Cowboy Bodyguard

by Dana Mentink

  After a quick flight to Los Angeles, she would put on her scrubs and box up her wedding ring for good this time. That was still her plan, wasn’t it? Then why was her heart breaking into pieces at the thought of leaving Jack? And why did the kiss keep intruding on her thoughts? Best not to dwell on it now, she decided. Noticing that Dina was marching resolutely to Larraby, Shannon forced herself away from Jack and joined them. Jack followed anyway.

  “I want Annabell,” Dina demanded of Larraby.

  “She’s safer in protective custody.”

  “No.” Dina shook her head. “I want my baby.”

  A shadow of disgust crept across Larraby’s face. “Your brother is probably the one who wants you dead and sent someone to collect you from Cruiser. The father of your baby and his people will kill you if you ever set foot in Southern California. What kind of life is that for a baby?”

  Shannon touched Dina’s back. “I can help you get started somewhere else, somewhere safe for Annabell.”

  Dina shook her head slowly. “I’m going to meet with my brother, and then I’ll decide what to do and where to go, but it’s my choice, unless I’m under arrest.”

  Larraby shook his head. “T.J.’s been released from the hospital, and he’s not making a formal accusation against you. You’re not safe, you and the baby, but you’re right. I can’t keep you from taking her. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Now,” Dina said.

  “I’ll have someone take you.” He stalked away from them to a fellow officer.

  Dina sagged. “I don’t know if my brother will trust me enough to meet me. He might think I was in on the ambush. I just need to explain, and then I’ll take Annabell and go.”

  Jack rubbed a smear of dirt from his chin. “Don’t do it, Dina. It’s not safe for you or the baby.”

  “I know, but I have to tell him. I have no family except him, and I want him to see his niece, just once. Then I’ll go, but I don’t know how to find him.” Her eyes were pleading. “My brother was the only one who ever loved me. He won’t let me down now. I am going to keep looking for him by myself. If you won’t help me, I’ll have to go to the Aces.”

  Shannon understood. She’d already grilled Jack about her mother and Uncle Oscar until she’d been satisfied they were all right. At that moment, it seemed to Shannon that family ties might be the only kind that mattered.

  Her own thoughts surprised her, considering she did not even know where her own father lived at that moment. But she had been given a spectacular mother, uncle and—she cast a quick glance at Jack—husband, for a while at least. That had to be a God thing. He tied people together with bonds that strengthened instead of strangled.

  “I’ll help you find him,” Shannon said. “At least until I have to leave tomorrow, but I won’t help you put Annabell in danger.”

  Dina hugged her, and they clung to each other, bonded by the baby they both loved and the ordeal they’d just survived.

  Jack blew out a breath that made them both break away and look at him.

  His face was pained. “I know where he is. We have a meeting arranged at midnight, but it’s not safe for you two to go.”

  They nodded their heads.

  “Whoever Pinball sent, if it was him, is still at large, or it could be some rogue Ace working on their own, without his knowledge. So you get why it’s a bad idea for you to join us to meet him?”

  Two more nods.

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw, which sported a yellowing bruise and a five o’clock shadow. “And you’re going to come anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” they said in perfect unison.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said with a groan.

  TWENTY-TWO

  At dinnertime, Jack, Dina, Annabell and Shannon assembled in the abandoned kitchen at the Gold Nugget. Jack figured it was as safe a place as any, since the inn was temporarily closed down. Hazel would be released from the hospital in the morning. He read their body language plain as day during their visit to Hazel in the hospital: Shannon torn about leaving her ailing mother, and Hazel determined that her daughter would do exactly that, in order not to lose her emergency-room internship. It ended as he thought it might. Plans were made for Shannon to see Hazel once more before her 3:00 p.m. flight back to Los Angeles.

  Now busily entrenched in the Gold Nugget kitchen, against his protests, Shannon rubbed a palm over her forehead, her eyes shadowed with fatigue. “I tried to convince Mom to let the place stay closed a few weeks, but I didn’t get anywhere, of course. I can’t get much time off to come help, so I’m strong-arming her into hiring another cook and housekeeper. At least all the bikers have gone elsewhere. Too much police attention, I guess.” She was busily scrambling eggs and making toast, while he put on a pot of coffee. He wanted to drink in every detail, from her hair, which collected in a loose bunch at the nape of her neck, to the way her mouth quirked as she surveyed the cooking eggs.

  The truth was a hot flame that burned in spite of Jack’s strident efforts to extinguish it. He loved his wife. He loved her with as much ardor and tenderness as he ever had, maybe more now that he’d almost lost her in the crazy charade. As a newlywed, he’d believed that love was enough, would always be enough, to keep a marriage alive.

  Love, his love, was not enough, and it never had been. The eggs stuck in his throat, and he had to force them down with a slug of too-hot coffee that burned his tongue.

  Annabell played contentedly in her bouncy seat, grabbing at her own feet, when she caught a look at them. The shadow of loneliness fell over him with a tarry blackness that pressed away his earlier joy.

  After the makeshift meal, Shannon and Dina retreated to empty rooms to shower and change, leaving Annabell with him. When the women were gone, he scooped her from the bouncer and tucked her close, his chin skimming her silk-soft hair as he sang the horsey song again.

  More time passed than he’d realized when he looked up to see Shannon standing there in jeans and a clean shirt, her hair damp and glistening from the shower, a wistful smile on her face.

  “You’re going to be a good daddy someday, Jack.”

  “And you’ll be a good mommy.”

  The statement seemed to startle her. Her fingers found a stray strand of damp hair. “Maybe,” she said. “I was always so ambivalent about ever being a parent, but I don’t know. Something about Annabell makes me think I should keep an open mind.”

  He chuckled as the baby reached out for his chin, grabbing with a look of determination on her perfect bow of a mouth. “Good. Hate to see all that love you’ve got go to waste.” It was the wrong thing to say. She flushed and dropped her gaze to the floor.

  “I really am grateful for all the help, the risks you took...”

  “No need to thank me.”

  “You’d have done it for anyone?”

  No, his heart said. Just for my wife. His insides felt wobbly, so he didn’t answer. After another round of the horsey song, he settled into a chair, with Annabell in his lap. “I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow, Shan.”

  He craved with everything in him to hear her say she’d changed her mind. “That’s, uh, still the plan, right?”

  Her expression went soft as she looked at him. “Nothing has changed, Jack.”

  He tried to shrug away the feeling that his heart was ripping in two. “Sure.”

  “I can get myself there.”

  He skewered her with a hard look. “You’re my wife for one more day. Let me at least hold on to that for a few extra hours, huh?”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it. “I...I’m sorry, Jack,” she said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

  So am I, he thought as he looked at the baby. He was only a small fool for falling in love with Annabell, a baby that was never his in the first place. What kind of man could resist the parental tug of caring for a baby?<
br />
  But he was an enormous fool, a colossal idiot, for allowing himself to fall in love all over again with Shannon.

  * * *

  Shannon’s body craved sleep, but her mind would not allow it. Her stomach was in knots at the upcoming meeting, and her heart felt as if it was in tatters every moment she thought of Jack. She was up and pacing when Keegan arrived in the Thorn-family van at the Gold Nugget, at precisely eleven thirty. Annabell slept through the transfer to her car seat.

  “We’ll leave Dina and the baby in the van until we’re sure the meet is secure,” Jack said. “Shannon, stay with her.”

  Shannon figured there was no point in arguing as they drove to Rock Ridge. She heard enough to know that Tom and Barrett had driven separately and were taking up a position somewhere in the darkness. When they arrived, Keegan parked underneath a streetlight in the parking lot of a machine shop, leaving the keys in the ignition.

  “If anything goes south,” Jack said, “Barrett and Dad will cover us from the trees, and you drive out of here as fast as you can.”

  “Leave you and Keegan?”

  “That’s the idea, yes.”

  “You’d be killed.”

  “We’re tough.” He looked at her then, and she could see the hurt shining deep and clear as the river rocks under the creek where they’d fished so many years ago. Not so tough, she thought with an ache. I hurt him worse than anyone ever could. How could she explain that her own pain was intolerable? Her craving to stay with him so strong, it almost eclipsed her dream to become a doctor. But if she gave words to her longing, stayed for one more day to be close to Jack, she’d never have the courage to leave. She had to take her own path, to stand up and prove once and for all that she was enough.

  There were only a few empty trucks parked near the building. The rest of the spaces were empty. Keegan and Jack walked away from the vehicle and stood silhouetted by lamplight.

  Dina unstrapped Annabell from the car seat when she fussed and eased a bottle into her mouth. The rumble of motorcycles made them both tense. Two riders rolled toward Jack and Keegan as both women strained to see.

  “Is it your brother?”

  Dina peered into the darkness. “The tall one on the left, I don’t recognize.” She gasped as the other man, muscular, wide-shouldered and long-bearded, stepped off his bike. “It’s Hank,” she said.

  In a second, she’d pressed the baby into Shannon’s arms and shoved open the door.

  “No,” Shannon called as Dina bolted from the van. Shannon hopped out with Annabell to stop her, but it was too late. Dina ran toward her brother, who yanked a gun from his waist. His second in command did, as well.

  Jack shoved Dina behind him and stepped between them.

  “Easy,” Keegan said. “She’s just excited to see her brother, man. Take it down a notch.”

  Hank looked over Jack’s shoulder. “Last time I tried to see my sister, I almost got my head blown off.”

  “So did she,” Jack said. “Instead she got kidnapped by one of yours and handed over to the Tide. Was that part your idea?”

  Hank glowered, finger still on the trigger. “No way. Only my closest people knew about Dina being back and our meeting plans, and none of them would betray me. None would lay a finger on my sister, either...” He frowned. “Unless I ordered them to.”

  “Did you? Because she went to your rivals?” Jack shook his head. “You’d consider killing your own sister?”

  “Maybe,” he growled. Dina flinched. “But I didn’t. I wanted to hear her out, that’s all. Maybe she set me up so her Tide friends could off me. Was that your plan, Dina? Looking to get even for our blowup all those years back?”

  “No, Hank,” Dina said, tears trickling. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. I don’t know what happened at the inn. I just wanted to talk. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We fought all those years ago, and I...I got involved with the Tide to spite you. It was dumb, and I regretted it, but I couldn’t get out.”

  Hank peered at her through slitted eyes. “Heard about your man, T.J., getting busted up. They say you did it. You knock him down the stairs?”

  “No, but they blame me. T.J. hurt me plenty, Hank. I had to get away for my baby’s sake, but I didn’t hurt him.”

  Hank tensed. “Could be that’s just a sob story.”

  “No,” Shannon said, coming a pace closer, but still staying close to the van, in case she had to get Annabell to safety. “I’m an emergency-room doctor. Your sister was beaten over the years. I treated her myself. She tried to get away. She called you from the hospital, remember?”

  Hank raised a puzzled eyebrow. “I never got that call.”

  Dina groaned. “I thought you’d just ignored it.”

  Hank considered a moment before wagging his chin at his partner, who holstered his weapon. “So why are you here now, Dina? Tides got their go-to guy busted, I hear. If there’s a problem in my Aces, I’ll take care of it. Got nothing to do with you, and you got nothing to do with me. Not anymore.”

  Dina walked around Jack’s restraining arm and took Annabell from Shannon.

  “No,” Shannon whispered.

  “He’s my brother. He loves me.” Dina returned to Hank, with Shannon following behind. “Hank, this is Annabell. I came here for your protection, but after everything that’s happened, I know I can take care of her better on my own. I’m leaving, but I wanted to say I love you, and I’m sorry, and to show you your niece one time before I go, since I’m not going to come back.”

  Hank looked from Dina to the baby in her arms. Shannon thought he might have sighed. “She looks like Gran.”

  “Yes,” Dina said. “She does. And she’s spunky like Gran, too.”

  Hank put out a massive hand and touched the crown of the baby’s head. “If you had just stayed here,” he said, voice much less gruff, “instead of running off to Los Angeles.”

  “I know,” she said. “I made mistakes.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “We all did.” He stared at Annabell for a moment longer. “Listen, things are messed up right now, and I gotta clean house. You’re right to go somewhere to keep the kid safe. I’ll help. I’ll get you some money and set you up in a place, a secret place. When things get better—” he shrugged “—I’ll come and see you, maybe, visit.”

  Dina beamed a smile that was a mile wide. “I don’t want your money, Hank, but I’d like you to visit someday. I really would.”

  A sprinkle of rain began to fall.

  “I’ll put her back in her car seat,” Dina said, walking toward the van.

  “Hank,” Jack said, “you have to face the fact that one of your people made a deal with Cruiser to help capture her. Whoever it was tipped them off to her location repeatedly.”

  “Must have happened some other way. Mason, the cop, maybe was behind it. Dina’s my kin. No Ace would dare touch her without my say-so.”

  Shannon fisted her hands on her hips. “You’re going to have to put your bloated pride aside because that’s exactly what happened. If the Thorn brothers and their friends hadn’t gotten us out, Dina would be dead, and so would I.”

  “Who you figure?” Hank said, staring at her.

  “Tiffany was the one who talked to us.”

  Hank gaped. “No way. No way she would do anything like that.”

  “Like I said,” Shannon snapped. “Set your pride aside.”

  He was silent a moment, and she knew he was putting the pieces together. “I hear you and Cowboy stuck your necks out for my sister.”

  “Yeah, and we almost got killed for it,” Jack said.

  “Plus, the Gold Nugget Inn’s all busted up,” Keegan said. “Your people had a hand in that, too.”

  “I’ll put out the word. No one touches the inn or any of your people ever again, as a thank-you for helping my sis.”

  “W
hat’s your word worth?” Jack said.

  Hank stepped up close, practically nose to nose with Jack, who did not flinch. Keegan drew closer, and Shannon held her breath.

  “My word’s solid as I am. Yours?”

  “Rock solid,” Jack returned. “If Dina ever needs help, all she has to do is call.”

  “Why would you do that for mine, Cowboy?”

  “Ever heard of ‘love thy neighbor’?”

  Shannon swallowed hard as the two men glowered at each other.

  A grin crept across Hank’s face. “Yeah, I think I heard that a time or two.”

  “I just thought of an idea,” Shannon said. “A place where Dina and Annabell can stay, if you are sure the Aces won’t touch them.”

  “I’m sure, but what about the Tides?” Hank said. “Can’t trust them for nothing, and they still got a beef with you.”

  Dina shook her head. “T.J. washed his hands of me and the baby. He thinks we’re more trouble than we’re worth.” Then her chin went up. “I don’t want him around Annabell anyway. She’s going to grow up without the Tide or the Aces in her life.”

  Shannon’s admiration for Dina washed over her in a bubble of pride, and she knew her half-baked plan to find a place for them was right on target.

  Jack started to reply, when a cry whirled them all in the direction of the van. Rain glistened on Tiffany’s rain-dampened jacket. It also shone on the barrel of the gun, which she held on Dina with one hand, clutching the baby, face-first, to her chest with the other.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Shannon’s stomach dropped.

  “Tiff?” Hank said in disbelief. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Let go of the baby,” Shannon shouted. “You’re smothering her.”

  Dina cowered on the ground. “Please, please give me my baby.”

  Tiffany ignored her pleas, but she kept the gun aimed at Dina’s chest. Annabell kicked the blanket away in her efforts to breathe. Her small feet gleamed in the dim light, wriggling faintly. “You’re not going to help her, Pinball. You’re not going to give her your protection. Once the word gets out that you’re helping a Tide, you’ll lose all respect.”