She wasn’t about to tell him that, though. In the past week she’d come to the conclusion that her Kevin Costner syndrome might be more than her imagination. It was easy to be attracted to a handsome bodyguard, especially when he was a gentleman.
What she had to do, quite often, was remind herself that he was being paid to care about her. There might be a connection between them, but it would soon end. He would get a sizable check from her father. Then they would go their separate ways. He would stay on this ranch, raising cattle and training horses, and maybe someday he’d marry and have little Wilders. She would go back to... She didn’t know what she’d go back to.
“Will you always do this, Boone?” she asked as he helped her into the black SUV, Lucy driving again.
He climbed in next to her. “Do what?”
“Ranch? Be a bodyguard?”
He removed his black cowboy hat and placed it on the seat between them.
“I guess I’ll always be a rancher,” he answered.
Lucy cleared her throat but didn’t comment.
“What about you, Stanford? What are you going to do with your life when this is all over with?” Boone asked as the SUV got on the highway, headed in the direction of San Antonio.
What was she going to do with her life? She had thought more about that recently than she had in years. Being the thorn in her father’s side no longer appealed to her. It had worn her down, pushed her to do things she couldn’t undo and woke her up at night feeling a lot of regret.
“I have a degree in early childhood education,” she admitted. “Once upon a time, I was a little girl who dreamed of being a teacher.”
“Maybe you should pursue that dream,” Lucy chimed in, no longer the silent observer. “I mean, it would be easier, wouldn’t it?”
Kayla watched the landscape of Texas Hill Country fly past her from the tinted window of the SUV. Autumn wildflowers dotted the landscape, as did an occasional farm or aging barn. The patchwork of the countryside, greens, autumn browns, was dotted by the occasional small town. She had seen the sky view from a plane and that was what it always reminded her of, the patchwork quilts Grammy Stanford had loved so much. She wondered what had happened to those quilts.
“Still with us, Stanford?”
“Lost in the countryside,” she answered. “Teaching. I don’t know if I’d be a good teacher.”
“Never know until you try.”
“True. I never thought I’d like a cowboy,” she teased.
He laughed. “And do you?”
A choking sound came from the front seat and Lucy glanced back. “Don’t encourage him.”
“I won’t. I wasn’t speaking of any particular cowboy, Boone. My brothers are ranchers and cowboys. I am a little bit attached to them.”
“There’s hope for you yet, Stanford.” He said it with an easy cowboy grin and a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.
It was easier when he called her Stanford.
The traffic got heavier as they drew closer to San Antonio. There were more houses, more businesses, more people. Her heart got heavier, too.
“Don’t worry, we’re with you,” Boone said about thirty minutes from their destination, a hotel near the River Walk.
“I’m not worried. I’ve done so many of these events in my life, I’m used to being under the microscope.”
He adjusted his tie. “I’m glad you’re used to it.”
She reached to fix his tie. “You’ve gotten it all crooked. Leave it. Or take it off. You look fine without it.” She loosened the tie to pull it over his head. He looked fine in jeans, boots and a button-up shirt with a sport coat. He’d draped the coat over the back of the front passenger seat, but she’d seen it on him back at the Wilder ranch.
“Do I look fine, Stanford?” he asked with a wink.
“I told you not to encourage him,” Lucy warned.
Kayla didn’t answer. Soon she’d have to leave the safety of this SUV and brave her father’s world. She wished she could face that world with something more than the false bravado she cloaked herself in. She longed to make eye contact with her dad and have him give her a look of encouragement. Or even love.
It seemed as if they’d been strangers for her entire life, but it had really been only in the past dozen years that things had fallen apart. Before that, she had been his little girl, going to work with him, sitting on his lap before bedtime. He’d been a good dad to a little girl who had been left on his doorstep by a woman who wasn’t capable of living in the real world.
He’d married Marietta when Kayla was five. They’d gone from the two of them, father and daughter to a family of three. And soon after, Andrew came along. And then Michael. Not that she pictured herself as Cinderella. She had never thought of herself as the tragic fairy-tale heroine. Marietta hadn’t banished her to the attic or forced her to do hard labor. She just hadn’t wanted to raise someone else’s child.
But she wasn’t a terrible person. Kayla wondered how things would have been different if she’d told her stepmother what had happened and not her father ten years ago.
“We’re here,” Lucy informed them as they turned onto a side street, then pulled into a crowded parking lot. “And I’m only warning you once, Kayla, no stunts like the last time.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Okay, ladies, let’s be friends.” Boone opened his door and took a quick look around the area, then he reached for Kayla’s hand.
A few minutes later they were inside the hotel and being directed to the conference room her dad had rented for the occasion. She found the term town hall amusing. Shouldn’t it be in a town, held in a hall of some type and not in a luxury hotel, so that only certain people could attend?
“You know, he wasn’t always this way, my father.” She stood next to Boone as they waited for the elevator. He focused briefly on her and then past her.
“No?”
“Stop looking around as if you’re afraid someone will jump out of a potted palm,” she told him.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid of palms. And I’m trying to keep you safe. So your father hasn’t always been like this?”
“No. A long time ago he cared about the people who came to him as clients. He would tell me about them, about their troubles, their lives, and how he wanted to make things better for those people who trusted him.”
“What happened?”
She had to glance away from him, from dark eyes that saw too deeply. “Money. Power. A business partner who didn’t have the same moral compass.”
“Paul Whitman?”
She shuddered at the mention of the name. “Yes, him.”
“Met him. I wasn’t impressed.”
The elevator opened and they stepped on. As the doors closed, another man rushed to jump on. Kayla slid a little closer to Boone and felt his strong hand on her back. He looked down at her and one side of his mouth tilted. He was all confidence.
“Afraid of elevators?” he asked as they went up five floors.
“Only sometimes.” She gave the man standing in front of them a pointed look.
“This one seems to be safe. Look, it even has an inspection sticker. And besides, what do you have to fear when I’m with you?”
“Nothing, of course.” She meant it, she realized.
The other man got off the elevator on the sixth floor. Without a backward glance he was gone. Kayla let out a sigh.
“I don’t want to live my life like this.”
“I know you don’t,” Boone said, pausing as if he meant to say more.
“What?”
“You have choices. This will end soon, and then you can find out what you do want from your life.”
“Easy words.”
The elevator stopped at the eighth floor. He led h
er off the elevator, cautiously looking both ways before he put a hand on her arm and guided her in the direction of the conference room.
“It isn’t going to go on forever.” He spoke quietly as they neared the room from which they could hear the steady hum of conversations.
“I know.”
Her phone chimed. She pulled it out of her purse. She would have hid it from Boone, but he was there, leaning over her shoulder. The screen of the phone was still shattered. But the words of the text were clear.
Your dad had his chance. Tomorrow’s paper should be interesting.
“It looks as if he’s upping his game,” Boone said as he took the phone from her trembling hands. “Let’s find your father.”
“I should go. I should just leave and make this campaign easy for him.”
Boone led her into the conference room and through the dozens of people. He seemed relaxed, and she realized that was his persona. Good-natured cowboy. But she saw the clench of his jaw, the way he constantly searched the crowd for danger. Danger. Someone wanting to hurt her. She’d lived her life laughing at circumstances, pushing the limits. She’d never thought of danger. Not like this. Never had a person want to harm her or destroy her father.
She edged closer to her bodyguard, thankful now that he was in her life, that her dad had known this would be necessary.
“There he is. And from the way he’s looking at his phone, you’re not the only one being texted.” There was a hard edge to Boone’s voice. It sent a chill up her spine.
This man knew how to protect.
“Get her out of here,” her dad said quietly, moving them away from the crowd as they reached his side.
“I’d already made that decision. But I want to make sure you have a security detail of your own and a plan for whatever is going to be released to the paper tomorrow.”
“Of course I don’t have a plan.” Kayla’s father swiped a hand over his short, graying hair. “No one has a plan for blackmail, Wilder. And yes, I have a team of people. I don’t need your help in this. I need to know that you’re keeping my daughter safe.”
And then Kayla’s father looked at her. His eyes softened. “I never wanted to see you hurt this way. I don’t even know what went wrong.”
“Dad, you do. But this isn’t the place to talk about that.”
He paled and his gaze shifted to look past her. “God help us. Kayla, someone knows.”
She fought the sting of tears and the emotions that tightened in her throat. She wanted him to believe her. She wanted him to be her father again and protect her. The past came back, all of the pain, the anger, the betrayal. Because she saw that look in his eyes all over again and she didn’t know if he’d ever truly believed her.
“Knows what?” Boone’s voice slid through the haze of pain.
“This doesn’t concern you, Wilder. Just take care of my daughter.”
“Yes, Boone, you take care of his daughter. He can’t. He doesn’t have time. He doesn’t have the courage.” She turned and walked away, ignoring her father, ignoring Boone as he called out to her to wait for him.
Pain waits for no man.
* * *
“Go with her,” William Stanford ordered as Boone paused for a moment, waiting for more answers.
Boone shot him a look that he knew wouldn’t quell the man or put him in his place. “Sir, I don’t have a daughter, but I wonder if maybe you should be the one going after her.”
“I have a job to do here, Wilder.”
“You have a daughter walking out that door, and I think she’s your responsibility.”
“I’m paying you—”
Boone cut him off. “Yeah, a lot of money to do that for you. I get it. I’ll go after her.”
He hurried after Kayla, who had almost reached the door. As he ran, he tried to come up with a plan, because there was a lot going on that he didn’t have answers to.
“Wait,” he called out as she went through the door and headed left instead of right, toward the elevator.
She paused but didn’t look back. She stood still, her shoulders straight and her head high. He walked up behind her but didn’t touch her. Instead, he let out a sigh and waited. She needed a lot more than him.
He called Lucy. “We’re heading down. No need for you to come up. We’re going back to base.”
“I don’t want to go,” she finally spoke. She wasn’t crying.
“What do you want to do?”
She shrugged, her back still to him. He kept his distance, giving her space. “I don’t really know. Six months ago I would have hopped a plane somewhere. Or I would have done my best to embarrass my father and make him pay. Now I don’t know.”
“Come on, we’ll go home. Mom will make you some of her famous hot cocoa, and maybe she still has some of that banana bread.”
“Hot cocoa would be nice,” she whispered.
“Yeah, she’ll ply you with cocoa and you’ll feel as if she’s the best friend you’ve ever had. I think you could use that friendship tonight, Stanford.”
She nodded, acknowledging without admitting. She turned to face him, no tears, just stark pain, the kind that made him feel it in his own heart. Pain and betrayal.
They left the hotel in silence, made the ride all the way back to Martin’s Crossing in the same way. Lucy would occasionally give him a questioning look in the rearview mirror. He could only shrug because he didn’t have answers, only questions and maybe suspicions.
He tried to think of a scenario when his own dad wouldn’t move heaven and earth to be there for his daughters, for all of his children. He tried to think how it would have felt if he’d been in that bed in an army hospital and he hadn’t woken up to find his dad sitting next to him.
When they pulled up to the Wilder Ranch, the house looked half-asleep. It was barely ten o’clock but the Wilders believed in early to bed and early to rise. He opened the SUV’s door and stepped out, giving Kayla room to exit the vehicle without touching him, which seemed to be her wish. As she walked toward the house, he waited, leaning against the driver’s door. Lucy had opened the window.
“Well?” she asked.
“Another text. Something to be revealed in the morning paper. I think it’s a serious bombshell. Father and daughter were at odds and she seemed to need something from him.”
“Fathers aren’t superhuman. They let their children down sometimes, Boone. You’re spoiled. Your father is one of the best.”
“I know, Luce. I’m sorry.”
She raised a hand. “This isn’t about me. She’s a mess and I think we’re in over our heads.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because she doesn’t need a bodyguard. You know it and I know it. They need a family therapist and a good private investigator.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed.
She gave a roll of her expressive dark eyes. “I’m always right.”
“Do you want to stay here tonight?” he offered.
“Nah, I’ll be fine. Mama is determined to take those bulls to that buck out in Arkansas. I’m going to help her load in the morning.”
“She’s a strong woman, your mom.”
“Yeah, she’s my hero.” She restarted the SUV. “Boone.” She paused and he looked back. “Watch yourself.”
She touched her heart and then she shifted into Reverse and left. Great, just what he needed was Lucy all emotional and compassionate. He’d have to tell her tomorrow that he didn’t need her to get all girlie on him. That would get her back on track.
Kayla had gone inside. He followed, finding her in the kitchen with his mom, the way he’d known she would be. He watched as the two of them mixed ingredients for Mexican hot chocolate. It wasn’t even heating yet but he could smell the vanilla and the touch
of cinnamon. Or maybe it was his imagination. He joined them at the stove, taking the place next to his mom and not Kayla.
“Make yourself a bed on the sofa, son.” His mom patted his cheek. “You look tired.”
“I’m good.”
Her brows arched. “Of course you are. You’re like your father, always good. Even when you aren’t.”
“Is Dad okay?”
She stirred the cocoa and the water that would help ingredients dissolve. “He says he is, of course. But I saw him today rubbing his chest. I worry.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Of course you do. I’ll see if I can’t get him to go to the doctor Monday.”
“Thank you,” she spoke softly. “And you, my son. You’ve been going nonstop. You’re limping. Take care of yourself, yes?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
Kayla had sent brief glances his way as he and his mother talked to each other. He saw a hunger in her blue eyes. He knew that a moment like this was what she needed. His mom would give it to her, in spades. He’d do the guarding. His mom would do the heart work. It worked best that way. It kept him sharp and focused on the job he needed to do.
Time to make his escape. “I’ll have a cup of that cocoa and then I’ll leave the two of you alone. Girl talk is not my thing.”
“No, you’re more about the conformation of a good horse and which cows drop the best calves,” his mom teased.
“A man has his priorities.”
“I’ll bring you a cup of cocoa. There are sheets and blankets in the hall closet.”
That was his mom’s way of dismissing him. He took the out she offered and left the two of them alone. The idea of getting off his feet made it easier to agree.
It didn’t take him long to make up a temporary bed on the sofa. His sister’s crazy cat, Sheba, appeared at his side. She gave him a long, unblinking look, then focused on his bed. Without an invitation she stretched, and then leaped. She curled up on the pillow and looked for all the world as if she thought it belonged to her.
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