Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  I’d done a lot of cases in which discretion was important, but never one quite like this. And never had I handled a case that had a personal connection to it—no matter how tenuous. This was going to be interesting on a number of levels.

  But I was a professional. I wasn’t going to let Ox down.

  The car was waiting at the front of my building. I jumped in the back, stretching out on the leather seats as the driver pulled away from the curb and started the trek downtown to Ms. Rae’s luxury hotel. I pictured her in that maid’s uniform, her pretty eyes covered by those expensive sunglasses—which should have clued me in immediately that she wasn’t just a maid!—her curly hair cascading down her back. The damn dress had fit her badly, too snug in all the wrong places and baggy in others. But it sure showed off her curves in a way that made that man inside me stand up and pay attention. She definitely had a movie star’s body! And when she took off those sunglasses and set those perfect blue eyes on me, I was nearly lost.

  A woman shouldn’t be allowed to be that beautiful. So damn distracting!

  “Going to a party tonight, pal?” the driver asked.

  I sat up, nodding as I peered at him through the opening in the partition between the front and back of the car. “Fundraiser.”

  “I hear we’re picking up some celebrity. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wasn’t sure. You seem somewhat familiar, but a lot of guys have a face like that.”

  “Not me. I’m just an ordinary Joe.”

  “Then who are we picking up, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Eva Rae.”

  “No shit?” The chauffeur looked at me in the rearview. “The model, Eva Rae? The one who did all those Sports Illustrated bikini pics last year? The one who was the centerpiece of that Victoria’s Secret campaign a few years ago?”

  “The one and only,” I said, remembering myself some of those photos I’d looked up on the computer. “She’s in town for a photo shoot.”

  “No kidding! My boys will never believe that I drove Eva Rae around!”

  I smiled, wondering what my military buddies would think of my job now if they knew who I was hanging out with tonight.

  The car approached the circle driveway of the hotel a few minutes later. The doorman opened my door, standing aside while I dragged myself out. The lobby was quiet, only a few guests milling around at this dinner hour. The bar, however, seemed almost overflowing and the sounds from the restaurant suggested a full dining room.

  I boarded the elevator with a young couple who’d just arrived, bags on wheels dragging behind them. They were gone at the fifth floor, but I continued up to the top floor where Ms. Rae’s suite was located. As I approached the door, I became aware of two men loitering around outside. One was sitting in a straight-backed chair, his head lolled back as he took a bit of a nap. The other was at the other end of the hall, staring off into the fading sunlight through a narrow window.

  I walked boldly right up to the door. I’d already knocked before the window gazer noticed me.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “I’ve come to pick Ms. Rae up for the fundraiser.”

  “No one said anything to us about no date!” The guy charged toward me, slapping his buddy on the shoulder as he passed him. “You can’t go in without us checking you out first.”

  “Is that right?”

  The man actually seemed a little uncertain. He cleared his throat, kicking at his buddy to get up and pay attention. Before he could formulate a response to my question, the door opened, and a pretty girl with blue hair stuck her head out.

  “What’s going on, Harry?”

  “This guy claims he has an appointment with Ms. Rae.”

  The blue-haired girl looked at me, raking her eyes up and down the length of me before a slow smile touched her full, bright-red lips. “You must be Akker Mills.”

  “That would be me.”

  “He is expected, dumbass,” the girl told the man she’d called Harry. “Remember? Eva told you so hours ago.”

  “No, she said—”

  The girl reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me into the hotel room. I nearly tripped getting past Harry but managed to get inside just before Miss Blue Hair slammed the door.

  “Sorry about that,” she said with a flip of that short bob of colorful hair. “Harry and Lloyd are kind of idiots.”

  “Kind of?”

  She giggled as she crossed the room to a hidden minibar inside a cabinet on the far side of the massive suite. “Want something to drink? We have a couple bottles of champagne in here.”

  “No, I’m good.”

  She nodded, turning to regard me once again. Her eyes seemed to touch me, brushing over my clothes and skin like a lover’s caress. I crossed my arms over my chest, not embarrassed, really, but caught off guard.

  “She told me about Brock, but words can never do justice to eye candy, can they?”

  “I’m not Brock.”

  “Oh, I know. She explained it all to me, how Brock had this twin and she ran into you today while she was sneaking out to do a little walking down memory lane. I told her not to do that on her own. The last time she snuck out of a hotel, she ran straight into a group of fans and was nearly torn to pieces by their need to touch. I don’t understand what drives people, this need to touch someone famous, but they always seem to need to put their hands—”

  “Femi, leave the poor man alone!”

  I looked up, my breath torn from my lungs as I watched Eva Rae come to the head of the stairs. She was wearing a white, sleeveless gown with some sort of knot above her right breast. It had a simple skirt that flowed all the way to the toes of her shoes, a simple train dragging against the carpet behind her. The way it hugged her body, revealing the curves she’d so thoughtlessly hid in that ill-fitting maid’s uniform earlier, made my chest puff up a little at the thought of walking into this boring, stuffy fundraiser tonight with her on my arm.

  “Sorry,” Femi muttered, throwing herself on the couch like she saw this magnificent view every day. “I was just telling him about that day you snuck out and your fans caught up to you, and they got you in that alley and—”

  “Femi, really! He doesn’t want to know about that.”

  “How do you know? Did you ask him?”

  Eva shook her head, throwing me an exhausted smile as she crossed the room and snatched a bottle of expensive champagne from the minibar. I watched as she poured a glass, downing it like it was nothing more than juice.

  “She doesn’t like these things,” Femi informed me. “She calls them dog and pony shows, impromptu performances that no one ever gives her a script for. She doesn’t like public speaking—go figure!—and she really hates having to answer questions on a red carpet. She’s always afraid she’ll say something stupid.”

  “Femi!”

  “What? It’s true.”

  “Yes, but you don’t have to tell my life story to everyone who walks through the door!”

  “He’s an old friend of yours, isn’t he? Isn’t that what you said? He would know some of this if that were true!”

  “Don’t you have a room of your own to get off to?”

  “If not for me, he wouldn’t have gotten in here. Harry was trying to pretend he really is a bodyguard. If not for me, he’d still be out there arguing with him.”

  Eva glanced at me, her eyes moving for a long second over the length of me before she turned away, a slight blush touching her cheeks. “I’m sure he could have handled himself.”

  Eva poured a second glass, tossing it back too, before returning the bottle to the small fridge. Then she walked across the room to grab up a black wrap that she easily tossed over her shoulders and a black clutch.

  “Ready?”

  “When are you going to be back?” Femi demanded to know, like a child not happy Mommy was going out for the night.

  “Too late for you to be here when I g
et back. Be a good girl and go back to your room. We have a 7:00 a.m. call in the morning. I want you wide awake and ready to go, because you know I won’t be.”

  “Yes, boss!” Femi snapped a salute. Eva just ignored her.

  The two security guards didn’t bother us when we came out the door. One dropped a bow to Eva, and that was about it. No wonder the woman had hired us to protect her on this trip!

  “You always travel with those fools?”

  “Harry and Lloyd? Yeah. They’re my manager’s nephews, and he thinks they can do no wrong. They’ve been my bodyguards for five years now.”

  “And you’re still alive?”

  She smiled a smile that lit up her entire face. “Yeah, well, this isn’t the first time I’ve hired my own security separate from them. It’s just the first time I’ve kept it a secret from Danny.”

  “And the girl? Femi?”

  “She’s my makeup artist slash friend slash personal assistant. She tends to be a little talkative when she’s been drinking.”

  “How much did she drink tonight?”

  “Half a bottle of champagne.”

  My eyebrows rose. “That’s all it takes?”

  Eva shrugged. “Sometimes it doesn’t even take that much.”

  I laughed, and she joined in, briefly.

  The lobby was still fairly empty when we crossed it, the doorman holding open the front door for us. The car was still waiting, the chauffeur coming around quickly to open the back door for us himself. He nodded politely to Eva, all professional now that she was actually there, but I did notice that he’d left the glass partition between the sections of the car open. I also noted that Eva closed it with a light touch on the remote the moment she was settled on the leather seat.

  “Do you really have a fear of public speaking?” I asked as we hit the road.

  She glanced at me. “I don’t particularly like speaking to reporters. And I don’t like being unprepared for the kinds of questions they tend to ask.”

  “Then we’ll just have to avoid the reporters.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “You’re with me. Anything’s possible.”

  She snorted. “You sound like Brock when you say things like that.”

  She turned her head away, allowing her thick, curly ponytail of dirty-blond hair to fall over her shoulder, obscuring her face. I studied her a moment anyway, curiosity getting the better of me.

  “What happened between you and Brock? Why are you so angry with him?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know. Or maybe I shouldn’t be. Since he never bothered to tell me about you, he must not have bragged about me to you much either.”

  “He didn’t. But he had reasons for that.”

  “Oh? Other than the fact that he wasn’t as into me as I thought he was?”

  “Like I told you before, we had a falling-out in high school. We didn’t speak for nearly seven years.”

  She nodded, brushing at her cheek, but not moving that veil of hair. “Yeah, well, I thought we were… I don’t know. Maybe I was just too much of a romantic back then. But I really thought we were going to make it over the long haul, you know? That we had marriage and family in our future. Turned out he was just feeding me lies the whole time we were together.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Brock.”

  “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.” She did move her hair then, peeking at me with those amazing blue eyes—blue like the ocean. Perfect. “We were living together. He begged me to move in with him; for weeks he kept trying to convince me it was what he wanted. When I finally gave in, he seemed so happy!” She smiled at the memory, but the smile quickly turned sour. “A few weeks later, I went to Los Angeles with my dad for a job. While I was there, before the first job had even started, I was approached by the agency that wanted to represent me. They had all these jobs lined up for me already, and it was… hell, it was everything I’d been working toward! I called Brock, and he promised he would come to Los Angeles; he just had to finish the school term. He was a week from taking the finals for his second-year law school classes. So close to finishing, you know? But he wanted to come, said he’d find out if he could transfer, get his career started in Los Angeles; said that he wanted to be with me. We planned everything for days over the phone, talking three or four times a day.”

  She was wringing her hands, twisting them in her lap. As I listened, I realized I knew what she was talking about, at least part of it. Brock had reached out to me about the same time, just before he was to finish up his fourth semester at law school. I knew why he never took those finals, and I suspected it was the same reason she never saw him again.

  “One day, he didn’t answer the phone. I called over and over again, trying to get him to pick up. I even sent him texts and emails and everything I could think of to try to get ahold of him. For two weeks, there was absolutely nothing. No calls, no word. And then, one day, a note appeared in my email inbox. ‘Stop calling. It’s over.’ That’s all it said. A few weeks after that, all my stuff arrived at my new house, boxed up nicely, everything I left at the apartment. But, of course, he was careful not to mix any of his stuff in there. No note, either, nothing to explain what had happened. He was just… poof! Like he’d vanished.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It’s been eight years. You’d think I’d be over it, but I just can’t stop wondering what happened, what I did wrong, why he didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t you.”

  “What else could it have been?”

  I could have told her what I knew. I could have offered her a little sliver of truth, but it wasn’t my truth to tell. Instead, I gave her a lame shrug.

  “You should talk to him. He’ll be coming home at the end of the month.”

  “I won’t be here that long. Besides, if he wanted to explain himself to me, he would have done it years ago.”

  “Sometimes we can’t control our circumstances.”

  She made that little snorting sound again. “Yeah, well… I heard he left town not long after I did. A friend told me he quit school and moved to Dallas. Doesn’t sound like a man who didn’t have a plan, who didn’t know exactly what he was doing.”

  “He had his reasons.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  There was such hurt in her eyes, in her voice, that I wanted to explain what had happened to my brother eight years ago, the situation that had brought him back to me, but clearly destroyed this beautiful woman. But, again, it wasn’t my truth to tell.

  We’d already reached our destination, but the line of cars waiting to spew their occupants was nearly half a mile long. Remembering what she’d said about the reporters, I picked up the little phone that allowed me to speak confidentially to the driver.

  “Would you let us out up at the corner? We’ll walk from there.”

  Eva hesitated when I climbed out of the car, but she took my hand and followed as I led the way down a quiet block and around the side of the museum, slipping her inside a door that wasn’t used much by guests of these fancy parties.

  “How did you know this was here?” she asked as I slipped her wrap from her shoulders.

  “I had an interesting childhood.”

  I snatched up her hand again and led the way down a back hall to the main exhibit area where the party was already in full swing. Everyone who was anyone in San Antonio society—hell, in Texas society!—was there. The mayor and his wife were holding court over by the bar, the governor was talking to a group of young women, the angle at which he looked up at them from his wheelchair with a careful mask of interest—his true interest shining through in the few cracks—making me wonder if it wasn’t such a curse being handicapped, and the state senator who was credited with the abortion clinic mess that had dominated the news a few months back was happily dancing with a woman half his age in the center of the massive dance floor.

  I alwa
ys hated these things. I would forever hate these things.

  “Isn’t that your boss?”

  I nodded, watching Ox make nice with the daughter of Shane Carrington, one of the most influential businessmen in town. I wondered briefly if they had come together, but then Colton Samuels, Carrington’s second in command, moved up behind the young woman and slipped a drink into her hand, his own hand on the small of her back making it clear who—if she hadn’t come with him—she was going home with.

  “Aren’t you Eva Rae?”

  A couple of adolescent girls—no older than fifteen—came rushing toward us, both dressed in gowns that implied they were on the invitation list. I hadn’t realized there would be children at this thing but wasn’t terribly surprised. There was nothing the chair people of these charities wouldn’t do to appease their donors.

  “I am,” Eva said brightly.

  “Can I have your autograph?” one girl demanded, handing her a small napkin and a pen.

  “What’s your name?” Eva asked as she took the proffered napkin.

  “Lynn.”

  Eva politely scrawled out a nice message on the napkin, asking the other girl, “Do you want to be a model?”

  The other girl, smaller and less effusive than her friend/sister, looked at Eva with open awe upon being asked that question. “Me?” she asked with the same awe in her tone.

  “You have beautiful cheekbones.”

  The smaller girl blushed, tears filling her eyes. “Thank you!”

  “Just stating a fact.” Eva handed the taller girl her autograph, smiling politely at her before turning to the smaller girl. She touched her face lightly with the backs of her fingers. “Never let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Eva smiled as the girl ran away, calling for her mother. The other girl didn’t seem to have noticed that she’d been somewhat overlooked. She was clutching her autograph, holding it out for everyone who wanted—and many who didn’t want—to see it.