Hot Soldier Bodyguard

by Cindy Dees

  But the next morning, along with the sun came the reality check she’d been incapable of last night. She looked over at Joe and saw a mature man lying beside her. He was so out of her league. Who was she trying to kid?

  She hardly knew him. She had no idea what his agenda was. He seemed to like her, but that could all be an act. Even if it wasn’t an act, bitter experience had taught her that he would get over his infatuation with her soon enough and emotionally abandon her. She’d read romance novels about men who stayed loyal to the women they loved through thick and thin, but she’d l never met any real men like that.

  According to Julia, by the time her father had gotten around to killing her mother, all Inez had felt for her husband was terror, and all he’d felt for her was contempt.

  Love wasn’t a rock; it was water. It ebbed and flowed, flooded and dried up, depending on the landscape and the capricious weather of life. It certainly wasn’t something to count on.

  Joe would get her out of here, and then he would get on with his regularly scheduled life. If she let him, he would love her and leave her like everyone else did.

  She sighed. Sure, he kissed amazingly well, but was it worth getting her heart broken over? Probably not. As hot to trot as he made her feel, lust was a purely transient thing. It would pass. It always did.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Smith,” Joe murmured beside her.

  She rolled onto her side. His hair was tousled and a hint of whiskers shadowed his jaw. In the daylight, his bare chest was a sight to behold, wrapped in hard muscles, bronze flesh, and a sprinkling of dark hair. Okay, so until he dumped her, he was a gorgeous hunk to wake up to.

  “Hey, Mr. Smith,” she managed to mumble back past an inexplicable constriction in her throat. If only he were real. She could fall for him like a ton of bricks.

  “Sleep well?”

  The question startled her. Or, rather, the answer did. For once, her dreams hadn’t been inhabited by images of dead bodies and blood. Instead, they’d been filled with this man. It was perhaps the best night’s sleep she’d had in her bedroom since Tony’s murder.

  “I actually slept great,” she replied. “You?”

  He smiled and shrugged, a breathtaking display of bunching muscle. “I don’t need to sleep much. I spent most of the night watching over you.”

  Watching over her? The thought sent her stomach spinning and a warm feeling fluttering through her. Safety. That was the feeling of being safe racing through her. Certainly a novel sensation in her father’s home.

  “Ready to go face the lion?” she asked.

  Joe rolled onto his back and stared up at the deep-blue sky outside. “I dunno. I see him as more of a shark than a lion. Maybe it’s the gray color of his hair.”

  She added dryly, “Or maybe it’s the way he always seems to be testing the waters for the smell of blood.”

  Joe nodded. “Good point.”

  He got up and she was surprised when he dragged a sheet with him, holding it around his lower body like he was naked. But then he stepped outside onto the balcony and called “’Morning!” down to someone out by the pool.

  Gunter’s curt voice floated back up. He didn’t sound too happy. But then, he was grumpy most of the time, anyway.

  Joe stepped inside, grinning, and closed the door behind him.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Gunter was hiding in the bushes and was annoyed that I spotted him.”

  “He was actually hiding in the bushes?”

  “Yup. In among those oleanders that head over toward your father’s office.”

  Cari grinned. “He’s actually a reasonably nice guy if you give him half a chance.”

  “Gunter?” Joe retorted. “The Terminator? Nice?”

  Her grin widened. “Relative to the other guards around here, he’s a veritable saint.”

  Joe shook his head and suggested, “Why don’t you go take a nice, hot shower? You’ll feel better.”

  She felt just fine, thank you very much. Except he was giving her a significant look and even jerked his head ever so slightly in the direction of the bathroom.

  “Come with me?” she purred.

  His eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”

  She laughed. “We are married. It is allowed, you know.”

  “Uh, right,” he mumbled. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” she said firmly.

  Joe frowned. Clearly, Cari had something in mind other than a shower. But what it was, he had no idea. She was in a strange mood this morning. Last night, she’d been all over him. And in all fairness, he’d been all over her. It had taken all of his willpower not to pick up where they’d left off once she climbed into bed with him.

  Two things he was sure of, though. One was that her room was under surveillance, and the other was that they’d had an avid audience of guards at the other end of those bugs and cameras. At least, his and Cari’s romp on the bed had probably satisfied the bastards that the two of them were really married.

  And then a disturbing thought occurred to him. Maybe last night had been just another piece of Academy Award-caliber acting for her. He wouldn’t put it past her to be capable of it or to have done it. So where did that leave him?

  Fine. He would go into the damned bathroom with her and see what she wanted. But disquiet filled him at the idea of once again closing himself in that little room with her.

  Taking a shower with Carina Ferrare certainly wasn’t part of the game plan.

  It had been hard enough to look at her in that transparent wisp of cloth she called a nightgown without leaping all over her, not to mention lying beside her in it all night long. Sleep had been entirely out of the question.

  His nerves were stretched plenty thin, right now. The thought of warm water running all over that luscious, naked body was almost more than his formidable self-control could contemplate.

  “C’mon,” she beckoned with a smile that was both shy and a siren song—a combination he’d never been able to resist. And then it hit him. The minx was playing him! As smoothly as she’d played Freddie and Neddie yesterday, and as smoothly as she’d played her father.

  Damn, the woman was as big a shark as her father, only when it came to manipulating men. She already had his number and they barely knew each other!

  In minor shock, he followed her to the bathroom.

  Twice more, she looked over her shoulder, smiling encouragingly at him.

  He stepped into the bathroom cautiously, not sure where to point his gaze. When did the walls close in and turn this spacious room into a shoebox, anyway? Heaven help him if she stripped and climbed into the shower in front of him.

  But thankfully, she only turned on the jets and stood back to wait. Perplexed, he leaned against the counter, his arms crossed in self-defense against what she was planning to do to him.

  Clouds of white mist rolled out of the shower enclosure—it must be a steam shower—and in a few moments, the mirrors fogged up. And then Cari did something strange. She relaxed. Truly, completely relaxed for the first time since she’d set foot in this house last night.

  She leaned close and murmured, “This room is free of bugs and cameras. I meant to mention it last night, but we got…distracted.”

  “How can you be sure?” he asked skeptically.

  “Because I’ve wired a jamming system into the electrical outlets, and I’ve done a thorough check for cameras. Plus, the steam will fog up any camera lens behind the mirror.”

  “You wired a jamming system?” he repeated in disbelief. “How in the hell did you learn how to do that?”

  “I have a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Miami.”

  He stared at her, openmouthed. How in the bloody hell had their research on the Ferrare clan missed that one? “You’re kidding,” he finally managed to blurt out.

  She grinned sheepishly. “While everyone thought I was sleeping off the wild nights in South Beach, I went to college during the da
y. I specialized in microelectronics. It wasn’t hard to build a transmitter to interfere with the equipment my father uses in the house.”

  “When’s the last time you checked to make sure there hasn’t been a frequency or baud-rate change in the transmissions?”

  “Two days ago,” she replied easily. “And most of the stuff around here isn’t digital. Straight EM transmissions work better with all the steel in the walls.”

  Okay, then. Maybe she really was an engineer. Holy shit.

  She continued. “I check my father’s equipment about twice a week in this bathroom. I don’t mess with the stuff in my bedroom because that would draw too much suspicion. Although, I have been gradually changing where the cameras are pointed. I’ve got them mostly pointed away from my bed and the French doors to the balcony.”

  There were cameras pointed at her bed? Talk about an invasion of privacy! There was such a thing as being security-conscious, and then there was plain being a sick bastard. Joe’s jaw tightened into a knot of tension. But Cari continued, apparently not noticing the sudden fury rolling off him.

  “In here, it’s plausible that the steam, and my blow-dryer and my other electric appliances could mess up the signals. So I went ahead and jammed them. I needed someplace to have a little privacy.”

  So that explained the wide array of hot rollers, curling irons, hair straighteners, electric toothbrushes and the like cluttering her counter. He nodded, impressed as hell.

  She went on, “Anytime we need to talk, we can come in here and turn on the shower. And in case you want to check out the system…” She moved over to one of the electrical outlets by the sink and popped out the whole plug face.

  It was fucking impossible to concentrate with her leaning over the counter like that, her perfect tush jutting out and the fine silk of her gown clinging to the curve of her hips.

  Over her shoulder, she explained, “I installed fake screws with springs behind them so it’s easy and fast to get in behind these and adjust my gear. I did this on my summer break a few years ago—once I knew how—so the equipment might not be totally state-of-the-art. But it gets the job done.”

  She turned around, showing him a full-blown circuit board wired behind the plug, a red light blinking on its surface. But his eyes strayed to the delicious curve of her breasts, the faint, rosy shadows of nipples beneath the silk.

  She pointed down at the little red light with the tip of her French-manicured fingernail. “That means the jamming system is active. You deactivate it by flipping this toggle here.” She pointed to a tiny black switch. “Sometimes when I come in just to put on makeup, I turn off the system. I figure if no signal ever gets out of here, someone will get suspicious. But I’ve got Gunter convinced this is just a bad reception area.”

  “Sweet setup,” he commented warmly, adding, “Well, aren’t you just a bundle of surprises?”

  The grin she threw him was positively impish. “I like to keep my men off balance.”

  No kidding.

  She turned to replace the plug in the wall and the side of her breast was outlined clearly by the silk gown. The way her negligee kept going see-through as it clung to various parts of her anatomy had Joe way beyond off balance. He was positively reeling. He had to get out of here before he embarrassed them both.

  He mumbled, “Uh, why don’t you take a shower for real? I’ve got a couple of things I need to do in the bedroom and there’s no reason to risk you getting caught, too.”

  She frowned and opened her mouth, but he cut her off gently. “Don’t ask. Just trust me, okay?”

  She nodded doubtfully. “Okay. But be careful. The guards are going to be watching your every move.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” he muttered.

  He spun and bolted from the bathroom, closing the door between them fast. He leaned, literally panting, against the wall to catch his breath and his equilibrium. Damn, that woman was lethal! She was sexy as hell and not afraid to use it.

  He shook his head to clear it. Get your act together. He looked around the bedroom. She said the cameras had been pointed at the bed and now weren’t. That narrowed down where the suckers could be hidden. Under the guise of putting the bed back together, he scoped out possible hiding places. He identified three possible spots to conceal a camera.

  He wandered around her room, examining little trinkets and doodads, and approached the likeliest spot. Bingo. A small black lens aperture poked out of a vase of silk flowers sitting on a bookshelf in the corner. The bastards. The amount of ire that little round eye provoked in him border-lined on shocking. But then, he was starting to get used to these bursts of violently protective feelings toward Carina.

  Time to make a statement to his new father-in-law. He picked up the marble horse statuette at the other end of the bookshelf and smashed the vase. Pieces of porcelain flew in every direction.

  He grabbed the camera lying in the wreckage and yanked its wires free from where they disappeared into the shelf where the vase had sat. He jammed the black box into his pocket.

  A sudden motion behind him made him whirl around defensively. Cari. Rushing out of the bathroom, a towel clutched in front of her naked body. God Almighty, look at all those miles of wet legs.

  “Are you all right?” she gasped. And then she took in the smashed vase behind him and her eyes widened in shock. She opened her mouth, but he waved her to silence.

  “Go back and finish your shower, princess. Everything’s fine out here,” he said clearly.

  Looking terrified and beyond stunned, she turned, absently clutching the towel ends over her rear end and gifting him with a view of most of the slender length of her back and more of those sleek thoroughbred legs of hers.

  Only one coherent thought formed in his head and he voiced it aloud. “Nice tan.”

  Cari jerked, looking over her shoulder in shock. She stared at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. She disappeared into the bathroom.

  Cari stepped back into her shower. Nice tan, indeed. The man was incorrigible. His glib tongue was going to get him in trouble as surely as she was standing here. She tipped her head back and hot water sluiced over her face in a cleansing rush.

  Her hair pulled, heavy and wet at her neck, like the steady tug of Joe at her emotions. His intelligence and compassion filled her mind, and the way his dark eyes lit when they looked at her filled her heart.

  Back off, girlfriend. He was a strictly look-but-don’t-touch proposition.

  Dammit!

  Okay, maybe a look-but-don’t-fall-head-over-heels proposition. She was pretty sure she wanted to touch him. A lot.

  It was almost possible to forget what a force to be reckoned with Eduardo was when Joe so commanded all of her attention. But she had to be careful. Eduardo was a cobra. She knew never turned her back on him or he would strike to kill in a heartbeat.

  A new thought sent an icy chill rippling through her. If she developed real feelings for Joe, she would be handing a lethal weapon to her father. Eduardo would jump all over that weakness the second he saw it. Not only would he use it to manipulate her, but also caring about Joe would put him at just that much more risk of being killed.

  The lesson of Tony’s death was not lost on her. Oh, no. Not by a long shot. She could let herself be in lust with Joe, but never in love with him.

  Joe. Abrupt awareness of time passing made her lurch. Knowing him, he was already downstairs at breakfast with her father, saying something outrageous and all but daring Eduardo to kill him. She hustled out of the shower and dried off hastily. Eduardo was as grumpy as a bear in the morning and wouldn’t take kindly to Joe’s antics.

  She rushed out into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, and stopped cold as Joe turned around. He was standing in the corner, his back plastered against the juncture of the walls, apparently studying her room for more cameras. She’d only found two cameras in all her searches. She watched as he sidled along the sidewall toward the pale-pink Renoir sketch of a little girl hanging in it
s gilded frame.

  “There’s a motion alarm on that,” she warned, nodding in the direction of the painting. “It’s an original.”

  Joe nodded his understanding. “I’m not planning on stealing it,” he remarked aloud. He reached up and took the painting down and, sure enough, an ear-splitting alarm made her slap her hands over her ears. But it didn’t prevent her from seeing Joe reach up and tear the camera behind the painting frame and its wires out of the wall. The actual camera had been wired into the spotlight that shone down on the painting.

  “Get dressed,” Joe ordered her shortly over the din of the alarm. “It’s time to go downstairs and have a little chat with your father.”

  But she continued to stand there and watch in dismay as he snatched a towel out of the bathroom and wrapped it around the jumble of wires and cameras. A pounding noise added to the chaos and it took her a second to realize it was a fist slamming against her door. Joe rehung the Renoir and headed for the door, jerking his head sharply in the direction of her closet. Right. Clothes. She hustled off toward her dressing area.

  As she crossed the open space, she felt Joe’s gaze on her as surely as if he’d reached out and touched the warmth between her shoulder blades with his fingertips. A purely sexual thrill whispered across her skin.

  Ducking into her closet, she stopped just inside the door to catch her breath and heard Joe talking to someone outside.

  “What the hell’s that noise?” he complained to Gunter. “Man. I was, uhh, kissing Cari, and the thing went nuts. You got some sort of sex alarm installed in here, or what?”

  Cari giggled and pushed away from the wall. Clothes. She needed to get some clothes on. She hustled into a tennis skirt and matching top while Gunter explained curtly that there was a motion sensor on the priceless painting.

  Joe harrumphed. “You got any more of those damned things in here? I mean, we’re likely to make a whole lot of stuff shake, rattle and roll, if you get my meaning….”

  She grinned as she tied her shoes. She’d better go rescue the poor German from her irrepressible spouse.