He crossed his arms and leaned one shoulder against the stairway wall, looking up at her. He was backlit by the light from the great room, and the near silhouette just emphasized how tall and broad shouldered he was. The man truly was built. She could only faintly see his face when he answered her. It didn’t matter—she remembered all too well exactly what he looked like with that chiseled jaw and those blue eyes.
“I’ve done this job for a decade, Ms. Hart. I haven’t lost anyone yet, and I don’t intend to start with you. Go to bed. And keep that door open.”
It was a measure of her state of mind that the thing that irritated her was that continuing Ms. Hart.
Chapter 13
He’d expected her to be restless, most people were the first night in a strange place. He hadn’t expected her to be up pacing the floor quite this much. She had at least done as he’d asked and left the door at the top of the stairs open. He appreciated that. But it didn’t answer the question of why she was still awake at nearly 2:00 a.m.
Maybe that was her normal schedule. Maybe she was always up until the wee hours. If so, she’d probably laughed to herself when he’d told her to go to bed before eleven o’clock.
Or maybe she was still missing her phone. Maybe she really was an addict.
Maybe she’s missing something else... Someone else.
And that was enough maybes. He got up out of the chair, an old not-too-comfortable recliner he’d pulled up close to the door of the downstairs bedroom—close so he could hear, and not-too-comfortable so he wouldn’t sleep too soundly to wake up at the slightest noise—and stepped out into the dark hallway. He slid the Dan Wesson TCP he’d had on the small table beside the chair into the clip-on holster on his belt. The maker of the tactical compact pistol was a subsidiary of a Kansas City company, and he liked to keep his business local when he could. Besides, even though the 1911 model handgun had its detractors, he liked the idea of the care that went into making only a thousand or so a year.
He grimaced inwardly at the feeble trick of thinking about his everyday carry weapon in an effort not to think about what had been on his mind. Which pretty well exemplified the merry-go-round his brain seemed to be on. He made himself focus. There hadn’t been anything in the file Eric had given them about a current boyfriend. A brief mention of an ex, a professor at some upscale northeast school, including the information that the breakup had apparently been mutual when the man had relocated to take a position at an even more upscale European school.
He remembered his first reaction upon reading that had been steeped in those assumptions he was trying to shake. Of course she’d dated someone like that. He’d studied the photograph of the man more out of curiosity than anything. He looked younger than he was—nearly two decades older than Ashley—with curly hair and big-rimmed glasses. He had that look Ty had always associated with the type, almost soft features and that air of superiority that seemed inbred. Assumptions again.
His second reaction—which should have been the first—was to check that they’d confirmed the man was where he said he was, and had been in the nearly a year since the split. Not that things couldn’t easily be arranged from halfway around the globe, but there were no signs. There had been a few contacts between them at first, but that had faded away after about three months. And the thorough report indicated the man was now semi-attached to some distant connection to a royal family from somewhere.
But his reaction now, upon remembering that file, was different. Now he found it somehow significant that she’d chosen to stay here rather than follow the guy. He wondered if it was a sign of her love for her home or not enough love for the man.
His second thought, as he stood there listening to her moving around, was to wonder how on earth she’d managed to stay, if the Elite report was accurate—and they were almost never wrong—unattached for nearly a year. She was smart, beautiful, rich and... He fought against letting the word sound even in his mind, but it was already there. Again. Passionate.
He had about as much luck as he’d had the first time it had popped, utterly unwelcome, into his head stopping himself from wondering if th
at passion for her causes spilled over into her personal life.
Into her sex life. Because, surely, she had one.
He heard the creak of the third step. The one that had never been fixed, because he’d insisted it remain as noisy as possible. The family knew to avoid it if they wanted stealth, but for his purposes, it served as a makeshift alarm. His father had grumbled, but then he’d never liked the idea of using the place as a safe house, anyway. His mother had told Ty to ignore him, that the real problem was still that Ty had chosen not to go into the family business. Fitzpatrick Colton had been stunned that none of his children had made the choice he’d assumed they all would. And, of course, it never occurred to him that the reason why was his own lack of interest in them in any other way.
He dragged his mind off that well-worn path. He waited, not wanting to startle her while she was negotiating the stairs in the dark. But when she took the last step, he spoke.
“Need something, Ms. Hart?”
He heard her smothered gasp, saw her shadow spin around toward him.
“God, you startled me!”
“Why I waited until you were off the steps,” he pointed out.
“Oh.” He heard her take a deep breath, as if to regain what he’d startled out of her. “Thank you. I think.”
He reached for the switch beside his door and flipped it. Light flooded the hallway. She squinted at the sudden flare. And then her eyes widened again, and she was staring at him so stunned that he looked at himself, wondering if he’d inadvertently grabbed a guest’s left-behind T-shirt with a rude graphic without realizing it, something that might offend her. But it was, as he’d thought, his old University of Kansas shirt with the bright blue Jayhawk character on it. It was a bit small after years of washing, but there was nothing on it to make her stare like that.
Maybe it’s too flyover for her. If it were Yale or Harvard, she’d be smiling, not gaping at me.
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