Single Mum's Bodyguard

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Everything that had happened. Finding windows open that she swore she had closed. Hearing that door creak open. Finding those calls in the log on her phone—calls she would have never placed.

And when she finally lifted her face from his chest, his shirt was soaked with her tears. And his face was unreadable. Did he believe her?

Or did he think she was crazy?

* * *

He was crazy. Dane should have left the minute he’d found her and the baby safe in the attic. Then he wouldn’t have held the baby.

Then he wouldn’t have held her.

The night breeze blew through his damp shirt, chilling his skin. But that was good. He’d gotten too hot holding her, too edgy. And her tears...

All those tears had done something to him. He’d felt like he was drowning in them, like he couldn’t get a breath in lungs that had felt so tight, so heavy.

He drew in a deep breath now. That pressure didn’t ease any. He had to go back in that house, had to see her again. The minute she’d finished pouring out her heart and her tears he’d hurried outside. He’d told her that he was going to check everything out and see if anyone had broken into her house.

But he already knew nobody had broken in. The lock of that open door had born no scratches or gouges from someone picking it. The jamb hadn’t been broken. Nobody had forced their way into the house. And yet she swore someone had been inside, that she’d heard footsteps on the stairs and the hardwood floors.

Was it possible?

When he’d followed her home earlier, he’d watched her go inside juggling the baby, a diaper bag and something that had looked more like a suitcase than a purse. A laptop bag? She’d had her hands full. She might not have closed the door tightly behind them.

But he’d sat there long enough, watching her house, that if it hadn’t been shut tightly, it would have blown open then. Wouldn’t it?

And what about the crying she claimed to hear that wasn’t Blue’s?

He tilted his head and listened. Maybe a neighbor had a crying baby. But while Lars had been living in the little bungalow, Dane had met the closest neighbors. An older couple lived on one side and a single man on the other. He doubted either had a baby staying with them. He heard nothing now. Not even the sound of a TV despite the glare of one showing behind a window of the adjacent house.

Shining the flashlight on his gun barrel, he walked around the house. Like at the chapel, he found wood chips disturbed beneath some of the windows. Had someone been standing in them, looking inside? Watching her?

He shivered and it had nothing to do with his damp shirt. His blood was chilled now. He had that eerie sensation he’d had when he’d walked through the open door earlier into a dark house.

The house had been dark then.

But he’d watched her turn on every light before he’d driven away. She had had every light in the house shining as if she’d been checking to make sure no intruders lurked in any of the rooms. And she’d told him earlier, when she’d been sobbing against his chest, that the minute she’d heard the door open, she’d grabbed her son and headed up the attic steps. She’d had no time to turn off all those lights. Unless she’d done it earlier, after he’d left.

Somehow he suspected she hadn’t. As spooked as she was, she probably left the lights on all the time and locked the windows. When he’d walked through the house, he’d noticed that all the windows had been unlatched, like the door had been unlocked.

When she’d turned on those lights earlier, she’d checked the windows. That was one reason he’d driven off because it had looked as though she’d made certain her house was secure. So why would that door have been open and the windows now unlocked?

The short hairs on the nape of his neck rose and the skin between his shoulder blades tingled. He felt like someone was watching him now. When he glanced up, he saw her clearly illuminated in the light behind her that she must have just turned on.

Like she’d turned him on when she’d clung to him, her face buried in his chest. Every word she’d spoken had sent a warm breath whispering across his skin.

He’d never been as aware of another person as he’d been aware of her. He hadn’t just felt her breath on his skin; he’d felt her breathing, as her breasts had pushed against his chest. He’d felt her fear in every fast beat of her heart. And he’d felt her sobs in the moisture of her tears and in the breaks of her sweet voice.

And she’d wondered why he’d kept staring at her. Since finding her in that attic, looking so terrified, he hadn’t been able to look away from her. He was staring again, he knew it. But he couldn’t look away now, either.

With her blond hair glowing and her luminescent skin, she looked like an angel. He’d never seen a more beautiful woman. Or a more frightened one.

One hand was pressed over her mouth, as if holding in a scream. The other was pressed over her breast, probably her heart. She still wore that dress from the wedding, the pale blue that exactly matched the color of her wide eyes. Her thick black lashes fluttered up and down, breaking their locked stare.

He backed up away from the house. Away from her. But he couldn’t leave even though every instinct was warning him to run from her.

Instead he walked around the house and back through that open door. She was holding it, though, and as soon as he stepped through it, she closed it behind him.

“What did you find?” she asked anxiously.

Not his mind. He must have lost that, since he’d ignored his instincts for the first time in his life. What would that cost him?

Only time would tell if it would be his life or something else...

Something he’d never risked before.

“What is it?” she asked, reaching for him. Just her fingers clasped his arm, but it felt like she had reached inside him.

He shook his head. He couldn’t tell her what was really bothering him: her. Not when he was the one she’d called.

“Why?” he asked.

Her eyes glistened with the threat of more tears. “Why? I have no idea. I don’t know why someone would break into the house. Why they would use my phone to make those calls...” She blinked furiously. “Why they would play that...crying...”

Was that what it was? A recording?

“Nobody broke in,” he told her. “None of the locks was tampered with.”

“But I heard the door open.”

“It must not have been locked.”

“I locked it,” she said. And her voice was sharp now, decisive.

“You had your hands full,” he said, “with the baby, his bag, yours...”

Her beautiful eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How do you know that?”

He shrugged off his slip. “Just assumed.”

“How?” she asked. “You don’t have a baby.”

“No, I don’t.” And he had no intention of ever having one. With anyone.

“Then how?”

He sighed as he acknowledged that he was busted. “I followed you home from the chapel.”

Her mouth opened on a soft gasp of shock.

So he hurriedly explained, “I’m not stalking you. I promised your brother I would watch you at the wedding, make sure you stayed safe.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s why...” Her chin lifted, and she bristled with pride now. “Then you know I locked the door and the windows.” She gestured toward the one through which she’d seen him. “And now they’re unlocked.”

He nodded. “I did see you check the windows, but not the door.” The solid steel exterior door had no window, so he hadn’t been able to see through it.

“I locked it, too,” she insisted.

“So how did someone get in?” he asked. “Does anyone else have a key?”

“Only Lars.”

And her brother would give up his life for hers—nearly had. He would never do anything to upset her. Purposely. Asking Dane to watch over her might have upset her, though—or at least pricked her pride.

Her brow furrowed now. “But I lost my keys a couple of weeks ago. Well, just misplaced them.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I left them at the coffeehouse near the chapel. One of the baristas called me a couple of hours after I left and told me a customer had found them under a table.”

“Do you mean you called them?” he asked. “How would they know they were yours?”

“The key for the office has the name of the White Wedding Chapel on it with the phone number,” she explained. “I hadn’t even realized I’d lost them. And...”

“What?” he prodded.

“I hadn’t sat down at a table,” she said. “I got a latte to go and was only near the counter.”

He felt like he’d been punched again. “Someone could have taken them.”

“But why return them?” she asked.

“If you’d known they were stolen, you would have changed the locks,” he explained. “This way they had time to make another set and get yours back so you’d only think you’d misplaced them.”

“But why?” she asked. “Why would someone want a set of my keys? Why would they come in here and not take anything? Just use my phone and...”

“Play that recording?” he prodded when her voice trailed off.

Her breath caught. “A recording? You think it’s a recording?”

“Could be.”

“But why? Why keep playing it all night, every night?” she asked.

He’d never been captured, but he knew guys who had been—like Gage Huxton, another Payne bodyguard. “Sleep deprivation is a form of torture,” he said. “It’s used to break someone.”

That was why he had sworn, at the start of every mission, that if something went bad, he would not be taken alive.

“Break?” And her voice did again when she breathed the word. Her eyes were wide, the circles so dark beneath them. She had not been sleeping for a while. “Why?”

“Someone’s trying to drive you crazy.”

She expelled a shuddery breath. “I’m afraid it’s starting to work.”

* * *

The plan had been working. Emilia Ecklund was nearing her breaking point. All the crying wasn’t just the recording; it was her, too.

But then she’d called someone tonight. And Dane Sutton had rushed to her aide. That had nearly messed up everything. What if he’d arrived a little faster?

The whole plan could have been destroyed.

The guy was big and armed—like her brother. It might have been better had her brother showed up. He would have been more concerned about her, about how distraught she was and he probably wouldn’t have checked out the house as thoroughly as this guy had.

What had he found?

Had he seen any footprints? Any evidence that the sounds weren’t just in Emilia’s beautiful head?

Dane Sutton was a problem. A problem they would have to eliminate.

Chapter 6 (#uc05cb37c-2b30-5223-86da-38ad6719cf4b)

Did Dane really believe her? Or was he only humoring his best friend’s crazy sister? His face was so expressionless that she couldn’t tell. He looked like a statue or a bust carved from granite. His features were that chiseled, his eyes that unreadable.

His stare made her shiver. But she hadn’t been cold earlier—when he’d held her. Then she’d been hot, her body tingling with awareness. With attraction.

She sighed. “Yes, it’s definitely working.” She was losing her mind. She couldn’t be attracted to her brother’s enigmatic friend.

“You’re too strong to let that happen,” Dane said.

Despite her fears and nerves and sleeplessness, she laughed. “Strong?”

She had been going out of her mind.

“You survived weeks in captivity,” he said.

If she’d been stronger, she would not have been in captivity. She would have freed herself instead of having to wait to be rescued.

“You survived nearly losing your son,” he added.

A pang struck her heart, filling it with the fear she’d felt then when she’d thought she would never see her baby again. She glanced toward the stairs and thought of running up them, of grabbing up Blue from his crib, where he’d fallen back to sleep.

He was sleeping. He was safe. He was here—with her.

“I survived that,” she agreed. “Once. I can’t go through that again. If all of this—” she gestured at the windows and the door that she’d locked but the intruder had still managed to get through “—is so that I lose him.”