by Ruthie Knox
“No.” She’d dug the hole herself after she bought the tulip tree for Henry’s first birthday. It had never occurred to her that she wasn’t allowed to put it wherever she wanted.
She felt as though she ought to say something about that, but she was having trouble keeping up with him. He walked fast, and her thoughts kept whirling around, a tornado that flung little bits of verbal flotsam toward her mouth, words like no and what? and stop and fuck and help.
“Sorry, I’m not sure … what does the tree have to do with anything?”
“It’s going to mess up your fence line. I can have it moved back, though. No worries. First things first, I’m going to do a circuit around the house. I’d like to see—”
“Stop.” He was getting away from her, his long legs eating up the ground, and an air raid siren had started going off inside her head. “Stop walking. Stop looking at things. And for the love of God, stop talking.”
He actually had the audacity to grin at her again, as if they were still allies, and this was all an enjoyable game rather than the second wave of a hostile incursion.
“There’s not going to be a fence,” Ellen said firmly.
“Your brother is crazy-famous, and you have a kid. You need a fence. I can get it painted any color you want. Or stained. Cedar would look nice with your siding.” Caleb looked at his watch. “Are you free in about an hour? I’m supposed to be meeting with Carly, but after that I’d like to come back by here. In the meantime, it would help me a lot if you could pull together your itinerary for the next few weeks. I need names and contact information for all your friends, too—family, boyfriends, anybody who comes over to play with your son—so I can let my team know who it’s okay to let on the property. Oh, and does your cell phone have a radio function, by any chance?”
Ellen’s fingers had begun to ache deep in the joints, so she opened her hand to stretch them, and the iced tea glass fell onto the lawn. She gawped at it, unable to collect her thoughts over the ringing in her ears.
Trouble. This man was trouble. Far bigger trouble than a few photographers.
Caleb leaned over and scooped up the glass. Then it was in front of her face again with his hand wrapped around it, and her eyes traveled the length of his forearm and over the rolled sleeve at his elbow, up to the rounded cap of his shoulder, his collar and neck, his jawline and that bump in his nose and those twinkling, confident, conspiratorial eyes. Heaven help her, he looked good. Why did misery always come in such attractive packages?
She took the glass from him, and his fingers bumped hers, and it was terrible the way she felt it. Just terrible.
“What?” she croaked.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll get you a new phone with a radio. Comes in handy as a backup. You’ll have to let my team know every time you leave the house, and they’ll decide whether you need an escort. I’ll get that set up by tomorrow morning. In the meantime—”
“Stop,” Ellen whispered.
Not loud enough. You had to be loud—she’d figured that out with Richard. You had to be louder than they were, stronger than they thought you could be, and so mean and cold and unforgiving, they called you names.
She knew how to do this. She’d done it before.
“Stop,” she said, and this time the word came out at a satisfying volume. “You’re not putting a fence up on my property. I’m not giving you schematics. I don’t want your help.”
“Didn’t we already cover this a minute ago?”
They had. But she’d been a fool, and she knew when to change tactics. If she gave this man one more inch, he would take over. She’d seen it with Jamie. One day, she and Jamie had been ordinary teenagers, and the next thing she knew her brother had his own armed escort. He was ostensibly an adult now, but he reported his comings and goings to a team of people who monitored his food, screened his friends, and installed an alarm system in his house that had a habit of going off at three a.m. in irritating bursts of shrieking that no one knew how to stop.
Security guards oversaw Jamie’s whole life. They told him where he could go and when, controlled him, choked him. Ellen couldn’t handle that. Not after Richard.
So she folded her arms over her chest and stood up straighter. Caleb’s gaze locked with hers. Let him try, she told herself. Just let him try.
But he only smiled, his eyes too kind and a bit bewildered. “I’m here to help you. The way I see it, Breckenridge put me under contract, but I work for you.”
“Excellent,” she said. Because it didn’t matter whether he was kind. It only mattered that he would wreak havoc with her life if she let him. “In that case, you’re fired.”
Chapter Two
Caleb didn’t know what had happened. A minute ago, Ellen had been high-fiving him. Now she was narrowing her eyes and bracing her bare feet in the grass as though she anticipated an assault.
“You can’t fire me.”
“Well, make up your mind,” she said. “Either you work for me, in which case you’re fired, or you work for somebody else, in which case you’re trespassing.”
Trespassing? “I had your permission to step onto the property.”
“I’m revoking it.”
He checked her expression again. Dead serious. Ellen didn’t want him here.
Tough luck for her, because she had him whether she wanted him or not. He needed this account for about five different reasons, all of them nonnegotiable. Breckenridge said Ellen Callahan had to be kept out of harm’s way, and he was the man for the job.
The trick, apparently, was going to be getting Ellen to accept that. She might dress like a bohemian, but the woman had a drill sergeant’s mouth. Fifteen years in the military police had taught him to tread softly around a mouth like that.
He glanced at his watch, then over at Carly’s place. He’d told her he’d be by at eight to talk about security, but this was more important. He could spare a few minutes.
So what’s going to work on you, Ellen?
Not brute force, obviously. You couldn’t club a woman over the head and force her to accept your protection. If that were an option, he’d have done it to his mom and both his sisters months ago. Feisty lot, the Clarks. Probably explained why he liked women with a bit of steel in their spines.
Because he already liked Ellen Callahan. He’d seen her around town with a towheaded toddler who had to be her son, and she’d certainly caught his eye. Under different circumstances, he might have started angling for her phone number the second he’d witnessed her trying to topple that photographer with her kneecaps. Unfortunately, circumstances being what they were, she was off-limits.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t turn on the charm. Caleb was a big believer in catching flies with honey.
He threw her his best smile, keeping his hands in his pockets and his tone light and easy. “Any chance I could come in for a glass of water while we talk about this? Driving off bad guys is hard work.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about. I already told you, I don’t need a bodyguard. Now if you’ll excuse me, I—”
“I’m not a bodyguard. I’m a security specialist. A thirsty one.”
He smiled again, and Ellen gave a minute shake of her head. Her arms crossed over her breasts and the challenging lift to her chin said, No way.
He’d pushed her too fast.
It was a shame no one had thought to give him a heads-up about Ellen. Caleb expected a hassle from Carly—Carly lived to be a pain in his ass—but he’d figured Jamie Callahan’s sister would be used to security. She’d seemed happy enough when he gave her a hand with the paparazzo.
His mistake.
“You were going over to Carly’s,” she said. “She can give you something to drink.”
“Carly’s pregnant. She doesn’t have any beer.”
“I thought you wanted water.”
“I wasn’t going to push my luck until I got inside your place.”
Her lips pursed, then flattened back out
. She had such a wide, expressive mouth. Not that he was supposed to be noticing, but it was the kind of mouth a guy noticed. The rest of her, too—soft, curvy. Lush. You’d think, looking at her, that she’d be all warm welcome, but then her eyes said, Piss off, I can take care of myself.
“You know Carly, then?” she asked.
“Sure, we go way back. Went to school together and everything. She’s thrilled to have my protection from the Huns.”
Ellen looked around. “I don’t see any Huns.”
“You never know when they might turn up.”
“If they do, I’ll call the police. You can stick with Carly. She actually needs some protection.”
Damn. Charm wasn’t working.
Maybe he’d come at her too fast, but the trouble was, they couldn’t afford to go slow. There were already guys on her lawn, and Caleb needed to take measures to get her house locked down and the situation under control as quickly as possible.
Time to adopt a new strategy. No way was he going to call up his guy at Breckenridge and tell him, Sorry, I can’t do the job. Ellen Callahan won’t let me.
He’d been hired because her brother thought she and Carly needed security, and given how much attention Camelot had been getting on the news in the past few days, it was a smart move. Caleb had seen quite a few strange cars downtown, and he’d heard the dispatcher on the police band sending black-and-whites to Burgess Street more than once.
All it would take was one guy getting greedy to scoop the others, and Ellen or Carly might find their homes broken into. Their property threatened—or worse.
Just thinking about it made him testy. Somebody needed to be here watching out for Carly and Ellen. Caleb couldn’t help but wonder why the hell Callahan wasn’t here doing it himself. What kind of man flew off to L.A. and left his sister and his pregnant girlfriend high and dry? No kind of man at all.
He decided not to mention this opinion to Ellen. The fact that she had her twin brother’s name emblazoned on her T-shirt suggested a degree of fondness it would be stupid to tamper with.
“You need me to keep them off your land.” She had the sort of yard that took effort to maintain, and she clearly hadn’t liked seeing her flowers trounced.
“I can do that myself.”
She said it firmly, unwavering. But she watched him.
The fact was, she couldn’t do it herself, and both of them knew it. She’d looked pretty tough going after the photographer with nothing but a cold drink and that scowl on her face, but unless she wanted to start throwing punches, she wasn’t going to be able to keep the newshounds off her grass for more than a few hours at a time.
Not her fault. The story was just too good. A world-famous pop star had taken up with a pregnant nobody in Nowheresville, Ohio, and the public demanded pictures. A decent photo of Jamie Callahan with Carly Short was probably worth half a million bucks.
Like it or not, Ellen Callahan needed him. She’d admitted it herself a few minutes ago, before he’d put her hackles up. Now he had to move slowly, or she’d bite him.
He pitched his voice low and soothing. “You won’t even have to know my agents are here,” Caleb said. “They’ll sit in an SUV at the bottom of the driveway and leave you be, but I’ll have them run patrols around the perimeter now and then. Their presence alone is going to keep the scum away, which means you won’t have to call the police to kick somebody off your lawn two or three times a day.”
“I don’t know. I don’t like—”
He raised his hand, palm out. Another “no” wouldn’t do either of them any favors. “Just think about it, huh? I’m going to go over to Carly’s to not get that beer I was hoping for, and I’ll come back over here later and we can talk it through. I’m sure we can come up with a solution that works for you.”
I’m sure I can find a way to save this job and save my ass, if you’ll just take it easy and let me watch out for you.
Caleb gave the smile one more shot, but it was a lost cause. Charm wasn’t going to get him anywhere with Ellen. He had to admire her for that, even if it did put them at cross-purposes.
“I don’t have time to talk to you today.”
“Ten minutes.”
“No. I have work to do, and then my son comes home at six, and I have to get him bathed and into bed, and there won’t—”
He interrupted her again. “What’s his name?”
“Henry.”
“What time does Hank go to bed?”
“Henry,” she repeated. Nowhere close to smiling. “Seven thirty.”
“I’ll stop by here at seven forty-five. In the meantime, I’m going to get a team on your driveway so you can work without worrying about strangers with cameras messing up your flowers. Which are very nice, by the way.”
That last bit of flattery did the trick—she finally smiled. Almost. At least, she stopped scowling. She looked good when she wasn’t scowling.
But then she said, “I don’t need a bodyguard.”
What was it, the third time she’d told him that? At least this time she didn’t sound quite so much like she’d gladly put him through a wood chipper.
“Good thing I’m not a bodyguard.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “I don’t want a car in my driveway. Put one car in the cul-de-sac if you have to. It can do double duty, and I won’t have to look at it all day. And no patrols. I don’t need strange men peering in my windows.”
A car in the cul-de-sac wouldn’t be enough by a long shot. It was a starting point, though. He could build on it.
At the moment, he didn’t have any leverage to use on her. If she honestly didn’t want his help, he couldn’t force her to take it. He needed to get to know her better so he could figure out what was going to work, and he couldn’t do that while she was standing shoeless in her yard, her heart still pumping fight-or-flight chemicals through her bloodstream, her mind on the work he was keeping her from doing.
“All right.” He started walking backward, careful not to step on any of her plants. “I’ll see you tonight, Ellen Callahan.”
“I don’t want to see you tonight,” she said. “We have nothing to talk about.”
“Maybe I’ll just drop by for that beer you owe me.”
“I only have wine.”
“I like wine.”
“Uninvited guests are the bane of my existence.”
But her mouth softened when she said it, and she held his gaze for a few beats.
“Seven forty-five.” He gave her a little salute and spun on his heel, already thinking about what he was going to ask Carly about her. Maybe they were friends. Carly was friends with everybody.
He would figure out how to fix this. He had to, because failure was not an option.
Chapter Three
“What were you thinking?”
On the digital screen of Ellen’s iPad, Jamie yawned and wiped one hand over his face. It was only six a.m. in L.A. She’d woken him up—a petty victory. In exchange for siccing Caleb Clark on her, he deserved whatever transcontinental forms of punishment she could inflict.
“What was I thinking about what?” he asked.
“The bodyguard. You know how I feel about security.”
Jamie frowned, and then his face disappeared, and she got random, jerky views of wall, ceiling, and a blurry blue blob that was probably his comforter. He came back into view, headboard behind him. Sitting up now. “I know how you feel about everything.”
“So what made you think this was a good idea?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe all those visits you got from the cops already this week? Come on, Ellen. You and Henry obviously need some kind of protection, and so does Carly. I had my guy at Breckenridge call up the Mount Pleasant Police Department, and they told him they don’t even have the resources to put a car on your house. I do.”
“Did you consider asking me first?”
Ellen walked to the window and checked the yard. Empty. She had to admit, it was a relief to see it that way.<
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“If I’d asked you, you’d have shot me down, right?”
“Of course.”
Jamie ran a hand through his curly blond hair, taming the sleep-mussed mess into something approaching his usual style. Even minimally groomed, he had the sort of masculine beauty millions of screaming fans went crazy for.
Growing up, she’d often wished for Jamie’s golden curls instead of her own flyaway white-blonde hair, his blue eyes to replace her hazel ones. She’d thought that if she were more beautiful, more talented, their mother might have given her an equal share of attention. Instead, Mom had raised her to watch out for her brother, to make sure he never got too tired or stressed out. She and her mother had specialized in spoiling Jamie, focusing all their collective energy on the more talented twin.
Ellen had always loved Jamie too much to hold the maternal favoritism against him. Only one person in a thousand got to be as gorgeous as her brother, and nobody got to choose their parents.
“I thought you might be more receptive to a stranger,” he said. “But I didn’t hire him, Breckenridge did. My head security guy suggested it would be a good idea to put some guys on you and Carly until this thing blows over. Apparently they don’t have their own people in the Midwest, so they contracted it out. Could you please stop pacing around? You’re making me motion-sick.”
Ellen propped the tablet against her salt-and-pepper shakers and sat down at the kitchen table. “Better?”
“Much. You were all nose hair from that angle.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She pulled a basket of laundry closer, spilled the warm contents onto the table, and started picking out and matching Henry’s socks.
Really, she ought to have called on her cell. Then she could have berated Jamie hands-free while she picked up the toy cars off the floor and unloaded the dishwasher. She and her brother had fallen into the habit of doing the video-chat thing for Henry’s sake. He wasn’t quite old enough yet to know what to make of the phone, but he loved to talk to his uncle on-screen.
“So I’m guessing a guy showed up, and you sent him packing?” Jamie asked.