She wouldn’t mind a little conversation, though.
“You like to run, Iowa?”
“Wouldn’t say ‘like’ is exactly the word.”
“Clocked your share of miles in the military, huh?”
“Most often humping a hundred pounds of gear and firepower, ma’am. Sorry,” he added when he realized he’d slipped again.
Obviously it was going to take some work to break him of that habit.
“Army? Navy?” she asked when he fell silent beside her.
“Army,” he said. “Rangers.”
“Whoa. Rangers. That’s pretty heavy duty.”
“It’s all heavy duty these days.”
Yeah. She supposed it was. But she knew he was downplaying his service. She was like any other concerned citizen in today’s world. She read. She understood the difference between regular army and special ops—at least she understood that the criteria were tougher and the washout rate was high.
“How long you been out?”
“Come again?”
He bent his head down closer to hers and for the first time since she’d met him he smelled something other than squeaky clean. Oh, that amazing clean scent was still there, but today it was competing with the scent of physical heat and healthy male sweat. It was all very . . . well, arousing.
And she was very . . . well, certifiable, she thought with a self-deprecating shake of her head.
“How long have you been out of the service?” she repeated, competing with the roar of the surf, the cry of the gulls, and the squeals of the children playing tag with the tide.
“Six months.”
“Decided not to make it a career?”
“No, ma’am.”
She pushed out a laugh. “You are really getting on my nerves with that ‘ma’am’ stuff.”
From the corner of her eye she caught the barest hint of a smile. “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” she said, and poured on the speed. “I can see that.”
It was kind of hard to be irritated with him, Janey thought as they kept a steady pace along the long stretch of beach. Baby Blue—though not a baby after all—was determined to do the job. And he was determined to keep things professional between them.
Professional was fine. It was also comforting, and she had to admit, she felt a sense of peace with him around since she’d found out that Grimm was back on the scene. So yeah. Professional was fine.
Stiff and stodgy, however, was another issue. Max had not only been her personal manager; he was her friend. Her confidant. Her comic relief when things got too crazy. She missed that.
Maybe, she thought, as the two of them skirted a sand castle a little girl had made with a little pink plastic pail and her mother’s guiding hands, she needed to iron some of the starch out of that stiff neck of Wilson’s and get him to play well with others. Specifically with her.
He was such a hottie, she admitted again. And the main reason she’d woken up this morning in the throes of an erotic dream. A major erotic dream that she’d had to play to its conclusion after she woke up.
Whew. At least it had served to unleash some of her tension. Although just being aware of his muscled body pumping away beside her got her juices flowing again.
If it weren’t for that damnable ache low in her belly, it would be laughable. She could see the tabloid headline now: Rock Star Lusts After Hunky Bodyguard. How clichéd was that?
It was somewhat gratifying to know she wasn’t the only one he affected that way. As they made their way down the beach, Wilson was turning his share of flirty female heads.
“They think you’re hot,” she pointed out, which had his head whipping her way.
He didn’t exactly stumble, but he did misstep.
“Excuse me?”
She grinned and hitched her chin toward a trio of high-school girls who were well into ogle mode and making no bones about it. “The little beach bunnies. They’re flirting.”
He grunted . . . and turned beet red. “And they would be all of fifteen. Does the term ‘jailbait’ mean anything to you?”
Janey chuckled. Bait was exactly what she was doing. It wasn’t nice to bait the bodyguard, but it sure was fun—especially since he was giving her so much trouble with her previously dormant libido.
“You got a girlfriend, Wilson?”
“No, ma’—” He cut himself off mid-“ma’am.” “No. No girlfriend.”
She wasn’t sure why that little tidbit of information pleased her. Like hell she wasn’t. The thought of him getting it on with some little sweet thing actually made her a little jealous.
Talk about juvenile.
She concentrated on her run. On the freedom of it. She owed him for that.
“It’s really great not being the one attracting the attention,” she told him. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to move freely without turning heads. You might be worth keeping around after all.”
“I’ll sleep easier tonight knowing that.”
She chuckled. “You make me laugh, Iowa.”
“We aim to please.”
Sure we do.
“How you holding up?” she asked after they’d run another quarter of a mile. “Got another mile in you?”
The look he gave her said, You’ve got to be kidding! “I just broke a sweat.”
Boy, had he. He’d stripped off his T-shirt a quarter mile back and stuffed it in the waist of his running shorts, showing off his incredible physique.
“Ripped.” “Buff.” Pick an adjective. He was calendar material—and he didn’t exactly look seventeen anymore. Not with that American eagle tattooed across the breadth of his chest. It was an amazing piece of work. About a hundred times the needle work of all four of her pieces put together and ten times the color.
Ouch. But then, he’d been a Ranger. They were supposed to eat glass for breakfast and nails for lunch.
Maybe knowing his military background had altered her perception of him, she thought as they made their way at a steady clip down the sand. Maybe she’d just had an opportunity to finally study him in depth without security issues pulling first priority.
At first glance he had looked like a baby. But when she looked, really looked, at his eyes—framed not only by character and experience lines but also by the thickest sun-kissed lashes—she’d seen the measure of his maturity. Yeah. If a boy wasn’t a man when he went to Afghanistan or Iraq, he would be when he got back. If he lived through the experience, that is.
Jason Wilson had. And she suspected it had changed him. There was a look that came over him sometimes that was almost scary. Like now when a group of kids came running toward them and he went on full alert. His jaw hardened. His muscles bunched and the fingers he wrapped around her upper arm to steer her in a wide path around them made it clear he was in complete control. And capable of doing things to ensure her protection that gave her both confidence and pause.
What had he seen? What had he done?
She wondered if she’d ever ask him. Wondered if he’d tell her if she did.
When the group didn’t veer but kept running in a straight line past them down the beach, he let her go. But he didn’t drop his guard.
They’d passed the last lifeguard tower and were running out of beach. They had to either turn around and head back or stop and cool off. Frankly, she needed to cool off. As much from the good workout as from some genuinely intriguing thoughts about her bodyguard. She hadn’t been around this much beefcake in a long, long time.
Not that beefcake was her thing. In her experience, beefcake always came with ego and ego equated asshole and she could live just fine without that kind of fly in her ointment. Been there. Hated that.
Nope. She was just fine on her own. While the gossip rags loved to pair her up with Derek—yeah, that was gonna happen—she’d been celibate for over two years. She hadn’t met anyone who had given her a reason not to keep it that way. Or to stick her neck and her heart out the way she had with Kevin—hard lessons learned
were often the most valuable.
Celibacy had certain rewards—and, of course, certain consequences. Her reaction to Jason Wilson seemed to be one of the latter. Not to mention confusing.
She barely knew him. In the interest of keeping it simple, she decided, it was probably best not to change that. And to quit baiting him.
“I’m going in,” Janey said, deciding she’d take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy her freedom and to cool off in the process. She tossed her dark glasses and cap onto the sand. “How about you?”
He shook his head, watched her walk backward into the surf. Again, she couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark glasses, but she got the impression that he was suffering her impulsive decision in disapproving silence.
The guy really was too much.
“You always this vigilant, Iowa?” Standing knee-deep in the water, she had to shout to be heard above the roar and rush of the surf as a wave slapped her hard around her thighs.
“Don’t go out too far,” he said.
“Guess that answers that question.” He did not return her grin. Big surprise.
“There are riptide warnings posted at the lifeguard stations.”
“Noted.” Ignoring his dark scowl, she turned toward open water and, holding her breath, made a shallow dive.
Thanks to her kindergarten teacher, she was a strong swimmer. Her mother never had it together enough to enroll her in the summer Red Cross swim classes, but Mrs. Buttons had taken a special interest in Janey. She’d seen to it that Janey got to her lessons.
And thanks to those lessons Janey had great breath control. She could hold a note forever, and that particular ability, along with her range, was one of the things that had gotten the attention of talent scout Lee Haversham and landed her the gig at Dollywood where Jack Swingle had discovered her.
She pushed herself farther under the water, relishing the tug and pull of the warm Atlantic. The freedom of absolute solitude.
And then freedom turned to terror when she felt a hard bump against her hip.
What the hell?
There hadn’t been anyone within fifty feet of her when she’d gone into the water. She felt another bump along with the slam of her heart as a hard pressure at her waist dragged her through the water.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” a winded voice growled in her ear when she broke the surface. “I told you not to go out too far!”
Gasping for air, Janey shoved her wet hair out of her eyes. And found herself pressed belly to belly and hauled up tight against her bodyguard. “Jesus. I . . . thought you were a shark.”
He shook his head, sending water in a spray around them as the surf slapped against their bodies and rocked them closer together.
“You scared the hell out of me!”
“Guess that makes us even. I thought you’d drowned!”
Another wave hit and she lifted her hands to his shoulders to keep from going under.
“Drowned? For God’s sake. I wasn’t going to drown.”
“Damn right you weren’t. No way in hell was I going to lose a client the first week on the job.”
She didn’t know who was angrier. Her or him. Didn’t know whose heart was beating faster, either. But she did know she wasn’t the only one aware of the rocking motion of the surf bumping and locking their bodies together. The bunchy muscles of his thigh wedged between hers. The unmistakable thickness of a very healthy erection pressed against her belly.
At the moment, she was too ticked off to dwell on it.
“Fool woman,” he sputtered, abruptly shifting her weight so she was cinched up beside him and well away from whatever was happening down there.
“Macho man,” she fired back as he trudged his way toward shore, dragging her with him.
Woman doesn’t have the sense God gave a rock,” Jase sputtered under his breath when they reached the hotel half an hour later. It had been a long, quiet jog back to the Hilton.
She was pissed. He was pissed. It had made for a damn pissy trip back.
He couldn’t wait to hit the shower to wash away the sand and the salt and the sweat. And the memory of her compact little body hitched up against his in the water.
A hard-on. Lord Jesus God, he’d gotten another hard-on. And she had to have felt it.
She stood beside him in the hallway, her arms crossed over her breasts, her foot tapping with impatience as he slipped the key card in the slot. He opened the door to the suite—and shifted from pissed to red alert when he saw what was waiting inside.
Jesus. Jesus Christ.
“Don’t.” He clutched her arm, blocking her way when she would have shot around him. Then he shut the door. “You don’t want to go in there.”
Like rain washing down a windowpane, all the color bled from her face. Wide brown eyes met his—frightened and far too wise. She let him steady her with a hand on her arm.
“It’s him, isn’t it? Grimm was here,” she said so softly that if he hadn’t read her lips, he would have missed it.
Between setting up security ahead of the tour’s next stop in New York City and seeing to details for the next two days, Jase had read everything he could get his hands on about Edwin Grimm. And yeah, it looked like the creep had left his standard calling card.
A heart-shaped crystal bowl sat on the carpet just inside the door. Inside the bowl was a red velvet cloth. On the cloth were two bloody hearts, each no larger than a robin’s egg.
7
Between the Atlantic City cops, the hotel security, the backup singers and band members who all showed up, the next hour turned into a world-class cluster fuck. And it royally torqued Jase off.
“Okay, that’s it, people.” With a hard look he took the arm of Lakesha Jones and herded the backup singer toward the door. “Let’s everyone just hustle on back to whatever it was you were doing, all right? Party’s over.”
Lakesha had heard via Christine Ramsey—a videographer or some such thing who was taping this leg of Janey’s tour—that the police had been called to Janey’s suite. Ramsey had just happened to stop by—a coincidence that had all of Jase’s “got a bad feeling” vibes revved—to see if she could film a little downtime, star style, when hotel security had arrived followed by Atlantic City police. Not only was Jase having a hard time buying that the videographer had just happened by, but he hadn’t been able to catch Ramsey, a sharp-featured, thin redhead, before she’d whipped out her cell phone and given Lakesha a call.
Of course, Lakesha had called the other backup singer, Tess Brewer, who’d called someone else, and the next thing Jase knew, the whole damn entourage had made an appearance, from the band members, to the rest of the singers, to Neal Sanders, whom Jase had met at a post-concert party and disliked on the spot. And who smelled like he’d drunk his breakfast and lunch.
Max was notably absent.
Janey was still notably shaken, although she was doing her damnedest to show a brave face.
Just like the day the police had told her about her mother’s death, Jase was out of his comfort zone on this one. He was here to provide security, not a shoulder to lean on. Yet every time he caught sight of her wide, haunted eyes, he fought an unprecedented urge to pull her into his arms and promise her that everything was going to be all right.
Neither playing out the little fantasy that had been cooking in the back of his mind since finding her naked in bed this morning nor playing nursemaid was in the job description, he reminded himself and let out a breath through puffed cheeks when the last lookie-loo was finally gone. That done, he dealt with any remaining questions from the police, then hustled his charge up to the new suite the hotel had offered up so the original suite could be preserved as a crime scene.
When he shut the door behind them and turned to her, he felt another sharp stab of compassion. She was still wearing her damp shorts and top. He tried to focus on her wet, straggly hair, far too aware of the way that tight, tiny shirt molded to her breasts. Hell, he didn’t even have to imagi
ne her little nipples puckered up tight as berries beneath it anymore. He’d seen them. Still saw them, no matter how many times he’d tried to banish the image from his mind.
“Why don’t you go and shower?” he suggested as much for his sake as for hers. It wasn’t just the air-conditioning that was making her shiver. Shock was setting in. “Warm up. Then we need to talk about this.”
Her gaze cut to his and he could see the hesitation there. She was still wearing her brave, tough-girl face, but he knew better. Grimm’s visit had shaken her. And with damn good reason. The pervert had almost succeeded in killing her once. Looked like he’d come back to finish the job. But not before he played with her a little first.
“The police did a thorough search of the hotel,” Jase assured her. “He’s gone. Was probably long gone before we ever got back from the beach.”
She nodded . . . and stood there.
And in that moment he saw her for who she was, what she was. A woman as scared as any kid would be and trying not to show it. And she looked even more like a kid—a lost, hunted kid—than she had at the breakfast table.
“Come on,” he said, instead of making her ask, because he could see from her eyes that she never would. “How about I go in ahead and take a peek around for good measure?”
Hell. He could be professional and not be a jerk about it. He could save her the humiliation. Just like he’d decided he’d save her the humiliation of knowing he’d seen her naked in bed this morning.
She sort of wilted with relief before sucking it up again. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do that. I’m fine.”
Tough. She was one tough cookie. She was also a long way from fine, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Just doin’ my job.”
Because that’s all it was. End of story. He wasn’t going soft in the head over a hard rocker who’d most likely find a reason to razz him about his homespun down-on-the-farm upbringing by sundown.
He led the way into her bedroom, where the housekeeping staff had resettled her personal things. Not that she’d have asked them to do it for her. He’d been surprised to find her original bedroom as neat as a pin. She’d picked up after herself after changing her leather for layman clothes. Interesting. And unexpected.
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