by Virna DePaul
But no, he’s told her his men had left by the time they’d had their date at the casino. Only how could she believe him?
Dropping into an armchair, Kat dropped her face into her hands.
That was the problem in a nutshell. No matter how much Luke claimed to care for her and want her forgiveness, there was no way to be sure when he was lying to her and when he wasn’t. Deception came so easily to him.
But wasn’t that part of protecting someone? Doing whatever it took to keep that person safe? She was safe now, and thanks to her running away and failing to check in with Charlie, she wouldn’t have known that but for Luke. Maybe he’d just been doing the hard stuff while she’d been burying her head in the sand.
With a frustrated groan, Kat shot out of her seat. God, she was driving herself crazy trying to make sense of all this. Maybe she should talk to Luke before he left. Or maybe not.
Spotting her purse, she grabbed it along with her car keys. She needed to get some space from him before her feelings ran over her good sense and she went over there. She locked up the cabin and drove to the same casino they’d visited just days earlier. She walked into the loud, busy place and looked around. It just made her miss Luke even more.
She tried her hand at the blackjack tables, but her little wins weren’t fun without Luke there to cheer her on. She left the tables and was wandering the floor when she sensed movement beside her.
“Hello there.”
The man beside her had a heavy accent. With dark skin and black hair, he was dressed in an expensive suit. He was smiling and his white teeth were perfectly straight.
“Hi,” she said, cautiously.
“You’re Kat Bailey, aren’t you?” She hesitated, and he held out his hand. “My name is Hussein Nayeri. I recognized you from the papers.”
Great.
He looked behind and around her. “Your bodyguard, this Indigo fellow, is good. I don’t even see him.”
“I don’t have a bodyguard. Luke was just a…friend who happens to be a bodyguard.” Is he my friend? Friends don’t lie to each other. Ben would never lie.
“Oh. Well, I don’t want to sound like an opportunist, but if he’s not busy with you, I wonder if he might be interested in taking another job. My son Omar is turning twenty-one and his party is going to be held here at the resort.”
Kat raised an eyebrow. “Why does he need a bodyguard?”
Hussein chuckled. “Omar recently made People Magazine’s Top 20 list of Richest Eligible Bachelors Under Twenty. My wife and I have been shocked at the sheer number of young women here at the resort vying for his attentions. They clamor to be near him. They think they know him because of what they’ve read about him in the papers. I’ve not seen anything like it before. He’s even run across a few with jealous boyfriends. Omar’s a good kid and I worry that someone is going to do something stupid and jeopardize his safety. Oh, here he is now.”
Kat looked up. As soon as she saw Omar, she understood his father’s concern, and why he’d been featured in People Magazine. He had the same dark skin as his father, but his eyes were a pale blue. His body was also a thing of beauty.
“Omar, this is Kat Bailey. Ms. Bailey, my son, Omar.”
The boy smiled and that made him even more beautiful. He gave Kat a little bow. “I’m honored to meet you, Miss Bailey. I’ve seen your movies. You’re an amazing actress.”
Kat smiled and offered him her hand to shake. Instead, he kissed the back of it. “Thank you, Omar. I’m pleased to meet you too. Call me Kat, please.”
There was a commotion at the nearby bar and Omar seemed to suddenly be on alert. He glanced over quickly and then behind him before turning back and offering her another smile. This one looked slightly anxious.
“Your father says you’ve had a hard time here because of some publicity you’ve had recently. I can identify with that. I’ve had some of the same issues.”
He nodded, his expressive face showing frustration. “Yes, it’s incredibly hard to deal with. All I wanted was to have a pleasant vacation with my family and celebrate my birthday. I despise the idea of having someone follow me around to make sure that I’m safe, but it’s strange how people presume they know you and just come right up to you without the slightest bit of invitation.”
“Omar,” his father said. “I know how reluctant you are about the bodyguard. But having someone else worrying about your safety will leave you the freedom to be yourself, your true self, not the one the public expects you to be.”
The man’s words ran through Kat’s head, echoing what Luke had told her several times. It was only now that Luke was gone that the words rang true. She’d spent so much time worrying about things since she’d started getting the threats, but when Luke was around, she hadn’t worried about a thing. Because she’d felt safe with him. Safe to be herself.
She wasn’t ready to forgive and forget what he’d done, but what if they could work things out? Wasn’t what they’d shared worth taking a chance on?
“It was so nice meeting you both,” she told Omar and Hussein. “I have to be going. Omar, I hope you have a great birthday. Mr. Nayeri, if you have a card or something, I’ll give it to Luke for you.”
He pulled a business card out of his jacket and gave it to her. “Thank you, Ms. Bailey. It was a pleasure.”
Omar told her good-bye and thanked her for the birthday wishes. When she got back to the cabins, she went to Luke’s first. His car was gone, which made her heart clench, but just in case, she tapped on the door.
She waited for quite some time before tapping again, louder this time. When he didn’t answer, she tested the handle. The door was locked. Maybe he’d just gone for a drive or to run an errand? But the curtain in the front window was open. Luke never left the curtains open when he went out. Never.
Her eyes smarted with tears. He was gone then.
She glanced around, making sure nobody would see her then she peeked in through the window. The cabin looked just like hers did the day she’d moved in. It was furnished and spotlessly clean, but none of Luke’s personal things were left inside. The photos from his mantle were gone. So was Bella. He’d actually left, and without putting up much of a fight.
What choice had she left him? He had told her he was leaving, and she certainly hadn’t given him any reason to stay. Or to believe she might want to talk to him before he left.
She let herself into her cabin and locked the door behind her. When she turned back around, her eyes fell on the tablet that he’d left with her.
He’d been able to watch her from that thing. It probably recorded what was on the screen for playback. If so, maybe she could figure out when he’d left.
If he didn’t have much of a head start it was equally possible she might be able to catch up to him, to ask that he sit and talk with her.
She tapped a finger against her lips. Wouldn’t it be better to just call him?
She took her phone out of her purse and stared at it.
She’d never asked him for his number. Charlie had it since he’d set up that initial meeting, but she hesitated involving Charlie in this debacle any more than necessary. She could always wait a few days and call him at his business number but…
Returning to where the tablet lay on the dining room table, she tapped it awake. The program transmitting images from the cameras outside was still running. She stood there for a moment, once again overwhelmed by the knowledge that Luke and his men had watched her without her knowing.
He did it to protect me. But does that make it right? Do I care if it was right or not? In the grand scheme of things, what’s more important? That he cared enough to watch over me, or how he went about it?
All hard questions.
But only one irrefutable answer. No matter his intentions, what Luke had done had been wrong. He’d admitted it himself.
The hardest question of all was whether she could forgive him.
And she was surprised how easily that answer came to her, as w
ell.
Yes, she could forgive Luke. He’d told her to trust her instincts, and she was going to. Despite all the horrible thoughts she’d had about him, he hadn’t been driven by a desire for fame and he wouldn’t have bragged to his men about having sex with her. He’d done what he’d thought was right. Bottom line, he was a good man. Granted, she didn’t know much more about him than that, but she wanted the chance to get to know him better. Wanted to see if the bodyguard was really at heart the same man she’d spent time with here in these beautiful mountains. Wanted to find out if they could have a future together, even when she wasn’t quite sure what that future would look like.
But first, she needed to find Luke and tell him.
She fiddled around with the tablet, trying to figure out how to get the footage to roll back to show her when he left.
She was concentrating so hard that she almost didn’t see the two figures walking up to her cabin. The porch light illuminated a young couple, a man and a woman.
Confused by their appearance near her cabin, she leaned closer to the screen. They were dressed like they were headed for one hell of a party or a catwalk. Were they lost? Had they had car trouble? Were they staying at the resort?
They walked up to her door and the woman knocked softly.
Thinking they were probably just lost, Kat started towards the door. At the last minute, however, her gut screamed that something was wrong and she stopped, returned to the tablet, and studied the screen even more intently. Something about the look on the woman’s face made her uneasy.
She looked angry. Why would a woman she’d never met before be angry with her? She’d heard of burglars and home invaders using young women or kids to gain entrance to the house. Something about it didn’t sit right with her. Maybe they’d followed her home from the casino. Instead of answering the door, she grabbed her phone and the tablet, then searched the room for her purse, which held her pepper spray. Where was it?
On the couch. She took a step toward it when the people standing outside began banging on the door and shouting for her to let them in. Startled, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door and called 911. Before the operator answered, she not only heard the intruders trying to kick down her door, she saw them trying to do it on the tablet.
What the hell?
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My name is Kat Bailey and someone is trying to break into my cabin. I can see them on the porch with a security monitor. It’s a man and a woman. They’re kicking the door.”
The soothing voice on the other side of the line said, “Okay, Ms. Bailey, can I have the address and cabin number?”
Kat gave her the information.
“The unit is about ten minutes away. Do you see a weapon?”
Kat peeked back at the monitor. “No.”
“Okay then, stay inside and keep the doors locked. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”
Kat watched the monitor as the woman picked up a rock and threw it through the front window. The sound of the glass shattering was very loud in the otherwise silent cabin. Fear coiled into her belly. The man knocked the remaining glass off the frame with a gloved hand then began pulling himself through.
“They’ve broken the front window with a rock. They’re coming into my cabin.”
“Do you want me to stay on the line, Ms. Bailey?”
“No,” Kat said, not wanting to be tied up on the phone if she needed to act. “Just ask them to hurry.” She hung up the phone and watched as the woman clambered through the broken window.
She couldn’t see them once they were inside the cabin. Just as he’d said, Luke hadn’t planted cameras inside her cabin—of course, at that moment she couldn’t help wishing that he had—but she could hear them moving around inside.
She was torn over whether to wait for the police or to confront them. Her practical side urged caution, just to wait it out and hope they couldn’t get into the locked bathroom, but the other side of her—that stubbornly independent side of her—urged her to do something. To act, rather than be controlled by her fear.
The bathroom’s door handle rattled and twisted. Kat stared at it, her eyes growing wider with each second. They were obviously looking for her. They weren’t there to steal something, otherwise they would have taken her purse or her jewelry off the dresser. They weren’t looking for money or valuables.
They were looking for her.
When they began kicking at the door, Kat’s panic escalated and she started to hyperventilate. The world around her grew fuzzy. She wanted to curl into a ball and cry, she was so scared, but she couldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
She forced herself to focus on the tablet in her hands. The police would be here soon, thanks to Luke. Setting the tablet aside, she scanned the room for a weapon.
Nothing but shampoo, perfume, and the showerhead. Her toothbrush was too blunt to be of any use and—
The bathroom door shook as the man and woman beat at it. Unlike the front door, the bathroom door was thin. Hollow. The more furiously they kicked against the door, the more certain Kat grew that it wasn’t going to hold. She took a deep breath and braced herself.
A few more powerful kicks and the door flew open. To her surprise, only the man stood in front of her, a jeering smile on his face. Kat forced herself to stand tall. She’d told Luke she could take care of herself, and she’d be damned if she let these people reduce her to cowering in fear in the bathroom.
“What the hell are you doing in my cabin? Get out!”
The man’s features twisted with an almost maniacal rage. “You fucked Ray Hamilton, and now you’re fucking Omar Nayeri? Is there anyone you haven’t fucked? Leave some for the rest of us, Kat Bailey, you bitch.”
Are you freaking kidding me? Who I have or have not fucked is none of your business! Kat wanted to scream the words. Instead, she tried to keep her voice calm. “The police will be here soon. You need to leave.”
Just then, the man’s companion stepped into the doorway. The long gleam of the blade in her hand made Kat’s anger pale and her fear spiral.
The man turned and saw the knife, his face going white. “Carla, what the hell are you doing with a knife?” Clearly, he had come along for the ride but hadn’t counted on his friend being completely off her rocker. He’d thought they’d scare the big movie star. Cuss her out. Call her some names. That kind of thing. This was way past what he’d signed up for and it showed in his voice and horrified expression.
Carla ignored her friend, keeping her eyes trained on Kat’s face. “I had Omar right where I wanted him until you showed up.”
Kat tried not to show any fear. It was harder to do than she imagined. She summoned up all of her acting skills and stared Carla down. She held her head up high, hoping that show of bravado would help save her.
“I didn’t show up, Carla,” she said softly. “We just happened to be at the same place at the same time. I am not interested in him, and he is most certainly not interested in me. You’ve got this wrong.”
“The hell you say.” Carla’s eyes were wide and dilated. Was she high? Most likely. She was also irrationally angry. She truly believed that Kat had taken away her chance to date Omar.
Carla advanced, the knife glittering even more wickedly now. Kat felt sweat break out on her forehead and upper lip. The calm and mild approach was not working. How long had it been since she’d called the cops? It felt like an eternity but she knew it had only been minutes. They might not arrive in time to save her life. She would have to protect herself.
“Get out!” Kat yelled, her ability to remain calm now in shreds.
Carla stabbed the air. The tip of the knife nearly hit Kat’s arm. She jerked back just in time.
“Carla! Stop!” her friend shouted. “This is nuts! You said we were just going to make her sorry she messed with Omar!”
Carla didn’t look away from Kat. “What better way to make her sorry than a nice fat scar across that pretty fac
e of hers…”
“Carla, no!” The man’s shout echoed through the small space.
Carla slashed the knife through the air again and despite trying to stand her ground, Kat flinched. I just have to fend her off a little while longer, she thought desperately. Just a little while longer.
There was no place to go. The bathroom would be a trap she couldn’t escape. The door hung on its hinges and would do nothing to keep Carla out. Kat had no choice but to stand her ground and face an attack head-on.
Kat and Carla kept their eyes locked on each other for several seconds before the other woman suddenly lunged. Kat stepped to the side, using both of her hands to push on Carla’s back so she was propelled through the bathroom and into the shower doors. She grunted and dropped the knife. Kat dove for it at the same time Carla did.
She’d just touched the knife handle when Carla tackled her, and they both wrestled for it. It skittered across the floor, sliding beneath the tiny protruding edge of the cabinet below the sink. Kat could see just the tip of the handle and she strained to reach it.
Carla grabbed her and flipped her over, fists flying. Kat managed to avoid most of the blows but a few landed on her ribs and chest. Desperately, Kat arched her body violently enough to flip Carla over. Grabbing the other woman’s hair, Kat slammed her head down hard on the bathroom tile, hoping to knock her out.
No such luck. Carla was beyond enraged, she was insane, and that made her brutally strong. She rolled over on top of Kat, her hands wrapping around Kat’s throat. Her nails clawed into tender skin while Carla’s cohort screamed in the background.
As Carla’s fingers tightened, Kat struggled for air. She had to do something. Her life would end if she didn’t get Carla off her, and fast.