She shuddered. “Rafe! I’m from Minnesota. When I’m not on the road, I live in Manhattan. Where would I find fried-egg tortillas? Assuming I wanted to, of course, which I don’t.”
“Well, you can find them here. Come on, you’ve got to experience at least a taste of New Mexico.”
She resisted, as Rafe had expected her to. “I can’t. Not this morning, anyway. The crew will be waiting. Maybe…maybe tomorrow? If we get up a little earlier and get our run in first?”
Rafe groaned. “You drive a hard bargain, woman.”
“Well?”
“Okay, okay,” he groused, falling into step beside her. “It’s a date. But I’d better warn you the chef has promised to stir up a mess of chilaquiles for me.”
“What are those?” she asked warily.
“You’ll find out.”
“Give me a clue. Animal, vegetable or mineral?”
“All of the above.”
She swiped a stray strand of sweat-dampened hair out of her eyes. “I’m starting to have second thoughts about this.”
“Too late. A promise is a promise.”
Rafe left her at the door to her casita still trying to worm the ingredients out of him, and went to scarf down a small mountain of fried eggs and tortillas. Then he showered and joined the rest of the crew for the trip into Santa Fe for the day’s shoot.
Allie couldn’t concentrate.
It wasn’t the traffic moving around Santa Fe’s glorious old plaza that bothered her. The milling tourists of every nationality who had gathered to watch the shoot didn’t distract her. Nor did Dom’s scowls and the technicians’ repeated adjustments to her face and hair and adornments disturb her.
The problem was Rafe.
Although she tried to blank him out of her mind and keep him out of her line of sight, she found herself watching for a glimpse of his blue-black hair out of the corner of her eye. He stood a little apart from the busy crew, his eyes shielded from the dazzling sunlight by aviator-style sunglasses as he surveyed the scene. He caught more than a few stares himself, Allie noted, her mouth tightening as a tourist frowned at his profile, then hastily averted his eyes when Rafe glanced his way.
“Loosen up, Allie,” Dom snapped. “We’re trying to sell lipstick, not Pepto-Bismol.”
Relaxing her mouth, Allie gave her attention to the photographer. Their routine was too familiar to engage her full mind for long, however. While a part of it recorded Dom’s instructions and responded with the requisite moves and expressions, a rebellious corner kept returning to Rafe.
In jeans and boots and a white shirt that strained across his shoulders, he looked rugged and at home in these surroundings. His dark hair and tanned skin carried a hint of the proud peoples who had once roamed this land at will, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. Or he might have been one of the cowhands who’d driven their herds up the Santa Fe Trail. Allie could imagine him joining the tough, fiercely independent men who’d celebrated reaching the end of the trail in the gambling halls she’d been told had once lined the plaza. Yes, she could see Rafe drinking and playing monte and dancing with sloe-eyed señoritas in black veils who…
“Allie, for God’s sake!” Dom snarled. “The light patterns are shifting enough without you adding to the problem. Hold still. Oh, hell, there’s dust on the filter. I need to change it. Hold it a minute.”
The minute stretched into two, then to three, as Dom swore at his assistant for handing him an ultra-violet filter when he wanted clear, dammit, clear! The muscles in Allie’s back began to ache. She eased her position slightly and set off another tirade when Dom squinted into the viewfinder and found that his reference points had shifted.
By the time they finally wrapped it up for the afternoon, even Allie’s patience was strained. Dom had become unbearable these past few days. He didn’t speak ten words to Rafe during the shoots or the evening postmortems, but neither did he bother to hide his resentment of her bodyguard’s constant presence. Rafe, on the other hand, ignored him, which only irritated the photographer more.
Dom’s mood took a turn for the worse, if that was possible, when Xola reminded him about the party the resort manager had insisted on throwing for them that night. Not the most sociable of animals to begin with, Dom didn’t want to shut down the shoot to go to a bleeping party.
By unspoken, unanimous vote, the crew gave Allie the unenviable task of convincing the photographer that everyone needed a break. He eventually conceded, but not graciously. In fact, Allie told him in exasperation, he made the fuzzy, saucer-size tarantula that had crawled into his camera case this morning seem positively congenial by comparison.
As a consequence, by the time their small convoy drove through Rancho Tremayo’s gates, the entire crew was strung tight.
Rafe included.
The easy camaraderie he’d experienced with Allie earlier in the morning had completely dissipated during the exhausting day. He’d contacted the Santa Fe police to advise them of her situation soon after their arrival. They’d been cooperative about keeping in touch with NYPD on the status of the investigation and adding an officer for crowd control during the downtown shoot. Even with the extra set of eyes, though, Rafe was coiled tight from a day of scanning the crowds of tourists who gathered to watch the shoot.
His mood hadn’t improved as the day stretched beyond the projected time and Avendez pushed for one more shot, one more pose. Like a sleek Thoroughbred bred for endurance as well as speed, Allie put herself through her paces. She was as tireless as the Zebra, or so it appeared.
But when Rafe arrived to escort her to the party that night, he noted an uncharacteristic droop to her shoulders. Drawing her elegant carriage around her like a cloak, she summoned her company smile and invited him in.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said as he stepped through the door. “Not with me.”
“Do what?” she asked, startled.
“Put on your public face.”
She studied him for a moment, as if trying to gauge the reason for his brusque comment. Then she shrugged. “This is the only face I have.”
“You’ve got one for every occasion. And for every mood.”
An emotion Rafe couldn’t quite interpret darkened her eyes briefly. “You’re wrong, but I’m not going to argue with you. I’ve had enough arguing for one day. Let me get my purse and we’ll go.”
She crossed the sitting room to pick up a small black leather bag, and Rafe realized that his night was going to be even longer than his day.
A week ago, even a few days ago, he would have reacted to this sophisticated creature with an instinctive, gut-level male response. His body would have tightened at the vision of her face framed by a tumble of dark red curls. His pulse would have hit Mach 3 at the expanse of creamy skin left bare by the sloping cowl neckline of her sparkly emerald-green sweater. He didn’t even want to think about his lower organ’s response to a strip of black leather so short it could hardly be called a skirt, or to those long, long legs encased in black tights.
Tonight, that small sag to her shoulders bothered him more than her stunning appearance. Or so he thought…until Allie bent over to pick up her purse.
Grimly he escorted her to the resort’s main building. Who the hell did he think he was kidding? His body was so coiled he could barely put one foot in front of the other. His pulse jackhammered in his chest, and sweat had popped out on his brow the moment he glimpsed that damned skirt. He was a man, and Allie was all woman. She was more than that. She was Allie.
It didn’t help Rafe’s mood that every other male at the party saw the woman in her, as well.
The resort manager glommed on to her the moment she stepped into the long hall with the low stuccoed ceilings supported by weathered beams. Tall, tanned and manicured to perfection, the man reminded Rafe of a hair-sprayed Cuban cigar. An El Tampico, he decided objectively. With a thin, fine outer wrapper—and a dull inner taste.
“Miss Fortune! We’ve been waitin
g for you. Come and meet some of the other guests.”
Rafe propped his shoulders against the wall and watched El Tampico parade Allie around the hall like a prize heifer at a cattle auction. Rafe had made some discreet inquiries about the man soon after their arrival. The nephew of a hotel magnate, he’d come out to prove himself by managing this exclusive resort some five months ago…leaving his wife and children in Dallas. He certainly wasn’t thinking about the little woman now, Rafe noted sourly. Nor were any of the men circling Allie like vultures who’d just spotted their next meal.
This was how he’d first seen her, Rafe remembered. Surrounded by men at the Fortunes’s party. The Viking had hung on her elbow then, the way the Cigar did now. Annoyance curled deep inside Rafe, then spiked to irritation when the Zebra strolled over to Allie and looped an arm around her neck. From this distance, Rafe couldn’t tell what he said to her, but she laughed and kissed him on the unfurred side of his head.
“Can I buy you a margarita?”
The low, liquid voice at his side could have been poured from a bottle of honey. Rafe turned and glanced down at the woman next to him, who stood almost as high as his armpit.
“A Coke, maybe,” he replied with a smile. “Better yet, a cup of coffee.”
Xola’s brows brushed the edges of her short-cropped brown hair. “Can’t drink on duty? Poor baby. I don’t think I could face tomorrow without a couple of margaritas. Dom outdid himself today.”
“So why do you stay with him? From what I’ve gathered, you’re good at what you do. Very good.”
Xola’s velvet chuckle poured out, jerking more than one man’s head around. Rafe caught the looks of amazement as the resort’s guests connected that liquid, sensual laughter with the woman who stood at his side, her stocky figure draped in a fringed Spanish shawl twice her size.
“Sweetheart, I’m the best stylist in the city, which means I’m the best in the universe. Any prop I can’t find doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, Dom’s also the best, which is why I work with him. At least—” her gaze slid to the far end of the room “—he is when he works with Allie.”
Rafe studied her face for a moment, then asked quietly, “Does Avendez know you’re in love with him?”
Her gaze flew back to his. “Are you kidding? I could wear a neon sign advertising the fact, but Dom wouldn’t notice. He doesn’t know any woman exists but Allie. I wish I could hate her.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. Allie’s one of the few models I know who doesn’t actually believe the attention lavished on her has anything to do with her as a person. Besides,” Xola added, with one of her patented stomach-tickling chuckles, “if it weren’t for Allie’s calming influence on Dom, I probably would have thrown the switch on all his strobe lights and sizzled him to a half-bald bacon strip by now.”
Rafe grinned down at her. “Sounds like a great idea to me.”
As she watched from across the room, Allie’s fingers tightened on the stem of the margarita glass the resort manager had thrust into her hand. Rafe’s slashing grin sent a stab of irritation through her. That was the same grin he’d turned on her, she thought in annoyance, just before he kissed her. Frowning, she rolled her shoulders to ease the weight of Dom’s arm. He shot her a sour look and strolled off. Allie barely registered his departure.
Xola and her bodyguard always seemed to find something amusing to chat about. Allie hadn’t missed the stylist’s habit of gravitating to Rafe’s side during shoots. Any more than she could miss his obvious enjoyment of her company now. He certainly couldn’t accuse Xola of wearing more than one face, she thought with a touch of spite. She looked exactly the same, morning and night.
Shame swept through her at the thought. Jealousy, Allie discovered, wasn’t a very pleasant emotion. Particularly when she didn’t have any right to be jealous. Rafe had been hired to spend his waking hours with her, and he performed his job with quiet efficiency. That didn’t mean he had to stay glued to her side. He had every right to enjoy another woman’s company.
“I have to confess something, Miss Fortune,” the unctuous resort manager murmured in her ear. “I wangled a few of the shots of you taken around the resort.”
Allie nodded absently, her eyes on the unlikely couple at the other end of the room. Rafe practically had to bend double to hear Xola over the background music.
“Would you mind autographing a picture for our rogue’s gallery? I’ll put you up right next to the vice president. He and his family stayed here a couple of months ago.”
“What?” Allie dragged her attention back to the man at her side. “Oh, of course.”
“I’ve got them in my office. Here, let me take that for you.”
He eased the margarita glass from her hand and set it on the table beside her small bag. Distracted and irritated anew by the sight of Rafe’s white teeth gleaming in another one of those incredible no-holds-barred grins, Allie let the man take her elbow and steer her through the crowd. The noise of the party faded as they walked into his large, paneled office.
“The photographs are on my desk. Here, which one do you like best?”
Allie shuffled through the prints, all of which had come from Dom’s reject pile. She tapped a nail against a glossy shot of her face and shoulders silhouetted in Rancho Tremayo’s timber-framed adobe gate.
“This one, I think.”
The manager’s arm brushed hers as he bent to examine her choice. “Yes, that’s great. Here’s a pen.”
Allie took the heavy silver pen he offered and edged a bit to the side to give herself writing room. She leaned over to scrawl Best Wishes across a corner of the picture, then froze when his arm brushed her hip. Only this time, the contact was deliberate. It couldn’t be anything else, since his hand stayed planted at the back of her leather skirt.
“If you don’t get your hand off me,” she said pleasantly as she scrawled her name across the print, “I’ll break your arm.”
He jerked away, stammering. “Uh…I was…just…”
She straightened. “I know what you were just.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Fortune. Really. You misinterpreted my eagerness over the photo.”
“I obviously misinterpreted something.” She tossed the pen onto the desk and gave him a look that combined disdain, haughtiness and plain old-fashioned dislike. “Let’s get back to the party.”
She swung around, prepared to sweep out of the room. The sight of Rafe leaning negligently against the doorjamb brought her to an abrupt halt.
He didn’t say a word to the manager. He didn’t have to. One look at Rafe’s face had the man stuttering again. “We, uh… Miss Fortune was just…”
“Yes?”
Allie had always considered the term “dark and dangerous” a romantic cliché. At that moment, she understood that every cliché was originally based on a hard, cold fact. Rafe’s leashed anger was all the more frightening for its rigid control.
The manager’s Adam’s apple bobbed several times. “Miss Fortune autographed a publicity shot for me. We, ah, were about to return to the party.”
“You return to the party. I’d like to talk to my client a moment.”
Visibly relieved, the man abandoned the scene without so much as a backward glance. Allie stiffened as Rafe’s blue eyes raked her with an icy anger.
“I thought we had an understanding,” he said coldly. “No more strolls in the dark without your chaperon?”
“My chaperon was otherwise occupied,” she returned sweetly. Too sweetly.
His eyes slitted. “Not too occupied to see you slip out of the party with your friend. And without this.”
He held up his hand, dangling her black purse.
Allie flushed. The sight of Rafe bending over Xola had disturbed her so much that she hadn’t even thought about the purse. Still, that was no reason to feel so guilty about forgetting the beeper Rafe had insisted she carry. The office door stood wide open, for heaven’s sake. A hundred or more people were
congregated in the next room. One scream would have brought them running.
“All right. I forgot the rules. I forgot the beeper. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it in an emergency.”
“Since this isn’t an emergency, it will have to. I said I’m sorry. I’m not going to grovel.”
He looked like he might try to make her do just that as he strode forward. Allie refused to retreat, although she thought about it for a second or two. Rafe could be rather intimidating when he chose.
“Dammit, Allie, you don’t go anywhere without the beeper. Anywhere!”
“All right! I won’t forget it again.”
He tossed her the small bag. “See that you don’t.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that your client-employer communication skills need a little polishing, Stone?”
“Most of my employers,” he returned, ushering her out of the office.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Rafe knew damn well he was overreacting. He also knew that his fierce, blazing anger was directed at himself as much as at Allie. He still couldn’t believe the searing male possessiveness that had streaked through him when he saw Allie stroll out of the party with El Tampico.
Leaving Xola in midsentence, he’d stalked across the room, snatched up Allie’s purse and arrived on the scene just in time to hear her threatening to break the man’s arm. She’d handled the Cigar easily, just as she had the Viking. That didn’t mean Rafe liked seeing her do it. Any more than he liked the way men came on to her. Himself included, he remembered with a twist of disgust.
When he escorted his client to her casita an hour later, Rafe still hadn’t shaken his residual anger. Neither had Allie, apparently. He made a quick, thorough check of the interior.
“Lock the door behind me,” he instructed curtly.
Her response was even more curt, “I will.”
“Keep the beeper within reach.”
Beauty and the Bodyguard Page 8