by Cindy Dees
Sampson reached up and grabbed Austin’s hand, physically throwing it off Silver’s shoulder. Were it not for the paparazzi eating this whole thing up, Austin would’ve ripped the guy’s arm off then and there. But as it was, Silver threw him a panicked look, and he didn’t have the heart to make her any more miserable than she already was.
He took a step away from her. But not before murmuring, “I’m going to go talk to the hotel security guys for a few minutes, and then I’ll meet you at the costume lady’s office. Don’t leave the hotel without me, okay?”
She nodded, trust shining in her eyes. He didn’t question it, nor did he examine too closely the surge of protectiveness that bubbled up in his chest. He just knew that something big had happened between them, lying together on the floor a few moments ago.
Sampson elbowed him aside, and Austin stepped back readily, without giving the guy the satisfaction of a response. The paparazzi closed in on Silver and Sampson like a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy. Austin frowned. Sampson ought to be doing something to keep them back. It was a blatant breach of personal security to let that many strangers surround a subject so closely. But the guy seemed more interested in getting his own arm around Silver’s shoulders and posing for pictures than in keeping his girlfriend safe. The pair stepped out onto the front steps of the casino and paused again for another round of pictures. Sampson seemed acutely aware of the best lighting and camera angles for the paparazzi and more than happy to give the press exactly what it needed.
Austin shook his head. Surely guarding celebrities wasn’t that different from guarding heads of state. No matter how famous and camera-worthy a subject was, no self-respecting bodyguard let would their principal stand still in an exposed position like those steps for this long.
And why wasn’t the guy’s gaze scanning the area in search of possible threats at a minimum? Bubba was supposed to be her bodyguard! Silver actually looked eager to go…and if he wasn’t mistaken, it was Sampson holding her back. No bodyguard would physically stop their subject to pose for the press! It was insane! What kind of training had this guy—
A fast-moving target hurtled out of the shadows off to one side of the lobby toward the front door.
Silver and Sampson had their backs to the attacker!
Austin lurched into motion, sprinting for all he was worth. But his heart sank even as his thighs churned frantically, propelling him forward. He was too far away to save her. Time slowed as the horror of an attack on his principal unfolded before him. He couldn’t get between her and the attacker in time. Her beautiful eyes, her smile, her soft body beneath his flashed helplessly through his mind’s eye.
He opened his mouth to scream at Sampson to throw himself on top of her.
But it was too late.
The deafening report of a gunshot exploded in the lobby.
Chapter 4
Silver froze as the world went mad around her. She registered a flash of motion. A shout of warning from behind. And then an explosion of noise so loud it made her teeth hurt. A giant sheet of glass crashed down a few feet behind her, showering her with shards of exploding glass.
People screamed and were running and ducking and falling everywhere. She didn’t know what to do. Everyone around her melted away, leaving her standing all by herself in a sea of glass, marble and glittering chrome. The torrent of crystal prisms fell like rain around her, each with its own rainbow of slivered light trapped within it. So pretty. The thought floated through her head, completely detached from reality.
Mark was a dozen feet away, cursing at the top of his lungs. He was turning in circles, as if he was looking for somewhere to run and hide but couldn’t decide which way to go.
And then something hit her from behind. It felt like a freight train had just slammed into her at seventy miles per hour. It drove her to the ground, face first, crushing her in darkness and suffocating weight. Panic struck her then. She couldn’t breathe! She had to run! To get out of here, away from this insanity. To protect her baby!
“Let me up!” she tried to scream. It came out no more than a breathy gasp devoid of sound.
“Are you hit?” a deep voice asked sharply in her ear.
Austin. A wave of relief washed over her, so powerful and warm it nearly made her faint. “I don’t think so.”
He shouted from above her, “Sampson! Clear the lobby! Set up suppression around the exterior perimeter so the subject can be evacuated!”
“Huh?” Mark obviously didn’t have the slightest idea what Austin had just told him to do.
Violent swearing erupted in her left ear, much of it dealing with Mark’s questionably human parentage and complete lack of training. Then Austin was giving her instructions, urgent and low. “We’re getting up and running like hell. We’re gonna zigzag back and forth so the gunman has less of a shot at you.”
Gunman? Gunman? Was that what that noise had been? A gunshot? Ohmigod.
“Let’s go!” Austin bit out.
All of a sudden his bulk was gone, replaced by light and air and an awful sense of exposure that made her want to curl up in a little ball with her hands over her head and never move again. But then Austin was pulling at her, yanking her to her feet. She managed to stay vertical and keep up with his zigzagging run until they burst out from under the covered overhang into the blistering late afternoon sun. Austin paused, looking around quickly.
“Hey! Let go of her!”
Mark again.
“Give it up, Bubba. You don’t know a damn thing about being a bodyguard. Get out of my way before you get your girlfriend killed. Let me do my job.” Austin sounded like he’d about had it with Mark.
Austin was dragging her forward again, toward a long, black stretch limo parked on the far side of the sweeping circular drive.
“That’s it, pretty boy!” Mark shouted. “You and me, right here, right now—”
“Shut the hell up, Sampson.” And with that, Austin yanked open the back door of the limo and surprisingly gently pushed her inside. Her heel caught on the thick carpet and she stumbled, landing on her knees on the carpeted floor as something big blocked the light behind her. The door slammed shut, and yet again, Austin banged into her.
“Oomph,” she grunted as she went down on her side.
The glass panel between them and the driver was sliding down. A pale, shocked face stared at them from under a chauffeur’s cap.
“Get this car moving if you don’t want to get shot!” Austin ordered the driver in a tone of command that brooked no disobedience. The vehicle lurched into motion violently, dumping Austin on the carpet beside her. Tires screeched, and the vehicle made a sharp turn before accelerating powerfully.
She blinked over at Austin, lying no more than a foot away from her. His eyes were green, a deep, shadowy shade like the darkest part of a forest. She said dryly, “We have to stop meeting on floors like this.”
He grinned back at her. “I haven’t been horizontal this many times with a woman without being in bed with her since…ever.”
In bed with him? Whoa. Now there was a thought. A tingle of that same electric attraction that had about jolted her out of skin the first time he’d tackled her shot through her now.
His pupils dilated hard and fast. All of a sudden, his gaze went so black and hot she could hardly bear to look at him. Other details started to register. His arm, heavy and muscular, lay across the indentation of her waist. And his leg was thrown across hers. If she leaned forward just a little bit, she could cuddle up against that big, brawny chest of his. Her face would fit in the strong curve of his neck, and his shoulder would make a perfect pillow for her head. A lock of his hair had fallen across his forehead, and her fingers itched to reach up and push it away.
“Are you okay?” he asked so tenderly it made her heart ache a little.
“Yeah.” And then an awful thought hit her. “Are you okay?” she blurted, alarmed. Her hands splayed across his chest of their own volition, searching frantically for injur
ies.
He grinned then, a lopsided thing oozing so much charm it ought to be illegal. “I’m fine. I’d have been glad to take that bullet for you but no, I’m not hit. Thanks for asking, though.”
Her hands stopped, somewhere in the middle of all those acres of muscle. “Take a bullet for me?” she repeated blankly.
“Yes. I’m a bodyguard. It’s what I do.”
“Get shot?”
Another one of those lethal grins. “Well, the idea is to avoid either one of us getting shot in the first place, but if it comes down to you or me, it’s my job to take the hit.”
She shuddered at the thought of deadly lead slamming into this man and erasing that smile forever. “Don’t take a bullet for me, okay?”
He drew her closer against him, and funny thing, she had no desire whatsoever to resist. That volcano of heat and lust that had erupted between them back in the casino exploded again, spewing steam and fire and molten images of sex with him all over the back of the limo. She’d been no saint in her day and had certainly partaken of meaningless sex just for the sake of it now and then. But never, ever, had she been bowled over by an attraction to any guy this instantaneous and this incendiary.
Her entire body felt liquid, flowing over and around him, seeking to engulf every inch of him. His arms tightened around her like tempered steel bands, and his desire rose to meet hers, towering every bit as powerfully as hers. For an instant, fear flooded through her. What had she unleashed between them? It was so big, so overwhelming, she wasn’t entirely sure she could handle it. She looked up, and Austin was staring down at her, looking every bit as stunned as she felt. Well, that was something, at least. Somehow, the idea of him being blown away, too, calmed her.
She relaxed once more in his arms, her trust restored. This was not ops normal for him, either. Something gigantic had happened between them. She hadn’t imagined it.
Wonder filling his dark gaze, he murmured, “I’ll do my level best not to have to take a bullet for you. But rest assured, I will do it if necessary. I’ll die for you.”
The import of those simple words slammed into her like a boulder. She stared at him for a long time, trying to absorb what it truly meant. Finally she managed to mumble, “Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me. Ever. Do you really mean it?”
His gaze locked with hers, as he clearly weighed what she’d just said. Was he trying to figure out if she was talking about other bodyguards, or about more? Much more. All of a sudden, she wasn’t sure, herself, just how much she’d meant by the question.
He answered so low she almost didn’t hear him over the sound of pavement beneath the tires. “Yeah. I do mean it.”
Now, that definitely sounded as if he was talking about more than keeping her alive. And darned if her pulse didn’t race even faster, her heart pounding even harder against her ribs.
He reached up to push a strand of white-blond hair out of her face. He whispered, “You’re even more beautiful in person. And I’ve always secretly thought you were a knockout. Are you really real?”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I’m just a normal girl who’s been lucky enough to live an extraordinary life.”
He smiled as if he didn’t quite believe her. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the guy was a little starstruck. “How ’bout you? Are you real? I thought superheroes only live in comic books.”
His grin was a little unbalanced. “I’m just a regular guy who’s been lucky enough to get some extraordinary training.”
“I think there’s more to you than that, Austin Dearing. A whole lot more.”
“I could say the same of you, Silver Rothchild.”
She gazed deep into his eyes. Shockingly, she didn’t see deception. Not an iota of greed or social climbing or self-interest. Was this guy for real? Everyone always wanted something from her—money or fame or a leg up on an entertainment career. Was it possible that he liked her just for her? That all those sparks zinging back and forth between them were real?
A rumble of laughter vibrated deep in his chest. “I have a sinking feeling that you’re going to lead me on a merry chase before this is all said and done.”
She grinned up at him. “Sounds like fun.”
He sighed, but the smile didn’t quite leave his eyes. “If I’m going to do my job, we need to get a few things straight between us.”
She couldn’t resist. She snuggled her hips against his—and gasped at the feel of him, huge and hard between her thighs. “Everything feels straight to me.”
He closed his eyes tightly for a moment. When he opened them, she was disappointed to see that he’d shifted into business mode. “I was trying to talk to you about the rules of engagement we’re going to operate under when you kept running away from me.”
“I wasn’t running away from you!”
He quirked an all-too-knowing brow. “What would you call it?”
She replied defiantly, “Creative avoidance.”
His crack of laughter inexplicably warmed her heart. She liked making this man happy. Wanted to get to know him better. To explore this thing between them. What was up with that? He was her father’s lackey. She ought to hate his guts. But somewhere in the past five minutes, in the midst of their heated argument and diving for cover, something had changed between them. Radically. It was almost as if someone had waved a magic wand and cast a spell over the two of them. Talk about going from zero to sixty in two seconds flat…
Weird.
His arm lifted away from her waist. The movement felt reluctant, like he didn’t want to let her go. That was lovely. He sat up and helped her twist around and sit up without coming out of her dress. And that was lovely, too. Considerate. Far too few people in her life showed her simple courtesy not because she was a rock star but because she was a human being.
She scowled at her dress as she gave the dowdy thing one last tug. It figured that she’d meet the man of her dreams the one day she was wearing something this goofy looking—her, the ultimate fashion diva, who never appeared anywhere without looking like the cover of the latest pop culture magazine. But her father had a cow whenever she wore anything even remotely sexy, and she hadn’t wanted a fight with him at her birthday party. So she’d chosen this high-necked, long-hemmed, multilayered affair in a demure shade of pink.
“Shall we go for the gusto and actually try using the seats?” he asked wryly.
She felt her dimples pucker up. “If we’re gonna hijack a limo, we may as well enjoy it before we go to jail.”
He grinned. “Good point.” He knocked on the glass partition, which had closed sometime during their exchange on the floor.
The chauffeur looked back at them in his rearview mirror. “We safe now?” the guy asked.
Austin nodded. “Yes, thanks to you. Mr. Rothchild’s going to be very grateful that you saved his daughter’s life.”
The guy snorted. “Mr. Coddington’s going to be very not grateful that I took off with his limo.”
Silver knew Albert Coddington. She jumped in, waving a casual hand. “Albert’s a dear. Once he knows what happened, he’ll be delighted to have helped.”
The driver muttered, “Maybe. But Mrs. Coddington sure won’t like having to wait for her ride.”
Silver laughed. “I give Mrs. Coddington-Number-Five six more months before she’s outta there. No need to worry about her. Albert’s determined to be just like Henry VIII, and he has one more wife to go.”
Austin’s gaze swiveled to hers. “The man’s had five wives? What’s wrong with him?”
She grinned at him. “He has a weakness for gold diggers and gets suckered, like clockwork, every ten years. But give the guy credit for style. The current Mrs. Coddington is younger than I am. By a lot.”
“You’re not exactly an old lady.”
She shrugged. “It’s not like I can lie to you about my age. After all, you met me at my birthday party.”
“You’ll like being thirty—”
She cut
him off. “Don’t tell me my thirties will be my best decade yet. I made a pact with myself that I’d murder the next person who said that to me.”
He shrugged. “Okay, how ’bout this? My thirties have been great to me so far. Wouldn’t trade ’em for the world. I hope yours are the same for you.”
“I’ll let you know in six weeks,” she replied ruefully.
“What happens in six weeks?”
She opened her mouth to tell him about her upcoming gig at the Grand, when the driver spoke from up front. “Sir, when do you want me to head back to town? We’re gonna have to turn around now or go straight for about a fifty miles and get gas before we turn around.”
Austin frowned. “Let’s head back to town. Does the Grand have a private entrance?”
Silver and the driver answered simultaneously, “Yes.”
Austin looked over at her. “I forgot. You grew up there, didn’t you?”
Indeed, she had. She was plenty familiar with the underground loading dock for the many deliveries it took to keep the Grand running. Rather than have trucks constantly clog the busy streets around the hotel, they unloaded underneath it, out of sight and out of the way. Which also made for an ideal entry for celebrities in search of privacy—or safety.
“We’ll have to call ahead to use it. Security’s very tight down there,” she said. “Particularly in the late afternoon. The casino gets its shipments of cash in at about this time of day.”
Austin pulled out his cell phone. “What’s your dad’s personal phone number?”
She rattled off the number and Austin dialed it quickly. She listened unabashedly.
“Hi, sir. This is Austin Dearing. I wanted to report that your daughter is unhurt and with me…that’s correct…what are the police saying about the shooting? Any trace of the gunman?” Austin listened a long time, then commented dryly, “With all due respect, sir, that Bubba who calls himself her bodyguard doesn’t know his nose from his ass. You made an exceedingly wise decision to hire me.”