Beauty and the Bodyguard

by Merline Lovelace

  “Funny,” she murmured, her eyes holding his. “I wouldn’t have thought of you as superstitious. I guess I have as much to learn about you as you do about me.”

  “Allie…”

  “We need to talk, Rafe,” she said quietly. “About what happened last night.”

  “I know.”

  “Tonight? After the opera?”

  “Maybe. If you’re not too tired.”

  And if he could manage to keep his hands off her. At this moment, that possibility seemed remote. Her scent surrounded him, delicate and floral and more erotic than anything he could remember on a woman. His body hardened, and he ached to draw her back, to feel her length pressed to his. Shoving the urge to the distant corner of his mind where it belonged, he offered her his arm.

  She hesitated, then slid her hand into the bend of his elbow. Rafe’s muscles quivered involuntarily at her touch.

  “Let’s hope your lucky charm works tonight,” she said, a touch of weariness creeping into her voice, despite her brave front. “Maybe we’ll wrap this sequence up early and actually get to enjoy ourselves at the opera.”

  Rafe figured his enjoyment meter would peg out about two and a half minutes after the curtain went up. But if an evening of music would ease some of the strain on Allie’s shoulders, he’d sit through a half-dozen performances.

  They arrived at the dramatic open-air theater on the outskirts of Santa Fe to find the advance crew already on the scene. After some consultation and a good many expletives, Avendez decided to shoot the first sequence using the sweeping arch of the half roof over the stage and the orchestra pit as a backdrop. The composition, he announced, would center Allie’s face and black dress against the golden lights of the arch, which thrust like a ship’s prow into the night. Black on gold on black was how he described it. Simple. Dramatic. Stunning.

  This simple shot, Rafe knew by now, would require half a ton of equipment. Metal rasped against metal as Avendez’s assistants worked feverishly to mount huge box strobes on the portable scaffolding. The generator hummed a steady counterpoint to the murmur of the crowd, many of whom wandered over to watch, champagne glasses in hand.

  Rafe’s jaw tightened as he scanned the milling crowd. Dressed in everything from formal evening wear to the distinctive Santa Fe look that only its residents could carry off, they added to the bustle and confusion around the shoot.

  The gawkers were crowding too close for his comfort. Mingling with the crew. Observing while Dom positioned Allie and ran some test Polaroids. Eyes narrowed, nerves tight, Rafe moved through the chattering throng to the uniformed officer the Santa Fe police had provided at his request.

  The officer must have sensed Rafe’s tension. She frowned slightly, studying his expression. “Everything all right, Mr. Stone?”

  He hesitated, then gave the only answer he could. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  She nodded and hitched her Sam Browne belt a little higher on her hips. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  Unease nagged at Rafe as he swept the scene. “I wish I could tell you what to look for.”

  “I wish you could, too,” she answered with a grin.

  Rafe drifted through the crowd, studying faces and hands and shoes, looking for something that didn’t belong, didn’t fit. He couldn’t pinpoint the source of his tension, unless it was the sense of suppressed excitement that shimmered in the night air. Maybe the excitement was caused by the gala event. Maybe by the added novelty of the shoot. Whatever generated this electric air, Rafe didn’t like it.

  Even when Dom yelled for quiet and began his ritual dance with Allie, talk fluttered around the edges of the shoot. People drifted in and out of the circle of onlookers. A well-dressed matron stumbled over the thick cables snaking from the generator.

  Idly Rafe followed the lines of cabling from the generator to the scaffolding that supported the strobes. As he scanned the bank of overhead lights, one of them dipped and tilted at an odd angle. Suddenly Rafe tasted danger. He shoved his way past indignant spectators and started toward Allie.

  At that precise moment, Avendez jerked his head up from the viewfinder, his lips curled back in a snarl. “Who’s messing with the lighting? What the hell’s—? Jesus!”

  The snap of a cable whipping loose sounded over the noise of the crowd.

  A wild arc of light skewered the night, then swept the sky at a crazy angle.

  Someone screamed.

  Rafe didn’t need to look up to know one of the huge box strobes had broken loose from the scaffolding and was now swinging wildly at the end of its anchoring line. Bright light flashed into his eyes, momentarily blinding him, then arced away. Black spots obscured his vision as he pushed through the crowd.

  “Allie!” Avendez shouted in panic. His camera shattered when he threw it aside and raced toward her. “Move! Get the hell out of the way!”

  Blinded by the dazzling light, Allie threw an arm up over her eyes and tried to sidestep through the forest of cables and reflectors caging her. The strobe swung toward her in a deadly arc.

  Rafe reached her a half second before the huge box hit the bottom of its vicious swing. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he spun around and yanked her out of its path. A corner of the strobe struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder. He felt a sharp metal edge slice through his tux like a razor, but his only concern at that moment was for Allie.

  Banding her against his side to shield her from the backswing, he shoved his way through the equipment. Behind him, reflectors crashed as the strobe knocked them from their stands. He heard Avendez shouting from the other side of the slashing arc, but ignored him.

  Setting Allie on her feet, he steadied her with hard hands on her upper arms. “Are you all right?”

  Her eyes were huge pools of shock in a chalk-white face. She opened her mouth. No sound came out.

  “Allie, sweetheart, are you hurt?”

  “N-no.”

  At the small squeak, Rafe groaned and folded her in his arms again.

  “Allie!” Avendez’s hoarse shout sounded behind them.

  Twisting his head, Rafe saw the photographer grab for the swinging strobe and wrestle it to a stop. Then he pushed it aside and pounded toward them.

  Reluctantly Rafe loosened his hold. A shaken Allie stepped out of his arms. Avendez was at her side the next instant. Looping an arm around her neck, he dragged her into a fierce hug.

  The naked fear on his face was the only thing that kept Rafe from reaching out and ripping the man’s arm off at the shoulder socket.

  “God, Allie, you scared the crap out of me!” The photographer’s voice shook as he buried his face in her hair.

  She gave a weak, muffled laugh and disengaged herself. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Yeah, right. Some models will do anything to get a little extra attention.” He searched her face, his own anxious. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Gently she brushed a strand of black hair from the side of his face. “I’m fine, Dom.”

  Rafe stood back, observing the scene with a surge of conflicting emotions. Part of him wanted to step between them, to jerk Allie’s attention away from Avendez and back to him. Another part admired her loyalty to a man she claimed as friend.

  Reluctantly Rafe moved the photographer to the bottom of his list of potential late-night callers. The man hadn’t been able to hide the fear that twisted through him a few moments ago, or the love he tried to disguise behind his gruff manner.

  A small movement to his side caught Rafe’s attention. He wasn’t the only one observing the scene between photographer and model. Xola gripped Allie’s cloak in both hands, her eyes bleak. The rest of the crew crowded behind her. Dom’s senior assistant stood white-faced, while the knobby-kneed Geek clutched a crumpled reflector in both hands.

  Then another figure snagged Rafe’s attention. Easing his way through the crew, he reached the police officer’s side.

  “I thought you might be interested in this, Mr. Stone.”


  Using a handkerchief, she lifted the end of a thick, black cable. The rubber coating was serrated, the wires twisted.

  “Looks to me like someone or something sawed through this cable,” she murmured.

  A muscle in Rafe’s jaw twitched. “Looks that way to me, too. Can you get an evidence technician out here, fast?”

  “I already called one. He’s on his way.”

  It took almost an hour for the lab tech to arrive on the scene and collect the evidence. In private conversation with Rafe, he admitted that the chances of lifting a complete print from the porous rubber coating were pretty slim, but maybe the experts at the crime lab in Albuquerque could get enough points to make a positive ID.

  In the meantime, the uniformed officer took statements from witnesses. No one, it turned out, had seen anything suspicious.

  At that point, Rafe made an instant decision. Until the results of the police checks came in, he was getting Allie away from the crew and the shoot. And from the damn schedule that was driving her into the ground.

  Stunned by the idea that the incident might not have been an accident, she made no protest when Rafe bundled her into the car. She’d recovered enough from her shock, however, to stammer a protest when he slammed the door to her casita behind them and told her brusquely to get changed and pack a bag.

  “What?”

  “Bring something warm.”

  She gaped at him. “Something warm?”

  “We’re getting out of here.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight. And we’ll stay out until I get the answers to a few questions.”

  “But…but I can’t just leave. The shoot… The schedule…”

  “To hell with the schedule.”

  Rafe strode over to her and lifted her chin with a hard hand. “You promised to follow my orders if I perceived a threat to your safety. Immediately. Without question.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it with a snap.

  “You’ve got five minutes to get changed and packed, Allie. Then we’re out of here.”

  Ten

  Allie wedged a shoulder against the car door and studied the man beside her through half-lowered lashes.

  In the glare of headlights, his profile appeared stark and uncompromising. A loose strand of dark hair brushed his forehead. His mouth was set in a hard line, and his chin jutted out to meet the night. He’d tugged off his bow tie and exchanged his tux for his sheepskin-lined vest during a quick stop at his casita, but he hadn’t taken the time to change his white shirt or his dark slacks.

  In the few moments he’d given her to get ready, Allie had traded her velvet gown for jeans and a soft, baggy gray turtleneck. Rafe had paced like a caged mountain lion while she hurriedly tossed a few things into her weekender. She’d snatched the case off the bed and started to hurry out, only to pause and scoop up the tin carousel at the last minute.

  She held the small toy in her lap now, reluctant to set it in the back seat with the carryalls. Somehow it helped to have the keepsake within reach, as if Kate’s carousel could somehow bestow on Allie a measure of her grandmother’s indomitable strength in times of crisis.

  No, not Kate’s carousel, she remembered bleakly. Hers. Kate was dead…as Allie might be, if Rafe hadn’t moved so quickly. Shivers danced all over her skin. She hunched lower in the seat and hugged her arms across her chest.

  “Cold?” Rafe’s deep voice cut through the darkness, steady and reassuring. He groped for the instrument panel. “Want some heat?”

  “No,” she replied.

  Yes, her mind screamed.

  Yes, she wanted some heat. His heat. More than she could ever remember wanting anything. She longed to curl into his arms and shut out the horror of the past hour. Pretend it had never happened. She ached for the passion, the release, the blessed mindlessness, that she’d found with him last night.

  As much as she wanted him, though, she was determined not to shove aside his objections and push herself on him. Not again. Not after last night. He’d have to find his way to her this time. Allie only hoped he didn’t take too long in the process.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, needing the sound of his voice, if nothing else.

  “To Devil’s Peak.”

  “That tells me a lot.”

  He slanted her a small smile. “It’s a ski lodge up in the mountains, about an hour from here.”

  “Why there?”

  “From what I understand, the place is packed in winter, but pretty well deserted this time of year. I reserved a cabin while you were packing.”

  “How did you know about this place?”

  “I made a few inquiries when we first got to Santa Fe. I always like to have an escape route and a rendezvous point predesignated.”

  “I see.” Allie swallowed. “Did you…did you think something like this might happen?”

  He gripped the wheel, his jaw squaring. “I considered it a possibility.”

  Shaken, Allie shrank back against the door. It was bad enough thinking someone she knew might be fixating on her because of a sick, twisted love. The idea that the same someone might be deliberately trying to maim or kill her frightened her far more.

  No wonder he’d been so reluctant last night. She’d brushed aside his objections, pooh-poohed his professional concerns in her hunger for this man. Practically forced him to make love to her. She’d made light of his need to keep some distance between them so that he could maintain his alertness. She wouldn’t make light of it again.

  “Why?” she asked, feeling more than a little ill. “Why would someone who professes to…to love me want to hurt me?”

  “Maybe it’s not you he’s out to hurt. A shrink might suggest he’s using you to get at all the women who’ve hurt him. Or maybe,” Rafe finished slowly, frowning at the road ahead, “he’s trying to get at someone else through you.”

  Allie stared at him, her eyes widening. “Someone else? My parents, you mean?”

  “Your parents,” Rafe replied, his brow furrowed. “Or the entire Fortune family, as embodied by Fortune Cosmetics.”

  “You…you think he might be harassing me because I’m Fortune Cosmetics’s new ‘face’?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just guessing. When did these calls start? Before or after you agreed to do this ad campaign?”

  Numbly Allie counted backward through the nights she’d been jerked from sleep.

  “After,” she whispered. “They started after my first meeting with Dom in New York to discuss the possibility of doing the shoot.”

  Rafe gripped the steering wheel. Avendez again. It always came back to Avendez. Yet the man had thrown himself at the strobe to stop its wild swing, sheet-white with fear for Allie. As much as Rafe would have loved to pin the calls on the vile-tempered photographer, it didn’t feel right. Not after tonight.

  Plenty of others had been present tonight, though. Xola, with her husky voice and her one-sided love for Avendez. The rest of the crew, including the Geek. Plus a whole new cast of opera-goers. Rafe could only hope that the lab in Albuquerque lifted some usable prints from that severed cable.

  His mind churned with the possibilities, and it was some time before Rafe noticed that Allie was breathing deeply. She had wedged herself against the door and rested her head at an uncomfortable angle against the seat back. In the dim glow from the instrument panel, he could see the sweep of her black lashes against her cheek and a quick bobble as her chin dropped, then jerked upward again. She shook her head, as if to clear it and mumbled something. A few moments later, her chin dipped again.

  Keeping one hand on the wheel, Rafe reached over and eased her into the circle of his arm. She gave a little sigh and burrowed her nose in the base of his neck. She went for that spot every time, he thought in mingled amusement and resignation.

  He spent the rest of the long drive breathing in the faint, totally erotic scent of her hair and reliving his terror when the strobe light had swung toward her. Maybe he’d overreac
ted when he decided to yank her away from Rancho Tremayo, he conceded. Maybe the mobile phone and the cut cable had nothing to do with her late-night caller. But Rafe had gone beyond maybes where Allie was concerned.

  Besides, he argued silently, she needed rest. Those killer marathon hours in front of the camera, piled on top of the calls, had taken more of a toll on her than she’d admit. Rafe had done his part, as well, adding to her stress by letting their relationship slip past the boundaries of employer and employee into something he couldn’t quite define.

  He couldn’t sort through the problem of their ill-defined relationship, not while he was responsible for her safety. But he could damn well keep her under wraps and see that she got some rest until the police came up with some answers.

  Allie woke to a dark room, a fuzzy mouth, and the sound of water running. Groggy and disoriented, she pushed herself up on one elbow. It took her a few moments to grasp that she was in a strange bed in an unfamiliar bedroom. Blinking, she stared at the contorted shadow dancing against the far wall. Gradually she realized that it came from the narrow slice of light spilling from the adjoining bathroom. A few seconds later, a low, muttered curse identified the shadow as Rafe.

  Frowning, Allie slid out from under a plump down comforter. Cold air immediately raised goose bumps over her body. All over her body, except for the small patches of skin covered by her bikini panties and bra. She glanced down in confusion. She didn’t remember climbing into bed, much less undressing.

  Another muted exclamation from the bathroom made the question of how she’d gotten into bed irrelevant. Spotting her baggy gray sweater on a chair a few steps away from the bed, she dragged it on and padded barefoot across the smooth, pine-planked floor.

  At first glance, she couldn’t figure out what in the world Rafe was doing. He stood sideways at the sink, naked to the waist and twisted halfway around. His right arm reached over his shoulder, while his left gripped a plastic bottle.

  Eyes wide, Allie skimmed her gaze down his long, lean torso. Twisted as they were, his chest muscles bunched and gleamed in the bright glow of the lights. His unbelted black dress pants rode low on his narrow hips. Allie had barely absorbed the impact of his raw masculinity when she noticed the white shirt stained with blood lying at his feet.