With a slightly less than curt nod, he turned his attention toward his cell phone. Had Randy changed his mind about being able to handle the home front single-handedly? If the phones were going to ring off the hook the way his partner hoped, they would have their hands full of real assignments instead of this make-believe one.
Sincerely hoping he was right, Ian flipped open his phone.
“Russell.” The next moment, he heard a voice in his ear that was all too familiar to him. Ian curbed his quick flash of impatience. “Yes, hello Alexis. Wait, slow down. What?”
The woman on the other end had been his first case only days after he and Randy set up their firm. She’d come to them, claiming that a stalker was after her. He’d recognized her as someone he’d questioned in connection with a crime while he was still a homicide detective. Very quickly it became apparent to him that the whole story about a stalker had been a ruse. As politely as he could, he’d taken himself off her case. Periodically she called back, still claiming that someone was after her.
He now listened as Alexis went through a hysterical litany. When she showed no signs of letting up, he finally broke in.
“Did you try the other two firms I gave you?” Sending her to the police was no use. They’d already proven that her stories were fabrications. “Well, you have to give them time, Alexis. I’m sure that one of them—no, I’m afraid I’m busy right now,” he told her firmly as she began to plead. “It’s a new assignment. I’m going to be busy for at least the next two months. Possibly longer. Right. Well, I can’t stop you from calling in two months, but I really recommend that you go to one of the other firms. They have more manpower. Right. Yeah, sorry. Bye,” he said quickly before she could get a second wind, then quickly flipped his phone closed again.
He pushed Off before slipping it back into his pocket.
As he began to turn the corner, he walked right into Dakota. His brows narrowed. She’d obviously heard every word. “I thought you said you were on your way to the kitchen.”
“I was,” she told him innocently, “but that sounded just too tempting to pass up. Yes, eavesdropping, I know.” She beat him to the accusation. “Sorry, occupational hazard.” She grinned at him. “But then, you know all about that, I imagine.” Since he’d all but grilled her, she thought turnabout was only fair. She cocked her head. “Old girlfriend?”
He blew out a breath. Alexis had probably seen him on the talk show, and that had been enough to get her going again. “Old client.”
“‘Old’ as in former,” she asked, “or as in having so many candles to blow out on her cake, the paramedic is on standby?”
“The first.” The woman asked way too many questions, he thought.
He glared at her, but she didn’t let that stop her. Her curiosity had taken wing. “What happened? Your company drop her?”
What happened was that he had quickly gotten wise to what was going on. He kept it simple. “She didn’t need a bodyguard. She wanted a warm body.”
As he watched, a grin bloomed on her lips. It had a captivating quality even as it annoyed him. “Yours, I take it.”
He shrugged it off. “It’s nothing personal,” he maintained. “Women fall in love with their doctors, with the fireman who rescues them—”
“With the bodyguard who’s a hunk,” she interjected easily.
He looked at her sharply. The whole thing obviously amused her. “It’s not funny.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “Being a hunk? Is that serious with you, too?”
“I am not a—” He caught himself before his temper had a chance to take hold. “Do you plan to be this antagonistic the whole two weeks?”
“Antagonistic?” she echoed, her hand delicately placed on her chest. “I thought I was being friendly.” And then she winked at him. “Believe me, you’ll know when I’m antagonistic. According to my father, my eyes start to shoot thunderbolts and my skin gets this really bright shade of red.”
Ian snorted. “Thanks for the warning.”
She walked into the kitchen, went straight to the wall phone and picked up the receiver. Her stomach rumbled a protest. “Want some breakfast?” she asked as she pulled the number of a restaurant off the refrigerator.
He stared at her in disbelief. “Are you ordering takeout?”
Her finger poised over the keypad, she glanced at him. “Sure.”
He strode past her to the refrigerator. “What do you have in your refrigerator?”
She thought a moment. “Last I checked, a lightbulb and some shelves.”
He opened it and looked for himself. She was right. Empty. Not even what he’d come to expect. “No bottled water?” he scoffed.
She’d never picked up the habit of carrying around overpriced water that came from heaven only knew where. “I like New York water,” she informed him. “It’s got character.” She watched as he closed the refrigerator and walked toward the front door. “Have I scared you off already?”
He paused only long enough to issue instructions. “Stay here and have some coffee.” He nodded at the coffeemaker she must have preprogrammed the night before. “I’m going to the grocery store.”
Sliding off the stool, she accompanied him to the door. “Sure I’ll be safe?”
He ignored her sarcastic tone. Thirteen days after today, he told himself. Just thirteen more days. “Just don’t throw open your door without asking who it is again.”
He saw her salute, then suddenly disappear from the doorway. But as he turned away he heard her call after him. “Wait.”
Now what? Stifling impatience, he turned from the elevator. “What?”
“Here.” Striding toward him, her door hanging open in the background, she placed the spare key that had once belonged to John in the palm of his hand, then closed his fingers around it. She was very aware that his fingers felt strong, manly, and that she couldn’t help wondering if they’d be that strong gliding along her body. “This way we won’t have to play twenty questions through the door and you won’t have to lecture me again.” She looked at him significantly. “The first lecture’s okay. The second one I might bite.”
He nodded, pocketing the key. “I’ll try to remember that,” he told her as he went to the elevator.
“You do that, Ian,” she murmured under her breath just before returning to her apartment. “You be sure to do that.”
Chapter Seven
Ian returned less than half an hour later, carrying two large grocery bags filled to the brim with everything he needed to make breakfast. Rather than use the key she’d given him, he rang the doorbell.
“Who is it?”
He allowed himself a small grin of triumph. At least she was learning. “It’s Ian.”
“Ian who?” came the melodious question through the door.
“Russell,” he replied evenly. Holding the bags was awkward to say the least. He shifted them for a better hold.
“How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
Okay, no triumph, he thought. She was being deliberately difficult. “Look through the peephole,” he growled.
He heard some movement going on behind the door. The next moment she opened it to admit him. “Never can be too careful,” she told him innocently. Dakota eyed the bags as he shouldered his way in past her. “Boy, what have you got there?”
“Breakfast,” he informed her tersely.
She’d changed, he noticed as he carried the bags into the kitchen. But she obviously wasn’t in work attire. Despite the weather, she was wearing shorts and an old sweatshirt. From her body language, he gathered that he’d caught her on the way out. Had he come in five minutes later, he had no doubt that he would have missed her.
Ian rested the bags on the counter and looked at her. “Where are you going?”
“Out jogging.” She started to turn on her heel. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”
“Hold it.” Picking up the bags again, he shoved both into the refrigerator and turned around.
The look on his face told her he wasn’t fooling around. “It’ll take me three minutes to get ready.”
Anxious to get going, to work off some of this tension that having him here created, she shifted from foot to foot. “Ready for what?”
He said what she didn’t want to hear. “I’m going with you.”
Dakota frowned. This was carrying pretense a bit far. After all, it wasn’t as if she actually needed a bodyguard. The people she ran into were all friendly.
“You don’t have to,” she told him. “I’ve been jogging every morning, rain or shine, since I was fifteen years old.”
“Wait,” he ordered sternly as he ducked back into the guest room.
She had no idea why she was listening to him. After all, she had free will, didn’t she? Even so, she approached his door rather than the one that led to the outside.
“I’ve got half a mind to leave.” She raised her voice in order to be heard through the closed door.
“That’s exactly what you have,” he agreed. “Half a mind.”
Ian threw open the door. Along with jogging shoes, he wore sweatpants and an old sweatshirt that might have fit him once, but was now a size too small and strained against his muscles.
She didn’t think it was humanly possible to change clothes so quickly. Too bad he couldn’t change his manners that fast.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked as she followed him to the front door.
Securing the door after she walked out, he then led the way to the elevator. “Where do you jog?” he asked.
Since her penthouse was located only a block away from Central Park, she thought the answer was rather obvious. “Around the park.”
Over the years, because of the efforts of the police force, Central Park had once more become a safe place for people to go. Up to a degree.
“Alone?”
She pretended to check her pockets for any small creatures. “Nope, no hitchhikers here.” She looked at him as she walked into the elevator car that had just arrived. “Yes, alone.” When he had first moved in with her, she’d tried to convince John to jog with her, but he hadn’t been into any kind of sport that required wearing sneakers.
“Don’t you realize that you risk getting kidnapped?” he demanded. “There are places along the park where—”
She didn’t like his tone. He had no right to think he was in charge of her even if she’d hired him to be her bodyguard, which she hadn’t. She raised her hand, stopping him before he could get any further.
“You don’t have to tell me, my ex-fiancé told me all about it.” The express elevator made it down to the first floor before she could finish her thought. The doors opened and she immediately was on her way. “I can’t live life like that, always afraid.”
He caught up to her before they exited the building. “Not afraid,” he chided, “just sensible.” Longing to stretch his legs, he forced himself to keep abreast of her as he tried to make her see the light. “You keep Band Aids in your medicine cabinet, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She sent him a look that was more annoyed than she realized. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d hated having people tell her what to do. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Judging by the way you talk, you’re not always worried about getting cuts, are you?”
As they approached the park, she began to pour it on. She noted Ian kept up without trying. “No.”
“Then why the Band-Aids? To be prepared, right?” The light was with them, and they ran across the street, entering the urban anomaly. “In case you need one. Sensible.”
She blew out a breath. It was going to be a long five miles. “If you say so.”
Forty-five minutes later, they were back in her apartment. Dakota did her best not to let him see just how much she’d pushed to keep up. She could swear she felt every bone in her body and they were all protesting. As they’d talked—or he’d lectured and she’d retorted—Ian had consciously or unconsciously set the pace. It was faster than her usual pace, but she was damned if she was going to ask him to slow down or shorten his stride.
She’d pushed harder this morning than she could ever remember pushing. She felt exhaustion, mingled with the special brand of euphoria that set in whenever a runner hit that magical zone where all things came together, made sense and created a sense of well-being.
Upon their return, Ian closed the door behind them. He didn’t even look winded, the rat. He did look sweaty, which was sexy on him.
Then again, blueberry muffins would have looked sexy on him, she decided.
“Why don’t you shower?” he suggested, taking the towel she’d handed him. He could smell her perspiration on it. Something small, anonymous and disconcerting tightened in his gut. “I’ll get breakfast going.”
The thought of cleanliness and distance appealed to her. She didn’t argue.
Fifteen minutes later she was looking down at French toast and an arrangement of small turkey sausages surrounding a single fried egg, over easy. It was as if he’d entered her head.
She looked at him warily. “How did you know?”
“Research.” Walking out of the kitchen, he went to take his own shower. Dakota noted that there were no pans or utensils in the sink. They were drying on the rack. The man was in a class by himself.
That still didn’t change the fact that having him underfoot and wedged obtrusively into her life was going to be a problem.
She drove to work with Ian in the passenger seat. She was surprised that he relinquished control this way without a word.
But the words came soon enough. And they centered around the hazards of jogging by herself and of opening the door without first checking to see who was standing on the other side. Then he got on to the topic of her having a security system installed.
He was taking all this much too seriously, she thought. She spared him a look at a red light. “You’re just pretending to be my bodyguard, remember?”
“The risks you’re taking aren’t pretend. You’re inviting trouble.”
Dakota bit her tongue as she glanced at him. She already had, she thought. And the invitation was not by choice. There was no way she was going to be able to survive two weeks of this.
Parking the car in her spot in the underground garage, she went to the elevator and punched the up button, fleetingly debating taking the stairs. She wanted to see the producer posthaste.
As Ian began to follow her out of the elevator, she looked over her shoulder at him and ordered, “Stay.”
“I’m a bodyguard, not a dog,” he told her. “Maybe you should look into the difference.”
“I already know the difference,” she told him. “Dogs obey. Look, I have something private to discuss with Alan. You have to wait in the hall. If Alan turns out to secretly be a Ninja warrior, I promise I’ll call for you.”
She left him scowling in the hallway as she marched into Alan Curtis’s outer office. Felicity, Alan’s secretary, looked surprised to see her. “He’s on the phone—”
“He’s got two ears,” she answered tersely.
She swung open the door to Alan’s inner office. Alan was indeed on the phone, but this didn’t stop her. Without any greeting or preamble, Dakota held up her index finger and declared, “One week.”
“Hold on a sec,” Alan said to the person on the other end of the line. He pressed the hold button, then looked at the star of his station’s best daytime program.
“Two,” he countered.
He wasn’t about to give an inch, she thought. And as producer, Alan did have final say. Feeling trapped, she demanded, “Why two?”
He laid the receiver on his shoulder, giving her his attention. “Because it takes almost two weeks for a routine to set in.”
Dakota shook her head. “Trust me, there’s no routine setting in.”
Affable, known as a pussycat among those he worked with, Alan Curtis was no one’s pushover. And he was savvy when it came to the viewing public.
Alan remained firm. “Two weeks.”
Dakota was never one of those personalities who threw tantrums to get what she wanted. She sighed heavily, accepting defeat for the good of the show. Certainly not her own good. “Okay, but you pay for the defense lawyer if I kill him.”
Alan settled back in his chair again and nodded solemnly. “Already got one on retainer. James Patrick. Good man.”
She stopped in the doorway, giving him a disparaging look. “More than I can say about you, Alan.”
“Sweeps,” Alan said in reply just before he pressed the hold button again and got back to his phone call.
The moment she was in the outer office, MacKenzie was on her, her eyes eager for details. She dropped her voice in order to avoid being heard by either Felicity or the man she’d passed standing in the hallway. “So, how’s the new man in your life working out?”
“He’s not the new man in my life and he’s not working out.”
MacKenzie sighed deeply as she looked over her shoulder out into the hall. “He’s too beautiful not to work out.”
Dakota knew more than anyone that good looks meant nothing. It was what was underneath that counted and Ian Russell’s “underneath” was a heavy dose of “annoying.”
“Fine, you live with a bodyguard for two weeks.”
“It’s not my show.” MacKenzie’s expression became a shade more serious. “C’mon, Dakota, it’s not so bad.”
A lot she knew, Dakota thought. “Yes, it is. Even if he kept his mouth shut—which he didn’t—it’s still unsettling having this huge, muscular shadow hovering around wherever I go.” She wasn’t getting the response she wanted out of MacKenzie. “Zee, the man jogged with me.”
MacKenzie clutched her chest. “The nerve of the man. He should be flogged.” And then she laughed. “So he jogged with you, so what? It’s nice to have a jogging partner. Remember, you tried to get me to jog with you. And John.”
Just what she needed, a friend with a good memory. “Neither one of you would have lectured about the dangers of someone like me jogging alone.”
Because a Husband Is Forever Page 8