Bodyguard Daddy

by Lisa Childs

The night she lost her whole family, the night she lost everything.

  Don’t think about it. Her daily—hourly—mantra.

  Don’t think about Mom or Dad. Or Teddy or Rob. Or—God!—Jack. There hadn’t been anything found of Jack to bury.

  Don’t think about her aunts and uncles and cousins—all gone. Her tribe—gone.

  In a moment she could remember only in her nightmares, her life had been swept away and what was left was the husk—a shell of a woman who couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could barely walk.

  She made it past the gate and after a moment’s hesitation turned left. It was a shorter walk to the park, there was no way she’d make it to the Green. Already her body was screaming for her to turn around and go back home. Close her front door behind her, curl up on the couch and stare at the wall until the light faded.

  No. Keep on walking.

  There was a stone wall fronting her house and she put out a hand to steady herself. It was in pristine shape, thanks to her incredibly helpful next-door neighbor, Joe Harris.

  She’d left her largest pot filled with boeuf bourguignon on Joe’s doorstep. She could barely choke down yogurt herself but having Joe to cook for made cooking fun again. Running through her endless list of recipes for something Joe might enjoy was the one bright spot in her day, though she probably didn’t need to stretch and be creative—he seemed to like more or less everything she cooked for him.

  Joe was always so incredibly grateful, as if she’d gone out, sheared wool off sheep, carded it, spun it and knitted him things. Or butchered the cows and harvested the wheat. As if she’d done this amazingly complex and elaborate thing just for him. It was only cooking and it kept her sane. Well, sort of sane. Sane had gone out the window on the night of the Massacre.

  It barely compensated Joe for what he did for her. Everything in her house was in perfect condition. Joe would scour the place for things to fix or improve. She didn’t trust herself to drive but last month Joe had started driving and he drove her everywhere she wanted.

  He’d been as messed up as she was when she’d moved here three months ago. But Joe had moved on. He’d used a cane that first day and he later told her he’d been on crutches the week before. The cane disappeared a few days after she arrived and every day after that he celebrated some milestone in putting himself back together again.

  He was still thin but he was all muscle.

  Yeah.

  A wave of heat shot through her. Just thinking about him made her weak at the knees and her knees were already weak.

  When doing repairs, Joe wore an ancient tee that was soft and thin from so many washings that every single muscle was visible through the thin cotton. When she’d first set eyes on him, thirty pounds ago, he’d been all muscle and sinew. Now he was even more muscle and sinew. Even when thin, his shoulders had still been the broadest she’d ever seen. Though, of course, in her previous life, muscles weren’t important in her crowd. She’d known more men with money than men with muscles.

  Muscles were better. Who knew?

  She often caught herself staring at him as he stretched or reached for something, trying to keep her jaw from dropping. He was just…magnificent.

  Watching Joe move became her new favorite thing at a moment when all her favorite things had been taken from her.

  He was pure sex, whether standing still or moving. Such a waste to have a guy like that for a next-door neighbor. Enticing, but out of reach.

  Because the fact was that sex had fled from her world. There were the occasional nonmenopausal hot flashes when Joe was doing something manly around the house but they were rare. Mostly, she felt numb. And cold. Dizzy spells would come and go, leaving her shaken and sweating.

  She had continuous flashbacks of when she’d woken up in the hospital, completely alone because her entire family had been wiped out. The nurse who had told her that had burst into tears. That horrible moment was never covered by the gauze of memory. No. Horribly, her flashbacks carried the emotional weight of living through the horror, again and again.

  Isabel carefully masked what she felt about Joe because, well, what would a man as vital as Joe want with a shell of a woman like her? He’d put himself together in three months and she was exactly as he’d found her that first day—dazed, halting, wounded.

  She wasn’t getting better. She was getting worse.

  These were thoughts she had a billion times a day. Buzzing round and round and round in her head like angry bees. It took an almost physical effort to wrench those thoughts in another direction. Joe was off-limits because she had no business yearning after him, not in the state she was in. That day—the day she found out she lost her family, the day she lost her life… She backed away from those thoughts as fast as she could. Don’t think about that.

  So many things she couldn’t think about. Things she chased from her head the instant they appeared.

  No past, no future. What was left was the here and now. Pay attention to the here and the now, she told herself constantly, because it’s all you have. The here and now, though, was vicious. She suffered from crippling bouts of dizziness that attacked her without warning. In the supermarket, shopping, in bookstores, in the bank, even at home. She’d suddenly feel the world swirl around her, no shape or meaning to anything. The ground would feel shaky under her feet. The only thing to do was freeze. She’d done that in the bank and in the supermarket and it had taken everything she had not to faint.

  She’d stood in the middle of the bank’s lobby and in the frozen produce aisle, unable to move, feeling nauseous and dizzy, and wishing with all her heart she could just press a button and be home, in her bed, with the covers pulled up over her while she waited for her wildly pumping heart to slow down.

  It had felt like a heart attack and she’d gone to the emergency room twice. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was her craziness, it was her broken heart. No hospital in the world could fix that.

  Fix it. How? Nothing short of the miraculous restoration of her family to life could work. She was in a deep hole and it kept getting deeper, blacker. The second time she went to the hospital in an ambulance, she found herself hoping she was about to die. Just put an end to it.

  That really scared her. As much as the outside world did.

  The outside world terrified her, because she could never be sure she wouldn’t simply pass out.

  Think of something else.

  Okay. What?

  It always came back to him, her neighbor, Joe. That made her dizzy, too, only in a good way. No matter that she couldn’t even think about sex, about relationships, no matter that she was alone in the world in a way that nobody could understand. She couldn’t be with anyone. She was too crazy. But…though she knew thinking about him was perfectly useless, her thoughts always circled back to him.

  He always moved with grace and economy, even when he’d been barely upright. He watched her carefully with those keen brown eyes of his, the color of a hawk’s eyes, that seemed to see everything so clearly. He seemed to take his cues from her. When she was really down, which was most of the time, they barely spoke. He came in, fixed something for her or carried something for her or set up something for her and then left.

  On the days that were just awful and not horrible and she had the energy to talk, they’d carry on a conversation. Nothing personal, oh no. The weather, maybe, though Portland weather wasn’t very interesting. Mostly wet. It was either getting ready to rain, raining, or rain was coming. They discussed the hell out of the weather.

  Then, her cooking, which he seemed to find miraculous, which was a laugh. He was a former SEAL. Those guys could send a slingshot around the moon, they could kill with a pinkie, they trained hard to be the best soldiers on earth. All she could do was cook, but he seemed to find that ability fascinating. Since he was helping her so much, she offered to teach him
how to cook and he eagerly accepted her offer. It turned out, though, that he was severely cooking-challenged. Everything came out burned and oversalted and disgusting.

  But that was okay. She liked cooking for him. It gave her something to do. And since he seemed to have some kind of rota system of buddies stopping by, she cooked for them too.

  She had the world’s best TV and sound system, carefully put together by Joe. She could probably receive TV signals from outer space. There wasn’t one creaky door or drawer in the house. He took her bathroom’s leaky faucet as a personal challenge and not a drop had fallen since.

  Wow. She stopped and blinked. She was almost at the park and she’d had very few bad thoughts along the way. Thinking of Joe had carried her from her house to the park, though the thoughts were useless. If she wasn’t such a head case, she’d have been thinking of her future, of what to do with her life instead of mooning over her gorgeous, built neighbor who had better things to think about than her.

  Okay, Isabel, now focus, she told herself sternly.

  Describe your surroundings. Be in the moment. That’s what a psychotherapist told her when she consulted her. She couldn’t sleep and wanted something that wasn’t pills. Pills were awful. They didn’t work but they did render her a numb walking automaton during the day. Anything was better than taking sleeping aids, even insomnia.

  Focus on your surroundings. Her surroundings. Well, mostly single family homes. It was a residential neighborhood, which was what she liked about it. The small park, whimsically called Strawberry Fields, was coming up. It was a pretty park even with bare trees and gray evergreen bushes. You could see the flower beds that would blossom in spring. It would be glorious in summer.

  Would she still be here in summer? Yes. Probably. Because…where else would she go? Back East was full of memories, no way. There was always California, much nicer climate. But Portland suited her. Everyone was friendly without being obnoxious. Lots of concerts. It was so green. Very little crime.

  Joe Harris.

  She sighed. Joe Harris was so something she should not be thinking about. Focus on something else. Focus on…that cute little pup trying desperately to dig in the flowerless flower beds. He was making it his life’s mission. His mistress was pulling so hard on the leash he rose on his two hind legs, the two front legs scrabbling in the air.

  Isabel laughed. She nearly looked around to see who’d done that, it felt so weird. She’d done it. The laugh had come from her. You’d have to be dead not to laugh at the pup, tongue lolling out its smiling mouth, scampering to leave its mark on the park.

  Its mistress—a young girl with golden hair tucked up in a Peruvian Chullo hat—was bending over, finger raised, doing her best to teach her pup etiquette. The pup barked and licked her finger. There was very little etiquette-learning going on.

  Isabel laughed again. The pup rolled its eyes toward her and barked. Their eyes met and the pup barked again, grinning and slobbering, straining now in her direction.

  Was that dog flirting with her?

  Isabel was not far from the small enclosed doggy section of the park, a square filled with sand where dogs could play and do their business. Owners took them off the leash to enter the small enclosure. The girl walked the puppy over to the doggy section. At the entrance, she bent to unsnap the leash.

  Instead of heading into the doggy park, the pup took off like a rocket, making a beeline for Isabel, fur rippling with speed.

  The girl straightened, gasped, called out to her dog. “Freddy! Freddy! Come back here right now! Bad dog! Bad dog!”

  Freddy paid his mistress no attention at all, leaving the ground several yards from Isabel, leaping straight at her.

  Isabel froze. The pup was heavy. It was going to be a big dog. It was big now. Hurtling straight at her, it was going to knock her to the ground and she didn’t have the reflexes to get out of its way.

  The dog barked, hit her in the chest, trying to lick her face. Isabel slipped on an icy patch, stumbled back and…

  Didn’t fall.

  Something big and strong caught her, kept her upright.

  She looked up, startled.

  Joe.

  Freddy was barking and writhing at her feet. He barked enthusiastically, put his paws up and wriggled, trying frantically to lick her.

  “Down, Freddy,” Joe said sternly. “Sit.”

  Freddy sat, butt wriggling on the ground.

  Joe had barely raised his voice.

  The girl came running up, face scrunched in apology. She held her hand out to Isabel. “Oh gosh, I am so sorry! Are you okay?”

  Was she? Isabel patted herself down. She’d expected to hit the ground hard, but hadn’t. It had happened in a flash. The dog jumping on her, guaranteed to bowl her over and then whoosh, like magic—Joe was suddenly there.

  “Yeah,” she said cautiously. “I’m, um, fine.”

  She looked up, way up, at Joe’s grim face. Sober, harsh features, standing there like a rock, big hand holding her arm.

  “Thanks,” she said and he nodded.

  Her voice seemed to unlock something in the puppy. It scrambled up, tail wagging furiously, body language clear. It wanted to jump on her again.

  “Down,” Joe said firmly again and Freddy plopped back down.

  The young girl looked at Joe wide-eyed. “How’d you do that? Freddy doesn’t obey me at all. How’d you get him to sit?”

  Isabel took pity on her. Being female, the girl was probably blaming herself for a ton of dog-training inadequacies.

  “Joe here is a former navy SEAL,” she explained kindly and the girl’s face smoothed out. Clearly she wasn’t inadequate. No one could expect her to show a SEAL’s ability to command.

  “Oh.” She looked up at Joe. “That true?”

  He nodded seriously. Isabel looked carefully and saw that Joe was biting his lips not to smile.

  “You’re not—you don’t…” The girl took a deep breath and blurted it out. “You’re not a dog trainer, are you? Because man, I would pay anything to get Freddy to obey me like that.”

  “Sorry,” Joe said in his basso profundo voice and the girl slumped. “Not in that line of work.”

  The girl sighed and bent down to clip the leash to Freddy’s collar. Freddy shook, hindquarters up, front paws extended. His hindquarters braced. The girl pulled at the leash but it was a big puppy and she had no hope of stopping another jump at Isabel.

  And then Joe worked his magic, this time with one sharp movement of his big hand. Freddy subsided.

  Isabel exchanged glances with the girl.

  Yep. You had to be a SEAL to be able to do that.

  With a smile, the girl walked off, an obedient Freddy trotting alongside her.

  Isabel looked up at Joe. “Thanks,” she said again and he shrugged.

  * * *

  FUCK, THAT WAS CLOSE.

  Joe had excellent balance, always had. Even after being injured, he’d never fallen, not once. He also had superb spatial awareness. When that rambunctious pup made a leap for Isabel, Joe had been able to see the consequences exactly as if it was a game of chess. Isabel was standing next to a steel post holding the wooden slats of the enclosure. She was in the exact right spot to ensure that she’d bash the back of her head against the steel post, drop and smash her head against the concrete piling. Maybe bounce off the wood, too, and get sharp splinters while she was at it.

  He’d seen it, as inevitable as geometry. Which was why he broke land speed records getting to her and breaking her fall.

  Joe knew how to make his face a mask. Nobody saw what he didn’t want them to see and he knew he wasn’t betraying the absolute panic he’d felt at the thought of Isabel cracking her head open. He’d watched one helmetless marine die when he fell and cracked his head on a rock.

 
; Isabel, dead. Fuck. Not going to happen, not while he was around.

  She was pale but she sketched a smile. “That puppy needs some manners.”

  “She’d better hurry up and teach him some because Freddy’s going to grow up to be a big dog,” Joe said sternly.

  He had no patience for those who acquired animals they couldn’t handle. That woman could have cost Isabel a bad concussion, or worse.

  “So,” he said, holding her elbow. He’d rather put his arm around her waist, but one way or another, he was going to be touching her. Isabel looked pale and shocky. She was not going to fall. “Since I’m here, do you want to walk around the park or are you ready to go back?”

  “Back,” Isabel said immediately. She peered up at him, frowning. “How did you happen to be here at exactly the right time? Are you Superman or The Flash?”

  “I didn’t go for my run and I wanted some exercise. I like this park and I just happened to see you and see that dog come running at you,” Joe lied cheerfully.

  Because the truth would have sounded too creepy. You looked unsteady on your feet so I followed you, and made sure you couldn’t see me.

  “Well, you showed up just in time, like a superhero.” She smiled at him. Her smiles were rare and they lit up her face. Joe should have felt bad about lying to her, but he didn’t. She wouldn’t have been smiling at him if he’d told her the truth.

  “Ma’am?” He stuck out his elbow at an exaggerated angle and she put her arm through his. “May ah have the honah of accompanyin’ you home?” He laid on a thick ole-timey Southern accent. Rhett Butler offering Scarlett his arm.

  “Why, sir.” She batted her eyelashes extravagantly. “It would be mah pleasure.”

  He was playacting but…whoa. It wasn’t hard to imagine her in some big ball gown, curtsying. She had such an old-fashioned beauty to her, made up of fine features, huge eyes with eyelashes that were like fans and perfect ivory skin. Those eyelashes of hers were so long they could create a breeze when she fluttered them.

  She frowned, the playacting completely dropped. “Joe?”