by Misty Evans
He sidled up beside Savanna and searched a different drawer. Next to a set of steak knives, he saw what he wanted. “Got it.”
She tried to take the metal opener from him, but he dodged her grasp and grabbed the wine bottle. A moment later, he had the cork out and was pouring her a glass of pale, gold wine.
“Sit,” he told her, steering her to a fancy chair on the other side of the island. “Before you drop.”
“I’m fine.” She took the glass he handed her and sank into the chair. “Aren’t you going to have some?”
“I don’t drink,” he admitted. And you’re not fine.
Her brows went up and she sipped her wine. “Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Why not?”
He scanned the yard outside the window. A foot of snow had already fallen.
He checked the lock and pulled the shade. Petit and Reese were keeping an eye on the long lane from the road to the house, along with Poison, who was positioned at the back of the property. Reinforcements were on the way to relieve Petit and Reese. “It slows my reflexes.”
“Your reflexes are off the charts. Superhuman, if you ask me. You’re not one of the Avengers are you?”
He leaned his back against the counter and purposely kept his focus on the laptop, crossing his feet at the ankles nonchalantly. “Not superhuman. Years and years of training.”
“Hmm.” She swirled the pale liquid in her glass. “So you never underwent any experimental drug testing through the DOD or anything? You did say you were in the Navy, correct?”
The investigative reporter was back. He couldn’t let his surprise show so he zeroed in on one of the security monitors, leaning forward to type something nonsensical on the laptop’s keyboard. He needed to turn the spotlight back on her and do it in a big way. “Back in the car, you were talking about control and said something about ‘I haven’t felt like this since…’ What was that about? Since when?”
In his peripheral vision, he saw her body stiffen. She seemed to brace herself. “It’s nothing. And you’re avoiding my question. Don’t you know that just makes me more of a bulldog?”
He glanced over the top of the laptop screen and saw her rolling the stem of the wine glass between her finger and thumb. Yep, he’d hit a nerve. “Want to talk about it?”
“My being a bulldog once I smell fresh meat?” Her joke fell flat.
“About the last time you felt out of control,” he countered.
Her blue eyes met his, fierce and challenging. “No, and that was a horrible segue, by the way. You do that a lot—turning the conversation around so we’re not talking about you.”
Shrugging, he went to work putting the pile of utensils back in the drawers. “Nothing to talk about.”
“Liar.”
He chuckled, closing the drawer and turning back to her. “How’s your wrist?”
Her brows scrunched. “My wrist?”
Keep the pressure on. “The one you injured. At the Olympics.”
Her gaze turned wary. “Why are you asking about that?”
“Seemed like it was fine when you were doing Flying Crow pose and handstands in the gym today. Does the injury ever flare up? Cause you issues?”
“Why would you care about that? How do you even know about that? Did Beatrice tell you?”
“Is that the last time you felt scared and out of control? At the Olympics?”
She played with her wine glass, twirling it between her fingers and taking a big gulp, staring at him over the rim of the class. Buying time.
Finally, her eyes narrowed. “Let’s get back to you. What rank did you reach in the Navy?”
He wagged his finger at her. “We can’t talk about me, or you’ll breach your contract, remember?”
“Ah, right. The mission. And here I thought we were past that.” Her lips smirked. “I thought we were friends.”
That smirk made him want to be so much more than friends. Her spirit, courage, and astuteness were as sexy to him as her full lips and big blue eyes. He wanted to strip off her body-hugging top and those damn yoga pants and make another grown erupt from those smirking lips.
That image led to more, his mind conjuring all kinds of pornographic scenes of her with her legs spread and chest heaving as he put his mouth to work on her.
Dangerous territory. But there was no way he was backing down. “You came home with four gold medals and had the chance at a couple more that year. You claimed a wrist injury, but there were no medical reports. No follow-up physical therapy. And you never competed again.” He leaned his elbows on the island’s salt-and-pepper colored countertop, putting his face directly across from hers. “Did you really hurt your wrist? Or did you pull out for another reason?”
Her throat contracted as she swallowed once, twice. Her voice sounded hollow when she finally spoke. “What other reason would there be?”
“Some people speculated you did it to improve the chances of one of your teammates to take the gold on vault.”
“Illogical,” she said, standing up and moving away from him in order to grab the wine bottle. “But I see you—or Beatrice—did your homework on me, at least what you could dig up from the internet. Unfortunately, that was a ridiculous theory back then and it still is.”
She returned with the bottle in hand and refilled her glass, keeping her eyes diverted. “Nora was my best friend. We supported each other and cheered each other on, just like we did all the other girls on the team, but we were competitors first and foremost. We both went out and did our very best at every meet and the Olympics was it. Everything we’d trained for, suffered for, strived for. We represented our country, our families, our coaches, who’d stuck by us through everything.
“I hurt my wrist, and although there were no official reports”—she made air quotes around the word official—“I was seen by my personal doctor. My coach and my mother agreed with his diagnosis. If I continued to participate I could end up with a permanent injury. So, on their advice, I pulled the plug.”
He could see it in her eyes. It was the company line, the one she’d practiced and spouted over and over again until she had convinced herself, as well as everyone else, that it was the truth.
He didn’t believe her.
All professional athletes performed with injuries. They wrapped joints, took OTC pain relievers, and soaked their sore bodies afterwards in ice baths. They received massage therapy, physical therapy, and when forced to back off on playing and practicing, they still did as much as they could, working through the pain.
She’d just admitted it—she’d been at the pinnacle of her gymnastics career. The Olympics! It wasn’t her first injury, nor should it have been her last. In fact, included in the notes Beatrice had provided, Savanna had injured her left ankle on a balance beam dismount during a world competition earlier that year and had still gone on to compete on the floor exercise where she’d placed second. It was later revealed that she’d broken two bones in her foot and sprained her ankle, yet she had done nothing more than wrap her ankle and compete anyway.
It didn’t surprise him. She was tough and determined, in some ways reminding him of himself. When the chips were down, Savanna got tougher. She didn’t give up. She didn’t run away.
Something devastating had happened to her at the Olympics and it wasn’t a sprained wrist. She’d dropped out of gymnastics that very night and never returned.
“Do you regret it?” he asked softly. “Quitting at the top of your career?”
She was still standing, her gaze on the golden liquid in her glass but seeming a million miles away. The stress lines around her eyes fell away, her mouth softened. “Every. Day.”
His comm unit crackled with Petit’s voice. “Changing of the guard, Coldplay. Your new teammates will be Stone Sour and Shinedown. Reese is heading back to the apartment to keep an eye on things there, Beatrice is running a more in-depth background check on that doorman, Rory is scanning every camera in the DC area looking for Parker, and I
’m going to put eyes on POTUS. See what our guy is up to.”
Trace straightened and touched his comm. “Roger that. Watch your six.”
“We’ve kept the showdown at the studio as quiet as we could, but there’s still some talk and speculation out there,” Emit informed him. “You might want to keep our client away from the news and social media for the time being.”
Savanna had removed her earbud as soon as they’d reached the house and he was glad. “Will do.”
“Beatrice created a statement for you about the incident and faxed it to Sergeant Franklin. You should have a copy in your email. Read through it and commit it to memory so if he calls to confirm it or ask questions, you know your official story.”
There was a slight pause as someone in the background spoke to Emit and he answered. Then he came back to Trace. “You need anything tonight, holler.”
Beatrice had covered his ass with the cops again. He owed her a smoothie. “Roger that, and…thanks. For everything.”
Petit signed out. Stone Sour and Shinedown checked in with Poison. The three guards would stay outside in their vehicles doing perimeter checks on the hour and keeping an eye on things even with the storm.
All systems were go. Now if he could get his client to go to bed.
I thought we were friends.
After she’d made it clear to him that he was in her employ, it seemed odd she would make that statement. Then again, he’d refused to answer her question about his other theories, and he planned to keep her away from that topic as long as possible. Preferably forever.
“Sorry for the interruption,” he said, seeing her watching him with a mixture of annoyance and trepidation.
“Is everything okay?”
“Routine check-in.” He scanned his phone and the pictures from the security feed. “Everything is secure. The master suite is on the third floor. The bathroom has a jetted tub. You should check it out.”
A quirk of her eyebrow told him his segue once again was horrible. “Trying to get rid of me?”
“It’s been a rough day,” he said, once again shooting for nonchalance. “I thought you might want to relax. If you’re not ready for bed, there’s a movie theatre and game room downstairs, and a library on the second floor with a nice fireplace.”
He was more of a movie guy, but she looked like someone who read a lot. Books and a fireplace…yep, he could see her curled up in a chair with her wine and a juicy crime novel, although he’d much rather see her naked in that jetted spa.
“Oh, no, you’re not getting off that easy. You took a shot at guessing my past. Now it’s my turn at guessing yours.”
Oh, shit. So much for enticing her into a soak in the tub or diving into a novel for a few hours. “My past is off limits.”
She shrugged and smiled into her glass. “You don’t have to confirm or deny anything, but I have a few theories about you.”
He almost wanted to hear them, too.
“You’re former Special Ops,” she said, her gaze roaming over his features. “If you’re Navy, you must have been a SEAL. That would explain the training and your ability to outthink what’s going to happen before it does. Your reflexes, your intuition, your split-second decision making. Am I close?”
Trace kept his face neutral. She was too clever for her own good. God help him, it turned him on.
Her eyes dropped to her glass. “It would also explain why you don’t like me.”
His gut tightened. “What makes you think I don’t like you?”
“That first day you showed up at my apartment, you made it pretty clear you weren’t happy about guarding me. I realized it had to be in conjunction with my show, the one I did a couple years ago on that Navy SEAL who turned traitor. Did you know him? Trace Hunter?”
Trace held perfectly still, blood pounding in his ears. This was the moment he should divulge the truth. Tell her everything.
A part of him wanted to. Wanted more than anything to come clean, but doing so would jeopardize everything he’d built with Savanna so far. She would freak out, and rightly so, ending any chance he had to prove to her he wasn’t a traitor and get her help to stop Linc Norman.
More than that, he simply wanted to spend more time with her.
She was still waiting for an answer.
Trace swallowed the truth. “Lieutenant Hunter and I ran in different circles.”
“Do you think he was guilty? Of treason?”
The uncertainty in her voice threw him. “Isn’t that what you proved on your show?”
“My show.” She chuckled without humor. “I always do my own investigations. Except that one time. And now, I don’t know. I have doubts about the legitimacy of the information I was given. It’s driving me nuts.”
He had to get her moving or he’d spill his guts and ruin everything. “You’re tired and you need some rest. You should go upstairs.”
She ignored him. “I think I’ve grown on you since that first day, but I’m still ‘the mission’, aren’t I? This is only a job for you. What I can’t figure out is why you, or anyone really, would be willing to take on the president.”
Here, he could be honest. “I have my reasons.”
Her phone rang from the pocket of her coat hanging on the chair. “Crap,” she said, digging it out. “It’s my mother.”
She took a big swig of wine, then pushed the talk button, hopping off the chair and pacing away. “Hi Mom. What’s up?”
As Savanna headed for another room, Trace overheard her mother ranting about the fact she’d seen the news and why hadn’t Savanna called her.
That was close. He corked the wine bottle and stuck it in the fridge. Too close.
As soon as he found Parker, he was going to sit Savanna down and come clean. He had to, whether it ended his stint as her bodyguard or not. If she had doubts about the information she’d blasted to the world on her show, then maybe she’d listen to him and not turn him in to the Feds. Even though he had no proof that he wasn’t a traitor, he did have something else. Information that would damn the president and bring him down.
Chapter Fifteen
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BEFORE DORIS JEFFRIES was done with her tongue-lashing, Savanna had found the living room and turned on the flat screen over the fireplace.
She flipped to the news channel and sank slowly down to sit on the couch as she watched Courtney Collins, the nightly anchor, tell the viewers about Savanna’s erratic behavior and sudden disappearance after shots were fired at the studio early that day.
Erratic behavior?
The couch cushions were soft and deep, and Savanna sunk down into them even as her body went rigid when she spotted the source Courtney had gotten her information from as the camera panned out.
“Here with us tonight is Ms. Bunkett’s close personal friend and fellow The Bunk Stops Here producer, Lindsey Fey. Lindsey, thank you so much for joining us tonight.”
Producer? Friend?
“Mom, I have to call you back.” Savanna disconnected, her mother still talking. In ten seconds, her mom would call back, so Savanna turned off the phone and tossed it on the couch beside her.
As Courtney interviewed Lindsey, Savanna sank further into the couch’s cushy pillows, wishing she could disappear. With a serious face, Lindsey told Courtney, and the camera, about Savanna’s refusal to do a show after the staff and crew had put hours of work and research into it. How Savanna had become paranoid about stalkers and hired a bodyguard. How she’d become fixated on a conspiracy theory that had no proof or facts of any kind to back it up.
And then Lindsey told the ultimate lie. “Savanna Bunkett has not performed her own research on any of the topics she’s brought to the American people in months. I’ve had to step in and do everything.”
Lindsey stared straight into the camera, still wearing her big hair and perfect makeup from hosting Savanna’s show. “We’re all concerned about Savan
na’s health and wellbeing, but her disappearance today is only one more incident in her recent unprofessional conduct. The show’s producers want the American public to know that the bunk truly does stop here. They will not tolerate unprincipled, unscrupulous, or dishonest reporting, nor will they support any reporter who acts in an unbecoming way.”
“What about the accident earlier today?” Courtney asked, her face showing the world how she, too, took Savanna’s misdeeds seriously. “Is it possible Ms. Bunkett was indeed targeted by a stalker?”
Lindsey gave Courtney a patient smile. “The police ruled the accident a hit-and-run, nothing more. This is DC. People run red lights every day and there are dozens of hit-and-runs in the metro area every month. She was a victim of the odds, not a stalker or crazy fan like she wishes everyone to believe.”
Savanna was so stunned, she barely noticed Coldplay setting her wine glass on the coffee table in front of her.
“You really want to watch this?” he said.
She was like a gawker at a traffic accident. “I can’t believe she’s doing this to me.”
He folded his arms across his large chest and nodded. “Been there.”
“What?” she said, looking up at him.
“Nothing.” He handed her the glass. “You’re going to need this if you’re going to watch.”
Boy, did she. She sipped and the glass froze halfway back down when Courtney went to a live feed from Georgetown and a home office Savanna hadn’t seen the inside of in months.
“Senator Brady Garrison joins us. Thank you, Senator, for taking time to speak with us.”
Brady’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, just like it always did, and he carelessly brushed his blond bangs out of the way. “Courtney, great to see you. It’s no problem at all. The storm’s keeping me at home tonight anyway.”
Gosh darn and gee whiz. As if he’d be on Capitol Hill at eleven o’clock working if it weren’t for this darned storm.
Savanna considered throwing her glass at the TV screen. “What are you up to?” she murmured under her breath at the oversized face of her ex.