“Dallas,” she said as she stepped out on to the front steps. “Earl?” she called to the normal security guard who should have been posted by the gate.
Before she could step any farther she saw Dallas, his arm around a strange man’s neck as he wrestled him to the ground.
Without thinking, she charged toward them, wanting to help, wanting to know what was going on. Earl and another security guard ran to Dallas’s side and drew their weapons.
“No,” Harlan cried, placing herself between them and Dallas as he subdued the man he was wrestling. “Earl, this is Dallas; he’s my friend. I don’t know the other man he’s holding.”
“Junebug,” Dallas said as Earl and the second man helped restrain the stranger.
“My name is Garret,” the man on the ground said, barely catching his breath, dirt likely filling his mouth. “I’m supposed to pick up Mrs. Kalling and her daughters and take them home.” He coughed and gasped. “So can you let me go?”
“I don’t need a ride home,” Harlan said incredulously.
“Emmitt hired me,” the man choked out. “My GPS took me up to the side gate I guess, and when I got out of the car to get buzzed in there was nothing there. I hopped the gate, figuring I’d just come up and ring the doorbell.”
Dallas loosened his grip on the stubby looking guy and shoved him back. “You are supposed to be security, and you hopped the gate? If you were really working here you’d have been given a briefing on the system, on the location, and the family. You’d have known about the perimeter alarms.”
“The briefing,” he croaked, rubbing at his sore neck. “I did get it. I kind of skimmed it. I figured I’d read it at night or something when she and the boys were sleeping.”
“I have daughters,” Harlan started but Dallas cut in angrily.
“You what?” he demanded, looking ready to punt the guy like a football. “You skimmed a security briefing? You showed up on a job without knowing what you were walking into? Where the hell did Emmitt find you?”
“He hired my cousin actually, but he couldn’t make it here until tomorrow. I was just kind of covering for him.”
“Stop talking,” Dallas barked, raising a hand like he might hit him again.
Harlan’s phone began to ring in her pocket, and she jumped. “It’s Emmitt,” she sighed, seeing now she’d missed two of his calls earlier in the day. She’d been so caught up in Dallas she’d forgotten to check in.
Dallas reached out a hand, wanting her phone. “I want to talk to him. You go in and let your mother and the girls know everything is all right. You two,” he said to Earl and his partner, “go back to your posts. Reset the alarm and do a sweep of the area.”
“Yes sir,” they replied, though he had no real authority to order them around.
“Emmitt, it’s Dallas,” he began, keeping his eyes fixed on the man sprawled across the lawn. “We’ve got a problem here, but I’ve got it under control.”
Harlan made her way back to the house, her heart banging violently in her chest. Reaching for the doorknob, she had to use both shaking hands to get a steady grip. “Everything is all right,” she whispered to herself, trying to put on a poker face for her kids. Just like the night they were abducted, she knew it would always be her job to keep them from knowing just how dangerous the world could be.
Swallowing back all the fear, all the memory and worry, she opened her mother’s door and laughed through her wide smile. “Oh, you won’t believe how silly that was,” she started and instantly the worry melted from their faces. “Uncle Emmitt and his big plans.”
“Dallas had his gun,” Anna said, a bit of anxiety returning to her shiny brown eyes. “He yelled at us.”
“He was just trying to talk over the alarm,” Harlan explained. “And his gun was only because that’s part of his job. When the alarm goes off, even when it’s silly, that’s what he has to do.”
“He’d shoot someone?” Logan worried, and Harlan’s heart ached, not even knowing her youngest daughter understood the purpose of a gun before now.
“If it meant keeping us safe,” Harlan said, swallowing hard. “But we are safe, and there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Like when those bad guys took us that night?” Anna asked, leaning her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. When you knew every inch of your child’s face, every rise of a brow and the meaning of each expression you could map out what they were thinking. This was a question her daughter did not just think up tonight. It was something Harlan did not know had been weighing on her beautiful daughter’s mind.
“What bad guys?” Harlan asked, pretending she had no idea what her daughter meant, praying for some slim chance that the lies she told her them about their abduction had stuck.
“The night Uncle Emmitt had to come get us from those bad guys that took us. He had his gun too. We were watching that movie about the dog,” Logan said as if she were recalling a normal night in her own living room.
Harlan opened her mouth to explain, but no words came. She knew how to scare away monsters in the closet, how to make brushing your teeth fun. It was even in her skillset to explain things like heaven and rainbows. But this had her at a loss for words. Real bad guys. Real danger.
“Sorry about that girls,” Dallas interrupted, stepping in to the doorway of the room. “Everything is just fine now. I’m going to drive you home.”
“Can’t we stay here?” Anna begged, clinging to her grandmother. “Please?”
“I guess we can stay here,” Harlan agreed reluctantly.
“But this is where the bad guys are,” Logan said, her eyes wide with worry. “They made the alarm go off. They could take us again.”
“There’s no bad guys here,” Dallas said firmly, not skipping a beat. He delivered his assertion with a kind smile that would be hard to not trust.
“If there were, you would shoot them,” Logan said, somewhere between a statement and a question. She was waiting for something from him.
Harlan looked away from them all, fixing her eyes on the window. She couldn’t see if he was stunned or uncomfortable by the question. But there was no time to wonder, as he answered with such a clear message.
“When you see me,” he said, pointing to his chest, “you can be sure no one bad would be anywhere around. The bad guys know who I am. They know I don’t like them, and they stay far away. Same with your mom. She’s very strong, and she wouldn’t let anything happen to you no matter what. Your uncles have sent very brave people here to make sure you are safe.”
“She told the bad guy who took us she was going to cut him in the throat with a pointy thing you open mail with,” Logan said, agreeing whole heartedly with Dallas’s point about Harlan. She had been sure her voice was low enough that night that her children hadn’t heard her threats.
“Can you stay too?” Anna asked Dallas, punctuating her question with a long large yawn.
“Of course I will,” he nodded. “It’s my job. If you all decided you are going to sleep here then I’ll be here all night.”
“Sleep over,” Logan said, seeming suddenly unfazed by any drama or worry. The reassurance had worked like a charm for her tiny heart. “Grandma can we sleep up here with you?”
“It’s all right with me if it’s all right with Mom,” she said, squeezing them tightly.
“You feel all right, Mom?” Harlan asked, that question layered with so many potential answers.
“Better now,” she answered, kissing the crowns of her granddaughter’s heads. “I’ll have the maid bring up some pajamas for them and pop some corn.”
“Use the intercom if you need me,” Harlan said, crossing the room and kissing her daughters goodnight. “Be good for Grandma.”
“Night, Mommy,” the sang in unison.
She closed the door behind her and let out an exasperated breath as she leaned against the wall in the hallway.
“Everything’s fine,” Dallas said, trying to reassure her. “He wasn’t hired by Emmitt but ev
erything else he said about his cousin was true. He’s just an idiot. Apparently you’ve chased so many security details away Emmitt is running out of good options.”
“So he rehired you?” Harlan asked, her whole body still quaking with anxiety. The threat had been quelled, but more danger felt just a heartbeat away. Made worse by the knowledge that her daughters knew far more than she thought they did about their abduction.
“I hadn’t told him why I had to quit,” Dallas assured her. “I blamed it on a scheduling thing, and I told him my schedule cleared up.”
“Didn’t he want to know why you were here tonight?” Harlan asked, imaging how Emmitt would be trying to unravel everything until he uncovered the truth.
“I told him I was dropping off the coat you left in my car after your terrible date last night.” Dallas’s eyes were shifty now, and she could imagine why.
“You didn’t tell him it was Benny from down the street, did you?” she asked, praying that wasn’t the case.
“I was trying to deflect suspicion from what might have happened between us.” He smirked apologetically. “He got a good laugh out of it.”
“So you’re going to be on my security detail again. Even after we broke the cardinal rule of bodyguards by fooling around?”
“Just until he can find someone more competent than the fence jumper,” Dallas said, checking his watch and then staring at her for a long moment. “I saw your face,” he said, leaning on the wall next to her. “You are worried.”
“The alarm gets triggered some times.” She shrugged. “It’s very sensitive.”
“But it gets turned off right away,” Dallas pressed. “It didn’t this time.”
“I can take care of myself,” Harlan proclaimed, clearing her throat, forcing herself to believe it.
“You’re worried,” he repeated and left it hanging there between them.
“It’s the girls. The thought of what could have happened that night.” She shook her head as though she were being silly. “All this time, I didn’t think they knew. We played it off so cool like there was never anything to worry about that night. The guy, Marc, he put on a movie, treated the girls very nice. Acted like they were just there for a visit. But tonight, they told me they knew. I thought I had been so slick that night. I thought they’d been completely in the dark.” There was still pain in her heart, a pierced feeling that she was certain would never subside.
She crumpled forward, her face in her hands as the tears came. “I didn’t want them knowing the world was like this. Not yet. I thought there would be more time before they knew that bad things can happen to good people. I want them to feel safe. But I can’t make them feel that way; I’m the one who allowed us to be taken in the first place.”
“No,” Dallas said, pulling her into his arms, her ear falling against his heartbeat. His words reverberated in his chest as he reassured her. “I read all the details on that night. You did everything right. You complied. You kept them safe with a very dangerous group of men.”
“I want to be able to do this on my own,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I want to prove to them, and to myself, that we really are all right. I can do it without Rylie, without my brothers trying to force all this protection on us. But tonight, when that alarm went off, when you came up with that guy on the lawn, I realized I couldn’t. I’ll fail. They’ll pay for my failure. I can’t have that. I need help.”
“Help isn’t a curse,” Dallas whispered into her hair. “It’s not a failure to bring in the big guns to protect your children. It’s brave to know you would put your life into complete disarray and upend everything to make sure your daughters have what they need.”
“For how long?” Harlan asked, feeling defeated. “How long do things have to be this way?”
“I don’t know,” Dallas admitted. “You’ll know when the time is right. And until then, I’ll be here.”
“You mean until the next guy gets here and takes your job? Emmitt will work fast to replace you.”
“I don’t have to work for you to protect you,” Dallas explained, holding her even tighter.
She smiled, finding the irony in all of this. “For a one-night stand, this is lasting a long time.”
Chapter 10
“So how exactly does this work?” Harlan asked from the study doorway. She’d changed into some tight yoga pants and a T-shirt that hung off one of her shoulders. Her smooth skin drew his eye immediately, thoughts of nibbling it clouding his mind long enough to keep him from answering her question. “Do you just stay awake twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week until nothing on this planet is remotely scary?”
“No,” he replied, breaking his stare on her body. “I’m waiting for the changing of the guard out front in about half an hour. Then I’ll check in to make sure they are aware of what happened earlier. Once I feel confident that the alarm is functioning and set correctly, I’ll get a bit of sleep down here.”
“A man with a plan,” she teased, sweeping her long hair over one shoulder.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, in spite of the fact that if she walked out of the room, he’d miss the way her delicate hand was touching her neck. Whether she knew it or not, she was creating a road map of where he’d like to run his lips.
“I don’t sleep,” she sighed, flopping into a chair and pulling her legs up like a child, curling in on herself.
“Really? Ever? You are part robot?”
“I have a condition,” she explained, her thumb now running across her bottom lip.
“Oh,” he faltered, feeling bad for missing that on the briefing he’d read about Harlan having any kind of health issue.
“Yes, it’s called motherhood. The symptoms are being awoken in the middle of the night and informed that one child’s sock has fallen off. It’s bathroom breaks at midnight that turn into deep philosophical questions about angels. When I do finally get to close my eyes, the sleep is so light I can hear every creak of the floor, every whimper of a nightmare, the first cough of a cold starting. You’ve been trained for years to be on high alert, to be ready . . . well, me too. I’ve traded sound sleep for motherhood, and I can’t say I regret it.”
“Tonight you can sleep well,” he promised, pushing one of the heavy drapes aside and looking out the window. “If there’s a noise, I’ll hear it first.”
“I thought maybe we could talk more about the case. I’ve been thinking if Larry is the only witness against him, and he led the police to the body, and Tim is innocent, then Larry must be somehow involved.”
“Not tonight, Harlan,” Dallas objected, moving behind her in the chair and placing a hand on her bare shoulder where her large T-shirt kept sliding down. “You don’t need one more distraction, one more thing weighing on you.”
“The distraction is welcomed,” she argued. “I think if we found out more about the victim and tried to link Larry to him we could come up with something. It wasn’t random, right?”
“Harlan,” Dallas protested. “You take care of your daughters. You take care of your mother. You hold out hope for your father when no one else does. Had I known you specialized in solving everyone else’s problems, I wouldn’t have pulled you into this. It wasn’t fair.” His hand squeezed down on her shoulder as he rubbed his thumb into the muscle. A low moan escaped her lips while her neck rolled toward the pressure he was pushing into her skin. “Someone should take care of you.”
“Yeah,” she panted, groaning as his free hand came down on her other shoulder and started to knead even deeper. “I can’t remember the last time I had a back rub.” She swept her hair away from her back and leaned forward, exposing more to rub. Every swirl of his thumb caused a new breathy moan to rise up from her.
He was rock hard now, the smell of her hair wafting toward him and creating such desire that his other senses dulled, overpowered. “Lie down,” he ordered, pulling her up and leading her to the couch in the corner. “They won’t switch at the gate for a few more minutes
. Let me make you feel good.”
“The kids,” Harlan protested weakly, a shiver running up her spine. But her objection didn’t stop her from lying down on the couch and pulling her shirt up so he could get his hands on her bare back.
An inch from her spine on either side he ran his thumbs up with deep pressure. He’d been trained to use restraint, to understand what willpower was, but in that moment not kissing the silky skin of her back took every ounce of his control. He was a man dying in the desert, and she was a waterfall ready to rain down and save his life.
Harlan shuddered and drew in a sharp breath as he reached the base of her back, her ass rising up, begging to be grabbed and slapped.
“Some people say oysters are aphrodisiacs,” Harlan purred. “But a back rub is far more potent than anything I’ve ever eaten.”
“Maybe I should stop,” Dallas offered, his voice layered with disappointment at the idea of having to stop touching her body.
“Probably,” she said, reluctantly sitting up and settling her shirt back in place. “You’re on guard duty. And I’m on mom duty. It’s a bad idea for us to do anything again.” Fixing her eyes on his face, she straightened the collar of his shirt and patted it down. Her lips lingered just inches from his, begging to be kissed.
His watch chimed and a shock of reality shot through his body as he realized his responsibilities were calling him. “We need to figure out whether or not we’re going to break the rules. I’ll need to know.”
“Why? You don’t like spontaneity?” she asked, nibbling on her lip coyly.
“I do,” he said, raising a brow at her. “But if the answer is no, I can’t rub your back. I can’t brush your hair off your shoulder or even stand too close.” He stood and drew in a deep breath, cramming his hands into his pockets as though they needed to be contained if he had any chance at all of following the rules. “Hell, I won’t even be able to look at you too long.”
Loyal Hearts (The Barrington Billionaires Book 4) Page 6