His Bodyguard

by Greiman, Lois

  “I do?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She shrugged. “Orange juice, I guess.”

  “Orange juice it is.” He smiled up at the hostess. For a moment, Brenna was afraid the girl might swoon. A Chicago journalist had said that when Fox entered the room, all the oxygen was sucked out, which might have explained the vacuum-like quality of the restaurant. “And could you send our waitress right away? I’m starving.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The girl finally forced herself to leave. Across the aisle, two young women turned to stare at him. Brenna tried to ignore them and concentrate on the business at hand. She was going to have to learn to focus despite the distractions.

  “So you like to run after you eat?” she asked.

  “No. I…”

  But just then the hostess reappeared, coffeepot in hand, flying from the kitchen as if summoned by the king of Sudan.

  “Thanks,” he said, then turned back to Brenna. “The way I figure it is this. I run down the road, right? I might be hit by a car, or die of a heart attack, or, hell…” He shrugged. Beneath the wear-softened cotton of his T-shirt, his. shoulders looked muscular and lean. The word “perfect” popped into her head. She pushed it back out with effort. He was her boss, and she was certain to eventually learn that he had some faults. “Way things are, someone might drive by and shoot me in the head just for kicks.” He took his first sip of coffee, smiled at the hostess and said, “Great stuff.”

  Her world complete, Miss Ponytail floated away on a cloud.

  Brenna waited for him to complete his sentence, but he seemed to have forgotten his line of thought, lost as he was in caffeine bliss.

  “And?” she said finally.

  “And? Oh. And I don’t want to die on an empty stomach.”

  She raised her brows and waited for him to say he was joking, but he didn’t.

  Instead, he gave her a self-effacing grin. “Sarge says I eat too much. Hell.” He took another sip of coffee. “Everyone says I eat too much.”

  Now she knew he was kidding, for although she had looked, she hadn’t detected a single ounce of fat anywhere on his body. In fact, he looked as fit and hard as one of her school friends’ prize quarter horses.

  The silence was getting lengthy. And she was staring again. She snapped her gaze away, resisted clearing her throat, and settled on fiddling with the pleats of her rayon slacks beneath the table.

  “I’d like to thank you, Mr. Fox,” she said, using her most professional tone. “Some—”

  “Just a minute,” he interrupted. A waitress was already hustling toward him. She was blond, buxom, and a little wide in the hips. As she panted up to the table, Brenna noticed that she looked about as unlikely to remain conscious as the last woman.

  “Are you ready to order?” She sounded breathless as she looked Nathan in the eye.

  Brenna silently thanked her CPR instructor for her thoroughness—just in case.

  Nathan flipped open his menu, skimmed the items for a moment and began. “I’ll have a steak, two fried eggs, a side of grits, an order of buttermilk cakes, a large glass of milk…and…how big are your buns?”

  “What?”

  He didn’t look up, absorbed as he was in his selections. “Your sticky buns. How big are they?”

  “Oh. They’re big.”

  “I’ll take two. No. Just one.” He grinned at Brenna. “I promised Mother Sarge I’d cut down. And you?”

  She couldn’t help blinking at him. “Me what?”

  “What’ll you have to eat?”

  “Noth—”

  “Listen.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “It’d be really nice if you’d eat with me, ‘cause otherwise I’m going to look like a pig.”

  She felt a lock of crinkly hair fall over her forehead. She’d tried to subdue that hair with gel and a scrunchy at the back of her neck, but it remained stubbornly out of control.

  “Please,” he added softly.

  A woman could drown in those darker-than-maple-syrup eyes of his.

  “Okay.” She yanked her gaze from his. “I’ll have some toast,” she said, glancing at the waitress.

  Unfortunately, the blonde was in another dimension, her gaze locked on Nathan’s profile.

  “Miss?”

  “Yeah?” The waitress jerked from her reverie, her eyes wide.

  “I’ll have some toast.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Sure. Are you Nathan Fox?” she blurted out.

  “What?” Brenna said, but the other woman had already yanked her attention back to Fox.

  “You’re Nathan Fox, ain’t ya?”

  He smiled up at her. “Yeah.”

  “I got all your tapes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. If I…” Her face was red. Brenna shifted slightly toward the aisle, ready to catch her if she collapsed like an axed pine. “If I got one from my car would you autograph it?”

  “I’d be tickled.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’d like that,” he said.

  Amazingly, Brenna thought, he sounded sincere. What a guy! Too good to be true, stunning, talented, charismatic. And he was nice, with a butt as hard as…Her boss! Boss!

  The waitress hurried away.

  Brenna forced her gaze down to the table. She was beyond the age of hormonal overdrive. Besides, that sort of thing had never worked well for her anyway. Even without her brothers’ constant interference, her love life had never been really phenomenal.

  Pulling a notebook out of her purse, Brenna flipped it open and cleared her throat. “We’d better get started before she comes back. I need to know—”

  “You were going to thank me.”

  “What?”

  He smiled. A couple of brain cells melted on impact and sizzled into nothingness. “You said you were going to thank me for something.”

  “Oh.” She glanced at the metal spiral of her notepad, then met his gaze. “For hiring me.”

  He was silent for a moment. “It was my pleasure. Believe me.”

  She was tempted to ask him why he had done it. What he had seen in her that all the other men in her life, her family included, had failed to understand. But that would surely not be professional. Best to pretend that she had assumed he would recognize her ability.

  “I appreciate it,” she said instead. “I won’t disappoint you.”

  “I know.”

  Would throwing herself onto his lap and kissing him senseless seem unprofessional? Probably. “Well then…let’s get started. I’ll need to know what kind of security problems you’ve had in the past.”

  “Your order, Mr. Fox.”

  Brenna’s jaw dropped as the waitress bustled up. She was loaded down like a pack mule, but still beamed as she kicked a stand into place and slid a heaping tray onto it.

  “Hope that didn’t take too long.”

  Too long? They had either cooked this stuff with a blowtorch or they’d stolen someone else’s orders. Or more likely, they’d stolen five other people’s orders.

  “No. I hadn’t even started gnawing on the table yet,” Nathan said.

  The blonde laughed. “I told Sharon it was for you.”

  “Sharon?”

  “The cook. She’s a fan, too. And she was wondering—”

  “Bring me more butter and an extra cup of syrup and I’ll autograph her stuff in blood,” he said, eyeing the tray of steaming food.

  “Really?”

  “Well, no. But—”

  “I mean…not the blood part, but will you sign hers too?”

  “Sure. Soon as I’m done eating.”

  “Oh! Yeah!” She began sliding the food off the tray and onto the table. “There you go. Anything else?”

  “The butter and syrup.”

  “Right.” She hustled away.

  Fox, already cutting up his steak, glanced up and grinned. “Good thing you got that toast so I don’t look like an oinker.”

  She laughed, unable to help herself.


  His fork stopped in midair. “You got a really pretty smile.”

  She sobered immediately, reminding herself with bubbly panic that her dream was on the line here—years of preparation, hundreds of hours of practice on the shooting range, the workout floor, in the classroom. She could not afford, under any circumstances, to be distracted by a handsome face.

  “We’d better get down to work,” she said.

  “Right.” He took a bite of steak, closed his eyes as if concentrating, then opened them and nodded. “What did you want to know?”

  “What kind of problems you’ve had in the past.”

  “Oh, well, my cholesterol’s a little high. Don’t know why. Could be ‘cause of them midnight snacks. But, you know. We’re on the road. There’s nothing to do…”

  “I meant security problems.”

  “Oh.” He took another bite, washed it down with a gulp of milk and began mashing up his eggs. “None.”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “I’ve been really lucky. My fans are great. You want to taste these eggs? They’re…” He took another bite. “Wow.”

  “But Sarge said you’ve been having trouble. Something about threatening mail.”

  Nathan waved at her with his fork. “Sarge is…Sarge. He doesn’t sing with the band anymore. So he’s got too much time to fret There’s nothing to worry about.” The pancakes were beginning to disappear.

  “Then why did you want a bodyguard?”

  “I didn’t,” Nate said. “But Sarge insisted.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “There have been a couple of accidents. A few letters.”

  “Could I see them?”

  “You don’t need to worry about it.”

  She stared at him. A warning bell clanged in her head. Don’t worry about it? As in, don’t worry your pretty little head? Brenna forced herself to relax. There was no reason for her to get angry. Nathan Fox was, by all accounts, a good guy. Still, something had knotted in her gut, and the tension wouldn’t go away until she’d learned the truth.

  “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Fox?” she said, her lungs aching with tension.

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you hire me?”

  “You mean, why did I hire you or—”

  “Why did you hire me!” She exhaled slowly, calming herself. But she had waited so long for this opportunity. Had put up with so much, had held her temper at Bartman no matter how many times “the boys” had complimented the fit of her blouse or the color of her hose.

  When she’d met Nathan, she’d felt a flicker of hope. Losing that hope might well be the death of her dream.

  “When there was a room full of men with more experience and far more bulk, why did you hire me?” she asked, dreading the answer, but needing to know.

  “You laughed at my joke. I can’t work with someone with no sense of humor.”

  She forced her muscles to relax. “So you really do plan to let me do the job.”

  He watched her as if trying to read her thoughts. “Hell yeah,” he said softly. “You don’t have to worry about that. You’re already on the payroll. Guaranteed a job till the end of the tour at least. Sarge tells me it’s an ironclad contract, so I better be sure.”

  That wasn’t exactly what she had meant, but he seemed to think he had reassured her.

  His eyes were warm, sincere, somber for once. “It doesn’t matter why you applied for the job. All you have to do is hang around and keep Sarge happy.” He took a swig of coffee. “And maybe, if you don’t mind, we could take in a couple of movies or something.”

  Beneath the table, Brenna tightened her hands into fists and tried to breathe normally. “So you don’t think you need protection?”

  He paused for a moment, then, seeming unable to resist, grinned and said, “Oh, I always use protection, honey.”

  Her dream shattered like a porcelain vase. Rage flew up with the piercing shards. She jerked to her feet.

  “My name is not honey,” she rasped.

  He rose more slowly, his expression befuddled. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said. “Fact is, I was wondering about your name. B.T. What does it stand for?” He stuck his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking young and vulnerable. “It’s not Bambi, is it?”

  “Bambi!” She choked on the word. She had to get away, had to leave, collect her wits…before she killed him. She spun around…and crashed into the waitress who was watching them, mouth agape.

  Tapes flew in every direction. The waitress staggered backward, and Brenna, thrown off balance, careened sideways only to be caught in Nathan’s arms.

  He drew her slowly erect, his gaze locked on hers, his right arm tight about her waist.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine!” she choked.

  His expression was sober as he watched her. “Listen. It don’t matter why you’re here. Maybe you’re in some kind of trouble. Maybe you gotta get out of Mississippi. Maybe you need an interview.” He shrugged, still holding her. “Truth is, I couldn’t care less if you don’t know a Winchester from a water pistol. I’m just happy to have you…” he tightened his arm slightly about her waist “…here.”

  The rage turned cold. “Really?” she said, then leaned closer, hugging her arm to her chest.

  “Really.”

  Her gun seemed to leave its arm holster of its own accord, and suddenly its barrel was pressed against his jaw as it pointed toward the ceiling.

  “Well, it isn’t a water pistol, Fox,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s a semi-automatic, 40 caliber, blued Glock 27 with a 10-round magazine, and if I hear another hint of sexual harassment, it can blow your earlobes off from twenty-five yards. Anything else you’d like to know about personal handguns?” she asked, and behind her, the waitress fainted dead away.

  3

  THE BUS RIDE TO CHARLOTTE, North Carolina was interminable and tense. Despite Brenna’s outrage at discovering Fox’s latent chauvinism, she had neither killed him nor quit. Instead, she’d calmed down as best she could, then proceeded to do her job with all the dignity she could muster.

  But just about now, her muscles felt like mush and her eyes as if they’d been sandblasted. Even so, she’d refused to remove her contacts, though she assured herself her reasons had nothing to do with vanity.

  It was in the wee hours of Thursday morning when she finally stumbled out of the bus and onto the sidewalk. She’d survived for nearly a day and a half as a security officer. A day and a half of poring over the questionable letters Sarge had given her to read, of wondering whether the seemingly inconsequential accidents Sarge told her about were accidents at all, of ignoring the band’s curious stares, of being hopelessly worn down by her own self-doubts.

  Although The Cowboys had two buses, most of the band had ridden together. It gave Brenna the perfect opportunity to learn more about them, or so she had told herself. In actuality, she’d learned little more than their names—Paul Grand, the drummer, Jimmy Fry, the fiddler; Rover, the guitarist; and Brian Mueller, who played keyboard. Oh, and there was the driver called Atlas, and the cat, a gargantuan tom called Nuf. Other than that information, she’d gained nothing except for the beginning of an ulcer and a pounding headache.

  The lobby of the hotel they trooped into was empty except for a balding fellow who stood behind the counter in a slightly shiny, one-size-too-small suit and a plastic rectangular badge that proclaimed him to be Gregory. Sarge pushed past the others, exchanged a few words with the man and came back to pass out key cards.

  There were yawns and mutters as The Cowboys wandered groggily off.

  “Thought you’d want the room next to Nate’s,” Sarge said, handing Brenna a key and staring at her for a moment.

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  Sarge turned away, leaving her alone. Self-conscious, she lifted her overnight bag from the floor and stumbled up the stairs after the band.

  The men filed off to their own doors, Nathan stopping before
number 1026. Brenna remained where she was for a moment, but if there was ever a time to be assertive, now was it Steeling herself, she stepped up to Nate’s door.

  “Here.” Without glancing at his face, she slipped the key from his hand. “I’ll do that.” The plastic card slid into the slot. She turned the latch, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  Nathan, however, remained in the hallway, his brows raised, and his head slightly canted.

  She flipped on the light, glanced about the sitting room and motioned him inside.

  He came, letting the door close behind him. But Brenna refused to look at his face. Instead, she hurried through the next doorway, glanced into the bathroom and assured herself there was nothing even vaguely threatening. Going on, she shoved open the closet door. Certain that small space was empty but for the usual apparatus, she continued into the bedchamber. The curtains were drawn shut, the bed perfectly made. All seemed quiet, but what seems and what is can be as different as a caterpillar from a butterfly. Master Leong, her judo instructor, had a propensity for expounding on such drivel. He had shared that tidbit of wisdom with her the first day a ten-year-old boy had effortlessly flipped Brenna over his head.

  Striding over to the bed, she lifted the eyeletted dust ruffle and peered underneath. A walnut-stained board closed off the underside of the bed. She tapped it with the toe of her shoe, made certain it wasn’t loose, then hurried around to the other two sides to do the same.

  Turning toward the window, she swept the curtain aside. All was secure, so she paced back to the door. Nate remained where he was, his brows still raised as he stared at her.

  “Making sure we’re alone?” he asked, his lips quirking into the suggestion of a grin.

  “Making sure you’re alone,” she corrected coolly and brushed past him to reach for the door handle. “Hook the security chain,” she ordered and pulled the door open.

  “What about the bathtub?”

  She turned back to him with a scowl. “What?”

  “You didn’t check behind the curtain.”

  “There is no curtain. There are glass doors. You can see right through them.”

  “Yeah?” he said, and grinned slightly, as if he were thinking something lascivious.