by Leslie North
“Yes. Absolutely.” She gave him her cell number, then waved as they headed for the door. “Talk to you soon.”
“Yep.” Clint ran back to grab Ashley’s iPad from the sofa, then headed out into the hall, feeling an odd mix of anxiety and anticipation tightening his gut. He’d need to run this by the guys at SSoF and find someone to watch Ashley while he worked, but man. He’d be working again. And if all went well, he might even be able to get to the bottom of what happened with the shooting. He felt better than he had in days now, all thanks to Tara.
5
Once they were assured that it wouldn’t be an issue with GGE’s board of directors, the guys at SSoF were surprisingly okay with his new assignment. In fact, they both encouraged him to go for it. So yeah. Check one item off the list.
It actually worked out great with Ashley too. She had kindergarten, and then after school, his next-door neighbor, an older retired teacher by the name of Mrs. Crocker, had volunteered to have his daughter stay with her until he could get home—which wouldn’t be too late, thankfully. Tara had said that once he installed security measures on her house, she wouldn’t need protection once she was in for the evening. Clint had talked with the woman casually over the backyard fence a few times and knew she used to teach at Ashley’s elementary school. She also headed the neighborhood watch group, so she seemed trustworthy enough. The only worry he had was Ashley’s opinion about the schedule change, since she wasn’t really big on change, but she’d gone over and inspected Mrs. Crocker’s garden several times and came back announcing it would be fine, since it would give her an opportunity to enlighten the older lady about the virtues of composting.
Better her than me, Clint thought, chuckling to himself as he headed over to Tara’s place later that night. Funny how all the pieces had fallen into place, like it was meant to be or something. He pulled up and parked in front of her little two-story Tudor-style house that looked like it was probably built in the 1920s. He got out and surveyed the area, taking note of all the exits and entry points to the home as he went. He’d need to know the layout of her place by heart for security reasons, if he was going to be effective. The neighborhood seemed relatively quiet and well-kept, with lots of manicured lawns and fenced-in yards. Not that different from his own area. That was good, since it would be easier for him to use the knowledge he had to design a layout for the cameras and such.
On the porch, he knocked on the door, noting the elaborate stone surrounding it with an arch at the top. The white limestone contrasted nicely with the red brick surrounding it. There were a few potted plants on either side, and a small garden. He wondered if Tara spent a lot of time tending it. The house itself looked nice enough, if a bit worn around the edges. Could use a new coat of paint on the timber trim, maybe some mortar around the brick window casings and on those tall chimneys. His place was a fixer-upper too, and he took pride in doing most of the reno himself, on the weekends and at night. Two-story and four bedrooms, it was bigger than he and Ashley needed, but he’d turned one of the bedrooms into a yoga studio for himself, so it worked out in the end.
He waited another moment, checked his watch, then rang the bell when no one answered his knock. He’d called before heading over to make sure Tara would be home and she said she would be. Huh. He leaned back to try to see in the tall, narrow window, but the curtains were pulled. There was a light on, though, so… His mind started spinning worst-case scenarios, because yeah. That’s what a security-expert-for-hire did. Had the person responsible for the attack at the rally this past Saturday somehow gotten Tara’s home address and come here? Was she in the house, hurt or worse? Should he bust down the door and charge to her rescue?
Before he could act on that impulse, the sound of several locks scraping sounded from the other side of the door. Clint released the breath he’d held without realizing it and clasped his hands behind his back, shaking his head at himself and wondering when he’d gotten so high-strung.
The door opened to Tara standing there, her phone to one ear as she waved him inside. Her pretty face looked a bit more drawn and anxious than he remembered from earlier that day, and he started to wonder if maybe his earlier thoughts about the attacker contacting her weren’t so far off the mark after all. He stepped into a small foyer and waited while she closed the door behind him and finished her call. Once she’d ended it, Clint gave a slight bow and small smile. “Your bodyguard, reporting for duty.”
Tara shoved her phone into the pocket of the pink hoodie she was wearing, then set about relocking all those locks. Three that he could see. Then she swallowed hard and faced him again, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why?” He turned to face her, concerned at the hint of panic in her voice. “Did something happen?”
“Uh, no. Not exactly.” She sidled past him, then led him down a short hall and into a large, open concept living room. This room had obviously been updated and renovated through the years, though many elements of the classic Tudor-style architecture were still present thanks to exposed pipes in the ceiling and brick on the walls. This place had been an old manufacturing headquarters at one time, if he remembered right. Still, the wall of windows covering one side offered exceptional views of downtown Atlanta and gave the place an airy feel. Had to have cost a pretty penny, though, which made him wonder how much environmentalists made. Tara walked into the open style kitchen and offered him a drink, which he declined. The kitchen had been updated too, with lots of granite and stainless-steel appliances. Nice. It certainly seemed like she could afford the maintenance on the trim and the window casings—maybe she just hadn’t noticed the need. She seemed pretty fully focused on her work.
She turned and leaned back against the large island there, crossing her arms, pulling her hoodie tighter around her even though it wasn’t that cold. “Nothing’s happened. I’ve just been alone since I got home and it’s bothering me more now since the shooting than I wanted to admit earlier.”
“Hmm. Understandable.” He followed her as she gave him a tour of the place and yeah, older home, but definitely nice—and pretty large, with four bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. As he trailed behind her, he noted all the locks and points of possible entry. The windows at least looked secure. They passed the laundry room and Clint quickly dropped his gaze when he caught sight of a lacy thong atop a stack of folded items on the dryer. His mouth dried and damn. Now that image was going to be stuck in his head all night. Especially after the glimpse he’d gotten earlier today. Given her taste in bras, he shouldn’t have been surprised about an equally lacy thong, but still.
Ugh. Stop thinking about her underwear. Do. Not. Go. There. Nope. Not again.
Except the more he tried to force himself to stop imagining it, the more it stayed in his brain.
“So, what do you think?” she asked as they completed their tour and stopped back in the living room again. Without the high heels she’d been wearing earlier at the office, Tara was a good foot shorter than his 6’6” height and had to look up to meet his gaze. Clint couldn’t help noticing that in her stockinged feet, she barely came up to his mid-chest, and it made him feel even more protective of her. Then she smiled up at him and damn if his traitorous body didn’t tighten again despite his wishes, sending all his good intentions perilously close to down the drain. “Am I savable?”
“Um…” Clint blinked down at her, unable to stop staring at that mouth of hers. Oh yeah. She was savable all right. Also, kissable and huggable and if he got her in that bedroom back there and naked beneath him, he was sure she’d be infinitely fuckable too.
Whoa.
He took a step back, grateful beyond belief for the cell phone buzzing in his pocket to distract him from what would have been a horrible mistake. This time it was him holding up a finger for Tara to hold on. When Mrs. Crocker’s number flashed on the screen, his heart tripped. Had something happened to his daughter? He exhaled slowly and pressed the answer button, dreading
what he was about to hear.
“Clinton, it’s Mrs. Crocker,” the older lady said, her tone a bit anxious. “There’s a problem here.”
Damn. He’d worried that having precocious a six-year-old underfoot would be too inconvenient for his elderly neighbor, and it seemed like he’d been right. Lord knew he’d heard that same tone far too often since he’d been raising his daughter on his own. Between her boundless energy and the fact she was far too smart for her young age, she could be a lot to handle. Clint cleared his throat and said, “Is everything okay?”
“Something’s happened to your house.”
That stopped his train of thoughts in their tracks. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Well, Ashley forgot an assignment from school, so I brought her to your place to get it and it’s a good thing too, since the whole upstairs was flooded.”
“Flooded? How the—” Crap. Clint raked a hand through his hair, trying to wrap his head around this new, unexpected development. But even before he finished asking the question, he realized he could already take a guess at the answer. He’d been doing some reno on the extra bathroom up there, but the plumbing was old and he hadn’t had the time or money to replace it yet. Had he done something wrong to cause it? He didn’t think so, but… “Did a pipe break?”
“Is everything okay?” Tara asked, coming up beside him.
He shook his head and turned away to focus on what Mrs. Crocker was saying. “Yes, I think so,” she replied. “I was able to find the main shut-off valve in your garage and turned it off, but you’ll need to call your insurance company and get someone in here right away to clean it up. Until then, you’ll probably need to find someplace else to stay. There’s an inch or so of water covering a good part of the second floor and I’d worry about mould and water damage. Why, a few years ago I had a similar issue and…”
She continued on with her story, but Clint had already moved on in his head to recovery mode. He needed to call his insurance agent, then contact a restoration service to get in there and start the clean-up. He’d do it himself, but it wouldn’t be a quick job, and it had to be handled right away. He’d already signed on to do security for Tara and he couldn’t walk out on her now when he’d just started. “Uh, okay. Thanks, Mrs. Crocker. I’ll phone people now. If I give them your number, can you let them in for me?”
“Happy to,” Mrs. Crocker replied. “Not sure what you want to do about a place to stay, though. It just won’t be safe there for the time being.”
Clint thanked her again for her help and ended the call, but his head was already concentrating on making the necessary arrangements, all the while aware of Tara beside him, watching him while he handled it all. Half an hour later, they were both sitting on the overstuffed leather sofa in her living room when she asked him where he was going to sleep tonight.
“I’ll call Levon. He and Olive have a guest room I can use until I get situated,” he said.
“Or, you can just stay here.” Tara leaned forward to grab her bottled water off the coffee table and took a sip, watching him over the rim of her bottle as she shrugged. “I mean, there’s plenty of space and it would make sense, right? That way you’re here in case I need my bodyguard, right? I know I said before that I’d be fine here on my own at night—but to be honest, I would feel safer with you around.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, pushing to his feet to pace. Moving always helped him think better. “That’s probably not a good idea.”
“Why?” She got up too, blocking his path. “Give me one good reason.”
Because we’d end up in bed together.
He coughed to get those words right out of his mouth. Instead, he said, “Because I don’t want to get in your way. And I’ll have Ashley too and—”
“Fine with me. I love your daughter. It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other better,” Tara said, bouncing on her toes and looking more adorable than should be allowed by law. “Seriously. I don’t mind at all and I’d like the company. You won’t be in my way at all. Please?”
Clint sighed. It would solve all his problems, and Ashley did like Tara a lot. Plus, it would make his life so much easier to have them all under one roof where he could keep an eye on them both. A tiny voice in his head still told him he shouldn’t say yes, but dammit. He was going to.
“Okay,” he said, grinning at Tara’s squeal of glee. “But you’re going to find out soon that my daughter’s a handful and a half. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
6
Tara was feeling pretty good about her decision to have Clint and Ashley move in with her short-term. Or at least she had, until the six-year-old arrived.
She’d known from their brief meetings and chats before that Ashley had some strong opinions for such a young kid, but in truth “strong” didn’t begin to cover it. The questions started the minute Ashley walked into the house. She’d tossed her backpack on the floor of the living room, knocking over part of a set-up that Tara had worked all day on to photograph later that night. When she’d first started at GGE, she’d been in charge of their social media, and she still kept her hand in by posting frequently both on the GGE accounts and under her own name. She loved being able to interact directly with people in the area—answer their questions, raise their awareness, direct them to good sources of information. Secretly, she thought of social media as her superpower, and hoped one day she could combine her Internet savvy and her environmental activism into a world-saving empire.
Based on the current state of her photo shoot set, though, that future was highly in doubt.
With a sigh, she bent to pick up the offending backpack, only to find Ashley now staring at her sofa like it was a nuclear warhead about to go off. “It’s beige.”
“Yeah,” Tara said, putting the backpack atop one end of the offending monstrosity. “So?”
“So you know the dyes and chemicals they use to achieve those colors are bad for the planet.”
Right. Tara did know that, actually. And if it had been her choice, she wouldn’t have picked the thing either, but since the house she was renting-to-own had come fully furnished, she’d kept it, thinking the sofa was better here, actually getting some use, than sitting in a landfill somewhere. She told Ashley that.
Ashley gave a disgusted harrumph.
“Sorry,” Clint said, ushering his daughter out of the room and into the kitchen to get a juice pack. “Like I said, she can be a lot. Hope you don’t regret the invitation to let us stay here.”
“Nah. Considering what I put up with at work, you guys are a piece of cake,” Tara said, determined to remain cheerful and positive. “So, Ashley, what would you like to do today?”
With Tara working from home these days for additional security, per the board’s decision, she’d planned to spend part of the evening helping her new house guests get settled in and maybe helping poor Ashley feel more comfortable. But as the little girl walked in and plopped down at one end of the aforementioned enemy sofa, with an organic cherry-blueberry juice box from the fridge, Tara’s alarm bells went off. She might not like the sofa, but it was expensive, and as far as she knew, the couch hadn’t been pre-treated with any stain protector.
“How about I give you a tour, Ashley, and you can pick out a bedroom for yourself?” Tara asked, standing and extending a hand for the little girl to take. “You can bring your juice box with you.”
Because better a spill on the floor than on that stupid beige sofa.
When Ashley gave her a wary look, Tara said, “Your dad can come too.”
“Oh, no. You guys go ahead. I need to get working on installing the new security system.” He glanced over at Tara. “Don’t worry. I won’t damage anything and it’s all easily removable, if you decide you don’t want to maintain it long-term. Go with her, sweetpea. There’s a loft upstairs.”
“Oh, a loft?” Ashley sprang off the sofa now, the juice box tipping precariously in her hand as she raced for the stairs. “I want to se
e the loft!”
Clint gave Tara an apologetic glance. “I did warn you.”
“That you did.” Tara snorted and followed the little girl upstairs. “Okay, kiddo. Let the tour begin.”
An hour later, she had Ashley settled in a room upstairs and thought her problems were solved. But then the godawful screech of the alarm system went off for the umpteenth time and Tara left the little girl in her new bedroom to rush downstairs, holding her ears. “What’s wrong with it now?”
“Not sure,” he yelled to be heard above the cacophony. “Keeps going off for some reason.”
Well no shit, Sherlock.
Tara sighed and went back into the living room, staring despondently at the set-up for her photo shoot. She’d been so excited about taking pictures tonight, but now it felt like all her creative mojo had flown right out the window.
“Sorry,” Clint said, finally getting that horrible alarm shut off, only to knock into her set-up, sending it even more askew as he moved the ladder to install yet another camera. “I just have a few more to do.”
“Daddy!” Ashley said, bounding down the stairs once more. “You should come upstairs and see the room I picked out. It’s got lots of windows and a big old bed and Tara said I can put my toys out wherever I want them and—”
“I’ll come up to see it as soon as I’m done, sweetpea,” he said, climbing up several rungs to reach the bottom corner of the loft. “But Daddy’s busy right now.”
“You’re always busy,” Ashley said, her small shoulders slumping and the corners of her mouth turned down into a scowl. She flopped back down on the sofa again and this time, the half-empty juice box in her hand upended, spilling deep red liquid all over the pristine beige couch.
Yep. This day was quickly becoming a disaster of epic proportions.
Tara immediately switched into recovery mode, her heart going out to little Ashley. Lord knew she’d felt lonely and like she was at the bottom of her mother’s to-do list growing up.