by Lisa Childs
Cooper pulled her into his arms and held her like he would have his sister. But Nikki rarely cried. She was the toughest woman he knew. From what he’d seen at the cabin, Teddie Plummer was pretty damn tough, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She gasped and stared up at him through her tears. “Oh no! You heard from the doctors? He didn’t make it?”
“No, no,” he said. “I haven’t. Nobody’s updated me.”
She sagged against him. “Oh, I thought...”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry about that, too. But I was apologizing because of what I said, what I thought.”
She blinked and focused on his face, as if she were trying to figure out what he was talking about. Then she nodded. “You thought it was all a publicity stunt.”
“I was wrong,” he said. And he should have known that he was. Manny didn’t have his family’s judgment. He wouldn’t have fallen for a woman who’d just been using him.
“I was wrong, too,” she said. “About Manny.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “Do you think I’ll get the chance to apologize to him?”
Cooper nodded. “Of course. Manny’s tough. It would take more than a couple of bullets to take him down.” He hoped like hell he was right this time.
Chapter 26
Cooper Payne had been wrong before—about her. Teddie hadn’t held her breath that he would be right about Manny. He had known the Marine longer than he’d known her, though. So when the surgeon finally walked into the waiting room—where she and Cooper had returned to sit with Lars and Nikki, Dane and Cole—he had good news.
Manny had survived surgery. But due to the amount of blood he’d lost, the next few hours would be touch and go.
“That’s my fault,” she murmured, more to herself than the others. “I didn’t do enough to stop the bleeding.” If only she’d moved faster...
But she’d been so stunned over what had happened. How had Manny found her in time? How had he saved her even when he’d been shot?
She had struggled to believe for a moment that any of it was real. That it had actually happened. But Anthony lay dead on one side of her and Manny lay bleeding on the other. So she’d snapped out of her stupor of shock and had done what she could to stop the bleeding.
Nikki squeezed her hand. Her other arm was wrapped around her enormous fiancé’s waist. “He’s going to be okay,” she assured Teddie. She sounded much more confident than her brother had.
Leaning slightly on his petite fiancée, Lars nodded and agreed, “Manny’s tough. He’ll be fine.”
“Can we see him?” Cole asked the surgeon, his jaw rigid with tension.
“Are you family?” the older man asked.
Cole nodded and fingered the dog tags around his neck. “Closer than family.”
The guy hesitated but then murmured, “Semper fi.”
He must have been a Marine, too.
“We put him in a private room, but it’s small and he’s hooked up to a lot of machines.” The surgeon looked at all of them. “If something happens, we need to be able to get in there and work on him. So only one visitor at a time.”
Teddie swallowed hard as she considered the implications of his warning. He seemed to expect something to go wrong, to expect Manny to need help. He said nothing more to them, just turned and walked back to the door through which he’d entered the waiting room.
Manny’s friends watched him walk away, as well, before they all turned to each other.
“Let Teddie go first,” Nikki said.
But Cole shook his head. “Not after the way she treated him...”
Teddie flinched. But she should have known Manny’s friends wouldn’t easily forgive her. They were all too loyal to brush aside her vicious accusations.
“She was deliberately misled,” Nikki said. “Anthony Esch set up the whole thing to get her to fire us.” She turned toward Cole. “And you didn’t wonder for just a second?”
Cole shook his head. “Not even a second. While Manny likes to talk, he doesn’t tell everything he knows. And if he’d wanted to sell a story to the press, he could have made a hell of a lot more off mine.”
Who was Cole Bentler? Really? He was more than a bodyguard. More than an ex-Marine.
Teddie didn’t really care who he was. She cared about only Manny. But these were his friends. No, they were his family. She wanted to be a part of Manny’s life, so she would need to be a part of theirs, as well. She didn’t have to worry about just them accepting her. She had to worry about Manny.
“I should have trusted him. I had no reason to doubt him.” But fear. She’d fallen so hard and so fast for him that she’d questioned her judgment. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not us you owe the apology to,” Cole said. “Go ahead.” He squeezed her shoulder before nudging her toward the door. “Go see him.”
When she walked into Manny’s room, Teddie didn’t know if Cole had rewarded her or punished her. Seeing the man she loved like this...
Hooked up to machines. It was almost as bad as when she’d been struggling to stop his bleeding. Her knees shook as she approached the bed.
A nurse glanced up from studying the machines. Then she unhooked a couple and pushed them back from his bed. “He won’t need these anymore.”
Teddie gasped, and her knees nearly folded beneath her. Was she too late? This was what she’d worried about falling for a bodyguard, that one day she would lose him, that he would abandon her just like her father had. “Oh no...”
“He doesn’t need them because he’s doing so well,” the woman said. “He’s breathing on his own and already beginning to surface from the anesthesia, which is surprising considering how long he’d been under for surgery.” She reached across his bed and squeezed Teddie’s hand—like Nikki had. “You came back just in time. I think he’ll be waking up soon.”
Teddie’s heart flipped in her chest as if it was doing cartwheels. “He’ll be all right.”
Despite the good news, tears streamed down her face. She couldn’t believe how close she’d come to losing him. Not that she would have him even if he fully recovered. He would probably never forgive her for the things she’d said, the things she’d believed of him—and she didn’t blame him.
But at least he was alive.
Nothing else truly mattered.
The nurse smiled and stepped out of the room. For a moment Teddie felt the panic she’d had back at the cabin when she’d been alone with Manny and unable to help him. Her biggest fear had been of losing him; that was why she’d fought her feelings for him.
But he was going to be fine.
Everyone had assured her that he was tough, that he could survive anything. She didn’t need to worry about him abandoning her because of the job he loved. She didn’t have to worry that he would ever come up against an assignment he couldn’t handle. But she needed him to forgive her for what she’d said to him, for how she’d doubted him. She needed to hear it from his lips, needed to feel his lips again—moving over hers—to believe that they would be fine. She needed to be close to him.
So she pulled down the railing and squeezed onto the bed beside him, careful not to jostle him. But his eyes opened anyway. He turned his head slightly and stared at her. While he was awake, he didn’t look fully conscious. He looked dazed. Out of it...
Had the loss of blood caused damage to his brain? Did he not remember who she was?
Or did he not want to remember?
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “So sorry I doubted you. I should have known you—of all people—would never do anything to hurt me.”
He cleared his throat and, through dry lips, asked her, “Why not?”
A smile tugged at her lips. “Because you’re my bodyguard.”
He moved his head, rolling it back and forth across the pillow as if shaking it
. “You fired me,” he reminded her. He had definitely not forgotten anything. “I’m not your bodyguard anymore.”
“No,” she agreed. “You’re not my bodyguard anymore. I don’t think you were ever just my bodyguard, though.” She reached out and skimmed her fingertips along his strong jaw. The stubble of his new beard tickled her skin.
“What was I, Teddie?” he asked.
“My everything,” she said. “You were and are my everything.”
That would not change even if he wasn’t able to forgive her. She would always love him. She opened her mouth to give him those words, as well, to tell him that she loved him, but he started laughing.
And panic clutched her again, squeezing her heart. She had expected him to be angry. She hadn’t expected him to be amused.
Had she read the entire situation between them wrong? Had he only been doing his job when he had saved her life over and over again?
* * *
He was dead. Manny had no doubt about that now. There was no way he could be alive and be this happy. Teddie Plummer—his longtime fantasy crush—could not be lying beside him, telling him that he was everything to her.
Manny had never been everything for anyone. Not his family. Not his friends...
He laughed harder, but it rang hollowly off the walls of the small room. Where the hell was he?
This didn’t look like hell. Or heaven.
She did, though. Even with her red hair tangled around her face and the dark circles rimming her green eyes, she looked like heaven. Like an angel.
He shook his head as his laughter died away. But was she real?
“I’m sorry, Manny,” she murmured, and tears glistened in those beautiful green eyes. “I’m sorry.”
For what? He couldn’t remember why she would owe him an apology. She hadn’t shot him. That had been Anthony Esch...
He tensed for a moment, worried that the man might come after her again. Then a memory flashed through his painkiller-addled mind. Esch with a bullet in his forehead.
The demented photographer would never hurt Teddie again.
She was safe. She was also sad.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she murmured. “I love you.”
No. This wasn’t real. He shook his head and murmured, “What kind of sick joke is this?”
If he wasn’t dead, then it must have been the painkillers making him hallucinate and imagine what she was saying. She couldn’t actually...
It wasn’t possible.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and her voice cracked with the tears overflowing her eyes. “I wish you could forgive me.” She began to slide off the bed.
But he grabbed for her, flinching as he moved his wounded arm. And he knew it was real—the pain and the happiness. “Oh, my God,” he murmured. “I can’t believe this.”
“That I’m apologizing?” she asked.
“I can’t believe you’re real,” he said. “I can’t believe this is actually happening—any of it.”
She relaxed against his side and pressed her lips to his cheek. “It’s real. I’m real.”
“I had the biggest crush on you when I was younger. I even brought your poster to boot camp,” he confessed. “You were my fantasy woman.”
“You never told me that,” she said.
“I figured you’d think I was your stalker,” he admitted, “if you knew about the crush I used to have on you.”
“Used to?” she asked. “Not anymore?”
“No, not for a while.”
She flinched now. “Not since I accused you of selling me out?”
“Oh, I still had a crush on you then,” he said. “I understand why you would have thought that—the pictures, the story. You must have told him the same things you told me.” No wonder he’d been so jealous of the guy.
She shook her head. “I only told you about my past,” she said. “He knew because his parents had me investigated when we started dating.”
She ran her fingertips along his jaw and tipped his face toward her. Staring deeply into his eyes, she assured him, “That’s all we did. Just a few dinner dates. I have never felt about anyone the way I do you. I never trusted anyone the way I do you.”
And she’d thought he had betrayed that trust. “I would never do anything to hurt you,” he promised.
“I know.” She blinked back tears, clearing the moisture from her eyes. “Now, about this crush...”
“I don’t have a crush on you anymore,” he said. “Now I love you.”
“Damn it,” she murmured.
“What?” She’d professed her love. Had she not wanted him to reciprocate her feelings? “What’s wrong?”
She sighed. “Now I’m going to have to tell my mother she was right about you.”
“What?” he asked. “Mothers hate me.”
“Not my mother,” she said. “She loved you from the minute you first told her off. She was certain you’re a man I could trust—with my life and with my heart.”
“I am,” he promised her. “I will never let you down. I will always be there for you.”
She smiled. “I know. Two bullets didn’t stop you from saving my life. You are the one who seems like a fantasy to me,” his fantasy woman told him. “You’re the one who seems too good to be true.”
He knew it wasn’t just the painkillers anymore. This was really happening. His dream had come true. “We’re both real,” he assured her. “And what we have is real.”
A love that would last forever.
* * *
Cole leaned against the door to Manny’s room. He wasn’t eavesdropping—not really. It wasn’t as if he could hear the words Teddie and his friend spoke to each other. But he could hear the happiness. Hell, he could feel the happiness; it flowed under the door and into the hall.
A nurse walked toward the door but stopped short to stare up at him. “I need to check on my patient,” she said.
He shook his head. “He’s doing great,” he assured her. Better than Manny had ever been.
The nurse smiled. “The redhead still in there?”
He nodded, and she turned and walked away. Like Cole, she knew her patient was doing well.
Moments later Nikki appeared in the hall. Her brow furrowed as she stared at him leaning against the door. “Teddie’s still in there?”
He had come back a while ago to take his turn visiting Manny. But he hadn’t had the heart to interrupt them. Hell, he knew Manny would rather be with Teddie than with any of them.
“Is everything okay?” Nikki asked.
“It’s great,” he assured her. “In fact, I think you should give your mother a call.”
“Cooper called to let her know Manny’s going to be okay.”
“You should give her a heads-up that she’s probably going to have another wedding to plan soon,” he said.
Her lips curved into a slight grin and she teased, “Yours? Why, Cole, I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.”
He wasn’t. He wouldn’t.
“Funny,” he said. And usually Nikki was, but this time her teasing had struck a nerve. “You know the wedding your mother will be planning next.”
“Good thing Mom has Emilia helping her,” Nikki said as she leaned against the wall next to Cole. “She has my wedding to plan—although I suspect she’s had that all figured out since the minute the doctor told her I was a girl.” She shuddered, then shrugged. “Dane’s going to pop the question soon.”
Cole nodded. He’d seen the ring.
“And what?” she asked. “You think Manny’s proposing now?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Cole said. “He’s had a crush on her as long as I’ve known him.”
“She loves him, too,” Nikki said. “What about you?”
Cole shrugged. “I’m kind of fond o
f him. But love...”
She giggled. “You know what I mean. All your friends have fallen in love. What about you?”
Cole had fallen—a long time ago. But unlike Manny, things had not worked out with Cole’s teenage crush. Instead of returning his love like Teddie returned Manny’s, Cole’s crush had crushed him.
He was not about to risk his heart again.
“Not happening,” he told her. “There’s gotta be one bachelor in every group, you know. I’m going to be that guy.”
Nikki snorted. “Yeah, I think that’s what Manny said. And Dane. And Lars...”
A chill chased down Cole’s spine as he remembered each of his friends making that claim, that they would never fall in love. But his situation was different than theirs. They’d never been in love before. So they hadn’t seen it coming.
Cole had been in love.
He’d already given his heart to a woman. And even though she hadn’t wanted it, she’d never given it back. So he could not fall in love again. He was safe.
* * * * *
Don’t forget the previous titles in the series:
NANNY BODYGUARD
BEAUTY AND THE BODYGUARD
BODYGUARD’S BABY SURPRISE
BODYGUARD DADDY
HIS CHRISTMAS ASSIGNMENT
And if you love Lisa Childs, be sure
to pick up her other stories:
RED HOT
TAMING THE SHIFTER
THE AGENT’S REDEMPTION
AGENT TO THE RESCUE
AGENT UNDERCOVER
THE PREGNANT WITNESS
CURSED
BRIDEGROOM BODYGUARD
Available now from Harlequin!
Keep reading for an excerpt from POWER PLAY by Beverly Long.
Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin ebook!
Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards
http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010003
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Romantic Suspense title.
You want sparks to fly! Harlequin Romantic Suspense stories deliver, with strong and adventurous women, brave and powerful men and the life-and-death situations that bring them together.