“That’s going to be damn hard to do when I’ve been assigned to protect you,” a deep voice drawled.
“Who are you?” she demanded to know as the man remained in the shadows. A hood was pulled over his head, and it shadowed his face like the dim light shadowed his entire body—his long, broad-shouldered body.
“Your bodyguard,” that deep voice rumbled.
She shivered again and clutched her weapon tighter.
That was the other thing the chief had told her, that he was hiring the Payne Protection Agency to protect everyone involved in Luther Mills’s trial. And like she had told him, that was a mistake. One that could prove fatal.
Was it going to prove fatal now—to her?
“Who are you?” she asked again, and she raised her weapon to point directly at his chest.
He chuckled. “You’re going to tase me?”
She moved her finger toward the trigger of the weapon. She knew how to fire it to plunge those probes into his chest because, unfortunately, she’d had to use it before. Luther Mills wasn’t the only criminal who had tried to hurt her.
“Yes.” But before she could fire it, the weapon was snapped out of her grasp and she was spun around so that her back was pressed against his chest, his strong arms wrapped around her.
She screamed.
But he just chuckled again. He knew there was nobody around to hear her. To help her...
She struggled in his grasp, but his arms just tightened around her, stilling her movements. She tried to kick back, with her stilettos, but when her heel struck his leg, the shoe slipped off her foot. And she hadn’t even fazed him; he was that strong, that muscular.
If this man really was her bodyguard, it was just as she’d feared. He was as big a threat to her as Luther Mills was—because, if she was right, someone within the Payne Protection Agency could be working for Luther. She had a horrible feeling that she’d just found out who—the man who had already overpowered her.
* * *
“Where are they?” Chief Woodrow Lynch wondered aloud as he looked around the nearly empty conference room.
Parker Payne shrugged. “They should all be arriving soon.” Right now he was the only other person in the room, sitting at the other end of the long conference table from Woodrow. He seemed confident in his team, though, which should have eased Woodrow’s concerns.
Woodrow had called the meeting at the Payne Protection Agency, so he could explain why he’d hired a private security company to protect everyone involved in the trial of a local drug dealer.
Luther Mills was not just any drug dealer. He was the biggest drug dealer in Michigan. Hell, probably in the entire Midwest, and he was so rich and powerful that he could hire or threaten anyone into doing what he wanted. And Woodrow had recently learned that some of those people Luther had either bought or manipulated were within the police department and the district attorney’s office.
That was why he had hired the Payne Protection Agency. He was going to make sure that Luther Mills didn’t hurt anyone else and that he finally went to trial for his crimes.
But not everyone was going to be happy with having a bodyguard. The assistant district attorney, Jocelyn Gerber, was certainly not happy. She thought he was stupid for trusting the Payne Protection Agency—at least Parker Payne’s franchise of the agency—because every member of his team was a former vice cop. She suspected at least one of them could be working for Luther.
Of all his stepsons’ franchises, Woodrow had chosen Parker’s because of their connection to Luther Mills. He knew Parker and his team had tried for years to bring down Luther Mills, so he knew they would have a vested interest in making sure he was finally brought to justice.
But as Jocelyn had pointed out, they had tried for years with no success. She believed one of those former vice cops hadn’t just been working for the River City Police Department but for Luther Mills, as well.
Could she be right?
If she was, instead of protecting everyone associated with the trial, Woodrow had just put one of them in even more danger. Which one?
Her?
CHAPTER 2
Landon had figured his protecting Jocelyn Gerber was a bad idea. But now he knew for certain he’d been right. She writhed in his arms, jerking around as she kicked at his shins. As her one remaining heel connected, he flinched, and a grunt of pain slipped out of his lips, stirring her black hair. “Stop struggling!”
“Let me go!” she yelled back at him.
But he kept his arms locked around her, holding hers down at her sides as her back pressed against his chest. He didn’t trust that she didn’t have another weapon on her. “What else you got in that bag of yours?” he asked.
In addition to not wanting to be tased, he didn’t want to be pepper sprayed or shot either. And he suspected she might have a concealed-weapons permit to carry a gun as well as that Taser.
“None of your damn business,” she told him.
“I’m your bodyguard,” he reminded her. “Everything about you is my damn business now.”
“You’re not protecting me,” she said. “You’re the one hurting me.”
He’d been careful not to hold her too tightly. But he was big and sometimes stronger than he realized. He immediately loosened his grasp, and she broke free and whirled around to face him.
As he’d suspected she would, she pointed another weapon at him, the small pepper-spray canister that was attached to her key ring.
He snorted. “I don’t know why the chief and Parker think you need a bodyguard.” Just as he’d worried, he was the one who needed protecting from her.
But while she had her finger on the trigger of the canister, she didn’t press down on it. Yet. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said.
He suspected he knew why: She was working for Luther. She was the leak within the district attorney’s office. Maybe he could use this opportunity to prove that to Parker and to the chief.
“But you got one,” he said. “So you’re going to have to accept that.”
Her eyes were such a brilliant shade of blue that they gleamed even in the dim lighting of the parking structure. Then she narrowed them in a glare. “I don’t have to accept you as my bodyguard,” she said.
“Do you even know who I am?” he asked. What could she have against him personally? He’d brought her evidence to indict Luther Mills, and he wasn’t the one who’d made that evidence mysteriously disappear.
She narrowed her eyes into slits of suspicion. “You obviously don’t want me to know,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have your hood up. You wouldn’t have been slinking in the shadows.”
“Slinking in the shadows...” He chuckled. “That’s kind of what bodyguards do.” Unobtrusively protecting their clients. But she wasn’t his client; Chief Lynch was. She was just his principal, the person he’d been assigned to protect.
“Why?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you be more effective if everyone knew you were protecting me?”
He shrugged. “I’m not making that call. That’s up to Parker Payne and the chief. They might want Luther to actually make a try for you, to flush out whoever’s working with him.”
She tightened her grasp on her canister of pepper spray, and he instinctively took a step back. “Is that what you were really trying to do here? Make a try for me?”
He chuckled again. She was crazy. “You actually think I’m going to try to take you out?”
She glanced around the dark garage and shivered. “This would be a good place to try.”
“I’m your bodyguard,” he repeated, and this time his teeth were gritted when he said it. How damn dense was she? Maybe that was why she’d never gotten a grand jury to indict Luther—because she wasn’t very bright.
“I only have your word that’s who you are,” she said.
He reached up and pushed b
ack his hood. Not that seeing his face clearly would probably make her recognize him. So he added his name, “I’m Landon Myers. I work for the Payne Protection Agency. I have been assigned to protect you.”
“You worked vice,” she murmured.
She must have recognized him.
“Yes, I did.”
His admission just had her tensing more. What was she worried about? Why didn’t she trust him?
Did she realize that he was onto her? That he suspected she was Luther’s leak in the DA’s office?
* * *
If the meeting at the Payne Protection Agency had been meant to reassure her, it had done exactly the opposite. Jocelyn was even more on edge than she’d been before it—when Landon Myers had accosted her in the parking garage.
Now he was using her keys to let himself into her house. She wouldn’t have turned them over, but he’d insisted on going inside first, on checking to make sure that nobody had broken in while she’d been gone. The minute he turned them and pushed open the door, the alarm began to blare.
“What’s the code?” he shouted over it.
She wasn’t about to give that to him. But she joined him in the foyer and surreptitiously punched in the numbers. When the alarm stopped blaring, she told him, “That’s why I know nobody has broken in here. They can’t get past my security system. That’s why you don’t need to be here.”
“You heard the chief,” he said. “He wants you and everyone else involved in this trial to have around-the-clock protection until the trial is over.”
She’d heard him. And she hadn’t had the chance to argue with him since everybody else had been arguing against the need for protection. She hadn’t wanted anyone who needed protecting to lose it—like the eyewitness.
She could not lose the eyewitness. And she actually trusted Clint Quarters to protect Rosie Mendez. He was the one who’d turned her late brother into an informant. He blamed himself for Javier Mendez’s murder. Unfortunately, so did Rosie. But because Clint felt guilty, he would do everything in his power to keep her safe. He’d already saved her from an attempt on her life tonight.
She shivered.
Landon must have thought she was cold because he closed the door, shutting them inside the dark foyer. She shivered again.
While she trusted Clint to protect Rosie, she didn’t trust Landon. He had no stake in this trial. Clint had walked away from the River City PD because of his guilt over Javier’s death. Why had Landon walked away?
Needing to see him clearly, she flipped on a light. The golden hue of the chandelier’s bulbs made his thick light brown hair glow like gold, as well. His eyes were brown, too, but a richer milk-chocolate brown. He stared down at her, which was an uncomfortable and unfamiliar sensation for Jocelyn. She was tall and wore heels to make herself even taller, which was usually taller than most of the men she encountered.
Except Landon Myers.
He was tall. But he wasn’t just tall. He was big all over—broad shoulders, huge chest and arms, long, thick legs. If he was working for Luther, like she worried he was, then he could have easily taken her out back in the parking garage. He could have snapped her neck with very little effort.
She shivered again—at the thought, and at the way he was staring at her. So intensely...
But he wasn’t looking at her with the admiration most men looked at her with. He didn’t seem to find her attractive at all.
“That’s some fancy security system,” he mused.
She nodded.
“Expensive.”
She shrugged. She had no idea. Her parents had insisted on installing it. They were paranoid about protection. They would probably approve of her having a bodyguard following her around, but Jocelyn didn’t.
“And not just the security system,” Landon remarked as he glanced up at the chandelier and at the artwork on the walls.
Her house had probably been expensive. But like the security system, it was something else her parents had bought for her. She’d been happy with her small apartment downtown, close to the office. Her parents had wanted her to live in a more secure neighborhood.
But she wasn’t about to share her private life with Landon Myers. “As you can see, I’m perfectly safe inside my house,” she told him. “You don’t need to stay.”
He was already walking beyond the foyer into the dark living room. And as he walked, his hand moved toward his holster. He couldn’t have heard anything, though. There wasn’t anyone inside.
Then she heard it, too, the clatter of something falling onto the hardwood floor. Landon pulled his weapon and swung the barrel around, but before he could pull the trigger, she grabbed his arm. Muscles rippled beneath her fingers. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “It’s just my cat.”
“Cat?”
As if to confirm it, Lady let out a pitiful meow. Jocelyn flipped the living room switch, but the light was dim from the lamp lying on the floor.
“That little thing knocked over the lamp?” Landon asked skeptically as Lady trotted up to them. The Singapura cat was naturally small-boned and light. But she was also active and athletic, too.
Sometimes a little too active and athletic. “She’s naughty,” Jocelyn said, but she smiled as she leaned over and petted the cat’s smooth beige coat. “You’re a naughty girl.”
As if insulted, Lady walked away from Jocelyn and wound between Landon’s legs.
His brow furrowed as he stared down at the animal. “I didn’t figure you for a cat lady.”
Her parents had not bought her the cat. They wanted real grandchildren, not furry ones.
“She came with the house.” She must have belonged to the previous owner because Jocelyn had found her inside when she’d moved in. The cat had been alone and hungry for food and affection.
Landon turned his attention to her, asking, “And you kept her?”
Jocelyn could have turned her in to a shelter or even sold her once she’d learned how rare the breed was, but removing Lady from the house hadn’t seemed right. And Jocelyn appreciated her company. Like she’d told her parents, Lady was as close as they were getting to a grandchild. Jocelyn was not about to wind up like her boss—missing out on a major case because she was having babies.
“Are you allergic to cats?” Jocelyn asked hopefully.
And Landon must have heard that hope because he chuckled. He reholstered his weapon and leaned down to pick up the cat. “Not at all,” he said.
The small cat looked even smaller in his huge hands. But instead of being frightened, she purred and rubbed against him.
“She likes me,” he said.
“She’s hungry,” Jocelyn corrected him, and she headed toward the kitchen.
He was right with her every step—as if he still suspected an intruder could have gotten inside the house. If anyone had made it past the security system, Lady would have been hiding, not out knocking stuff over. Usually she shied away from strangers. But she kept purring and fawning all over Landon.
“Traitor,” Jocelyn murmured.
“What?” Landon asked. But his mouth had curved into a grin, so he’d probably heard her.
The minute Jocelyn rattled the cat’s box of food, the fickle feline squirmed from Landon’s arms and jumped down to trot over to her bowl that her mistress dutifully filled.
“She is a traitor,” Landon agreed.
Was he?
Was he a traitor to the police department and the city he’d once sworn to serve and protect? Jocelyn stared at him, wondering.
Could she trust him?
Not like the chief and Parker Payne did. She tried again. “You don’t have to stay. I’m safe here.”
“I have my orders,” Landon said. “You were there—you heard.”
She sighed. She’d heard too much—about that attempt on the witness, about the plan for all the bodyg
uards to act like boyfriends, or in Detective Dubridge’s case, Keeli Abbott was to act like his girlfriend. Jocelyn shuddered in revulsion. She didn’t want a boyfriend at all, let alone someone like Landon Myers.
Someone she couldn’t trust.
“Don’t worry,” Landon said as he walked out of the kitchen and headed back to the living room. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
Jocelyn doubted that. She followed him into the living room, where he shrugged off his jacket and undid his holster. After putting the weapon and his coat onto the ottoman next to the couch, he reached for his shirt, tugging it up and over his head, so that he stood before her with that enormous, muscular chest bare but for the golden-brown hair on it.
Jocelyn choked on her own saliva. How the hell long had it been since she’d had a boyfriend?
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a man shirtless. It had been too long ago, and it had never been a man with a chest like this guy’s.
“You okay?” Landon asked her. And there was a wicked gleam in his brown eyes.
She nodded.
And he teased, “Cat got your tongue?”
Heat rushed to her face. But she refused to let him know he was affecting her, any more than he must have already guessed. She glared at him. “I’m fine,” she said.
“Really?” he asked. “You look a little frustrated.”
“I am,” she agreed. But not how he was implying—if that was what he was implying. She wasn’t sexually frustrated. Not at all...
“I’m frustrated that you insist on staying here when I don’t need protection,” she said.
He shrugged, and muscles rippled in his arms and chest, as well.
She nearly choked again.
“I’m just doing my job,” he told her.
Was that all he was doing, though? Or was he working for Luther Mills as well as the Payne Protection Agency?
Fortunately, he’d returned her Taser, so she would have that if he tried anything. It wouldn’t kill him, but at least it would give her time to get away from him.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set Page 43