by Lisa Childs
* * *
“I’m so sorry,” Teddie said, blinking against the sudden light as Jordan flicked on the power again. She stared down at the knife lying on the hardwood floor next to his gun. She had nearly stabbed him. Well, maybe not nearly. He had disarmed her quickly and easily.
Jordan closed the cabinet of the electrical panel. “You have no reason to be sorry,” he said.
Now she stared at him in shock. “I pepper-sprayed you,” she reminded him.
Not that he would have needed the reminder. His eyes were still red, still watering.
“And I could have killed you.” She gestured at the long knife.
He chuckled as he leaned over and picked up the knife and the gun. He slid the gun back into the holster he wore over his black T-shirt. The cotton was molded to his heavily muscled chest, and his arms bulged.
And she almost laughed, too, at the ridiculous notion that she could have hurt him. He held the knife, handle out, toward her.
But she shook her head. “I don’t want it back.”
“If you don’t want to hang on to it, at least keep it close,” he advised her. “You were smart to arm yourself. I should have told you I was at the door.”
“You had a key,” she said, and she tensed at the sudden realization. “I didn’t give my keys to the Payne Protection Agency.” So how was it that he had a set?
“I found them,” he explained, “when I found your stalker’s campsite in the woods.”
She shivered, as she was thoroughly chilled again. For a little while, when she’d realized the intruder was her bodyguard, she had felt safe—especially in his strong arms, pressed against his hard body.
She had felt things other than safe, too. She’d felt an attraction, a need for closeness, that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time and maybe never at that intensity.
But his words had completely shattered her brief sense of security.
“You found his campsite?” she asked as fear skittered throughout her again. “He’s camped out close to here?”
Within sight? She felt as if he was always watching her—no matter where she was, no matter how far she’d gone to try to escape him.
Jordan Mannes’s massively broad shoulders moved up and down as he shrugged. “I don’t know how close the camp was. It was so damn dark out there, I got turned around. I couldn’t tell you now exactly where it was.”
She moved nearer to him and touched his face, which was almost as red as his eyes. His skin was burned from the spray, as well. Beneath her fingertips, it was warm and a little rough from the stubble of his beard.
“That’s because of the pepper spray,” she said. Her eyes had finally stopped burning, but that was because she’d washed her face after he’d left her alone in the cabin. “You need to get all of that off you.”
She moved her hand along his hard jaw to his dark hair. She could see droplets glistening in it. Maybe he’d brought the fog inside with him, or maybe she had gotten the spray in his hair, too. “You need to shower it all off.”
He shook his head and dislodged her hand. She curled her fingers against her palm. Her skin was tingling. Maybe it was from contacting the spray again or maybe it was from touching him.
“I have to keep watch,” he said. “He got away from me.”
“You saw him?” she asked.
“Not much of him,” Jordan replied. “He tried hitting me over the head. Then he ran off. That was when he dropped the keys.” He pulled a ring of keys from the pocket of his worn jeans.
She stared down at them, but they didn’t look familiar to her. They didn’t look like her set of keys, but then, a copy didn’t have to look the same as long as the notches were identical. Her head began to pound as she tried to think of how that was possible. “I don’t know how he would have gotten those.”
“Have you given out any keys?”
She shook her head. “I don’t give out keys.” She had never had a relationship that had been serious enough to exchange keys. Except for one. “Only to my mom.”
He stared down at her as if he was skeptical. He had probably read some of the tabloid articles about her. For years there had been a new one every week, claiming that she was involved with some actor or rock star.
“I hope you don’t believe everything you’ve heard about me,” she said.
He cocked his head as if searching his memory. Then he shrugged again. “What would I have heard?”
“Plenty of stuff that’s not true,” she assured him. She didn’t date famous people. She didn’t want to be famous herself. She had never wanted to be; she’d started modeling only to help out her mother.
“I’ve just been back in the States for a few months,” he said. “So I’m not caught up on my celebrity gossip.”
“I’m not a celebrity,” she said, but then grimaced when she heard how sharp her voice sounded.
He snorted. “Yeah, right. I haven’t been gone that long. It took me a little while to put it all together. But I know who you are.”
Nobody really knew who she was. They only knew what she looked like.
She was sick of talking about herself. She was far more curious about him, and now she had an opportunity to satisfy her curiosity.
“Where were you,” she asked, “that you’ve only been back a few months?”
“My Marine Corps unit was deployed,” he said.
Marines. Of course. That was why he was so muscular. She knew male models who had spent thousands of dollars on personal trainers and performance products trying to achieve Jordan Mannes’s impressive physique. They’d never come close to his masculine perfection.
Being a Marine would have definitely qualified him to be a bodyguard. She should have felt safer with him protecting her. But her interest—and attraction to him—unnerved her. She had never been so fascinated with anyone before.
But maybe she was just desperate for something to get her mind off her own life, off her stalker.
“Thank you,” she said.
He arched a dark brow. “For what?”
“Your service.” To their country and to her.
He nodded. But he didn’t look comfortable with the gratitude. “Just doing my job.”
She knew that being a Marine was much more than just a job. She wanted to talk to him more about his life.
But he reached for his weapon.
And she tensed. “What is it? Did you hear something?”
He shook his head. “No. So maybe now’s a good time to take that shower you suggested.” He squinted as his eyes continued to water. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?”
She shook her head.
He cocked it and handed it to her. “If someone tries to get in here, you squeeze the trigger.” He wrapped most of her fingers around the handle while he stretched one finger along the barrel. “You’ll need both hands to hold it.”
It was cold and heavy. And she was terrified of accidentally firing it.
“Move this finger to the trigger if you hear anything,” he advised.
“But...”
“He knows I’m armed,” Manny said. “I nearly shot him. So I don’t think he would be stupid enough to burst in here. But I want you to be ready in case he does.”
He walked over to the hallway leading to the door, his broad back toward her.
And afraid of shooting him, Teddie lowered the barrel. “Why are you trusting me with this?” she asked. “Didn’t I nearly kill you enough times already?”
He chuckled as he locked the front door and picked up a backpack she hadn’t noticed sitting next to it. “Good thing for me that nearlys don’t count,” he said. “Or I would have been dead a hell of a long time ago.”
She wondered about that, about how dangerous his life was, after he closed the bathroom door. When the shower started, she wondered abo
ut something else—how he looked standing naked under the spray of water.
Her hands began to shake, and it wasn’t just from the weight of the weapon she held. It was because her pulse had begun to race again. The stalker wasn’t the only danger she faced.
She was in danger of becoming entirely too enthralled with her bodyguard. But just as she had never wanted to date famous people, she wouldn’t want to date anyone like him. She wanted a simple life in which she knew her husband would return home to her every night.
She didn’t need another man abandoning her like her father had. Of course, that had been his choice—to never be involved in hers and her mother’s lives. Once he’d gotten what he wanted from her mom, he’d dropped the girl he hadn’t considered good enough for the school’s star athlete.
It probably wouldn’t be Jordan Mannes’s choice to abandon his family. With his dangerous life, he would just eventually run out of nearlys.
* * *
The cold shower had washed away the pepper spray, but it hadn’t washed away the attraction Manny felt for his client. The goose bumps had left his chilled skin the minute he’d opened the bathroom door and found her standing with the gun in her hands, trained at that back door, as if she was protecting him.
Her arms and hands had been trembling as he’d taken the weapon from her. He wondered if she’d even blinked or had stared, wide-eyed, at the door the entire time he’d been in the shower.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “He didn’t come back.”
Yet. But they both knew he would. The disturbed guy who’d sent her all of those threatening notes was obviously obsessed with her.
At the moment Manny could relate. She was something else. And it wasn’t just her beautiful face and goddess-like body. It was her spirit.
She had a fire inside her that matched the color of her long, curly hair. He could just imagine releasing all that passion...
But imagine was all he could do. She was a client. Even if she wasn’t, she would be off-limits to a guy like Manny. Despite her assertion that she wasn’t, Teddie Plummer damn well was a celebrity. He was just a bodyguard, the person the paparazzi never even noticed standing next to the celebrity. Usually the celebrity didn’t notice them, either. Teddie probably wouldn’t have if there were more than just the two of them in the cabin.
“I need to check in with my boss,” he said as he realized he should have done that earlier. But he hadn’t had much of a chance.
Her lips parted on a gasp. “I called him,” she confessed, “when you didn’t come back right away.”
He groaned. Cooper was probably furious with him. Manny had handled nothing about this assignment correctly. He was unlikely to ever get another solo one even if he actually managed to survive this one.
“I was worried,” she said.
About herself or him?
“I thought something happened to you.”
And his heart shifted. Was she a celebrity? Since they’d met she certainly hadn’t acted like one. Not that he had any firsthand knowledge of how a celebrity actually acted. He could only go by what the media portrayed, and even vacuous reality stars acted more entitled and spoiled than this successful supermodel.
“I’m glad you called him,” Manny said even though he had to brace himself as he pulled out his cell phone. The screen was black, though. No wonder Cooper hadn’t tried to call him back. The phone was dead.
Teddie glanced down at the black screen. “That happens up here,” she said. “Trying to get a signal drains the battery.” She picked up a phone from the small kitchen counter. “I researched what carrier gets the best service up here, so use mine.” She held it out to him.
He had learned to never rush off unprepared again. Hopefully his boss wouldn’t think he’d learned that lesson too late.
“Thanks,” he said. As he took it from her fingers, her skin flushed.
Or maybe it had already been red. She had gotten some of the pepper spray on herself.
“Do you need to shower?” he asked her. “Get that stuff off you, too?”
She lifted a hand to her face. “I—I washed it off already.”
But her thick hair looked dry. “You showered?”
She shook her head. “No. I probably should.”
As she headed toward the bathroom, he swallowed a groan. That had been a mistake, suggesting she get naked. He had already been having a hard enough time not imagining her that way.
Forcing his mind back on task, he punched the redial button to call the last number.
“Ms. Plummer,” Cooper responded immediately. “Has Mannes returned yet?”
“Yeah, he has,” Manny answered.
He heard Cooper’s muttered but heartfelt “Thank God” before his “What the hell were you thinking going off and leaving her alone?”
“I was thinking I could catch the sick bastard and wrap up this assignment right away,” Manny said.
“So did you?”
He sighed. “No. The son of a bitch got away from me.”
Cooper must have heard the frustration in his voice because he didn’t berate him. Manny was berating himself, though. He should have just shot the creep, but he would have been lucky to hit him with his blurry vision.
“You okay?” Cooper asked with concern.
Manny shrugged it off. He didn’t deserve it. He had been a fool to leave her alone.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m okay.”
“She told me that she mistook you for her stalker and sprayed you.”
“I’m fine now,” Manny assured him. “I’ll be able to fly us back to River City soon.”
“Not tonight,” Cooper said.
“My eyes are fine now,” he said. They weren’t, though. They were sore. But at least he could see.
“The airports are all closed down here,” Cooper said. “Too much fog.”
Manny cursed as he moved to the window and peered through the slats of the blinds. The fog was even thicker here now, too, wrapping tightly around the cabin. “Yeah, it’s foggy here, too.”
“Can you secure where you’re at?” Cooper asked him. “Then I’ll get reinforcements up to you as soon as possible.”
“If I can’t fly into River City, then nobody can get out of it,” Manny pointed out. As he peered through the slats of the blinds, he doubted anybody could see in this fog, either, even if he hadn’t been maced. “I don’t think even Cole could fly in this.”
And Cole was a better pilot than he was. He’d been flying longer.
Cooper snorted. “He’s trying.”
Manny cursed. “Don’t let him! It’s not worth the risk. I scared the stalker away. He thought she was alone up here. That’s why he tried for her earlier. Now that he knows she has a bodyguard, I’m sure he’ll back off.” He was only saying that so his friends wouldn’t worry. Manny didn’t believe a word he spoke. And as he stared out the window, he noticed a shift in the darkness, as if something—or someone—was moving around out there.
Just as he’d suspected, the son of a bitch wasn’t giving up on getting to Teddie. But he would have to go through Manny to do that.
Chapter 6
“He’s out there, isn’t he?” Teddie asked her bodyguard as Jordan Mannes peered through the blinds.
He didn’t have to nod to confirm her fears. She always knew when he was watching her. She could feel it like a chill rushing over her skin.
She shivered. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken that shower an hour ago. While it had washed away the last vestiges of the pepper spray, it had done nothing to warm her. Her hair was so thick that the blow-dryer could never completely dry it. It hung down her back, dampening her sweatshirt. She shivered again.
“He knows I’m armed,” Jordan said. “So he knows better than to try anything.”
“He’s crazy,” Teddie sa
id as she picked up the folder from the small desk where she’d been sitting. She opened it to all those mutilated photos and threats. “Nothing he says or does makes any sense.”
Mannes walked over to the desk. “I saw those when I first got here.”
She gasped as she realized the photograph on the top was a new one. She recognized the scenery around the cabin, and she recognized herself—despite how mutilated the figure was—in the middle of that photo. It had been taken right here, and she knew when. Thinking she was safe, she had gone for a run the first day she’d settled into the cabin. The weather had been so warm that she’d been wearing shorts and a tank top. The top was gone, as was her face. Had she looked happy when the picture was taken?
She’d felt happy then. She shouldn’t have. Obviously she didn’t always know when he was watching her.
“This one’s new,” she said, and she pointed to it with a trembling fingertip. “It wasn’t in here before.”
“That must be why I found the door unlocked,” Mannes said. “He let himself inside to leave that.”
She glanced toward the door and shivered again. She had been foolish to think she would be safe anywhere from him.
“I have the keys now,” Manny reminded her. “He can’t just let himself inside again.”
She doubted that not having a key would stop him. There were windows. The glass patio door. He could break any of those and get inside if he wanted to.
And he obviously wanted to.
“Who is he?” Mannes asked.
She glanced up at him. “You think I know?”
“You must have some idea,” he said. “An ex-boyfriend? Jilted lover?”
She shook her head. “No.”
She couldn’t believe that anyone she had trusted enough to date could have done this. Well aware of her mother’s heartbreak, Teddie was always very choosy about whom she dated. That was why she rarely dated.
If only she’d been as careful with some of the friends she’d made...