What did he see when he looked at her through those steel-blue eyes? she wondered.
Just what everyone else saw, the practical corner of her mind said mockingly. A face. Two arms. A body that would have been considered bony and unattractive in the pre-Twiggy days, though a good number of men today seemed to find it sexy. Including, Allie remembered, the late-night caller who’d brought Rafe into her life in the first place. Despite her best efforts to control it, a little shiver rippled down her arms.
“Cold?”
His deep voice piled another set of goose bumps on top of the first. Grateful for his excuse, Allie rubbed her arms.
“A little. It’s going to take me a few days to get used to Santa Fe’s chilly nights.”
“And to its altitude. You might want to rethink this early-morning jog.”
“I rethink it every morning,” she admitted wryly. “Once when the alarm goes off, and again when I finally drag myself out of bed.”
He linked his hands behind his head. “But you still jog every morning?”
With some effort, Allie kept her gaze from sliding down the washboard of his ribs to the flat plane of his stomach. For heaven’s sake, she’d seen more male torsos than she could count during her career. Just because this particular male radiated a lean, coiled power that she’d seen demonstrated to startling effect in the hangar this morning, that was no reason for her pulse to skip every other beat.
“I use diet and exercise to control my weight, instead of drugs,” she replied with a credible show of nonchalance. “I’ve watched too many of my friends destroy their careers and their lives by substituting chemicals for food.”
He flicked a quick glance at the door. “You have some interesting friends.”
“Yes, I do,” she replied evenly. “And despite his ups and downs, Dom’s one of the best.”
He made no answer to that, and a small silence settled over the room. Allie searched for something to say, but everything that came to mind seemed inane, or far too personal. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to ask about his friends. Or how he’d gotten into the business of guarding bodies. Or how he’d acquired those scars. Yet she found herself intensely curious about his past. With a slight shock, she realized she knew next to nothing about the man who’d invaded her life so completely in the past twenty-four hours. Still, she valued her own privacy too much to intrude on his.
“I think I’ll call it a night.”
He rose and snagged a sleeveless sheepskin-lined vest from the chair where he’d tossed it. Shrugging into it, he tucked the paperback into a pocket and closed the small distance between them.
“Five o’clock, huh?”
“Five o’clock,” she returned firmly, trying to ignore the tingling sensation his proximity generated. “It’s the first day of the shoot. We have to stick to the schedule, or Dominic will tear out the rest of his hair.”
“Is that what happened to it? He pulled it out?”
She should open the door, Allie told herself. Or take a step or two away and put some distance between them before she turned and answered his question. For reasons she would have to examine later, in the privacy of her room, she didn’t do either of those things. Instead, she leaned back against the door and studied him through her lashes.
From this angle, she couldn’t see his scars. Only his strong, square chin, stubbled with a late shadow. And his mouth, a few inches from hers. And eyes more silver than blue. What did they see? she asked herself again, wishing she didn’t know the answer. Wishing she didn’t see it in the male intensity of his gaze.
He saw a face. Nothing more. And so much less.
“Actually,” she replied, in answer to his question, “his doctor shaved it off. Dom got impatient during one of our shoots….”
Rafe’s snort told her he’d already figured out that wasn’t an unfrequent occurrence.
“Instead of waiting for a ladder, he climbed a tree to get a better angle. Unfortunately, the tree was loaded with poison oak. Some tangled in his hair, and the result… Well, it wasn’t pretty for a long while.”
“I wouldn’t call it pretty now.”
“You would if you’d seen him six months ago,” she retorted.
“I don’t think so.” Lifting his hand, he brushed a careless knuckle down her cheek. “This is what I’d call pretty.”
The touch seemed to surprise him as much as it did Allie. Frowning, he dropped his hand at the same instant she jerked her head back.
“Sorry,” he said tightly. “That was out of line.”
As surprised by his apology as she’d been by the unexpected caress, Allie struggled to match his quick recovery. “Apology accepted.”
She stepped aside, and he reached for the door handle. “Lock the door behind me.”
“I will.”
“And keep the beeper handy.”
“I will.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
His mouth twisted in disgust, Rafe pulled the door shut behind him and listened for the snick of the lock. He couldn’t believe he’d given in to the insane impulse to touch her. She was his client, for God’s sake. And the kind of woman he had no business touching.
Except… Rafe wasn’t quite as sure now that he knew what kind of woman Allison Fortune was. Every time he thought he had her pegged, she threw him another curve.
Hunching his shoulders against the chill, he walked the arching adobe corridor that led to his casita. With each ring of his boots on the Spanish tile, his mental composite of Allie Fortune shifted focus a bit.
He almost believed her line about Avendez. Even after that business with the keys, he might have accepted the “best friends” bit, if he hadn’t caught the fierce, masculine, hands-off glare the photographer arrowed his way a few moments ago. Whatever relationship Allie might think she had with the man, he wanted a hell of a lot more from her than friendship.
Surely she wasn’t so naive that she couldn’t see it? First with the Viking, and now with this character? She had to know simple friendship couldn’t exist between the male and female of the species.
Maybe she didn’t, Rafe conceded. Or maybe there wasn’t room in her busy life for anything more. The dossier on her had included clippings that detailed a well-publicized engagement, and an equally well publicized breakup. Had her fiancé been one more in a string of “friends,” or had he actually managed to penetrate Allie’s formidable barriers and connect with the woman inside?
Rafe didn’t think so. He’d known the woman for only one day, but his opinion of her had subtly altered in that short time. She collected men the way some people collected matchbooks. She couldn’t help it. They did everything but sit up like eager, overgrown puppies and beg to be collected. Yet Rafe wasn’t as sure as he had been last night that Allie made a game of them. After watching Eric the Blonde and Avendez in action, he was starting to believe they made games of themselves.
He’d have to be damn careful that he didn’t do the same…which might be a hell of a lot easier said than done, he conceded. That one small contact with her smooth, satiny skin had generated an instantaneous and almost overwhelming urge to repeat the touch.
What he needed, Rafe decided, was a long walk in the cool night air, and a stiff drink, not necessarily in that order. Since he didn’t allow himself to drink while on assignment, that left only one option.
He had to familiarize himself with the compound at night, anyway. He didn’t anticipate having to make a middle-of-the-night escape with Allie, but he wanted the routes laid out in his mind, just in case. He didn’t need another permanent and visible reminder of how dangerous it was to rely on only one escape route.
Besides, after the incident in the hangar this morning, he was beginning to realize how little he could anticipate, where Allison Fortune was concerned.
Four
Rafe would have been the first to admit that most of his knowledge of modeling had been gleaned from flipping through the swimsuit
edition of Sports Illustrated. He soon learned that the impression he had of laughing women splashing thigh-deep in a sparkling sea while a photographer clicked away at two hundred miles an hour held little resemblance to the reality of the profession.
It was work. Damned hard work. And it required a level of discipline and endurance that astounded him.
The first day of the shoot began, as threatened, at five o’clock. Rafe rolled out of bed, instantly awake, but not particularly happy about it. Security considerations aside, this early-morning jaunt through the open countryside wasn’t high on his list of fun things to do. He wasn’t out of shape, exactly. He could sprint like hell when the occasion demanded, which it had in more than one memorable instance. But given a choice of exercise methods, he would have preferred a stationary bike…with Allie on the bike and him stationary.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, he pulled on the gray sweats he’d purchased from the resort’s gift shop the evening before. Fortunately, the shop stocked an assortment of tennis shoes. Unfortunately, the only pair in Rafe’s size were designer originals with purple-and-black zig-zags stitched across the yoke. He stood and stomped his feet. To his relief, the baggy sweats covered the tops of his insteps. He did a few quick knee bends to loosen up, then tucked his Smith & Wesson into the holster nestled at the small of his back. Moments later, he walked through the chill, splintering dawn to the next casita.
His faint hope that Allie might have reconsidered this jogging business faded as soon as she opened the door at his knock. She stood framed in the light spilling from the sitting room, and Rafe swallowed. Hard. She wore her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, well-worn running shoes and a glistening pale green Spandex bodysuit that would have been a tight fit on a number three pencil.
“Morning,” she said, stepping outside.
She turned to lock the door, giving Rafe an unimpeded view of her sloping back and her firm, rounded bottom. His hands curled into tight fists.
“Morning,” he muttered.
She dropped the key into a flat pouch attached with Velcro to one hip. From the way the pouch bulged, Rafe assumed it also held the beeper. The thing certainly couldn’t be concealed anywhere else on her person.
Propping a foot against the wall, she bent and pressed her cheek against her calf. In the process, she stretched the Spandex and Rafe’s lung capacity to their limits. He must have made some inarticulate sound, because she gave him a curious glance.
“Not a morning person?”
“Not any kind of a person without a couple of ounces of caffeine slogging through my system,” he admitted, his voice gruff.
She switched legs, and Rafe’s hamstrings twitched in protest. “Well, there’s a coffeemaker in my kitchenette, but we don’t really have time now, if we’re going to get in a run. Today’s the first day of the shoot, and we have to—”
“Stick to the schedule. I know.”
She switched legs again, and Rafe felt his back teeth grind. Her ponytail flopped as she twisted her face to glance up at him.
“Don’t you need to loosen up?”
He did. He most certainly did. But contorting himself over his thigh wouldn’t accomplish the trick.
“I did some stretches in my room. I’ll save the rest of my energy for the real thing.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She looked doubtful, but dropped her leg and stepped away from the wall. “Okay. Do you want to set the pace?”
“It’s your exercise program. You set it. I’ll let you know if I can’t keep up.”
Rafe was still only halfway recovered from the whammy of the glistening green Spandex when she hit him with another. It soon became apparent that when the woman said she ran in the morning, she meant she ran. She started with an easy lope across the adobe-walled compound. Once outside the wooden gates, she sped up to a trot. A few moments later, she kicked into a fast jog. Then the narrow dirt road that led from the resort to the state highway a few miles away straightened out, and she hit her stride.
Within five minutes, rivulets of sweat were tracking down Rafe’s neck. Within ten, he was sucking in razor blades instead of air. Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and sweeping the terrain at regular intervals.
Overhead, the sky lightened from impossible shades of red and purple to a feathery, gold-streaked blue. A broad, flat blade of light cut like a sword through the pine-shrouded Sangre de Cristo peaks surrounding them. Suddenly, the high desert terrain at the base of the mountain took on a hundred different shades of dun and green. Silvery tumbleweeds piled one on top of the other where the wind had blown them, and stalks of tall, spiky, narrow-leafed yuccas thrust up like bayonets against the sky.
Nostrils flaring, Rafe dragged in the sharp, resiny scent of pines carried from the mountains by the morning downdrafts. He might have appreciated the grandeur of the world around him, if he had the energy or the breath to do so. Allie glanced over her shoulder a couple of times to see how he was faring. He had just decided to tell her he needed to slow it down when she moderated her pace and dropped back beside him.
“You okay?”
He didn’t even consider going for macho. He wouldn’t be much use to his client if his legs collapsed under him, which they might do if they didn’t turn back soon.
“No.”
He expected a smirk. At the very least a lift of a superior red-brown eyebrow. Instead, she gave him that half smile that he was coming to crave the way a chocolate junkie craves M&Ms.
“The altitude’s getting to me, too. Want to head back?”
“Yes.”
She swung around and retraced her steps. Following hard on her heels, Rafe couldn’t help but note the smooth, rippling musculature of her back and bottom under their glistening green covering. He also noted that she hadn’t worked up anything faintly resembling a sweat. Suspecting that the altitude hadn’t gotten to her as much as his painful rasping, he set his jaw and calculated the distance to the resort’s gates.
He could make it.
Maybe.
He might have…if his left leg hadn’t chosen that moment to turn to iron. Excruciating pain wrapped around his thigh like a vise. Rafe’s stride faltered, then went lopsided. He halted for a moment, and the gripping pain intensified. Grunting, he forced himself to resume his jerky movement.
At the sound of a grunt behind her, Allie spun around. She’d maintained too many unnatural positions for too many painful hours not to recognize instantly the signs of a world-class charley horse. She dashed back to Rafe, panting from the combination of thin air and exertion.
“Stop a minute. Let me massage the cramp.”
Jaws tight, he shook his head. “It’ll work itself out.”
She danced around him. “Rafe, for heaven’s sake! Stop!”
“It feels better,” he got out through gritted teeth, “if I keep moving.”
It might feel better at this instant, but Allie knew from bitter experience that a constant pull on protesting muscle could lead to a severe strain. Her mouth settled into a tight line, and a glint Rocky would have recognized instantly came into her eyes.
Her twin always claimed that she could tell the moment Allie decided to do something that would get them both into trouble. Usually, she’d try to talk Allie out of it, cite the dire consequences that might result. Then she’d grin and join right in. Rocky wasn’t here to issue any warnings, however, and Allie planted herself squarely in front of Rafe.
At the least, she expected him to slow his pace. At the most, for him to bump into her. What she didn’t expect was the unstoppable forward momentum of rock-solid body. He plowed into her before he could stop himself. Startled, Allie tried to disengage. She took an awkward hop back, his foot tangled with hers. Then they both went down.
Twisting in midair, he cushioned her fall with his body. Allie landed atop him with an “Oomph,” and his arms locked around her with a force that squeezed the res
t of her breath from her lungs.
“Don’t ever try something…so stupid again,” Rafe rasped out, his damp sweatshirt rising and falling like an accordion under her splayed fingers. “I could’ve hurt you.”
Allie gasped and tried to drag some air into her starved lungs. “I… You…”
“What?”
She wiggled desperately and pushed at his chest with the heels of her hands. “I…”
“What, dammit?”
“I…can’t…breathe!” she shouted, expelling the last of her oxygen in the process.
His arms loosened fractionally. Just enough for Allie to gulp down huge drafts of the New Mexico morning. Relief washed through her, and her rigid body went limp. Dropping her forehead to his shoulder, she lay sprawled atop him for long, life-giving seconds.
Gradually, her pulse slowed and her lungs stopped pumping like overworked bellows. When she felt reasonably certain she could speak with some coherence, she lifted her head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trip you.”
One black brow shot up in patent disbelief.
“I didn’t,” she insisted, still panting.
She wiggled again, intending to slide off his chest. She was finding it entirely too difficult to pull together her scattered thoughts, much less form an adequate apology, with her hips grinding into his. To her surprise, he didn’t release her. She glanced down at his face and saw his eyes narrowed to slits behind their ridiculously thick black lashes.
“Okay,” she said, suddenly a little breathless again. “I’ll admit it wasn’t such a good idea to step in front of you in full stride. I just know how painful a muscle can be when it gets hard like that.”
Beauty and the Bodyguard Page 5