Protector for Hire

by Tawna Fenske

  “I’m worried about you.”

  The softness in her sister’s voice made Janelle’s throat tight. “I’ll be okay,” she murmured. “This family you’re marrying into—the Pattons? They’ve got their shit together. Between Sheri’s crash course in handguns, Mac’s twenty-four/seven surveillance on Jacques’s men, Stella teaching me how to make a hand grenade with hair spray and a bobby pin, and your fiancé making all these arrangements to have Schwartz hide me out in the middle of nowhere—”

  She swallowed, overwhelmed by how much they were all doing for her, these people she’d only met in the last few months.

  “They’re good people,” Anna agreed. “All of them. You can trust them with your life.”

  “I kinda have to.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out with the witness protection program. I really thought the cops could—”

  “Don’t,” Janelle said. “None of that was your fault. You couldn’t have known what Jacques was capable of. How hell-bent he is on getting me back.”

  Dead or alive, she almost added, but didn’t want to freak her sister out more.

  “Do you think it’s weird Mac was never able to find Schwartz?” Anna asked. “I mean, Mac handles covert government deals all over the globe. He knows what a terrorist in Afghanistan ate for breakfast or what a warlord in Yemen is watching on television. How come he never tracked down Schwartz?”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?” Janelle asked. “The guy obviously knows how to stay hidden. If no one’s been able to find Schwartz all these years, then Jacques shouldn’t be able to find me.”

  I hope.

  Janelle cradled the phone tighter against her shoulder, missing her sister. She also kinda missed the creature comforts of her home in San Francisco. She hadn’t had a good latte for days, and her manicure was chipped and faded. Silly things to think about at a time like this, but she had to focus on something besides fearing for her life and wondering if she’d ever be able to go home again.

  She tried not to cry as the bus slowed down. “Sweetie, I have to go now,” Janelle said. “It looks like we’re in some sort of town, so I think we’ll be stopping soon.”

  “Okay. Stay safe?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’d tell you to call me, but—”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to.”

  “I know. I understand. Still, if you get a chance, let me know you’re okay.”

  “I will. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, hon. I miss you.”

  “Tell your hottie fiancé thanks when you see him.”

  “Okay. Stay safe.”

  Janelle clicked off the call, mentally tallying up the number of times Anna had uttered those words.

  Stay safe.

  Like Janelle had any say in the matter. Her safety was entirely in other people’s hands at this point.

  One person in particular.

  The bus slowed to a crawl, and Janelle clutched her Louis Vuitton case tighter in one hand. The snoozing woman at the front of the bus stirred, then sat up, wide-eyed and blinking like a confused owl. The surly-looking teen didn’t glance up from his Game Boy.

  The bus turned a corner, ambling past squatty brown buildings that were all no more than twenty or thirty feet tall. No skyscrapers here, and the sky was so bright blue it nearly hurt her eyes. Janelle knew this wasn’t her final destination, but she already felt a million miles from San Francisco.

  The bus lumbered into the parking lot of a gas station and screeched to a halt next to the pumps. “We’re here, folks,” the driver said, probably avoiding naming the town because he had no idea himself.

  Janelle glanced out the window again. A funny-looking black-and-white bird was picking at the remains of a box of french fries squashed into the asphalt. A woman in chaps walked bow-legged from a horse trailer at the gas pumps toward the front of a convenience store, a gust of snow dust swirling around her boots. Next to the bus sat a pickup truck so ancient, it had five colors of paint on its rusty hood. There was a man in dark sunglasses motionless behind the wheel.

  Janelle stared. The driver stirred, then opened the door. A leg the size of a tree trunk swung out, followed by another, and Janelle felt her heart surge throbbing into her throat. There was nowhere for her to run. Nowhere to hide if Jacques and his men came looking and—

  The man slammed the door of the pickup and stared up at the bus, a permanent scowl etched into his clean-shaven face. As he tugged off his sunglasses, Janelle felt her heart skid back to a normal rhythm. Well, mostly normal. The guy was huge. The guy was terrifying.

  The guy was Schwartz.

  The photos she’d seen of him were nearly a decade old, but she would have known those eyes anywhere. The clear gray-brown hue, their haunted depths, the deep fan of lines spread out from each corner.

  But as much as she fixated on his eyes, she had to admit the rest of the package was pretty fine to admire as well. He was scary-big like his brothers, but well put together with broad shoulders and a chest that looked like he might be wearing armor plates under his faded flannel shirt. He had a slim waist and well-worn jeans that strained a bit over his—

  “Ahem.” The bus driver cleared his throat. “You getting off, miss?”

  I will be if I keep staring at that guy’s crotch.

  Janelle stood up, clutching her bag to her chest. She made her way down the aisle of the bus, her knees feeling like they were made of KY Jelly. She wanted to blame the long bus ride and not the sight of that flannel-clad Viking standing on the asphalt waiting for her.

  She clomped down the bus stairs in her designer snow boots, wobbling a little on the last step. She felt her left knee buckle and reached out to catch the edge of the door.

  The door was warm and covered in flannel, and it took her several breaths to realize she was in Schwartz’s arms. She blinked up into his eyes and felt herself gasp.

  “Good God.”

  His mouth moved into something that almost resembled a smile, and she wondered how often that happened. “Nope,” he said slowly. “Schwarzkopf Alexander Patton, but if ‘God’ is easier for you to pronounce than Schwartz, I suppose we’ll go with that.”

  He was still holding her in his arms and she was still staring like an idiot, which she probably ought to stop doing now. Any minute. Really, in just a second she’d tear her gaze away from his and—

  “Thank you,” she said, finding her voice at last. “For catching me. And, um—picking me up. And hiding me. And—”

  “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself,” he said, setting her down on legs she was surprised to discover actually worked now. “Haven’t done most of that yet.” He stepped away from her, seeming to want a little distance between them. She couldn’t blame the guy. She was acting like she’d never seen a man before.

  You’ve never seen one quite like this.

  “You dropped your bag,” he said, nodding down at the ground. “In a pile of moldy french fries. You hungry?”

  Janelle blinked down at the fries, then back up at Schwartz. She shook her head. “No. No thank you.”

  “You sure? It’s a long drive.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “All right then. I can get you something a little better than the fries if you can wait a couple hours till we make it back to the cabin. Uh, there’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a white bandanna. He held it up, and for a moment, Janelle wondered if she was supposed to blow her nose or take it as a sign of surrender.

  “I’d like to blindfold you.”

  Chapter Two

  The drive to Schwartz’s cabin took almost two hours, though Janelle was able to convince him to blindfold her for only the last hour. She’d claimed a proclivity toward car sickness, which wasn’t altogether untrue. By the time they bumped their way down a gravel road that seemed to go on for miles, she was feeling a bit queasy.


  “You doing okay?”

  It was the first time he’d spoken to her in at least forty minutes. She’d given up trying to make conversation after thirty minutes of one-word answers and unintelligible grunts. Schwartz Patton was a lot of things, but gregarious wasn’t one of them.

  “I’m fine,” she said, recognizing a note of strain in her own voice as she reached up and adjusted the blindfold. “Are we almost there?”

  “Yep. Just a couple more minutes.” He was quiet for a few beats, and Janelle figured that was the end of the conversation. She was surprised to hear his voice rumble low and soft beside her. “Look, I’m sorry about the blindfold. It’s for your own protection. If anything happens—” He stopped, and Janelle wondered what he was about to say. “I just don’t want any risk that you’d be able to direct someone here where they could find you.”

  “Find me, or find you?”

  He didn’t respond right away, and Janelle wondered if she’d crossed the line. But hell, it wasn’t a big secret he’d kept himself hidden from his own family all these years. She didn’t understand why, but she was grateful he’d agreed to break his self-imposed solitary confinement for her.

  “Here we are,” he said, bringing the truck to a halt. She started to reach up to remove the blindfold, but Schwartz’s hands were faster than hers. She felt his large palms slide over the back of her skull, his fingers moving in her hair as he untied the knot. The fabric fell away, but his hands stayed where they were, cupping the sides of her head.

  His gaze held hers, and Janelle didn’t blink, didn’t move, didn’t breathe, waiting for him to say something. The intensity of those gray-brown eyes was like nothing she’d experienced before.

  “You can take the wig off now.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll get your stuff.”

  Janelle blinked as he dropped his hands and turned to open the truck door. Okay. So they wouldn’t be having a lot of deep, meaningful conversations in this little cabin in the woods. Janelle picked up her purse and slid out of the truck, her pulse still ticking a few beats quicker than it should have.

  Schwartz was already moving ahead of her toward a rustic-looking log cabin with a green metal roof. A curl of smoke drifted up from a chimney, which made her feel both comforted and ravenous for a smoked-caramel latte from her favorite coffee shop. Valentino’s Cup would probably go out of business without her swinging by a dozen times a day to drink her own body weight in caffeinated goodness.

  Up ahead, Schwartz was setting down her bags and unlocking the front door and—

  “Holy God in heaven, what is that?!”

  Janelle screamed as the monstrous shaggy beast bounded toward her, its tongue lolling out to expose teeth the size of small daggers. She scrambled backward toward the truck and grabbed the door handle, but it was already locked and the animal was gaining on her.

  “Janelle!” Schwartz yelled. “Stay put. Just let him sniff you.”

  “Sniff me? As foreplay to devouring my internal organs?” She gripped her purse to her chest like it would offer any sort of protection from an attack. The creature moved closer, its enormous tail practically knocking down trees as it approached.

  She swallowed. “What the hell is it?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen a dog before?”

  “Not one that looks like a werewolf.”

  “That’s part of it. He’s part wolf, I mean. His name’s Sherman.”

  “Sherman?”

  The animal didn’t appear to be devouring her, though it slobbered on her shoe as it bent to have a sniff. Realizing she wasn’t about to be the creature’s dinner, Janelle reached out one tentative hand to touch an ear the size of a fur-covered sail. The wolf-dog snapped its head up, and before Janelle could draw her hand back, it dragged its tongue over her knuckles.

  She gave a squeak of surprise, not sure if the thing was showing affection or having a taste test. But then the tail wagged, and the beast gave her hand another sloppy slurp.

  “Sherman,” she repeated, a little less terrified this time. She scratched the monster behind one ear, and it gave a soft moan of pleasure and flopped on the ground at her feet.

  She looked up at Schwartz, who was watching her with a funny half smile.

  “Sherman, like the military general?” she asked. “Isn’t that how everyone in your family was named? Sheridan and MacArthur and Grant and Schwarzkopf and—”

  “Come on,” Schwartz said, the half smile vanishing as quickly as it had come. “Let’s get you inside.”

  Sherman flipped over and jumped to his feet, then trotted after his master into the cabin. Janelle followed, not sure what she’d said to irritate Schwartz. The man was a mystery, which was probably part of what made him so stupid-sexy.

  Don’t get any ideas, she warned herself. He’s your bodyguard, not your boyfriend.

  The interior of the cabin was small and sparse, but surprisingly tidy. There was a kitchen off to the left, with a set of cast-iron pans hanging over the range. Next to that was a small oak table with two ladder-back chairs. Straight ahead was a large leather sofa the color of an old saddle. Not that Janelle had ever seen a saddle in person, but she recognized the color from the Pottery Barn catalog.

  Off to the right, she saw two doors leading into what she assumed must be—

  “Bedrooms,” Schwartz supplied, answering the question she hadn’t wanted to ask. “Plural. That one’s normally my home office, but I’ll be sleeping on a rollaway bed in there so you can have the king-size bed in the other room.”

  Janelle stared at him, then shook her head. “You? On a rollaway bed? What are you, six three, six four?”

  “Six five. So?”

  “Holy cow. You must be the tallest of all the Patton kids?”

  “It’s been a few years since our mom lined us up and made pencil marks on the wall, but yeah. Probably.”

  “Then there’s no way you’re going to fit on a rollaway bed. You’d probably break the damn thing.”

  He folded his arms over his chest, looking oddly amused. “I ordered it extra-long.”

  Janelle felt her gaze drop to his crotch. She realized in an instant what she’d done and snapped her gaze back to his face, but it was clear from the smirk now crossing his features that the slip hadn’t gone unnoticed. She felt her face flame as she lifted her chin.

  “I’ll take the rollaway,” she insisted. “I’m upending your whole life here. I’m not going to steal your bed, too.”

  For a moment, he looked like he might argue. Instead, he shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ve gotta warn you, though, I get up early.”

  “And you need me to bring you breakfast in bed?”

  The startled look on his face almost made up for her lame attempt at humor, and she felt strangely satisfied watching him sputter.

  “What? No. I just meant the rollaway is in my office. I like to start work early.”

  “How early is early?”

  “Six, maybe six thirty.”

  She felt herself blanch at that, but held it together. “That’s fine. As long as you’ve got good coffee, I’ll be fine.”

  “I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘good.’” He nodded toward the kitchen, and Janelle followed his gaze to the world’s tiniest coffeemaker. At least, she thought it might be a coffeemaker. The handle was rusted, and the glass carafe was so grimy it looked like someone had rubbed it in the dirt. Beside it sat a tin of Folgers coffee grounds. She stared at it for a few beats, trying not to feel grim.

  “Folgers was one of my first clients,” she said. “I’m a graphic designer. I helped redesign that logo eight years ago.”

  “Huh.”

  “The version on that can hasn’t been in stores for at least seven years.”

  “You don’t say?” Schwartz shrugged. “Not much of a coffee drinker myself.”

  “You drink the blood of young virgins for breakfast?”

  “Something like that. Well, you’ll get your exercise mak
ing the coffee anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The well where we get our water is about a mile from here,” he said, nodding toward the door. “It’s just uphill from the outhouse. I hope you like roughing it.”

  …

  Schwartz was still laughing quietly to himself twenty minutes later. It probably looked more like scowling than laughing, but the sentiment was there.

  Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been nice to convince Janelle the cabin had no indoor plumbing. He’d expected her to be a froofy city girl, but he hadn’t expected her to be so spirited. Or so ridiculously beautiful. He’d watched the horror flash in those striking pale blue eyes, seen all the color drain from that perfect heart-shaped face as she gripped the handle of that fancy-looking purse.

  But she hadn’t uttered a word of complaint. Just nodded and took a really deep breath and asked him where the bucket was.

  “For what?” he’d asked.

  “I’m going to get some water. It’s going to be dark soon, right? I want to do my share of work around here, and I’d rather go find the well while there’s still daylight.”

  He probably shouldn’t have let her get halfway down the gravel drive before he yelled for her to come back. But hell, he’d been enjoying a rear view that was just as sexy as the rest of her.

  When he showed her the real bathroom—complete with an oversize antique claw-foot tub and a tile shower he’d installed himself, thank you very much—the look of relief on her face was almost palpable.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, turning to look at him with eyes that shimmered in the light from the antique copper fixture.

  Shit, was she crying? Dammit, he hadn’t meant to do that.

  He took a step back, trying to put some distance between them. “Look, why don’t you take a bath or something?”

  “What?” She raised one arm and turned to sniff under it. “Are you saying—”

  “Dammit, no. I wasn’t suggesting you stink.” Schwartz raked his hands through his hair, wondering how he’d gotten so bad at this.