The Private Bodyguard

by Cowan, Debra

  Meredith walked to the window beside the bed and glanced over. He thought he saw a glint of tears before she looked away and stared out at the gray day, the private dock and lake less than a hundred yards away.

  “Your grandparents and I—We thought…”

  “I know,” he said softly.

  She turned, anger crossing her face before she closed it against him. “Why did you let us think you were dead?”

  He couldn’t tell her everything. The less she knew, the safer she’d be. Breathing past the pain, he stared.

  Despite the shadows in her eyes, she was gorgeous. He’d been a self-absorbed fool to let her go. Her creamy skin was velvet-soft. Her blond curls were pulled back in a neat ponytail that made him want to mess it up.

  After what he’d done to her, he’d be lucky if she ever let him get close enough to touch her hair, let alone put his hands on her.

  Whatever she saw on his face made her frown. “Gage.”

  “Sorry. I just can’t believe I’m seeing you.”

  “Ditto,” she said drily. “Now talk.”

  “Yeah.” He drew in a deep breath, struggling to focus. “Okay, here it is. After you—after we—our—”

  After she’d broken their engagement.

  “I know what you’re talking about,” she said stiffly. “Go on.”

  She’d thought she hadn’t regretted returning his ring. Until six months later when she’d gotten word he was dead and she kept hearing her last words to him over and over. You don’t need to push me out of your life any longer. I want you out of mine.

  They’d been engaged for nearly two years and she’d never been able to get a wedding date out of him. That, along with being repeatedly put second to his job as a fire investigator, had made his obsession with Operation Smoke Screen the last straw. She understood priorities and no one knew better than a doctor that sometimes work must take precedence. But not every time.

  So Meredith had finally called it quits. Her last words to him had filled her with guilt. She thought she had gotten past it and now he was here, stirring it up all over again.

  His woodsy, body-warmed scent settled in her lungs and notched up a sense of dread. A steadily growing anger. She didn’t see how anything he said could be good.

  “There was a series of fires. None of us Oklahoma City fire investigators could get anywhere on the case and neither could an investigator hired by an insurance company.” He paused, pulling in a shallow breath, looking pale and wasted.

  “The residents of one burned-out section went to the State Attorney General with evidence against the torches. He ordered an investigation, asked me to be part of a task force. We discovered an arson ring, a conspiracy made up of gang leaders, city officials and city employees. It was the easiest money they’d ever made, and the more they got, the more they wanted.

  “Our evidence was strong. They were all arrested for murder, conspiracy to commit arson and fraud, and indicted. The trial is scheduled to start in ten days.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. After sitting with him through the night, never looking away in case he disappeared, some of the shock had worn off, but now it surged inside her again. She shook her head. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “It’s pretty wild,” he admitted.

  “Does the trial have anything to do with you being shot?”

  He hesitated. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you let us believe you were dead.”

  He wanted to touch her, pull her close, but he’d given up that right when he’d let her walk away. And again when he’d made the choice to let her believe a lie. A lie necessary to save his life, but still a lie. “There were two attempts on my life.”

  Her only sign of distress was the sudden way she paled. Her gaze skipped over him, thoroughly, dispassionately. Looking for proof of his claims. His wounds weren’t visible and he wasn’t talking about them.

  “After those attempts, the Attorney General involved the marshals. They put all of us in WitSec.”

  She frowned at the term.

  “Witness Security,” he explained. “Their witness protection program.”

  “All the investigators?”

  “Yes. We argued against it, but by then the decision was out of our hands.” Gage had agreed to it in the end because it was his only option, which made him hate it even more. “The police and the AG’s office announced that they believed the gang leaders had succeeded in the attempts on our lives. We were all ‘pronounced dead,’ different ways. One a hunting accident, one a car wreck, one simply disappeared.”

  “And you,” she said hoarsely, “in a fire.”

  “Yeah.” He hated seeing the ravage of grief in her eyes, the pain, the betrayal, but he’d had no choice then. Just as he had no choice now.

  “So shouldn’t you still be whoever you are now?” She frowned. “And back wherever it is you live now?”

  “Getting shot changed my plans. I knew there were medical supplies here and I thought the house would be empty this time of year. It always has been before.”

  She studied him for a long moment. “There’s more.”

  There was, but he didn’t want to give her one iota of information more than necessary. He was determined to keep her safe.

  Under the guise of making sure Gage was ready for trial, the marshal assigned to his case had arrived at the house where he’d been living for the past year. It was there that Gage had overheard the man being threatened into killing Gage. If he had to literally give up his life for Meredith, he would. He never should’ve pushed her out of it.

  He’d been half-dead since leaving her, anyway. Dumb-ass. He clamped down on the thoughts. She was a regret he lived with every day and looking back on it didn’t change one thing. He had to look forward, move forward.

  He knew he’d lost a lot of blood. He knew how crappy he felt, but he also knew the risk of staying. “I need to go.”

  She eyed him critically. “Think you can?”

  “I have to.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Drove an SUV I’ve been fixing up. It’s at the side of the house.”

  “You should stay in bed for another twenty-four hours.”

  The longer he stayed, the higher the chances of Meredith getting involved and he wasn’t involving her. “It’s best.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He wished he could. Tearing his gaze from hers, he asked, “Where’s my shirt?”

  “I threw it away. It was ruined.”

  “My leather jacket?”

  “It’s on a bar stool in the kitchen, along with your laptop. I’ll find you something to wear.”

  She left and came back with a man’s long-sleeved denim shirt. “This is Wyatt’s. You can borrow it.”

  “Thanks.” Gage was about the same size as Meredith’s younger brother, which was good because the only clothes Gage had left here were shorts, T-shirts and underwear.

  “Need help getting it on?”

  Yes, he did, but if she touched him, Gage didn’t think he would be able to make himself leave. “I can do it.”

  “All right. Let me know if you change your mind. I really don’t think you’re strong enough to go anywhere.”

  He sure as hell didn’t want to. “I’ll be okay.”

  After studying him for a moment, she shook her head. “I’ll get your jacket and laptop.”

  Her tennis shoes scuffed softly on the hallway’s wooden floor as she walked away. Regret welled up inside him. He wanted to stay here, look at her, be with her, but he knew he couldn’t. He hated this. It was just as painful as it had been a year ago, letting her believe, along with his grandparents, that he was dead.

  He sat up and eased his feet to the floor, gripping the edge of the mattress as the room spun. Long seconds later, the dizziness receded. Biting back a moan, he pulled the right sleeve up his arm.

  The next thing he knew, he was on the carp
et, his shoulders propped against the side of the bed and Meredith was kneeling in front of him.

  “What happened?” he asked groggily.

  “You passed out.”

  “Passed out?” Pain pounded through his shoulder, his skull. He felt himself fading. “You have to help me so I can leave.”

  “And then what? Drive you wherever you need to go? Babysit you? You can’t even get dressed on your own.” She leaned over, her sweet-smelling hair tickling his jaw as she fitted her shoulder under his, supporting him to his feet.

  Light-headed and wobbly, Gage was aware of the blackness at the edge of his vision. He couldn’t feel his legs, had no control over them.

  Meredith got him prone on the mattress and pulled the blanket over his bare chest. “Don’t try that again until I tell you it’s all right.”

  He was fading, his vision blurring, but as she straightened, he said, “Are you okay with this?”

  “Does it matter? You can’t even walk the three feet to the bathroom let alone out of this house.”

  “I just…don’t want you to get hurt, Meredith.”

  The look she turned on him was glacial. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

  Yes, he did. As he watched her walk away, regret rolled over him. The hurt he’d caused her—them—was only one more reason he needed to leave ASAP. He’d avoided going to Presley and had come here solely for the purpose of keeping her out of this hell. Instead, he’d made her a target.

  Chapter 2

  Hours later, Gage jerked awake to the sound of harsh, labored breathing. The wind lashed brutally against the house, crackled in the trees. He thought he’d been done with the nightmare. Staring into the heavy morning shadows, he could still feel the pain and the flames as if they were real. Burning him, burning Meredith. A swirling fiery mix of present and past.

  He scanned the room slowly as he tried to level out his pulse. The sheet and blanket were shoved to the foot of the bed. His jeans hung neatly over the back of a chair in the corner, socks tucked into his black running shoes. Meredith.

  Gage had tried to call the state attorney general to update him but couldn’t reach the man. Not trusting anyone else in Ken Ivory’s office, Gage planned to call again later.

  Agony bored deep into his injured shoulder and sweat slicked his face, his chest. Fine tremors worked through his body. As pale gray daylight seeped past the blue bedroom curtain, his pulse hammered sharply in his temple. He lay unmoving, trying to deal with the images the nightmare had driven into his fatigued brain. Regret pumped through him like adrenaline. Always the regret. Over his grandparents, over Meredith. Especially over her.

  Exhaling a slow breath, he drew a shaking hand down his damp, whisker-stubbled face. He’d gone almost two months this time without having the dream, but sometime during the night, it had grabbed him by the throat. Had him reliving over and over what he couldn’t control or change. The lie all his loved ones believed. That he was dead.

  The task force Gage had been assigned to had arrested and indicted six coconspirators in an arson-for-hire ring. Those men had ties to a gang, so death for the investigators working Operation Smoke Screen was only a matter of time.

  Months ago, Gage had been shot at and escaped unharmed, but he hadn’t been so lucky with the second attempt. Yes, he’d survived a vicious pounding by a baseball bat and a lead pipe, but there were aftereffects. Parts of him still didn’t operate fully and probably never would.

  In addition to a broken nose, jawbone and two ribs, he’d lost his peripheral vision on the right side. A fracture to his orbital rim had damaged the optic nerve. After two surgeries, he was amazed he didn’t look like a completely different person.

  Local law enforcement already had plans in the works to provide protection for all the investigators and witnesses, but after Gage had been beaten and left for dead, and a day later, the ATF agent assigned to the task force had also been attacked, the State Attorney General had requested assistance from the Marshals Service.

  Gage’s time had come a year ago. He’d been unable to tell the grandparents who’d raised him. And Meredith wouldn’t welcome any contact, a fact she’d made emphatically clear six months before when she’d returned his ring. Per instruction from the marshals, he had ignored the phone calls from his best friend and firefighter, Aaron Chapman.

  As clearly as if it were happening right then, the images scrawled across his brain in painful technicolor. The bitter February cold sliced at him like a knife, so sharp it stung his lungs. The tang of gasoline and winter-fallow earth mixed with the faint aroma coming from the coffee plant a mile away.

  As his life had gone up in flames, Gage thought about his grandparents and how unfair this was to them. Thought about Meredith and wondered if she would even care when she heard the news.

  He felt sick to his stomach and slowly became aware once again of where he was. In the present, with his ex. Frustration and helplessness over the situation still ate at him like acid.

  He now lived as a mechanic in the northeastern Texas town of Texarkana. He was sick to death of reminding himself that this lying was necessary. That he was doing it for his job, doing it to protect those he loved, to protect future victims.

  The past months had been spent with him alternating between self-loathing and flat-out ambivalence. He’d grown impatient and more uncertain that the deliberate erasure of his life made a damned bit of difference.

  He had found himself sinking into an apathy he’d never experienced. His job had always motivated him, challenged him, but now it was a ball and chain. He wanted his life back and he was starting to wonder if it would ever happen.

  Noises penetrated his thoughts. Down the hall, he heard a drawer opening, water running. He pinpointed the sound as coming from the kitchen. He hadn’t had the nightmare in a while and he knew why he’d had it now. Meredith.

  Seeing her had sprung the lock on Gage’s tightly guarded memories. He’d thought there was no regret left in him, but the disbelief, the dazed shock and apprehension on her face last night had proved him wrong.

  His chest still ached from the emotion that exploded inside him upon seeing her. He felt raw, exposed. Unprepared. Why was she at her family’s summer lake house in the dead of winter?

  A chill settled over him and he shifted uncomfortably against the burning pain in his shoulder. He’d spent the past year consoling himself with the thought that at least his grandparents and his ex-fiancé weren’t involved in this mess, that he didn’t have to worry about their safety. Finding Meredith here had shot that all to hell. She’d probably saved his life and the longer he stayed, the more he endangered hers.

  She’d come here to bury the past; instead it had blown up in her face. Throughout yesterday and last night, Meredith made hourly visits to check Gage for fever, shock or signs of more bleeding. She made him drink plenty of water and gave him antibiotics as well as ibuprofen, which was all she had for pain. In between, she had cried, paced and fought the urge to yell at him.

  Gage wasn’t dead. He hadn’t ever been dead. She’d taken his pulse, touched his flesh and yet she could barely absorb it.

  At first, she was numb, then she felt…everything. By late last night, incredulity had given way to nerves. And fear for him. She didn’t buy his explanation of being shot because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she hesitated to press for an answer. She wanted to know and yet she didn’t.

  For the past year, he’d lied to her, to everyone. She understood why, but that didn’t stop the feeling of betrayal or resentment. It wasn’t surprising that he’d given up his whole life for his job. Everything came second to the fire department and always had. Including her.

  After moving his silver SUV into the garage next to her car, she’d dozed off and on in the twin bed across the hall with the door open so she could hear and see him.

  Except for her interruptions, he’d slept deeply the past eighteen hours. He appeared to be still asleep when she
rose at dawn and went to the kitchen to start coffee. On the way back to her room, she stopped to check him again.

  There was enough watery light to make out his motionless, half-naked body. He’d kicked the quilt and sheet to the foot of the bed. Last night, she hadn’t had the time or the presence of mind to notice any physical changes, but she did now. He’d always been rangy, and now he’d become sleeker, more defined. His arms and shoulders were solid slabs of muscle.

  The dark lashes laying against his winter-reddened skin were the only soft thing on his sharply planed face. She’d removed his jeans, making him as comfortable as possible and now her gaze skimmed his hard chest, lingered on the lean hips in gray boxers. When she caught herself staring at his plank board–hard abdomen, she mentally shook herself.

  Pressing the back of her hand against his cheek, she registered light perspiration, but no clamminess, no fever. She didn’t realize she was caressing him until her gaze returned to his face. And found him watching her.

  His blue eyes heated in the way that had always sent a shiver through her. And still did, she realized with a jolt as she withdrew her hand.

  He gave her a weak grin. “Couldn’t wait to get me out of my clothes, huh?”

  “How can you joke about this?” she snapped.

  He shrugged and she saw it then—the bleak shadow of pain in his eyes. He was only trying to cope with his injury, she chided herself. And maybe some of the same awkwardness she felt.

  Off balance and unsure about exactly how to act with him, Meredith decided the best thing for her to do was deal with him as she would any other patient. Professional, efficient, distant enough to remain clinical about his injury.

  She eyed his pressure bandage. Without access to a hospital or clinic, she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t bleeding inside so she had left on the thick ABD pad a little longer than twenty-four hours. There was nothing more she could do except keep a close eye on his pulse and blood pressure.