Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04]

by Over the Line

  All in all, it had been just a peach of a day. Max’s call just before dinner—another warning that reeked of desperation to never let Janey out of his sight—was small potatoes, though, compared to Dallas’s news.

  He didn’t turn around when he heard the machine shed door open and saw the beam of a flashlight cut a path along the rafters.

  “Want some company?”

  Janey. Better her than the old man, he guessed, and got mad all over. At himself.

  A line from an old Jack Nicholson/Tom Cruise movie came to mind: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

  Guess he’d proven that again tonight.

  “Suit yourself.” He went back to tinkering with the carburetor while she bent to pet Tucker, the collie, who had followed him out to the shed.

  “Nice car.” She walked up beside the hood. “Great color,” she added, running her hand along the metallic silver enamel.

  “Nineteen sixty-five Mustang. A classic.” He’d been surprised as hell when he’d told No about it and found out his former squad leader had one, too. Great minds and all that.

  “Yours?”

  He straightened, grabbed a grease rag, and wiped his hands. “And my brother’s.”

  She was quiet as he reached up and carefully closed the hood.

  “Your mom told me.” Her voice was so soft, he figured she knew that she was treading on some very thin ice. “About Jeremy. How . . . how he died. It must have been horrible. For all of you.”

  Yeah. It had been horrible. One day he’d had a big brother. The next day he didn’t. Jeremy had been driving a friend’s car—because the friend had been too drunk to drive.

  Evidently Jeremy had been too drunk, too. He’d run off the road and headlong into a culvert on the way home from a kegger.

  “Yeah. It was bad.”

  “How old were you when it happened?”

  He glanced at her standing there. Looking small and concerned and too much like someone he wanted to confide in.

  “Fifteen.” Folding his arms over his chest, he settled his hip on the Mustang’s fender, crossed his ankles, and stared at his boot tips. “I begged him to let me go to that party with him. But I was just a freshman. The party was for seniors. Otherwise I’d have been in that car with him.”

  “I told your dad . . . you know. What you told me. That you weren’t drinking anymore,” she said, after a long silence.

  And there it was. The bone of contention between him and his father. At least one of the bones.

  “That must have been a hard sell.” He pushed away from the fender, opened the passenger door, and motioned for her to get in. “Check it out.”

  She eased into the passenger seat and he shut the door, aware of her brown eyes watching him as he walked around to the driver’s side and settled in behind the wheel.

  “He was relieved,” she said, turning to him, the white tucked upholstery creaking when she did. “That’s all. He was just relieved.”

  “Yeah. Well, I gave them fits all through high school. Both him and Mom were afraid I’d end up like Jeremy.”

  And there’d been many times when he’d thought the same thing. God, he’d been stupid. And young. So damn young. He didn’t feel young anymore.

  “What was he like? Was he a good big brother?”

  Jase didn’t think he wanted to talk about this. But he didn’t not want to talk about it, either. And the fact of the matter was, no one had ever asked him.

  “He was . . .” He stopped, shook his head. “He was something. Great athlete. Great friend. The chicks—man, the chicks went crazy for him. Especially after he got this car.”

  He ran his hand along the smooth curve of the steering wheel. “I had a real case of hero worship. Wanted to be just like him when I grew up.”

  “And when he died, you weren’t so sure you wanted to grow up,” she said with the wisdom of someone who shouldn’t know him nearly this well.

  He turned his head. Looked at her under the light cast from a bare bulb hanging from a rafter. At that soft, silky hair, at that face he figured he’d see into the afterlife, at those eyes that had misted over. Tears. She was near tears for him.

  He looked away because, damn, it would be easy to sink into all that sweet concern. Too easy to pull her into his arms and hold on to this woman who was far too intuitive, and far too tuned in to who he was.

  How in the hell had that happened? And why would she even go to the trouble of figuring it out? It wasn’t like she didn’t have her own troubles to deal with. More trouble than she knew. He wasn’t going to lay Dallas’s news on her tonight, though. She needed a break.

  “Maybe things won’t be . . . you know,” she said, breaking into his thoughts, “so tense between you and your dad now that he doesn’t have to worry about you so much.”

  Way too intuitive, Jase thought again. And suddenly he was just blurting it out.

  “My father and I have what shrinks would probably call a bit of a dysfunctional relationship.” He wrapped his hands around the wheel and gripped it tight. “He keeps thinking I’m going to fulfill his expectations and I keep making certain that I let him down. It’s kind of an unspoken rule between us. He has hopes—I kill them.”

  “He loves you.”

  Jase closed his eyes, let his head drop back to the headrest. “I know. And I can be a real prick sometimes. It’s just . . . I’m not Jeremy.”

  “I highly doubt that he wants you to be.”

  That much was true. “No. He’d never put that on me. He just wants me to take over the farm someday. That was the plan—with Jeremy. He was going to carry on the tradition. So that leaves me.”

  “Not wanting to fill that slot,” she concluded accurately.

  He nodded. “Pretty much sums it up, yeah.”

  “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Baghdad, huh?”

  He snorted. “More like, I’m not going to live and die on eight hundred acres of Iowa loam when I can see places like Baghdad. Do things like jump out of choppers.

  “I’m not a farmer, Janey,” he said, feeling defensive and hating himself for it. “He wants me to be. And every time I look at him, it reminds me of how badly I’ve let him down.”

  “He’s disappointed maybe, but you haven’t let him down. He’s very proud of you.

  “Why do I know that?” she asked when his curiosity got the best of him and he looked at her. “I know because they showed them to me. Yup. Drug out the dreaded family albums after dinner. Your mom got them out—but it was your dad who provided commentary.”

  He groaned.

  “I was particularly taken with the one on the bear rug.”

  “Oh, God. She didn’t.”

  “She did. And your dad showed me your jock stuff. Lots of track ribbons and medals and wrestling trophies. What the hell is a punt, pass, and kick trophy for anyway?”

  He could only shake his head. And smile. Somehow, she’d turned a bitch of a day into something—well—something he hadn’t expected it would be.

  “It’s okay that your dad is disappointed,” she said when the silence settled again. “We all have disappointments in life. That doesn’t mean you need to feel guilty about your dad’s. And it doesn’t mean he expects you to.”

  Yeah. Well. He’d need to think about that. He’d need to think about it a lot.

  Just like he’d been thinking about why it had been such a struggle to find his niche after the Rangers. Being rejected by every police department because of his hearing loss—well, it had been tough to take. So he’d floundered and brawled until he’d wised up and joined E.D.E.N. He’d needed to prove that he was still vital . . . still whole . . . still capable for God’s sake, despite the hearing problem.

  And deep down, he finally realized that a big part of his problem was that he wanted to be the perfect son for his father. And it hurt like hell that he couldn’t be.

  Friday morning, July 21st

  Baby Blue smiled when Ja
ney handed him the Thermos of ice water. “Thanks.”

  He downed a long, thirst-quenching swallow, then whipped a red bandana out of the hip pocket of his jeans and wiped the sweat and hay chaff off his face and neck.

  “So this is what they call making hay while the sun shines,” Janey said as they sat side by side on the hayrack, legs swinging, as the July sun beat down the next morning. A muggy breeze stirred the hair at her nape. “It’s hard work.”

  “I don’t mind the work. Nothing wrong with sweating for a living. It’s in his blood.” He nodded toward Bruce Wilson, who was driving a tractor pulling a full hayrack toward the barn, where they’d later heave the bales onto a conveyor and stack them in the mow.

  “I can see that.” Janey was mesmerized by Baby Blue’s strong, clean profile. She’d never seen a man so sweaty and dirty look so good.

  “For Dad’s sake, I wish it was in mine.” He glanced at her, then looked away, a grim expression on his face.

  “You can only live your life for yourself,” she said, watching the muscles in his neck and throat work as he downed another deep swallow of water.

  “Is that what you’re doing?” He handed the Thermos back to her.

  “Yeah. I am. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Sing,” she clarified. “Most of the rest of it—the glitz, the travel, the grind—I could do without. But I’ve always wanted to sing.”

  “And what would you do if you weren’t traveling?”

  His interest both surprised and pleased her. Surprised because to date, she’d been the only one who’d initiated any personal questions. Pleased because a part of her wanted to believe it was more than idle conversation prompting his questions now.

  “We moved around a lot when I was little,” she said. “I’ve always wanted someplace to call home.”

  “Malibu isn’t someplace?”

  She lifted a shoulder, watched a yellow butterfly flit along the rows of neatly raked hay ready to be baled. “Malibu is a base of operations. Takes more than an address to make a home.”

  He reached up, surprising her again, and plucked a piece of hay off the shoulder of the T-shirt she’d borrowed from his mother. The jeans she was wearing were Bev Wilson’s, too. A little big, but not much, and covering up, Janey had learned, was a necessary part of making hay.

  Not that she’d actually done that much work. She had driven the tractor, though, scared half to death of doing something wrong and proud as hell when she’d actually mastered shifting.

  “So how come you haven’t hooked up with someone?”

  She glanced at him sideways. Intrigued. Well now. A personal personal question. She wondered what he’d think if she gave him a personal personal answer and decided, what the hell, she’d go for it.

  “I did hook up. Once,” she confided. “Didn’t last, though.”

  “What happened?”

  “Turned out Kevin—Kevin Larson, he’s a rocker,” she elaborated.

  “I know who he is,” Baby Blue said, looking a bit disgusted, which was also intriguing, because it was a “what were you doing with a bum like him” kind of disgust.

  Looking back, she had the same question. “Turned out he loved his own image more than he loved me. And when my albums started outselling his, it seemed he didn’t love me quite so much after all.

  “Would have been nice, though,” she added on a deep breath, “if I hadn’t caught him cheating with someone I thought was a friend. Guess it was his way of saying I wasn’t so hot and her way of saying she could have anything she wanted—including something that belonged to me.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she turned to look at him. Saw the muscle in his jaw working and a dark scowl on his face.

  “Seems to me you have more than your share of creeps in your life.”

  She knew he was thinking of Grimm. Maybe even of Neal Sanders. She’d figured out early on that Baby Blue didn’t think much of Neal. “Yeah, well, some of us just get lucky.”

  He grunted, jumped down off the hayrack. He was a sight, this bodyguard of hers. He’d wrapped a blue bandana around his brow do-rag style to absorb the sweat. His white T-shirt was dusty and soaked through. His jeans were as worn as his lace-up leather boots.

  And he was gorgeous.

  “What about you?” she asked as he headed for the tractor, their break evidently over. “You ever hook up with anyone?”

  He hesitated. “Thought I had. Didn’t work out, either.”

  Before she could ask him what happened, he’d jumped up onto the seat, cranked the key, and fired up the tractor. And that was the end of that conversation.

  By now she knew the drill. She scooted back onto the middle of the rack and hung on as he caught up with the hay baler.

  Had some creeps in your life, too, Baby Blue? she wondered. Or have you just never met the right woman?

  Obviously, he didn’t consider her the right one, she thought, as they bounced along through the rough field. After they’d talked in the machine shed last night, she’d hoped that . . . well, she’d hoped that maybe they’d made a connection. One that had opened up more than candid dialogue between them.

  She’d hoped for a lot of things last night. As she’d lain in his brother’s old bed with Baby Blue in his room down the hall, his parents in their room downstairs, and the house as quiet as a church, she’d actually listened for footsteps in the hall, the turn of the doorknob, the pleasant squeak of a hinge in need of oil.

  She’d fallen asleep waiting.

  And all day today, she’d wondered.

  What if she had gone to him?

  The tractor came to a jerky stop, jarring her back to the heat and the hard work yet ahead of them.

  “You know, you really don’t have to be out here in this heat,” Baby Blue said after jumping down from the tractor and rounding the hayrack. “Why don’t you head on back to the house? Take the truck.”

  “Trying to get rid of me?” She eased to the ground and tugged a pair of borrowed work gloves out of her hip pocket.

  “Trying to figure out what kind of spin the paparazzi would put on this if they could see the rock star of the decade decked out like Ellie Mae Klampett and getting blisters on her hands.”

  “Rocker rolls in the hay with hunky bodyguard?” she suggested, then laughed when he shook his head.

  “Seriously, Janey. Go on up to the house. Get out of this heat.”

  “If you can take it, I can take it,” she insisted.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is? It’s like you said. Nothing wrong with sweating for a living.”

  When his gaze made a slow, intense sweep of her body—she’d done some sweating, too, and her cotton T-shirt was pretty much molded to her body and transparent—she shivered, despite the blistering heat.

  “Suit yourself.” He dragged his gaze away. “Just let me know if you need a break.”

  She needed a break all right, Janey thought, climbing up into the tractor seat. She needed Baby Blue to give her a break and consider thinking about her as something other than someone he needed to take care of.

  Come on,” Jase said, opening the screen door after dinner that night. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “Sounds good.” Janey, squeaky clean again, her nose a little sunburned from working out in the sun all day, gamely left the cool air-conditioning of the house and walked outside ahead of him into a sultry summer night.

  She’d worked like a dog today. Jase still couldn’t get over it. A real trouper, this one. She’d even pitched in and helped his mom with dinner—then dug in like a Ranger who’d lived for a year on MREs.

  He should let her rest. But he was inexplicably restless. He needed to get out. Needed some action. Maybe the sight of her dressed in that short little pink shirt with the little-girl ruffle along the bottom again and that band of bare skin between the hip-hugging skirt and midriff-skimming top had something to do with it. If his hands were otherwise occupied on the steering wheel of the Mustang
, they wouldn’t be so itchy to get ahold of her.

  “Hold on.” He left her outside and opened the overhead shed door.

  Then he climbed behind the wheel, tugged the S & W out from under his shirt, and tucked it under the seat. He hadn’t wanted her to see it. She was relaxed for a change and didn’t need the reminder that there was still a threat. He didn’t expect to need it, but didn’t feel comfortable without it, either.

  After backing out of the shed, he leaned over, and opened the passenger door, shoving it open for her. “Let’s roll.”

  “Did I mention,” she said, easing inside and getting comfy, “that this really is a hot car?”

  He grinned. “Couple of times.” Then he drove about twenty-five miles per hour on the gravel—as much to irritate her as avoid chipping the paint—before opening the Mustang up when they hit the highway.

  “Wow!” Janey laughed as they roared down the blacktop, windows down, radio blasting out rockin’ country and the cool night air washing over their skin. “This baby moves. Must be more than a few horses under the hood. Who knew they made cars this fast back then?”

  Yeah, who knew? Jase thought as he backed off on the gas when they reached the Clear Creek city limits sign. Who knew that bringing Janey Rock Star Perkins home to Iowa would lead to a positive spin on the relationship with his father that he’d been wrestling to come to terms with for years?

  There was something else he was also wrestling with. The way he’d treated Janey after that night—that amazing night—they’d spent together. She hadn’t deserved that from him. Just like she didn’t deserve that Larson creep cheating on her.

  He couldn’t do anything about the way Larson had treated her but could apologize for the way he had. He was going to do that tonight.