What the Lady Wants

by Nika Rhone

  “Much as I’d like that to be the case, we can’t count on it.” Not when Thea’s safety hinged on their response to the threat the stalker posed. They couldn’t assume anything other than that he was still out there, still focused on her, intent on somehow getting to her. Anything less was leaving her open to danger, and that was unacceptable.

  Whether they ever received another letter or not, they couldn’t lessen their guard. Not until the perp was identified and neutralized.

  “Did we get anything more on the analysis of the foreign substance on the last letter?”

  “Yeah, actually. It turns out it was honey.”

  “Honey? So, what, our guy’s a beekeeper?”

  “Or a baker, or a little old lady who likes honey in her tea, or…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. It doesn’t help us at all.” Doyle pinched the bridge of his nose. “Shit. We’re getting nowhere with this.”

  “There’s always one thing we can do.”

  Doyle knew exactly what he was going to suggest. “No.”

  “It might be the only way to draw him out.”

  “I said no, dammit. We are not using Thea as bait!” The very thought had his guts twisting into agonizing knots.

  “You wouldn’t be, not exactly.”

  “Not any way.”

  “Hear me out,” Red said.

  He didn’t want to, but Doyle gave him a terse nod. “Go out. Let the two of you be seen together. If he’s watching her, he’ll blow a gasket thinking she’s being unfaithful to him.” He grinned at his boss’s expression. “What, did you really think it was a secret for more than five minutes? We had a pool going on how long it would take her to finally wear you down. Besides which, you can’t keep that stupid moony look off your face whenever she’s within ten feet of you.”

  “Fuck you,” Doyle muttered, feeling the tips of his ears warm. “I damn well don’t moon.”

  “Like a goddamn schoolboy.” Still grinning, Red popped the last bite of muffin into his mouth.

  “Ah, hell.” Doyle stopped arguing. He probably did moon. God knew he’d caught himself staring off into space more than once when something triggered a memory of how Thea’s skin had felt gliding along his, or how her hair had smelled as he pressed his face into it as he thrust inside her, or how…

  He jerked his attention back to Red, who was all but laughing at him now. Which was as close as the older man would come to giving his stamp of approval.

  Clearing his throat, Doyle said, “I don’t like the idea of antagonizing him. It could be dangerous. He’s already nuts. Make him mad, and he could act out in violent and unpredictable ways.”

  “And if we’re expecting it, we can mitigate the danger.”

  “But not eliminate it.”

  “No.” Red conceded that with a sigh. “We can’t eliminate it. But is she any safer while we just wait for him to make his next move on his own?”

  No, she wasn’t. That didn’t mean that Doyle was comfortable putting her at potentially greater risk.

  “I’ll consider it.” It was all he would commit to. He’d have to think it through, weigh the pros and cons. And, most difficult of all, he’d have to take his personal feelings out of the equation. Because try as he might right now, his thoughts weren’t objective. And that wasn’t just bad. That was dangerous.

  “Everything’s in place for Saturday,” Red said, acknowledging that the discussion had been tabled for the moment. “We finally got everyone vetted by Secret Service, so we shouldn’t get any more grief from Rogers about anything.”

  Doyle restrained a grin. Interaction between his second and the head of Davenport’s security had been less than friendly from the start and grown even less so as the day of the party drew closer. Watching the gruff former SEAL deal with the snob from D.C. had become a source of great amusement to the entire security staff. Bets had been laid on how long Red would hold out before he gave up on being diplomatic and resorted to intimidating the jackass instead.

  “Why the hell did it take so long?” Doyle asked. “It should have been routine.”

  Red shrugged. “Something blipped on one of the background checks, so they went back and reran them all for everybody on staff, even the ones not on the party detail. Just to make sure they didn’t miss anything.” His tone said it was more likely because they were just being assholes.

  “What?” Doyle sat up straighter. “On who?”

  “Poole.”

  Doyle’s Spidey-sense gave a small tingle. “Impossible. His background check when he got hired came back clean.”

  “Evidently the Secret Service has better tech people than we do, because they found a juvenile record from when Poole was sixteen that got expunged after he completed court-ordered counseling.”

  “If it was expunged, then it shouldn’t have popped.” Just like it hadn’t popped for them. Expunging a record was like erasing the fact that a crime or arrest had happened. It was meant to give people a second chance so prospective employers didn’t let their impression get influenced by something done while the person in question had been young and stupid.

  Just like Doyle’s was being influenced now. Suddenly, all those requests to be put back on Thea’s personal detail took on a much more ominous tone.

  “I want him off the party detail.”

  Red didn’t look surprised, but he did look determined. “If you do that, you might as well just fire him, because no one’s going to want to work with someone you show that kind of blatant distrust for.”

  “I don’t have any reason to fire him.”

  “Secret Service cleared him, so you don’t have any real reason to pull him from the detail, either.”

  Doyle wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. He was thinking with his emotions again and not his head. “Fuck.”

  “You could always ask him about it yourself.”

  He could. But if he approached the problem like the head of security and kept his personal feelings for Thea out of it, he knew he probably shouldn’t. People given a second chance didn’t deserve to have the rug ripped out from underneath them.

  The problem was, his feelings for Thea weren’t so easy to discount. He wanted her safe, even if it meant trampling other people with unfairness in order to achieve it.

  The alarm on his watch beeped. Glancing at it, Doyle stood, swiping a muffin for himself as he did. It was a safe bet there wouldn’t be any left when he got back. His people were notorious scavengers when it came to any treats out of Rosa’s kitchen. “Time to head for the airport.”

  Red stood as well, his hand making a quick trip to the basket for another muffin as he did. He saluted Doyle with his booty and followed him out. “Isn’t Thea going with you to pick up her folks?”

  “No.”

  Red looked at him for a long second before bursting into laughter as he figured out the reason.

  “I don’t moon, dammit.” Doyle pushed past his friend with a none-too-gentle shove of his elbow. Red’s laughter followed him all the way outside. Hell, he thought, a smile tugging at his lips, he not only mooned, he also grinned like a fool, and maybe even drooled, just a little, whenever Thea was around. He might not have had his light bulb moment just yet, but he knew when he was well and truly hooked.

  Still on edge over the news of Simon’s somewhat questionable past, Doyle chose to slide into the rear of the limo rather than ride up front with him. He needed to think things through before he made any decisions there. The Secret Service might have cleared Simon to work the party, but they didn’t know about the stalker. A call to Don Rogers just might be in order.

  Aside from not wanting to deal with those issues, he needed the time the ride to the airport took to prepare himself for the coming conversation with Thea’s parents. He might like and respect them, but in the end it didn’t really matter what the Fordhams said when they found out about his relationship with their daughter. It didn’t even matter if they fired him. Thea was his now, just like he was hers, and no matter
what happened, he wasn’t letting her go.

  ****

  Thea could tell just from the way Doyle emerged from the back of the limo that things hadn’t gone well with her father. He had his impassive game face on, the one that kept all his thoughts and feelings bottled up and buttoned down, but his normal fluid movements were stiff and jerky, making him appear like a marionette whose strings were being yanked too hard.

  As she watched her father emerge next, it wasn’t too difficult to see just who had been doing the yanking. Frank Fordham looked more like he’d just come from fighting off a hostile takeover than a month jetting around to some of the most exotic places in the world. Lines of tension bracketed his mouth, which was missing its usual boyish smile, and his shoulders as he reached back to help her mother out were as stiff and tight as Doyle’s.

  Not good.

  Hoping to snap some of that tension, Thea hurried over to the limo, her smile turning genuine the moment she saw the glow of health that exuded from her mother’s face despite the pensive look that shadowed her eyes. A worry Thea hadn’t realized she was carrying slid off her shoulders. Whatever else had happened in the past month, at least her parents’ vacation had done its job.

  “Mom!” She flung herself into her mother’s open arms, absorbing the love and safety that embrace had always offered. They hugged for a long minute, both of them just a little teary when they broke apart, which made them both laugh. Her mother gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “I missed you, sweetheart.” Evelyn Fordham used her thumb to wipe off the smudge of coral lipstick that had transferred to Thea’s face.

  “Missed you, too, Mom. You had a good time?”

  “It was incredible. The experience of a lifetime. I can’t wait to show you the pictures.”

  Thea grinned. If she knew her mother, there were probably thousands of them. Literally. Her mother had never met a picture she didn’t like, even the out-of-focus ones.

  “What’s someone got to do to get a hug around here?”

  With a huge smile, her father grabbed her up into a bone-crushing embrace. Thea thought there was a hint of desperation in his grip, which bordered on painful before he eased up and stepped back. He kept hold of her arms as he looked her up and down as though to make sure she was in one piece.

  “I’m fine, Daddy,” she said, hoping to head off the overprotective look that was gleaming from eyes that were several shades lighter than her own deep blue.

  “Of course, you’re fine. Why wouldn’t you be?”

  Thea sighed. Great. They were going to play the pretend-it-didn’t-happen-and-it-will-go-away game.

  Deciding it was time to take the bull by the horns, she said, “Maybe because I have some psycho writing me love letters that would make the Marquis de Sade blush?”

  “We are not discussing this.” He released his hold on her arms, as though distancing himself from the matter.

  “We are going to discuss it because you obviously don’t understand just how wrong it was to keep this from me.”

  “From us.” Her mother stepped up next to Thea, arms folded across her chest as she bent a look of severe displeasure on her husband.

  Thea almost felt bad for him. Her father never won when the two women in his life joined forces on something and he knew it, but he clearly wouldn’t cave on this matter without putting up a valiant effort.

  “How is it wrong to want to protect the people I love most in this world?”

  “How did this protect me?” Thea asked. “Not knowing there was a stalker watching me put me in more danger, not less.”

  “You were never in danger, not for a second,” her father said, his voice very certain. “There were guards with you every time you stepped foot from the property. I made sure of that.”

  “And because I didn’t understand what it was they were trying to protect me from, I made their job ten times harder than it needed to be!”

  “I pay to have the very best,” her father replied, “and I expect them to be able to handle what they were hired to do, hard or not. If they can’t, then they don’t work for me anymore. End of story.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “Fine. Putting aside the issue of my needing to know about what was going on,” Thea said, switching gears, “what about my right to know?”

  A wary look flashed in his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “The threat, the letters, they’re aimed at me. Doesn’t that simple fact mean I had the right to know about them?”

  “Sweetheart, I just didn’t want you being bothered by this.”

  “Bothered?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Bothered?”

  “Why should you have to worry your little head over something that was already being handled?” By the grownups hung unspoken at the end.

  In that moment, Thea realized that Doyle wasn’t the only man in her life who had been having trouble seeing her as a capable, reasoning adult since she’d come home. It was obvious that her father still saw her as a silly little girl who needed to be coddled and cosseted, allowed to play at life but not to be trusted to make her own decisions about the really important things.

  That knowledge made her heart ache a little bit.

  “Why not?” The sour taste of disappointment coated each word. “Because I’m rich and privileged, or because I’m just a child?”

  “Because you’re my daughter,” her father said, “and I love you enough to want to protect you from the parts of life that aren’t always pleasant. Is that such a terrible thing for a father to want?”

  Before she could answer, two strong hands slid onto her shoulders; the steadying warmth of Doyle’s sturdy presence touched her back. She barely resisted the urge to lean into all of that strength he offered and take comfort in it.

  “Sir, with respect, I suggest that you not raise your voice when you’re speaking to Thea,” Doyle said, his tone low and calm and dead serious.

  “Why are you still here?” Her father’s gaze flicked to Doyle’s hands, the implication making his eyes narrow. “You don’t work for me anymore, remember?”

  Thea’s gasp was lost under Doyle’s reply.

  “Yes, sir, I remember. But I’d still suggest you not yell at your daughter.”

  Reaching up with one hand to cover one of Doyle’s, Thea glared at her father. “You fired him? How could you?”

  “How could I?” Her father sounded incredulous that she would even ask. “He ignored my direct orders. Worse than that, he not only told you about those God-awful letters, he let you read them! How could I not fire him?”

  “I insisted he show them to me,” Thea said, wanting to make her part in things very clear. “I didn’t give him a choice.”

  “He had a choice. He just made the wrong one.” Her father’s gaze turned frosty as he shifted it back to Doyle. “Letting her read those letters was unconscionable. I would have let you go for that alone, even if you hadn’t disobeyed my orders by doing it.”

  The way Frank’s lips curved into an angry scowl emphasized the small scar just to the left side of his upper lip. Ever since she was a child, Thea used that mark as a gauge of his temper. The more pronounced the scar, the angrier her father was. Right now, it was about as bad as she’d ever seen it.

  “I happen to agree with you, sir,” Doyle said, his hands tightening on Thea’s shoulders. “The last thing I wanted was for Thea to be exposed to what was in those letters.”

  “But you let her read them anyway.”

  Doyle nodded. “Because I trusted her to know her own mind. Thea has a good head on her shoulders, and I think we all tend to overlook that fact once in a while in our eagerness to protect her. She wanted to know exactly what she was facing, so I let her. Within reason.”

  Meaning they would have started selling snow blowers in hell before she ever got to see those last few letters. And Thea was absolutely okay with that. She’d had enough nightmares from the ones she did read.

  “For what it’s worth, Fr
ank, I think he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances,” Evelyn said. “From what Brennan told us in the car, things have gotten worse since we left, and without any real leads, it was getting too dangerous to keep Thea in the dark any longer.” To Thea, she said, “The first I heard of any of this was in the car just now. If I’d known anything about those letters, I would have been on the first plane home.” The fine lines beside her mouth were a sure sign of how tight she was holding onto the fear and fury Doyle’s revelations stirred.

  Thea appreciated her mother’s forced calm. One of them needed to be the voice of reason, and Thea was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be her.

  “Which is precisely why I didn’t tell you,” her father said, taking her mother’s hand in his. “There was nothing you could have done by being here, and the worry was exactly what the doctors said you needed to avoid.”

  The tenderness in the way he looked at her mother softened Thea’s anger. She understood how he felt. Hadn’t she been willing to go along with the whole bodyguard routine when she thought her mother might back out of her trip?

  But lying and reasons aside, there was one big issue that needed to be handled. Immediately.

  “Daddy, you can’t fire Doyle.”

  “I already did.”

  “Then un-fire him.” She felt a surge of panic at her father’s unrelenting scowl. She had to get him to change his mind. She had to. “You know he did the right thing. You can’t fire him for that.”

  “Yes, I can. But somehow I don’t think that’s the only reason you want me to keep him on staff.” His too-shrewd gaze took in the comfortable way she stood under Doyle’s touch. “What the hell else has been going on here while we’ve been gone?”

  “Why don’t we continue this discussion inside?” Thea’s mother looped her arm through her husband’s. “I get the feeling we might want a little more privacy for this.”

  Her mother had a point, but Thea wasn’t budging until she got an answer. If her father didn’t change his mind about Doyle, any other explanations were moot. “Dad?”

  “I can’t just let people disregard my orders because they think they know best. It’s bad business practice. If I ran my company that way, it would have imploded years ago.”