by Bianca D'Arc
The Jaguar Bodyguard
by
Bianca D’Arc
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2018 Bianca D’Arc
Published by Hawk Publishing, LLC
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my Dad, who puts up with my crazy hours and never complains. Even though he’s never read any of my romance books, he is my biggest cheerleader, always encouraging me to keep writing and keep persevering. I love you, Dad.
And to my readers and friends. Particularly Peggy McChesney and Jessica Bimberg, proofreader and editor, respectively. They’ve helped me so much over these past few years. You gals are great!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
About the Author
Other Books by Bianca D’Arc
CHAPTER ONE
Nick Balam was on special assignment for his newly mated Alpha, billionaire Mark Pepard. Nick didn’t like being away from the safety of the Clan or unable to keep tabs on the Alpha. As Beta of the Clan, it was his responsibility to make sure the Alpha came to no harm. Ever.
But Nick also had a duty to obey the Alpha, and right now, Mark had convinced Nick that he could best serve the interests of the Clan by being here. In Hollywood. Watching over a human starlet who might have learned more than she should have about the Clan and their secrets. Nick was here to assess the situation—and the girl—and see if she needed to be silenced permanently.
It wasn’t something Nick would do lightly, but to protect his Clan, he would do more than kill. He would lay down his life for the Clan, if need be. Arranging an accident for a single human was a small thing compared to the allegiance he owed his people in their bid to make a new life for themselves on Jaguar Island.
For the Jaguar Clan was rebuilding. Slowly. They’d been decimated by the drug wars and the lack of a strong, central gathering place where they could seek shelter in numbers. Living as wild cats, each with their own private territory, hadn’t worked out well as drug cartels moved in on the jungles the jaguars had called home. So many had been slaughtered, caught up in the senseless killing and violence, each trying to drive the interlopers from their territories.
It was Mark Pepard who had finally put forward a plan and, with approval of the remaining elders, put it into motion. He’d purchased an island in the Caribbean—a dormant volcano that spoke to the fire of the jaguar that lived inside them all. He’d also found an architect, who turned out to be his mate, to design a community that his people could live in together, and grow.
For the first time, Nick thought they might actually have a chance at rebuilding the might of the Jaguar Clan and adapting to the brave new world the humans had created. So much, though, depended on secrecy. And the actress, Sullivan Lane, had seen and heard things she should never have been allowed to witness.
At least, that’s what Nick was here to investigate. He was deep undercover, acting as Sullivan’s bodyguard, watching her every move and doing his best to discover if she had knowledge that needed to be erased. Which would, of course, mean erasing her. Permanently.
So far, she hadn’t given any indication that she’d go running to the tabloids with her story or the proof they thought she might have. It was Nick’s job to, first, see if she did have the feared evidence of the existence of jaguar shifters, and second, if she did, to make sure she never got a chance to pass it on to anyone else. Above all, their secret must be maintained.
Sullivan was a lot different than he’d expected. He had met her only briefly. Introduced by her manager as the replacement for another bodyguard who had been contracted only recently to see to the up-and-coming actress’s safety. She’d been receiving death threats ever since her new movie had opened last week.
It had been the night of the premiere that she’d been involved in a situation that had let the cat out of the bag—almost literally. One of their younger and much more foolish Clan members had been working as a valet, parking cars at the director’s mansion at an exclusive after-party that had a guest list in the hundreds. Only a teenager, Rafael hadn’t fully mastered his jaguar yet, which normally wouldn’t have been that much of a problem, except that one of the other youngsters had been showing off and lost control of a very expensive vehicle, nearly hitting Rafael in the middle of the dark parking area.
Rafael had not only jumped clear of the oncoming car, but in his panic, his cat had come out. The poor kid had shifted in mid-air, then been unable to shift back because of the panic and fear that had made his animal a little crazy. The other kids had tried to talk him down. They were Clan members, too. But none of them had realized until it was almost too late that Sullivan had come out to get her car and had probably seen the entire episode. She had her phone in her hands, and they couldn’t be sure she hadn’t taken video of Rafael’s change.
Rafael and his folks had been given one-way tickets to Jaguar Island, where the teen could learn to better control his inner cat with others his age. The elders there would help him, too, and if he shifted in public, nobody would care because every single person on that island was a trusted Clan member. It was a place where they could let their jaguars run free without fear.
So unlike the human world, where they had to watch their every step. This little incident could blow up in their faces if not handled properly. Nick was the expert in the Clan when it came to security and protection. Mark might be Alpha, but in their culture, the Alpha was the big-picture position. The Alpha had to dream the dream that kept the rest of the Clan on track. He was the leader, but each member of his support staff had their own important functions.
Nick was the Beta, which meant he headed all security for the Clan. When it came to protection of their personnel and their secrets, Nick was the leader. The Alpha of the Clan’s security team, as it were.
When a human had witnessed a shift, it could usually be explained away by the introduction of drugs or alcohol, which was a much nicer way to lead an unsuspecting human to believe they’d been seeing things. But, when there might be actual evidence, that was a high-priority security breach. The fact that they weren’t sure and couldn’t just go rifling through Sullivan Lane’s home or personal effects without triggering her own security brought it to the level where Nick had to be called in to preserve the best interests of the Clan as a whole.
He’d finagled his way onto her security team by calling in more than one favor from acquaintances he’d made over the years. The fact that Su
llivan’s star was on the rise with the release of her new film meant that she was more protected than she ever had been. The death threats that had accompanied her new-found fame had led her—very sensibly, if somewhat inconveniently—to hire a full-coverage security team from one of the best companies in the business.
Luckily, Nick had contacts in the company and was able to get his friends to shuffle a few things so he could join the team already in place. A human guy who’d been unhappy with the gig was taken off the team, and Nick was put in charge of the night shift—a perfect placement that would allow him to do a little covert snooping in the starlet’s home while there on legitimate duty.
If she had video evidence of Rafael’s shift, Nick would find it.
*
The new guy on the security team made Sal want to purr. He was fit and handsome in a way she hadn’t expected. All the other guards looked like bulked-up gorillas to her, but the new guy—Nick was his name—was all sleek lines and graceful motion. He was big and burly, too, but in a way that reminded her of a sinuous dancer…or a jungle cat.
That thought gave her pause.
She knew she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to see when she’d left the after-party at the director’s mansion early. She’d seen a young man turn into a leopard. Or a jaguar. Something with spots and big scary teeth and claws. He’d scurried into the shadows, but the wide-eyed fear on his friends’ faces when they saw her standing there was enough to tell her that the boys were all in on the secret that their friend was hiding a powerful magic in his teenaged body.
Sal knew a little about magic from her mother, but not enough to really know what she’d seen. She knew enough to keep her mouth shut, though. One did not talk about magic, unless one wanted to be committed and put in a room with padded walls and no windows.
Like her mother.
Being labeled crazy was something Sal wanted to avoid at all costs. If she’d had a chance to talk to the boys, she would have told them their secret was safe with her, but they’d all disappeared, leaving her to find her car on her own that night. Luckily, it hadn’t been far away, and she’d been able to leave without a lot of fuss. She hadn’t wanted to make a big production out of her departure from the party that had been getting increasingly wild.
When the drugs had come out, she’d made her exit. Cocaine had been passed around on mirrored platters like hors d’oevres, and pills in every color of the rainbow had been displayed like candy. It had made Sal uncomfortable, and rather than say anything that might get her ostracized from the crowd that could easily dictate whether she ever worked on another film again, she’d just left. Quietly. She’d just used a touch of the magic she never openly acknowledged to make herself disappear.
They gave her mother all kinds of drugs in that place. They’d dulled her mind so much that her mother rarely even recognized Sal when she found the courage to visit. The drugs had just about destroyed her mother’s mind, quieting her wild magic and making her a docile shell of the woman she’d once been.
Of course, her mother had been violent. The magic hadn’t been a fuzzy, soft friend. It had been a harsh roar of passion that demanded attention and lashed out when it wasn’t given what it wanted. The violence was what had gotten her mother sentenced to that place. A home for the criminally insane.
The shame and horror of it was what had first driven Sal to change her name. The need to hide her origins and reinvent herself over and over had led to a career as an actress. She knew her existence as Sullivan Lane, flavor-of-the-month, could be even shorter lived than usual if her secret got out. Sally Lannier could be dug up any old time and used to blackmail or discredit her reincarnation as Sullivan.
In a way, Sal hadn’t really wanted the new movie to get such good reviews or critical acclaim. Being a star had drawbacks enough for a normal person, but with her background and the skeletons hiding in her closet, Sal would have been better off if she hadn’t risen so far, so fast. A good, steady job was all she’d wanted. Now, she had to deal with fame and death threats because the subject matter of her last film had apparently touched a nerve among some of the more unstable elements of society.
The movie had been about a fictionalized account of a real-life serial killer case, and Sal had played the female detective who had cracked the case and almost become one of the victims herself. Sal had met with the detective—Elaine Mercado—and talked to her about her experiences working on that case and others. It had helped Sal get a feel for the role she had never expected to launch her into stardom, but that’s just what had happened.
And now, someone was stalking her, much as Detective Mercado had been stalked by the real-life Lewiston Strangler twenty years ago. Sal hoped the person stalking her wasn’t going to live out the entire fantasy and start killing people, but the tokens he’d been leaving for her ever since she’d taken on the role had been escalating. The last straw had been a decapitated squirrel, left on her front doorstep the day after opening night.
The idea that the stalker had gotten that close had frightened Sal into upgrading her security. The team she’d had in place for about a week now had been good, but the night shift supervisor had been replaced with the new guy. Nick. Too short a name for a man like that. She wondered if that was short for Nicholas, or some other more exotic variant.
And she was spending way too much time thinking about her new bodyguard.
Sal got out of bed and padded downstairs to the kitchen. It was the middle of the night, but she couldn’t sleep. Maybe a hot cup of tea would help.
Nick came to alert the moment he heard her get out of bed. His superior jaguar hearing allowed him to put away the papers he’d been examining in her desk and make it look as if he’d never spent the past hour snooping in her study. He went back to his security station in the front foyer of the large house, checking the camera feeds behind the little desk that had been installed to hold them.
The house was a rental, which made it easier in some ways to protect since it had already been wired for top-notch security when they’d moved her highness in a week ago. In fact, the security company had decided where to put her after a stalker put a dead squirrel on the front doorstep of her previous residence.
Good move, taking her away from a site that had already been compromised. Nick would have advised the same, had he been on the case last week. The new house had been rented furnished, which meant Sullivan Lane had only a few of her personal items here. He’d already perused the inventory lists from the moving company they’d hired to move her in four hours flat. The security company had coordinated that, as well, screening, hiring and overseeing the movers who did the actual work.
Fame and fortune could buy all sorts of services in this town, it seemed. Nick hadn’t spent a lot of time on this coast, but he was familiar with the area from several trips he’d made while he’d been a young adventurer hell bent on seeing the world. He’d done his traveling mostly on Uncle Sam’s dime as a Special Operator. The reputation, friends and contacts he’d made, then, had stood him in good stead all his life, including on this most recent mission.
He heard Sullivan come down the staircase in her slippers and head for the gourmet kitchen. It wouldn’t be out of character for him to check in on her. He was supposed to be keeping watch inside the house at night, after all. He’d be a pretty piss-poor guard if he didn’t check on the noise in the kitchen. Or so he told himself.
His decision had nothing at all to do with the fact that Sullivan Lane was one of the most attractive females he’d ever seen. Nope. No, siree. Not at all.
He peered around the corner into the kitchen doorway and stopped in his tracks. Her scent wrapped around him as it had earlier that day when he’d first met her. Warm cinnamon and spice. Like a holiday fruitcake he wanted to gobble up.
Whoa. Down, kitty.
“Everything okay, Miss Lane?”
Nick tried not to notice that his voice had come out in a deep rumble that meant his jaguar was very near the surf
ace. Kitty was riled by the luscious scent of the woman, and his human side definitely noticed the way she filled out her clingy silk nightgown and whisper-thin robe.
She startled and whirled to face him, one hand going to cover her heart. Her eyes were wide with alarm until she recognized him in the doorway. He hadn’t meant to scare her. He was glad when relief replaced fear in her deep blue gaze.
“Sorry, you scared me. I’m just making some tea. Want a cup?”
Her invitation surprised him. Wasn’t she some rich bitch, stuck-up actress? Hmm. Maybe not.
“I shouldn’t leave the camera station unattended too long, but if there’s an extra cup, I’d be very grateful,” he told her.
“How do you take it? Cream or sugar? Lemon or honey?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just plain.” He wasn’t a complicated guy. At least not with his choice in tea.
She waved him on, giving him a gentle smile. “You go back, and I’ll bring it out to you.”
“Much obliged,” he said, surprised as the old-fashioned words came out of his mouth. Was he a cowboy in some bad Western now? Who said that anymore? Argh.
He made his escape, going back to the foyer and sitting down. There were two chairs in the station. During the day, there were two guards on duty. One to watch the cameras and one to deal with anything that might come up. At night, there was just Nick inside the house and a whole lot of technology set up in strategic places around the perimeter.
He checked the monitors and status lights. Nothing was moving outside, or in the public areas of the house, for that matter. Miss Lane had drawn the line at having her private rooms set up with cameras, but she had panic buttons and sound sensors that would alert to any loud noise, which was the next best thing.
Of course, with a jaguar shifter on duty in the quiet of the night, he’d probably hear anything happening in the house long before a sensor would detect it. Like right now. He heard her slippers making little shuffling noises as she walked down the marble tiled hall toward him. His sensitive nose had picked up the scent of hot tea wafting toward him from the kitchen long ago and now mixed that aroma with the delicate scent of Sullivan’s skin and the light floral shampoo she favored.