He rocked himself into my hand and started unbuttoning the top of my jeans.
We were going to do this. Right there.
He began to slide down my pants and panties over my hips. All I could think of was getting him inside me. “You were right; I can’t believe how much I want you,” I said.
He froze and quickly moved back.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Don’t stop.” I could handle anything, anything in this world except him stopping.
“Shit. What the fuck am I doing?” He put himself back inside his jeans.
Still panting, I stood there, not caring that the rough tree bark dug into my back. “It’s okay.”
He turned his back to me. “It’s not okay. I swear you’ll be the death of me—I can’t think straight around you. Button your pants.”
Wounded and humiliated, I did as he asked, all the while, thinking about what a total jerk I was for letting myself get carried away like I had.
But clearly you want him. Yes. I did. In a bad way. Like I occasionally needed chocolate or to spend over my credit limit. But I was better than a simple urge. Wasn’t I?
Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. But that didn’t make the sting of rejection any less painful. Truth was, I would have gone through with it.
“Come on,” he grabbed my hand and continued walking us through the woods.
“Wait.” I marched back to the tree and found my notebook. Who knew, maybe this would be the only memory I’d ever have of my father after all was said and done.
Paolo cussed a few choice words and continued ahead. “Hurry, for God’s sake.”
We walked in silence for several moments, me wondering why he was so pissy when I was the one who’d been rejected.
“Are you actually mad?” I whispered.
He stopped abruptly, causing me to almost ram into his back. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry. Why?” I asked.
“We are in the middle of a fucking mess, and I’m acting like a fucking sixteen year old who can’t keep his dick in his pants. I was unprofessional, and it will never happen again.”
“Oh. That’s right. I’m just a job. ” I walked on ahead, not knowing where I was going, but far away from him felt insanely rational and very good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Two long, cold hours later, I was simply thankful it was September and not October or November. Any colder and my nose, fingertips, and toes would have been left behind as ice chips.
Shivering, I watched Paolo approach a large cabin through the backyard. The lights were off. For a moment I thought he was going to break in. Instead, he walked around the side, grabbed something from a bush, and then popped open a side door leading to the attached garage.
“What are you doing?”
He waved me over.
I entered the dark garage, and he shut the door behind me. He flipped on the lights, revealing this wasn’t just a garage with another SUV—this one black—but an arsenal of sorts. “Whose place is this?”
“A friend’s,” was his only answer.
He went quickly to work, opening locked cabinets and loading duffel bags into the back of the truck.
“Why do I have the feeling you’ve been planning for this event for a very, very long time?”
He glanced at me, too busy to truly see me. “Planned, yes. Very, very long, no. I was assigned to you again three weeks ago.”
“What’s in those?”
“Supplies.” He plunked a heavy box into the back of the SUV, and then grabbed another box that sort of clanked when it landed. “And a few guns with plenty of ammo.”
“And where does the elusive, gun-hungry Jason plan to take me now?” I crossed my goose-bumped arms over my chest.
“Jason?” he asked.
“As in…Bourne?”
He stared blankly.
Ugh! “Never mind,” I said.
“I’m taking you into hiding, to a level one safe house—we only use them when there’s a problem.”
“Guess this qualifies,” I mumbled.
“Sometimes leaks happen, which is why when we go to one, we sever all communication with other people for months.”
“Months? Why months?” And how the hell would I survive months of being alone with him? I’d be a big hot mess!
“It gives your father time to find the leak. Once he sends an all clear we can leave or go to a level two—a house with a communication system and nearby contingencies.”
I immediately thought about his cabin that had burned down. Contingencies must have meant a plan B, like this one.
“Are you sure we’ll be safe wherever this safe house is?”
“Yes. It’s the first thing we prepare when we’re assigned to a protection job.”
Job. There was that word again. It stung. It implied a certain level of obligation versus free will.
“You had all this,” I waved my hand toward the truck and apocalyptic stockpiles, “planned in two weeks? You must have a big team.” I’d only been at college for a week, so I assumed he’d had this all ready to go before he started his “assignment.”
“We never use teams; I’m the only one I know I can trust. Adding other people into the equation only increases the risk of information leaking into the wrong hands. Besides,” he grunted and landed another heavy box in the trunk, “it only took three days. We’ve got a system. I took a week off before starting. Knew I’d need the rest—my last assignment was a rough one.”
Made me start to wonder where he’d been these last months after he’d disappeared from my life. “So who was the lucky woman?”
“Lucky woman?” He breathed heavily and rested a hand on top of the next box.
“Yeah. The lucky woman who got to play bodyguard with you after you left without a trace from my life. Did you almost try to screw her against a tree, too?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Dakota, you really are a child.”
“Child? Child! I’m being hunted here. My father is Austin Powers without the bad teeth, and the guy I spent months trying to forget just showed up in my life, only to tell me that protecting me is nothing more than a chore he gets paid for. Yet…” I swept my hands over my body. “Here I am. No cracks in my fucking armor, Mr. 007. I’m here, ready to fight for my life, taking the shitty hand you just dealt me and making the best of it! All the while, having my feelings stomped on. So please!” I poked his hard chest. “Please tell me how I am the one acting like a goddamned child?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—”
“No. You shouldn’t have. Because from where I’m sitting, the only difference between you and me is that I haven’t had my Spy Kids training.” I poked him again. “Yet,” I added. Because I’d be signing up for the first class I could get my hands on.
Paolo was about to say something, but to his credit he shut his trap.
I loaded my freezing body into the passenger seat and shut the door.
Paolo continued loading duffel bags into the large space in the back of the Suburban, and I just had to wonder where the hell he was taking me. I hoped it would be an isolated town in Alaska where a new passport awaited me along with a new life, new heart, and new…bodyguard!
After ten more minutes, he shut the hatch and got into the driver’s seat. He gripped the steering wheel and stared at the garage door for several moments. The turmoil undulating just beneath his steady facade was palpable. “Dakota, I don’t expect you to understand. Or believe me. But I broke the rules once.” He gripped tighter. “I wasn’t the one who paid the price. When I lost her, I lost everything.”
Another piece of the puzzle slid into place, and I’d almost wished he hadn’t told me. Yes, it now explained why he’d acted so strange around me, but it broke my heart to hear something so tragic. And all along, I’d been getting in his face about his boundaries, which now made me feel horrible. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…know,” I murmured.
“How could you?”
“I should have gue
ssed,” I replied. Only people with serious baggage acted that neurotic. His behavior—hot and cold, angry and caring—screamed inner turmoil. He must have cared for her deeply. “So she died while you were protecting her?”
He didn’t flinch. “Yes. And I had feelings for her, but not like I have for you.”
Ouch. “I understand. I would never…expect that from anyone,” I mumbled.
“You misunderstood. What I feel about you is…” He bumped his fist on the steering wheel. “Fuck, Dakota. Don’t ask me to repeat my mistakes. Because,” he looked at me with a sharp, soul-piercing gaze, “I couldn’t handle losing you. Not you.” He looked ahead and opened the garage door. “I won’t watch you die.”
There was nothing to say to that, other than…“All right.”
He nodded, and we drove off into the night, our fates awaiting us.
~ ~ ~
The place Paolo was taking me, I learned, was special for one reason: It was a house that couldn’t be tied to him, me, or anyone. It belonged to a real estate firm that rented homes to executives from abroad. Payment flowed through various companies—a phony company’s overseas bank account tied to an alias, through a relocation company that farmed out the actual relo work to a third company, etc. I didn’t quite get why it was untraceable, but I gathered the rental had gone through so many parties that it put a healthy distance between us and anyone looking for us.
The second thing I learned was that my father was, in fact, a very, very well-connected man.
“A passport, driver’s license, and a credit card?” I said to myself, in complete shock. I looked through the rest of the envelope Paolo had given me while he pumped gas. There was also a couple thousand in cash. Strangely, it looked like the large white envelope the policeman in San Diego had given him.
Paolo got back in the car and started the engine.
“Are these real?” I held up the passport. The photo was the same one I had taken for my university ID a week ago.
“Yes,” was all he responded. I couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of power a person had to have to get a genuine passport with a phony identity—in a week.
“Julie? Julie Jones?” That was the name they’d given me. “Not very creative, are you?”
He shrugged. “It’s a name people easily forget.”
“Is this really happening?” I said to myself.
We pulled back onto Highway 10, heading east. The morning sun had long ago transitioned into a bright, sunny afternoon. “Give it time. You’ll adjust,” he said.
“How many times have you done this? I mean, taken someone into hiding.”
“A few,” he replied.
“Oh.” In a million years, I could never have imagined this was his life. “So why did you come back? I mean, my father could’ve assigned someone else to babysit me at college.”
Paolo shrugged. “I took you on again because he asked. I’m his best.”
Arrogant much? “So you didn’t want to come back?”
“No.” He glanced at me, with no sign of apology in his eyes.
“Don’t blame you, I guess. Watching the boss’s daughter can’t be very exciting.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, and a smile twitched across his lips.
“Then why didn’t you want to be assigned to me?”
“I have my reasons,” he replied.
“A man of few words.”
“Yes.” He smiled.
Oh, now I knew he was teasing. “Stop that.”
“Okay.”
I slapped his arm. “I mean it.”
“Ow.” He feigned being hurt and rubbed the spot. A few moments of silence passed, and I watched as his eyes focused on the road while his jaw muscles worked, giving away the wheels turning in his head. “I didn’t want to be assigned to you, because I am very attracted to you,” he finally said. He didn’t look at me, and I was glad. He’d only see me trying to hide a smile.
“Is that why you left?” I asked.
“Your father is one of the most powerful men in the world. He would not appreciate me…appreciating his daughter.” I felt a shameless, and admittedly shallow, little glow inside my chest. He considered me a temptation.
“Who does he work for?” I asked.
“For no one. That’s what makes him powerful. That, and no one knows who he is, except me and a few of his most-trusted men.”
The way Paolo described him, my father sounded like a mob boss.
“Can you at least tell me if he works for the good guys?” I asked.
“Good is a slightly subjective term—survival of the fittest might be more appropriate. But his customers, so to speak, are the obvious players.”
I assumed he meant the U.S. government or their allies, but it still didn’t sit well with me knowing he and his men were a bunch of international 007s.
“So that photo of you I found on the Internet—why was it there if you’re a spy?” I asked.
“I’m not a spy.”
“Do you kill people?”
“I have, but that’s not my primary function. I’m not a hit man,” he explained.
Right. How had he explained it before? “You just gather information and get paid not to exist. So, you’re a ghost with a curious streak?”
He smirked. “You could say that.”
“Except your picture is on the Internet.”
“Not anymore. We killed that site after that little incident with you. But it was one of the ways we communicated without contacting each other. Your father had posted it so I’d send him a flare.”
“Flare?”
“It’s a signal to—never mind. The less you know, the better. It’s too dangerous.”
So I’d nabbed this “ghost’s” photo off the Internet and used it to build my fake boyfriend. “Wrong place at the wrong time. Poor you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“That if I’d picked someone else’s picture, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
He shrugged. “Must have been fate. Your father already had a few people assigned to you and was in the process of finding you someone more permanent for college. Male. He’d already approached me, but I’d turned him down.” Paolo looked at me. “For obvious reasons.”
Was he referring to finding me attractive?
“Well,” I said. “It’s nice to know, I suppose, that my dad tries to take care of me.”
Paolo glanced at me. “He loves you. He’s always put your safety first, assigned his best people to you and your mother.”
Best people. Like who? Christ. “Mandy? She’s one of the other…” I didn’t know what to call them if they weren’t spies. “People?”
“Don’t be silly,” he replied. “She couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag.”
“Hey! She’s my best friend.” I supposed it didn’t make sense that she’d be one of them. After all, I’d known her since elementary school. “Are you going to tell me who then?”
“No. But they all moved on after Janice hit you. They failed to do their job.”
Had he meant the people were fired? I sank down in my seat and let the craziness in my head settle. “But Janice wasn’t some spy, was she?”
“No. Janice was a complete fluke—I checked it out myself. She just went crazy.”
From where I sat, crazy was not such a foreign concept. “I thought I’d imagined you, you know. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“I’m sorry, but it hadn’t gone as planned. Your father was supposed to fill you in before I arrived, but then you were hit by that truck, and he got called away to an emergency at the same time. I was under strict orders not to tell you anything.”
“So you just let me believe I was insane and used intimidation to keep me in line?” I said.
“I didn’t have a choice. And as long as I kept you safe, I knew we’d sort the rest out later. Once your father resurfaced, we did. More or less. Your father pulled me off and assigned someone else to you.”
“Why?” I asked.
Paolo shrugged but didn’t reply. Maybe he simply wanted to save me from hearing something unpleasant, such as I was a complete pain in his ass.
“Who took your place?” I asked drearily.
“I can’t discuss the details.”
My mind wouldn’t let that one go, of course. I started to sift through the faces at school. Had there been anyone new my senior year who’d arrived after Santiago disappeared?
“Oh my God! Pierre? The French exchange student?” I asked.
Paolo didn’t respond.
“I kept wondering why anyone would show up so late in the year. And I bumped into that guy everywhere. Mandy said he was following me.”
Of course, I hadn’t cared. I’d been so messed up after Santiago—Paolo left that nothing seemed to matter, not even my raging popularity. I’d tried dating a couple of times, wanting to forget. Even went out with Dax once, but when he’d kissed me there was no spark. Nothing. All I could think of was Santiag—Christ—Paolo. It’s going to take me forever to get used to his real name.
“You’re name is Paolo, right?” I asked. “Because I’m not going through the effort of learning a new name only to find out later on that you’re Bob or Mike or Buford.”
“Buford? If that were my real name, I’d change it anyway.”
“Good point.”
“My real name is Paolo,” he confirmed.
Paolo. Italian for Paul. I chewed on that for a moment. I supposed he looked like a Paolo, but I was still trying to grasp him not being the sexy Spaniard Santiago.
“How old are you?”
“Just turned twenty-three.”
Well, at least that wasn’t a surprise. “How long have you been working for my dad?”
“I met your father when I was nineteen, but started working for him when I was twenty. Next question?”
“What’s your last name?”
“I prefer not to say,” he replied. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
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