Bodyguards In Bed

by Monroe, Lucy; Denton, Jamie; Naughton, Elisabeth

  She considered picking up her bag and quietly slipping from the room, escaping down to the lobby where she’d have the night clerk call her a cab. It could be hours before she’d have any time alone with Whatshisname.

  What good would reading him the riot act do anyway? All she’d end up doing was maybe leave him with a few choice words to choke on, and then she’d be on her way. Home. Alone. To nurse—what? A broken heart?

  Hardly.

  In order to have a broken heart, she’d have to have feelings for him. She hadn’t known him long enough to care. She hadn’t known him long enough to have sex with him, either, but that hadn’t stopped her. One sultry glance from his get-lost-in-me green eyes and she’d spread her legs like a cat in heat. She was hopeless.

  She looked around the room and found him with his back to her, talking to the other FBI agent. Just as quietly as she’d been sitting in the chair for the past two hours, she picked up her bag and exited the room.

  She made it to the elevator undetected. She even stood in the lobby for a full fifteen minutes undisturbed. And then she slipped into the backseat of a taxi, gave the driver her address, and never once looked back.

  Noah had resisted the urge to panic once he’d noticed that Alyssa had left. He’d been in a heated conversation with the federal prosecutor, essentially telling the guy he was a jackass and should be disbarred for hiring a couple of gun-toting henchmen. The supervisory agent from the L.A. field office had stepped in and Noah had walked away, disgusted by the entire mess. It had taken him half a minute to realize Alyssa was decidedly absent. He didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out she’d probably gone home.

  The taxi he’d taken from the hotel pulled up in front of her white stucco duplex. He should probably wait until a decent hour before he knocked on her door, but he had a flight to catch in less than six hours and didn’t have time to waste. He’d wasted enough at the hotel and then at MBPD straightening out the mess that had become the Rolston case.

  Rolston had indeed been in the custody of the U.S. Marshals ; he had made a deal. In exchange for the government dropping the pending insider trading charges against him, he would testify at the Bastard Pharm criminal trial, provided he was placed in the witness protection program. The partes involved believed his testimony was strong enough that they’d granted Rolston the protection he sought.

  At noon, Noah would board the plane back to Virginia and Rolston would have already testified. The whistleblower would be safely in protective custody, learning to become a plumber or landscaper or in some other non-accounting-related job training program for his new life.

  Noah really could care less. He was just glad the ordeal was behind him. Except for one last loose end.

  He exited the taxi and paid the driver. For half a second he considered asking the driver to wait, just in case she wasn’t home, but he knew that wasn’t true. He was in that place in between insane and insecure and he didn’t like it one bit. He’d never done well with uncertainty, but that was exactly what he was facing now.

  The taxi took off, leaving him no choice but to face Alyssa or stand there on the sidewalk in front of her house looking like a stalker. He walked up the driveway to the side door.

  A light was on over the sink, giving him hope that she might be awake. He opened the screen, knocked on the door and waited.

  He lifted his hand to knock again a few seconds later, but the curtain lifted and there she was—glaring at him.

  “Go away.”

  He frowned and knocked again.

  “Are you deaf?” she shouted from inside the house. “Go. The hell. Away.”

  He didn’t bother knocking again. Instead, he twisted the knob and was mildly surprised when the door opened. Without waiting for an invitation he knew wouldn’t be coming, he walked inside and closed the door behind him.

  “Oh. Oh,” she stammered when she spun around to face him. “Now that’s breaking and entering. You’re in so much trouble.”

  “Not even,” he argued, trying hard not to be taken prisoner by the flinty sparkle in her eyes. Damn if she didn’t look adorable and cute and sexy as hell when she was all fired up about something. “We need to talk.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Go to hell.”

  He let out a rough sigh and jammed his free hand through his hair. “Alyssa, please.”

  “Funny how you know my name when I don’t know yours.”

  She was exaggerating. She knew his name because she’d heard him announce it to the private investigators when he’d placed them under arrest, the 911 operator and every other law-enforcement official who’d entered their hotel room. Still, point taken. “Noah Temple,” he said. “Happy?”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “Hardly.”

  “I can explain.” If she’d let him. He was beginning to have his doubts.

  “You can suck wind, too, for all I care.”

  He dropped his garment bag on the floor with a thud. His patience was starting to slip. “Would you be rational for one minute, please?”

  “Oh? Now I’m irrational? You have a hell of a lot of nerve.” She stalked out of the kitchen. “Get out of my house,” she said, her voice rising. “Better yet, get out of my life. Go back to Quantico, Mr. FBI Man. Your services are no longer needed here.”

  All right, he knew she was pissed at him, and she had every right to be. He’d lied to her, but his job had required him to do so. But this wasn’t about his job; this was about their having sex underfalse pretenses.

  Not needed? Big difference from not wanted. And in his book, that meant he just might stand a chance.

  A chance at what? Forever? Or long enough to know whether or not she was pregnant? How many stolen weekends would they have in a long-distance relationship that had no hope of surviving? But what if they weren’t long distance ? What if one of them relocated? Was that what he wanted?

  He followed her into a dining room that smelled like lemon wax. “What I did was wrong,” he admitted. “I should’ve told you the truth about who I was before we . . .”

  “Made love?” she finished for him. Her hands landed on her hips and her chin held a mutinous tilt. “Or had sex?”

  The defensiveness was back in her tone and he knew he was screwed. All of a sudden, he felt cornered, trapped in an emotional minefield of his own making. No matter which way he stepped, which answer he gave, he suspected it’d be the wrong one.

  “We had sex, Alyssa,” he said in an even tone. “We made a mistake and had unprotected sex. I’m sorry for that, too.”

  The spark in her eyes was extinguished and in that instant, his world suddenly became a very dark place. He’d hurt her, and he regretted that. But really, wasn’t it better to put a stop to whatever this thing was between them before they dragged it out for weeks, only to suffer the inevitable tragic ending?

  “Thank you for clarifying that for me,” she said stiffly, her voice carefully devoid of emotion. “If you wouldn’t mind seeing yourself out, I’d appreciate it.”

  And with that, she walked out of the room without another word. He thought about following her, but why? To prolong the agony? To try to make himself feel better, to assuage his guilty conscience?

  Instead, he headed back to the kitchen, picked up his bag and walked out the door. By the time he hit the sidewalk, he knew without a doubt he’d made a mistake, one that couldn’t be rectified, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eventually the pain that had nearly crippled her when Noah had walked out of her life four months ago had subsided to a dull ache, for which Alyssa remained grateful. She couldn’t imagine having to live the rest of her life feeling as if her world were constantly crashing down around her, especially if she had no one around to help her dig out of the rubble.

  Once she’d been able to breathe again, she’d made some tough decisions about her life. She’d figured now was as good a time as any to grow up and start behaving like a responsible adult.
Her days of trying to find herself were over, so she’d put her expensive education to good use and did what any law school graduate would’ve done upon graduating—she crammed hard and took the bar exam. She wouldn’t know if she’d passed for another few weeks, but come February, she’d have to take it again in her new home state since she’d be clerking for a federal district court judge.

  The decision to leave the only home she’d ever known had not been one she’d made lightly. But she had her reasons, and once she’d put the duplex her Granny Belle had left her on the market, everything had fallen into place as if it were meant to be. Despite the horrible real estate market, the duplex sold quickly. Not that she really believed in signs or anything of the sort, but even she had to admit the entire transition was going smoothly without a single glitch.

  She really hated to leave Craig and Perry and the other guys at Primo Security Services, but she’d spent the past two weeks training her replacement and felt relatively confident they’d be in competent hands. They’d given her a lovely sendoff, with dinner at one of Venice’s newer, trendy restaurants and a small bonus. They’d even had one of their limos booked to take her to the airport in two days.

  Despite its being October, a god-awful heat wave had plagued the Southern California coast for the past four days and there was no end in sight. Swiping at the hair clinging to her cheek, she taped up another box marked for Goodwill and carried it to the kitchen to set near the door.

  Her back ached from all the packing and sorting she’d been doing. She was nearly finished, though, which was good since the moving van would be arriving tomorrow. She was looking forward to the changes and was anxious to start her new life.

  Thirsty and needing a break from packing, she yanked open the fridge for a bottled water. She gulped down the icy cold liquid until a knock at the side door had her screwing the cap back in place before setting the bottle on the counter.

  “You’re early,” she said as she approached the screen door. But instead of opening it for the Goodwill driver she’d been expecting, she came to a halt. Stunned, she stared into a pair of get-lost-in-me green eyes.

  “Hello, Alyssa.”

  The sound of his deep, velvety voice sent a shiver racing down her spine. He was the last man she’d ever expected to see on her doorstep today. She didn’t know what to think, and quite frankly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She’d spent too many nights crying herself to sleep, too many days trying to shut herself off from the agony of her broken heart.

  She couldn’t help herself. Pathetic or not, she was convinced she was predestined to fall hopelessly in love, at first sight no less, only for it to end horribly. She was like those women in the Sandra Bullock movie where the men who loved them all died in some bizarre circumstance, only she had no deathwatch beetle to signal the impending tragic end. She was on her own.

  “Noah.” She’d stopped calling his Whatshisname three months ago.

  She did not want to see him. Not like this. She’d imagined their first meeting a hundred different ways, and caught off guard and vulnerable was not how she’d envisioned it.

  “I wanted to see you.”

  Sure he did, she thought skeptically. He wanted to see if she was pregnant, wanted to assure himself that her silence wasn’t because he’d knocked her up and walked away with her heart in his pocket, whether he’d asked for it or not. He wanted to either confirm his suspicions or alleviate the uncertainty, nothing more.

  “Then you should come in,” she said, careful to keep her emotions in check. The last time she’d seen him, she’d been an emotional, irrational mess. But not today. Today she had a plan, a set of solid blueprints for her future. And she would confront that future on her terms.

  She unhooked the latch and swung the door open for him. She caught him looking, trying to determine if she was indeed carrying his child, but she hiked her eyebrow upward in challenge and he had the decency to at least give the appearance of being embarrassed.

  He didn’t look good, and that made her heart catch. Partly in satisfaction, but mostly because she cared about him. Damn, but it pained her to admit that, even if it was only to erself.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “All I have left is bottled water.”

  “Water would be fine.”

  The stilted politeness was all a little too civilized for her. She might be starting a fancy new job as law clerk for a federal court judge, but deep down she was still a rough-and-tumble kind of girl who wore her heart on her sleeve and said whatever was on her mind. And right now, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to throw the bottle or herself at him.

  The bottle she decided, because dammit, she was still angry. At him for walking away. At herself for caring so much about him. And hindsight being twenty/twenty, at the circumstances that had brought them together and the pride that had eventually separated them.

  “Would you like to sit down?” There she went, being all polite again. “There’s some space left in the living room,” she said and led the way.

  He followed her, then took a seat on the muted blue-and-yellow plaid sofa. “You’re moving.”

  She sat primly on the edge of the light tan side chair. “Yeah,” she said. “New job.”

  The beginning of a smile curved his mouth. “Doing what this time?”

  She tried not to take offense. In fact, she couldn’t do much of anything since she’d looked at his mouth except relive every deliciously wicked moment those lips had spent on her body. “I’m actually putting my education to good use this time.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “UCLA. What did you study, again?”

  Sneaky, because she’d never told him her field of study. “Law.”

  His jaw fell slack and she resisted the urge to smack it back in place. “Don’t look so surprised.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it from the shock she’d just given him. “I just assumed you had some sort of liberal arts education.”

  “A totally useless degree for a totally useless woman, is that it?” she asked without an ounce of animosity. “It’s okay. Actually, my really useless degree is in art history from Long Beach State. I went to UCLA for law school.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “It wasn’t something I broadcasted.”

  “Then why all the . . .”

  “Menial jobs? I wanted to be sure practicing law was what I really wanted to do. All those jobs allowed me to have a small taste of many different fields.”

  He glanced at her stomach, at the loose-fitting, button-down shirt. “But something made you decide it was time to start practicing law?”

  “We all have to grow up sometime,” she said with a careless shrug. “And I’m not practicing law yet. I’m clerking while I wait for the bar results.”

  “And you’re moving.”

  “And you’re observant. Look, Noah. I don’t know why you’re here, or what you want, but I have a lot of work to do before the movers get here tomorrow, so you’ll—”

  “I wanted to know how you’re doing.”

  She issued a short bark of laughter. “Nice try. You want to know if I’m pregnant.”

  His hand tightened on the water bottle he hadn’t bothered to open. “Are you?”

  So that was the reason he’d flown across the country. “What do you care?” She t knive a rip if she came off snappish. He was rude.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  Oh, God. Just like that, she melted. She couldn’t survive him. Not again. “I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t cha—”

  He sprang up off the sofa and started to pace. “I can’t remember the last time I had a decent night’s sleep.”

  “I hear they have a pill for that.” Not that she’d taken anything for her insomnia.

  He stopped to crouch in front of her. He looked miserable and she wanted to be smug, but he was already chipping away at the wall she’d worked so hard to build aroun
d her heart, and all he’d done was show up and tell her he’d missed her.

  He slipped a curl behind her ear. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  That made two of them, because she’d never fully managed to evict him from her mind. Or her heart.

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  She smoothed her hand over his jaw. “I don’t think it’s supposed to.”

  “I love you, Alyssa.”

  “I know,” she said, but her smile was sad because it didn’t make a difference if he loved her or not. “I love you, too. I shouldn’t. I should hate you for what you’ve put me though, but I just haven’t been able to manage it.”

  He held her face between his palms and kissed her, slow and tender and filled with emotions that made her nervous. “Quit your job,” he said when he ended the kiss. “The one you haven’t started yet. Come back to Virginia with me. I have a condo close enough to D.C. You’ll find work there. Between D.C. and Virginia, there must be a million law firms where you could find a job.”

  “But I’ve sold this place and already bought another one.”

  “So sell that one, too. Come with me, sweetheart. Come live with me in Virginia.”

  Her heart took a nosedive. “I can’t, Noah. I can’t live with you. Not like that.” She’d made mistakes when it came to Noah, and though she couldn’t help loving him, she had to draw the line somewhere. What remaining self-respect she’d managed to hang on to was a good place to start.

  He frowned, but took hold of her hand. “Yes, you can.”

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Noah. I won’t.”

  “Then marry me.”

  He had lost his ever-lovin’ mind. “Get serious.”

  “I am serious,” he said, his voice filled with confidence. “I told you, I love you.”

  “It was a rhetorical comment.” She still loved him, but nothing had changed. They still didn’t know each other. “Is that what you want? Is that why you really came all the way out here? To ask me to marry you?”