A Cop's Promise

by Sharon Hartley

  Damn the man! When Miles Fortune had first contacted Chaz about providing security for his daughter, he’d described Savannah as the studious sort, who rarely took her nose out of a book. According to him, she had a very limited social life and made a point of avoiding men entirely. She’d be easy to keep an eye on, Miles had told him.

  Hell, the man was either blind or knew very little about his own child, Chaz thought with a heavy dose of frustration. Keeping his eyes on Savannah Fortune was going to be easy. It was keeping his hands off her for the next few weeks that was going to pose the problem.

  Chaz had assumed he was going to be guarding a meek young woman, whose idea of an exciting evening was to watch an educational channel on TV. This young beauty looked as though she’d be very much at home on the dance floor and in the arms of a very attentive man.

  Trying not to dwell on that image, he peered across the narrow console to see she was leaning slightly forward, peering through the windshield at the entrance of the apartment. The movement caused a long curtain of smooth brown hair to slip forward and partially hide her face. Chaz wanted to reach over and tuck the silky strands behind her ear. Not because he needed to see her lovely features. No, the image of her face was already burned into his brain. He simply wanted to touch her and discover for himself if she felt as soft and womanly as she actually looked.

  “That’s the correct number,” she stated happily. “And the outside certainly looks pretty.”

  Chaz pulled his gaze away from her long enough to study the entrance to the redbrick apartment. A dark green door with a brass knocker was shaded by the overhang of a square concrete porch. On one corner, a huge planter spilled over with red and pink geraniums.

  The apartment was definitely not typical budget-friendly housing, he decided. It was for the elite class and more like a fancy townhouse than an apartment. But then, he’d not expected anything less from a Fortune.

  “I’d say it appears to be exceptionally nice. Did you rent it sight unseen?”

  She nodded. “Live Oak Lane is supposed to be one of the best gated communities in Austin and I studied photos on their website before I signed the lease. But sometimes pics can be doctored. I’m hoping that’s not the case when I see the inside of the apartment.” She unlatched her seat belt and pulled the strap of an expensive leather handbag over her shoulder. “If you’ll be kind enough to help me get my bags to the door, I’ll let you be on your way.”

  “My pleasure,” he murmured.

  After pushing a button to release the trunk, he skirted the hood to help her out of the car. When she placed her little hand in his, Chaz was instantly swamped with all sorts of protective feelings. Most of which had nothing to do with his job.

  Once she was standing next to him on the concrete drive, she looked up at him and smiled and though he was cursing at himself to step back and wedge a respectable amount of distance between them, all he could do was hold on to her fingers and stare into her hazel eyes. Green, blue or brown, he wasn’t sure which color was dominant, but he was quite certain he’d never seen anything so sparkly or full of life.

  “Thank you, Chaz.”

  “You’re entirely welcome, Miss Fortune.”

  Clearing his throat, he forced himself to drop her hand and turn to the task of lifting her bags from the trunk. As soon as he had them on the ground, she grabbed up a floral tote and a midsized suitcase with wheels.

  “I can manage these two,” she said and headed to the entrance of the apartment.

  As Chaz followed with two bags stuffed under each arm, he glanced furtively around the apartment complex. There were five tenants to the right of Savannah’s flat, four to the left and no second floors to any of them. At least that was a plus for security, he thought. But the beautiful landscaping separating the lawns of each apartment could create a nightmare if anyone decided to hide behind the giant blooming oleanders or bushes of Texas sage.

  When he reached the door, Savannah was already digging through her handbag for the key.

  “Just put them anywhere,” she told him. “I’ll get them inside.”

  He set the bags down and took a deep breath. His time had run out, he decided. There was no more delaying the inevitable.

  “Uh—Miss Fortune, I think—”

  Before he could push the remaining words past his lips, she smiled and offered him her hand in a gesture of farewell.

  “I know what you’re going to say. It was nice meeting this way.”

  “It couldn’t have been nicer,” he agreed, while thinking he could stand here holding on to her hand for hours and never get tired of looking at her plush lips, or short little nose, or those luminous eyes fringed by the longest lashes he’d ever seen.

  “Perhaps I’ll see you around campus sometime,” she said. “But then, I suppose you’re always busy carting people to and fro.”

  He tried not to wince at the deduction he’d allowed her to make of him. “Actually, Miss Fortune, you’re going to be seeing quite a bit of me.”

  Her eyes suddenly wary, she purposely pulled her hand from his. “Oh? I don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have explained the moment I introduced myself at the airport. But I...thought it might be nicer if the two of us got to know each other a bit before I sprang the situation on you.”

  She was shaking her head now and Chaz saw a look of confusion and something close to fear fill her eyes.

  “Situation? What are you talking about?”

  “My name is Chaz Mendoza, but the university didn’t send me to collect you at the airport. Your father did.”

  She took a step backward. “Excuse me?”

  “Your father is Miles Fortune of Fortune Investments in New Orleans, right?”

  Although her nod was an affirmative, her eyes were glazed with shock. “Yes, he is my father. But why—”

  Before she could question him further, he said, “He’s hired me as your bodyguard, Miss Fortune.”

  She gasped with disbelief. “Bodyguard! You must be joking!”

  “Hardly. I don’t joke about providing security. From what Mr. Fortune tells me, you could be putting yourself in quite a bit of danger. My job is to see that danger doesn’t get anywhere near you.”

  * * *

  So this was why her father hadn’t spoken to her before she’d departed New Orleans, she thought. He’d believed he’d taken control of the situation by hiring her a bodyguard.

  “This is incredible! I can’t believe my father would go so far as to—” Her gaze swept over him as though she were seeing him for the first time today and then her head began to swing back and forth. “Hire a man to follow me around! It won’t work. It simply won’t work. As of this moment, you can consider yourself relieved of your duties.”

  During the brief ride over from the airport, Chaz had made the mistake of thinking she was different from the wealthy people who often visited his family’s businesses, Mendoza Winery and La Viña restaurant. As they’d made conversation, she’d not come across as a spoiled little rich girl. But she was certainly coming across as one now.

  “Sorry. You didn’t hire me, Miss Fortune. So you can hardly terminate my services.”

  To underscore the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere, Chaz pulled a key from his jeans pocket and unlocked the door.

  Her mouth fell open. “Where did you get that key?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me you’re planning on staying here! In my apartment!”

  Smiling smugly, he pushed the door open and gestured for her to precede him into the building.

  “Don’t worry about how I got a key. And don’t be thinking you can run to the building manager and complain. Your father has already taken care of everything.”

  “That’s what he thinks! There’s no way in hell I’m going to share my living space with a man!”

  Her plush lips
flattened to an angry line as she brushed past him, but Chaz was paying very little attention to her outrage as she marched ahead of him. No, he was much more focused on the sweet flowery scent of her perfume and the evocative sway of her round little bottom.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Fortune. You’ll get used to me.”

  Looking over her shoulder, she glared at him. “Never!”

  Something about her ruffled feathers made her even more attractive than when she’d been making polite conversation and Chaz couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her.

  “Never say never, Miss Fortune. It might come back to haunt you.”

  She stomped out of the foyer and as Chaz followed after her, he realized his job as a bodyguard had just taken on a new meaning.

  Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker.

  The Austen Playbook

  by Lucy Parker

  Chapter One

  A year ago

  After twelve years of performing in the West End, Freddy Carlton had racked up her fair share of unfortunate experiences. Bitchy co-stars. Costume malfunctions. Having to stage-snog people with whom she’d had bad dates and even worse sex.

  She’d never forgotten her lines during a public performance.

  “Peanut, it wasn’t that bad.” Crossing her long legs, her older sister Sabrina pushed the basket of hot chips across the table. She’d been trying to stuff food down Freddy’s throat for the past half hour. The conviction that most ills could be assuaged with carbs ran deep in their family. “You covered really well. Barely a pause.”

  Freddy put down her sangria and rubbed her eyes. “Yes. It really saved the day when I quoted a Bruce Springsteen song in the middle of a play set in 1945.”

  In the instant under the lights when her mind had just...blanked, and her stomach had dropped to her shoes, some safety valve in her brain had stepped in and supplied a line. Unfortunately, it had fixed on the last song she’d been listening to in her dressing room to wind down before curtain.

  She supposed she should be thankful she hadn’t trotted out a line from the second-to-last song the radio had infiltrated into her subconscious. She might have responded to her soldier lover’s romantic declaration with an obscene rap.

  “Oh my God.” She pushed aside her glass and briefly dropped her forehead to the table. “Press night. I quoted Springsteen in front of a thousand people on press night.”

  She’d never really screwed up on stage before. Certainly never so bizarrely. She usually confined any major hiccups to rehearsal. She had a reputation for reliability. Affability. Just tell Freddy where to go, what to do, who to be, and she’ll do it. She’d even throw in a smile.

  Generally, the smile was genuine. She loved the stage, she loved her family, and she loved life. With the glaring exception of tonight’s debacle, her career was on the up. She ought to be skipping through the streets.

  Not lying awake at night, not partying too much in the extremely brief gaps between productions, and not feeling physically sick before auditions.

  “People may not even have noticed.” Sabrina pushed back a strand of wildly curling hair. They’d both inherited their father’s ringlets, but where Freddy was dark brown, like every Carlton in recent memory, Sabs had popped out a bright redhead. An early beginning on her lifelong tendency to stand out in the crowd. “And given how shite the actual dialogue was, I thought your improvisation was a massive improvement.”

  “Sabrina,” Akiko protested from the other side of the booth, her heavy silver jewellery glinting in the light as she shifted. Her makeup was equally sparkly, the smooth bob that curved under her chin was currently dyed cobalt blue, and she looked more like a rock star than an academic. She’d been Sabrina’s best mate for over two decades, and Freddy literally couldn’t remember life before her comforting presence. “I thought the script was very good.” Akiko ran her fingers over the tines of her fork. She always fiddled when she was blatantly lying.

  “Akiko, I love that you’re a nicer person than I am, but there’s politeness and there’s absolute bollocks.” Sabrina patted Freddy’s arm. “I’m assuming that—Jesus, I can’t even remember the name of tonight’s play, and it was only an hour ago. Seriously, kiddo, stop beating yourself up. A forgotten line is the least of that script’s worries.”

  “You’re not being very respectful about your late grandmother’s work,” Akiko said, and Sabrina wrinkled her nose.

  “I think enough people fawn over our infamous granny, don’t you? Dad’s one step away from erecting a ten-foot solid-gold statue of her on his balcony. And based on the script tonight, I’m baffled by the accolades. The ‘greatest British playwright of the twentieth century’? What, were the only other plays between 1900 and 1999 written by the typewriting monkey at the zoo?”

  “The play I stuttered my way through tonight is Masquerade.” Freddy took a chip from the bowl Sabrina was waving in front of her again and bit it in half. They were venturing into territory that made boulders appear in her stomach, so she might as well pile some greasy spuds on top. “It’s one of the earliest Henrietta Carlton scripts.”

  Their grandmother had written Masquerade at the age of twenty, several years before she’d hit the big time as both a playwright and an actor.

  “Her writing inexperience shows in Masquerade. Hugely. It’s nothing like The Velvet Room.” The script that had catapulted Henrietta into the history books. “Which I assume you’ve still never read.” Freddy swallowed down another chip with a mouthful of sangria. The director of Masquerade wanted his cast to follow a healthy diet during the run. Nailing it.

  “You should read it.” Akiko swirled the melting ice in her own drink. “I’m not that keen on just paging through a script like it’s a novel, but The Velvet Room is so poignant you forget you’re reading stage directions. Your grandmother grew into a cracker of a writer.”

  Sabrina lifted finely threaded brows. “All that, and a brilliant actress, too. Almost seems too much talent for one person, doesn’t it?” She tweaked one of Freddy’s fluffing curls. “Thank God our little Frederica came along to keep the end up for this generation. Four centuries of thespians in the family, with X-factor spilling out of their Shakespearean ruffs, and it almost ended with—”

  “A very talented journalist,” Akiko said loyally.

  “Some drunk ginger floozy from the telly?” Freddy suggested at the same time, in a tongue-in-cheek attempt to divert the stream of the conversation.

  Sabrina lifted her nose. “Excuse me, baby sister. I am perfectly sober. I can hold a cocktail.”

  “You can hold about six in each hand at the TV Awards every year.”

  “Entirely different situation.” Sabrina grinned. “Despite that piece of cheek, you wee shite, and even with a spot of Springsteen thrown in, I’m incredibly proud of what you can do. And I’ll even bone up on The Velvet Room, so I’m all set for your star turn in the West End revival next year.”

  Freddy felt her smile fade from the inside out. Her heart gave a hard thump of trepidation and shrivelled, and the shadow probably spread to her face. “There’s no guarantee I’ll get a role in it.”

  “Of course you will,” Sabrina said, and added with sisterly affection and zero tact, “Talent aside, you’re Henrietta’s granddaughter. Think of the marketing opportunities. Dad’s always got his eye on his investments, and this’ll be a triple coup. A performance royalty from the theatre, commission from your salary, and all the media appearances he’ll be able to milk out of you appearing in Grandma’s tour de force.” Her vivacious features slipped into that barbed wall of sarcasm that usually emerged when they were discussing their father. “Thanks to the offspring who isn’t a massive disappointment, Scrooge McDuck can pour another bucket of gold coins into that vault of millions he’s hoarding.”

  Fredd
y felt a tinge of colour rush into her cheeks, and that knot in her chest twisted. She put down the rest of the chip in her hand.

  Akiko folded her hands on the tabletop, studying Freddy with uncomfortably shrewd dark eyes. “You do want a role in The Velvet Room, Freddy?”

  “What, Henrietta’s masterpiece? The Carltons’ biggest claim to fame?” Sabrina waved at someone who’d just come into the pub. “Freddy’s always banged on about what a good script it is. She’s almost as bad as Dad on that subject. Although at least she likes it for its artistic merit, not the rewards it generates.”

  Akiko was still looking at Freddy.

  She weighed her words. “It’s an excellent play. It really does deserve all the accolades.” She hadn’t actually answered Akiko’s question, and from her expression, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Freddy appreciated the genius of The Velvet Room—but did she really, honestly, want to act in it?

  No. She could say it silently, privately, in her own mind, but so far she hadn’t had the balls to say it aloud, even just to Sabrina.

  After a moment, she lifted a shoulder. “The most likely director for the new season of The Velvet Room was in the audience tonight. This performance wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, was it?”

  “You were probably just nervous,” Sabrina said, in a tone that suggested Freddy was eleven years old again and had just embarked on her first debut.

  Incidentally, when she had debuted at eleven, she’d remembered every one of her lines.

  “I’m sure press night is always terrifying,” Akiko said.

  Yes, it was, even after all this time. Doubly so when her family were in the front rows, as well as the dozens of critics, including the dude who’d called her “duller than a pair of safety scissors” in the Westminster Post.

  And the scrutiny would have been high tonight, because of the family connection. By choice, Freddy wouldn’t audition for any adaptations of her grandmother’s works. For several reasons, one being that enough of her career had been founded on nepotism. She hadn’t minded exploiting the connection in her teens, but unearned glory wore thin very quickly. With Carltons populating the theatres of London since the days of quills, bustles, and bubonic plague, she didn’t need to provide extra fodder for the critics to discuss the many and varied ways she had built a career on other people’s achievements.