Beauty and the Bodyguard

by Merline Lovelace

  She felt exalted and exhilarated and too exhausted for words. Sleep tugged at her, overriding the tiny worry that squiggled around at the back of her mind. She shouldn’t have whispered that she could love him. Desperately. Her feelings were too new. Too uncertain for her to press them on him yet. Yet the words had slipped out during the peak of her passion, and she couldn’t recall them. Or regret them.

  That was a worry for yesterday, she decided. Or tomorrow. Right now, she would focus only on his warmth next to her in the bed, his breath on her shoulder, and his arms around her.

  Twelve

  Allie woke the next morning to a narrow beam of sunlight slicing through the edges of the drawn curtains and an empty cabin.

  Pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes, she rose up on one elbow. A quick survey convinced her that Rafe had left while she was still sleeping. Sudden doubt rushed through her, only to be shoved aside with the covers. Whatever else he might decide to do after last night, Rafe wouldn’t leave her unprotected.

  Her bet was that he’d gone to the restaurant to procure the caffeine he needed to jumpstart his system. And breakfast, she guessed. The Devil’s Peak version of chila-whatevers. He’d tried to get her to try the mysterious dish yesterday, but she’d been too edgy and tense over the incident at the opera and the delay in the schedule to abandon her diet, as well. This morning, she could eat a moose slathered in green chilis. Or Rafe slathered in anything, she decided, grinning.

  She was dressed and waiting when he returned some fifteen minutes later. Sure enough, he carried a plastic tray loaded with two large foam cups and several boxes of assorted sizes. She answered his knock and stepped back as he brought a gust of pine-scented mountain air with him into the cabin. He stopped just over the threshold and let his gaze roam from the top of her brushed and shining hair to the white athletic socks she’d appropriated from his carryall.

  He hadn’t showered or shaved, Allie saw, no doubt to keep from waking her. Stubble darkened his chin and his lower cheeks, and his hair was ruffled from the breeze outside. He looked dark and rugged and altogether too serious for the morning after one of the most glorious nights of her life.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Allie willed him to kiss her. She balled her fists behind her back and focused all her energy on sending him a mental message.

  Touch me, Rafe. Kiss me.

  To her delight, he set the tray down on the table against the wall and curled a knuckle under her chin. His hand was still cool from the chill morning air, yet Allie burned where he touched her.

  She saw a raw hunger in his eyes that more than matched her own, and a worry that told her he’d brought back more than just breakfast. Determinedly ignoring the worry for the moment, she closed her eyes and reveled in his kiss. When she opened them again, her mouth curved in a small smile.

  “Nice,” she murmured.

  “Very.”

  “And definitely undumb.”

  “One of the undumbest things I’ve ever done,” he agreed, brushing his thumb across her lower lip. Then he stepped back to shrug out of his sheepskin vest, and Allie knew she couldn’t ignore the worry any longer.

  “Did you talk to the police?”

  Nodding, he hung his vest on the back of one of the chairs. “I called them from the restaurant.”

  “And?”

  His jaw tightened. “And they’ve drawn a blank. On both fronts. There’s no record of any call being made to your room from the mobile phone in the processing center.”

  Allie sagged in relief. “I knew no one on the crew could be harassing me like that.”

  “This doesn’t rule them out,” Rafe countered sharply. “It just means that the call wasn’t made from the processing unit. Someone could have made it easily from outside the rancho.”

  “Okay, okay! What about the incident at the opera?”

  He shook his head. “The rubber coating on the cable is too porous. The lab could lift only a few smudges.”

  Allie’s initial relief gave way to crushing disappointment. She’d hoped desperately that the police would identify some stranger, some fanatic, who’d followed her to Santa Fe and mingled with the crowd at the gala. She wanted this harassment to end.

  “There’s more,” he continued, his mouth grim. “The lab can’t state with any degree of certainty whether the cable was cut deliberately or simply worn through by the same kind of sharp edge that sliced into my tux.”

  “So it might have been an accident after all?”

  “It might.”

  “The caller might not even be here? In Santa Fe?”

  “He could be anywhere.” Frustration evident in every line of his taut body, Rafe raked a hand through his hair. “It looks like we’re back to square one.”

  Allie shoved aside her bitter disappointment. “Oh, no,” she replied softly. “Not square one. I’m not sure exactly where we are, but not square one.”

  He glanced at her, his tension taking on a hint of wary confusion. Allie had experienced the same confusion last night, only hers had come closer to panic.

  “I’m not exactly sure where we are, either,” he said slowly. “All I know is that I’ve broken just about every rule in my book since I met you, lady.”

  “Yes, well, rules are made to be broken, or at least modified to fit the circumstances.”

  Although Allie kept her tone light, she suspected her smile came out a bit lopsided. Dammit! She shouldn’t have scared him with that silly whispered promise of almost-love. She’d spooked him, as his next words proved.

  “I was married once, Allie.”

  “I know.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “So? I was almost married once. That didn’t work, either.”

  “You don’t understand. I wasn’t particularly choice husband material before the explosion. My wife decided I was even less of a catch afterward. Now…”

  “Now, you’re a little dented and scarred, like the carousel,” Allie interrupted, mentally consigning the ex-Mrs. Stone to a pit of hungry vipers. Very hungry vipers.

  “More than a little, sweetheart.”

  “You said yourself that it didn’t matter what the outside shell looked like. It’s the song inside that counts. I, for one, happen to like the way you sing,” she finished fiercely.

  One corner of his mouth curled. “You do, huh?”

  “I do. Well, most of the time,” she amended. “When you’re not going on about zebras and cigars and such.”

  “Guess I’ll have to watch what I say about your collection. While I wasn’t looking, I seem to have become part of it.”

  She’d have to think about that one, Allie decided, tucking it away for future examination.

  “Don’t look so worried,” she told him. “I won’t push you into anything you’re not ready for.”

  A rueful gleam lightened his eyes to a silvery blue. “You’ve been pushing me since the moment I laid eyes on you, Miss Fortune.”

  “Is that so?”

  He brushed a knuckle down her cheek. “You know damn well that’s so.”

  She bit back the retort that certain men needed to be pushed, either into the lake or into love. Curling a hand over his, she nuzzled her cheek against his palm.

  “I’m serious, Rafe. We’ll play this by…by whatever rules you want to establish. Within reason, of course.”

  “Why do I sense that I might have come up with a whole new set of rules?”

  Allie hid her relief. He hadn’t exactly committed to anything like a future together, but neither had he turned tail and run. After all the years she’d spent holding off men who proclaimed to be in love with her, or at least her face, she was finding this business of coaxing Rafe into her bed and her heart a bit daunting. Deciding she’d pushed him enough, she dropped her hand and pulled out a chair.

  “I’ll help you write them,” she promised. “Right now, though, I guess we’d better eat and get packed. If we make it back to Rancho Tremayo by noon, we might be able to get the
museum sequence done this afternoon.”

  “I’m not sure we should go back to Rancho Tremayo. Not yet.”

  She paused in the act of prying a lid off one of the cartons. “Why not?”

  Rafe hooked a chair and sat down opposite her. “I can’t give you a specific reason, just a gut feeling. Although I don’t have any proof, my instinct tells me the calls are from someone you know. Someone who knows your schedule. I want to run some more background checks.”

  “I thought you already ran checks on everyone, me included?”

  “I did.”

  Frowning, Allie watched as Rafe dug a fork into a congealing mass of eggs, vegetables, diced ham and green chilis. She shuddered, remembering her earlier confidence that she could eat a moose slathered with that stuff. Thank goodness Rafe had brought her wheat toast and fruit instead.

  “There has to be something I’m missing,” he said between forkfuls. “I’ll just have to dig deeper.”

  Allie crumbled a sliver of dry toast in her fingers, torn. She understood his determination. He was a professional—one of the best in the business, according to her father. So was she.

  “How long will this excavation take?”

  “As long as necessary. Until I come up with something that feels right,” he said grimly.

  Torn, Allie tried to weigh his gut instinct against the weight of her responsibility to her family and to the rest of the crew. As much as she longed to spend another few days with Rafe in this isolated mountain cabin, she couldn’t keep a crew of forty hanging around, twiddling their thumbs, without good cause. And she was too much a Fortune to let the company Kate had built with her own hands founder in the process.

  “Rafe, I have to go back. We’ve already lost a day and a half in the schedule.”

  His black brows slanted. “Didn’t I just hear you agree to play this by my rules…again?”

  “I did…within reason.” She hesitated, groping for the right words. “I’m not particularly brave or adventuresome, like Kate was. It scares me to think someone I know may be trying to harm me, or to harm my family through me.”

  “I don’t care much for the idea, either.”

  “Yet if I let him frighten me into canceling the shoot and delaying the launch of this new product line, he’s done just that.”

  “Allie…”

  She reached across the table and gripped his hand. “There’s more at stake here than most people realize, Rafe. My grandmother’s company in on the line. My family’s future. I can’t let them—or her memory—down.”

  He stared at her for long moments, his face hard-set and unyielding. Then his breath slowly gusted out.

  “From what you told me about your grandmother last night, I’d say you’ve got more of her gritty courage than you realize.”

  Allie managed a lopsided smile. “I’ve also got you guarding my person.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s one of the rules we’re going to revise immediately. From here on out, Miss Fortune, I’m not guarding your person from the next casita.”

  Soft laughter spilled through her. “Now that, Mr. Stone, is one rule I can live with.”

  They arrived back at Rancho Tremayo just before noon. As Allie had predicted, the delay in the production schedule had turned Dom from surly and sarcastic to savage. The photographer’s mood wasn’t improved by a further delay while his assistant scurried to round up the rest of the crew. Or by Rafe’s quiet announcement that he was moving his gear into Allie’s casita immediately following the afternoon’s shoot.

  The bald half of the Zebra’s head went red, along with the whole of his face. He glared at Rafe with undisguised dislike, his lip curling back in a sneer.

  “Apparently Allie got more recreation than rest during her little R and R.”

  “Watch it, Avendez.”

  Rafe’s soft warning deepened the red stain, but the photographer didn’t back down.

  “I’ve known Allie a lot longer than you have, Stone. I’ve watched men fall all over her, dazzled by the woman they think she is. Very few ever get past her outer shell, or see what I see through the viewfinder.”

  A collage of images instantly filled Rafe’s mind. Of Allie’s laughing face as she sprawled atop him in the dust.

  Of a scrubbed and nightshirt-clad woman standing in the middle of the cabin, pointing a tube of skin cream at the coffee table and sternly ordering him to sit.

  Of a glorious pagan goddess, her head thrown back, her skin tinted to gold by the fire.

  At that moment, Rafe knew he’d been given a rare and precious gift. He’d viewed something Avendez would never see through his camera lens. The knowledge softened his instinctive antagonism toward the photographer.

  “Maybe you do see something through the viewfinder that few others are privileged to see,” he said quietly. “You and Allie know how to use your skills to bring out the best in each other. But I’m moving my things into her casita after the shoot.”

  For a moment longer, Avendez held his eyes, still angry, still rawly jealous. Then the flush staining his face slowly faded, and his shoulders sagged.

  “Fine. But until then, she’s mine.”

  Rafe didn’t argue. He knew as well as Avendez that Allie belonged to no one but herself. What she chose to give to others was a gift.

  By the time the hastily assembled team had gathered in the courtyard, the photographer had recovered his acidic tongue. He lashed out at everyone indiscriminately as they hastily loaded the equipment into vehicles and headed into Santa Fe. Following the small convoy, Rafe drove Allie to the internationally renowned Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, a soaring structure of adobe and glass that housed one of the world’s foremost collections of Native American artifacts.

  While Xola combed the museum for usable props, Avendez positioned his model against a backdrop of priceless Anasazi pottery to capture what he called her timeless essence. Throughout the process, Rafe’s eyes roamed the scene.

  A splotch of burnt orange snared his attention. His eyes thoughtful, he watched the sweatshirt-clad Geek jump every time Avendez shouted at him to move the reflector or get a goddamn fan and make a breeze to ruffle Allie’s skirt. Granted, working around the Zebra would make anyone a prime candidate for a psych ward. But the kid’s jerky nervousness seemed to peak two thirds of the way through the shoot, when he dropped a whole tray of exposed film and roused Dom to unprecedented fury.

  Scrambling awkwardly on hands and knees to retrieve the film, Philips stuffed it into the tray and scurried for a supply of fresh film. He returned some time later, swiping his arm across his nose like a kid who’d had a good cry.

  Suddenly Rafe stiffened.

  A doper! he thought, totally disgusted with himself for not picking up on it sooner. The kid was a doper! A sometime user, or the signs would have been more visible. Still, Rafe shouldn’t have missed the runny nose, a classic symptom of a snorter.

  Eyes narrowed, he watched Philips skulk at the back of the shoot. A thousand possibilities sifted through his mind. Drugs could have magnified an otherwise healthy young male’s fascination with Allie Fortune’s beautiful image into a sick fixation. The kid could have made the calls when he was high, so high he either didn’t remember them or managed to disguise all evidence of his obsession when he was down. He could have…

  “Dammit, I want this shot backlit, not silhouetted. You can’t even see her face. Move that damn strobe.”

  While Avendez snarled in fury at his hapless team, Rafe watched the Geek closely. He’d visit the kid later tonight, he decided with grim determination. It was time they had another little chat.

  The exhausted crew returned to Rancho Tremayo some seven hours later. Leaving Allie in her casita for a few moments, Rafe went next door to collect his gear. When he returned, she had showered and changed.

  “Dom wants to go over the contact sheets in the processing unit,” she told him with a tired smile. “His team will print whatever shots we decide to go with from today’s seque
nce while we review tomorrow’s production schedule.”

  “Give me five minutes,” Rafe replied, dumping his gear on the bed.

  As he walked through the cool, starry night to his casita, Rafe realized he’d have to delay his private conversation with the Geek. Although his instincts told him to corner the kid now, before anything else happened, Allie was totally depleted from the grueling seven-hour shoot. On top of that, she had this late-night conference to get through. She needed sleep, badly, and Rafe wasn’t about to leave her alone in her casita or her bed.

  He’d pull the kid aside tomorrow, he decided. After the morning run, while Allie was safely ensconced with her team of stylists and makeup artists and hairdressers. Right now, though, he’d make a quick call to New York and get the detective working Allie’s case to check the National Crime Information Center for priors on one Jerome Philips. If the Geek had any history of arrests for drug use, it would show up in NCIC’s computers.

  As the intense review session dragged on, Allie was too exhausted to take more than passing notice of Rafe’s coiled tension. Her eyes blurring, she propped her chin in her elbows and surveyed the black-and-white contact sheets on the worktable.

  “This one, I think,” Dom muttered. The felt tip of his marker squeaked as he circled a shot of Allie running a finger around the lip of a breathtakingly beautiful black pottery bowl.

  She scrunched her nose. Combined with the scent of developing solution and the other chemicals stored in the unit, the odor from the marker was giving her a headache. Allie wanted desperately to be out of the closed-in unit, walking through the clean air with Rafe. Or snuggled up beside him in the wide bed in her casita. Or sprawled on top of him in…

  “What do you think, Allie?”

  She blinked and focused her tired eyes on the contact sheet. “Of which one?”

  Dom’s mouth screwed into a tight line. “This one,” he said acidly, tapping his marker against the sheet. “The one that just might win me an Addie this year, not to mention sell every tube of Sunglazed Wine that Fortune Cosmetics can produce.”