Bodyguard Reunion

She told him about Bryson Wagoner. Not much because she figured it bad form to talk to one man about another. But he’d asked if she was currently seeing anyone and she’d confessed to breaking off the relationship after Valentine’s Day, when he’d tried to propose.

They lingered over coffee and dessert, and like a crazy person, she thought about inviting him back to her apartment. But finally, when the restaurant was shutting down, he hailed down a cab and carefully put her inside, with just a casual peck on the cheek.

And she realized that she might have just had the best night of her life and it wasn’t going to happen again. At the last minute, she pressed her business card into his hand.

It had taken him two days to call, two frantic days of jumping every time her office phone rang only to be disappointed. She didn’t tell anyone about him. Didn’t want to admit to her esteemed colleagues that she’d been duped by some guy or that it simply hadn’t been as special as she’d built it up in her mind. At least not for him.

She’d been practically shaking when his call had finally come in. She’d—

“I’m ready,” Charity said, interrupting her memories. She was holding the cat cage and it was swinging as Hogi turned circles in the small space.

“Great,” JC said. What was important now was that Charity was coming home with her. They would get a chance to know one another, to become friends.

A chance to find the truth.

She reached for the doorknob but Royce beat her to it. “I’ll go first,” he said. “Keep close behind me. Do exactly what I say when I say it.”

“Fine,” she said. She made a deliberate attempt to relax her jaw. Her poor teeth did not deserve to be mashed together. She managed to smile at Charity. “Doing okay?” she asked.

“I guess,” the young woman said. “Are you some kind of cop?” she asked Royce.

“No,” he said.

“Royce is part of my security detail. Goes with the territory of being a CEO,” JC said, making her tone light.

“Cool,” Charity said. “I’m kind of hungry.”

“We can get lunch at my hotel,” JC said, happy that the young woman didn’t have more questions.

“Is there a pool?” Charity asked, her eyes big, looking more like a little girl than a woman old enough to be living with an abusive boyfriend. JC thought longingly of what it might have been like to have Charity live with her, like a real little sister.

“Of course,” JC said.

“Not going to be any damn swimming,” Royce said. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 6

Her red dress had gotten his attention. He’d been nursing a beer, thinking about leaving, when he’d seen her across the rooftop patio. The wind had been playing with her skirt, making it swirl around her legs, and he’d had to tighten his grip on his bottle because his damn hands were simply itching to know if her skin was as soft as it looked.

She’d given him a dismissive smile and he’d been just reckless enough to think the hell with that. The rain had been fortuitous and he’d been ready to insist upon dinner when she’d graciously agreed.

And he’d had a great three hours. Still, when the night had ended, he’d been prepared to let her go. Had told himself to be content, to simply enjoy the serendipity of their meeting. She was out of his league.

But damn her, she’d pressed her business card into his hand and he’d gone home and slept with the damn thing under his pillow. For two nights. And when he wasn’t sleeping, he’d been staring at it. Until finally he’d called.

Yes, the red dress had made an impression. But it was a strapless white bikini that had been his Achilles’ heel. Two weeks into their relationship, he’d met Jules at the pool that was on the roof of her condo building. She’d been all long legs and sweet curves in a bit of nothing that had him instantly breaking into a sweat.

And she’d been a damn fish once she got into the water. But he was a good swimmer, too, and he caught her. And when her warm body brushed up against him, he cursed the few other guests lounging around the pool.

He somehow managed to let her go, to let her swim away. Had managed to lie next to her on the beach chair, like a reasonable person, pretending to read a damn book. Had managed not to touch her.

It had almost killed him.

It was their sixth date in two weeks and he desperately wanted her in his bed. But he was waiting for a sign that she was equally needy, equally ready.

Jules was different. Jules was important.

They shared a bottle of chilled white wine that she had in her bag. And hours later, after the summer sun had finally slipped beneath the horizon, and they were the only two left at the pool, he didn’t protest when she led him toward one of the curtained cabanas. And when she confidently stepped out of her suit, he wondered how much more wonderful he could stand.

They made love. And afterward, he realized as he held her still-quaking body close, that it had been a terrible mistake.

It was going to be so hard to let her go.

Ten weeks later, at the end of summer, he’d found out just how god-awful it could be.

And now, eight years later, he was helping her herd a belligerent teenager and a mangy cat into a dirty elevator. Really hadn’t seen this one coming.

“Nice car,” Charity said when they got there.

He didn’t answer. He was busy looking up and down the street, trying to spot anything unusual. He wanted Jules back inside her hotel.

The back seat of his BMW was barely big enough for Charity, her suitcase and the cat carrier. But once she got wedged in, and Jules had taken the passenger seat, he didn’t waste any time getting the car started and driving.

The only sound inside the car was the damn cat, making some kind of squealing noise that wasn’t a purr, or a meow, or anything faintly resembling any noise a cat should make.

When they got back to the hotel, he saw two of the doormen look at the cat carrier and exchange glances, but nobody tried to stop them as they proceeded up to the fourteenth floor. Thankfully, the cat had stopped squealing now that it was out of the car.

Once inside the hotel room, he had Jules and Charity wait near the door while he did a quick inspection of the rooms. When he was confident the space was clear, he motioned them forward. Charity, still holding the cat cage, turned in circles.

“Wow. I’ve never stayed in a hotel like this before,” she said.

“There’s your bedroom and bath,” Jules said, pointing off to the left.

Charity nodded, still looking awestruck. “I guess I should let Hogi out. He really liked it when we stayed at the Super 8.”

Well, then, the cat should be ecstatic at the Periwinkle. Calling up all his cat friends, inviting them over for tuna.

The vision in Royce’s head made him think that he might really have lost his mind. But then again, it was easier to think of stupid things than remember what it had felt like to see Jules’s body up against the wall, her air supply being shut off.

Her, being there in that squalid little apartment, in that kind of danger, it made him crazy.

Once Charity and her cat had gone off to her bedroom, he turned to Jules. “All of this was unnecessary,” he said. “All you had to do was stay here. Like I asked.”

Jules sighed. “I’m sorry, Royce. I really am. But in retrospect, I’d do it again. If that man had come home and seen Charity all packed up and ready to go, well, like she said, she might be one of the horrible news stories that we hear about and shake our heads. I couldn’t have lived with myself if that had happened.”

And I couldn’t have lived with something happening to you. He thought it, but he didn’t say it. They’d ended their relationship eight years ago; there was no reason for her to know that the old feelings that he’d long believed buried had sprung up from the dead and were now a waving red flag. And he was the sorry-ass bull that couldn’t keep from charging.

“So you two have been corresponding back and forth for some time?”

“Today was our second conversation and our first face-to-face meeting. But what does it matter?” she asked, her tone suggesting that he was pushing some buttons.

“Because my job is to provide security for you. And you’ve just introduced a new person into the mix. So now my job is to figure out who this new person is and identify any risks that she may pose to you. It’s what you’re paying me for.”

“Fine,” she said, her mouth barely moving.

“What’s her mother’s name?”

“Linette White.”

“And how did your mom and Linette become friends?”

“She came to the house to wash windows,” she said.

He supposed odder things had happened. But not much odder. “There had to be more than that.”

“Of course.”

Royce had trained himself to hear even the slightest nuance in a person’s delivery, to note a change in tone, pace or inflection. And that’s what he heard now. Was she lying to him? Why?

“And that was...?” he prompted.

“I think my mom was impressed by her work. She must have thought that Linette could do more. Ultimately, she recommended Linette for a position at the bank where my father worked.”

“So your dad was friends with Linette, also?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure about that. I just know that my mother kept in contact with Linette for several years after she stopped coming to our house to wash windows.”

“When’s the last time your mom saw Linette?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said. She looked him squarely in the eye. “Linette died eight months ago. I guess that takes her off the list of suspects who may or may not be trying to harm me.”

He didn’t take the bait. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

She didn’t acknowledge his half-baked consolation. “Is there anything else?”

“How is it that you and Charity found each other?”

“Recently I remembered that Linette had a daughter and I hired someone to find her.”

“You just remembered this? And felt compelled to find someone that you’d had no contact with?”

“Yes.”

Now he was fairly confident that she was lying. But he didn’t think she was about to tell him the truth.

He wanted to know more. But since his gut was telling him that it was unlikely Charity had written threatening letters and postmarked them from three different cities, he decided it could wait. He opened the leather briefcase that he’d pulled from the car. “I have the contract,” he said.

She took it, glanced at it and tossed it on the coffee table. “I’ll give it to Barry.”

“Tell me about Barry,” he said.

“I thought we’d covered that. He’s the chairman of the Miatroth board.”

“And...”

“How do you know there’s an and?”

He glanced at his watch. “We could probably get through this more quickly if you were more forthcoming with the answers.”

She sighed. “I’ve known Barry since I was a kid. He’s my dad’s friend.”

He did not want to talk about Jules’s father. “And that’s how he got to be the chairman of the board of Miatroth?”

“Of course not. Barry was an executive at Geneseel. That’s where we met. He later retired. It’s not unusual that former industry executives become board chairmen somewhere else.”

He had sensed that Barry cared deeply about Jules. He was confident the man was not a threat to her.

“Tell me about your schedule,” he said. “We need to start planning.”

She nodded, as if she’d accepted the inevitable. “Fine. But I’m going to order some lunch first. Charity said she was hungry. What would you like?”

To hear the truth. “Anything is fine.”

“Still like burgers?” she asked, already picking up the receiver of the phone.

“Still like turkey clubs?” he asked.

The air in the room seemed to still. They had a history. Brief, perhaps. But significant. They knew things about one another. Simple things. And very intimate things.

She put down the phone. “Is this going to work?” she asked.

“It might be best if we stop making assumptions about the other,” he said, talking as if he had a stiff board up his butt. He was rattled and hated the feeling.

“It’s hard,” she admitted. “In some ways, it doesn’t seem as if eight years have gone by. Maybe that sounds silly to you.”

No, it didn’t. But he couldn’t admit that.

She was staring at his left hand. “You aren’t wearing a wedding ring, Royce. Did you ever marry?”

Had barely dated. Had told himself, and the others who were brave enough to ask, that he was too busy working and going to school. Hadn’t been a monk, that was for sure. But the relationships were brief, unencumbered.

He hadn’t been stupid enough to think he was waiting for Jules. Just hadn’t been willing to accept something that was so much less than what he’d known that summer in New York.

“No,” he said. “Appears you weren’t married for long.”

“No,” she whispered. “Bryson deserved better.”

He could not have a conversation about the man. Eight years ago, she’d told him it was over. He’d believed her.

Had never guessed that she’d lie about something so important. Had never guessed that a few short months later, she’d hurt him so badly.

Chapter 7

JC ordered lunch and then handed Royce a paper copy of her electronic calendar. It was color coded. “My assistant does that,” she said, a little embarrassed to be caught being so anal retentive. But he didn’t appear to care how she kept track of her life.

He pointed at the first entry, a two-hour block this afternoon, that she’d labeled “Financial Review/Cole Hager/Wallington Hotel.”

“Cole Hager. Who is that?” he asked.

“He’s the senior analyst for a large mutual fund. Our board is hoping that he’ll come out strong in support for us.”

“Isn’t it the CFO’s job to talk to investors about financial results?”

“Yes. And he’ll probably do that. But I’ve met Cole once before and it’s not that strange that he’d want to talk to me, too.”

“He can’t come here?”

“I don’t want to ask him to do that. At this point, it would look like a power play on my part and that’s not in my best interest.”

He made no response to that. Simply settled his index finger on the X that she’d used to block out 10:00 a.m. to noon the next day with Sparrow next to it. “What’s this?” he asked.

She’d written the information on the sheet after she’d printed her electronic calendar. Her assistant would be upset that it wasn’t appropriately color coded. “Sparrow is the room name,” she said. “Evidently, all their meeting rooms are named after birds.”

“What’s happening there?” he asked.

“That’s the panel presentation I mentioned this morning. I wasn’t originally scheduled to do it but evidently one of the original presenters had a conflict. Wayne Isman contacted me and asked if I’d fill in.”

“Wayne Isman. Your old boss at Geneseel?”

She was surprised that he’d remembered. “Yeah. We’ve kept in touch over the years. We do some humanitarian work in Africa together. This particular presentation is on new pathways to fighting drug-resistant bacteria. Wayne knows that’s a topic near and dear to my heart and he figured I wouldn’t need much prep time.”

“Who else is on the panel?” he asked.

“Besides Wayne and me, there’s a physician from Mass General.”

“Name?”

She knew where this was going. “Really, Royce? You think my two fellow panelists are hit men in disguise?”

“I think that they’ll be the two closest to you during the event. That automatically puts them on my watch list.”

“Fine.” She reached into her bag that was at the end of the couch and pulled out a sheet of paper. “This is hot off the press. Wayne is getting enough printed that we can give one to every attendee.”

He stared at the paper and she regretted the impulse to show it to him. Not only were there biographies for Wayne Isman and Dr. Lilah Moorhead, there was also one for her. He knew her educational background and her work history. But would he be surprised to learn that she’d served on a presidential committee? Or that she authored a white paper that had gotten her an appearance on the Today show?

“I remember you thinking a lot of Wayne Isman,” he said, pointing at the man’s picture.

She was grateful that he didn’t want to talk about her. “He was a wonderful boss. I learned so much from him. Very bright and, of course, he’s got that killer accent, too,” she added.

“Australian, right?” he asked.

She nodded. “I could listen to him read the phone book and be totally entertained.”

“The phone book, huh? I haven’t run across one of those, but there’s a manual that describes how the dishwasher works in that cupboard.” He pointed across the room.

It was a spark of the old Royce, the one who made easy jokes and found pleasure in silly things.

“I’m sure that would be lovely, too. Wayne is one of the most respected people in the industry,” JC said. “The project we’ve been collaborating on is making children’s vaccines more readily available in underdeveloped countries.” She paused. “Of course, I let him do most of the talking in the meetings.”

“The accent thing,” he said. “I got it.”

He was staring at the paper. Wayne was a good-looking man. Was it possible that Royce thought they were collaborating on more than the vaccine project?

“Wayne Isman has been married for many years. He talks about his wife all the time. I met her once and thought she was lovely. And he’s crazy about his three daughters.”

“How nice for him,” he said, as if he couldn’t care less.

Maybe she’d read him wrong. Or maybe she’d been hoping that he was just a teensy bit jealous.

She was pathetic.

“Do attendees preregister for these sessions?” he asked.

“No. This is like most conferences. There are concurrent sessions and attendees are free to choose whatever sparks their interest at the time. There are probably seven or eight different sessions in each time slot. Presenters have been advised to plan for 150 to 200 attendees.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” he said.

“We’re not confident that it’s even a real threat.”

“We’re not confident that it isn’t.”

She sighed. “Look, I don’t want it to be obvious that I’ve got security.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” he said. “But no promises. If I feel that the situation warrants it, I’m going to shut it down.”

“The session?” she said incredulously.

“At least your participation in it.”

He was serious. “Royce, I have a professional reputation to maintain.”

“My job is to keep you safe. That’s the priority.”

Of course that was what she wanted, too. “All I’m asking is that if it’s possible, I’d like the two goals not to be mutually exclusive.”

He shifted his attention back to the calendar. Six to ten on Thursday night was colored green and labeled Ballroom. “Is that the awards dinner?” he asked.

“Yes. It may not last that long, but I wanted to plan on the careful side.”

She was not the type to arrive three minutes before going onstage—after anyone remotely responsible for the event had had a mild stroke for fear that she wasn’t going to show—and then leave as soon as the applause had ended.

She would arrive on time, mingle with other attendees, participate in dinner conversation, hopefully give a great speech and then hang around to answer questions afterward.

He leaned back in his chair. “Who else has access to your schedule?”

“Glory, my administrative assistant, and I are the only one who can see the details. Others, many others, of course, can look at my calendar and know if I’m busy or out of the office. Makes it easier to schedule things.”

“We need to change that. Immediately.”

“But—”

Royce shook his head. “Can Glory do that on your behalf?”

She nodded. This was a small hill. Certainly not one she intended to die upon. “Yes.”

“Good. And I need Glory’s information. Full name, address, social.”

“Miatroth has a rigid background screening process, I assure you.”

“I don’t care. How long has she worked for you?”

“Five years.”

“No recent issues? Strange behaviors? Odd conversations?”

She shook her head. “She’s amazing.” She wanted to implore Royce not to do anything that might upset Glory. The woman was already a little irritated with JC because she hadn’t gotten to come to Vegas, one of her very favorite places. “A good assistant is worth his or her weight in gold.”

“Noted,” he said.

A knock on the door made her jerk. Royce motioned for her to stay where she was. He looked through the peephole. “Room service,” he whispered, turning to look back at her. “Fast.”

“Bet the orders from the suites get priority.”

This from Charity who’d again emerged from her bedroom. She was carrying Hogi. The cat seemed calmer and when Charity put him down, he promptly jumped into one of the deep windowsills and pressed his nose up against the pane.

Royce opened the door and motioned the young man outside to come in. Then he watched him like a hawk, as if confident that he was intent upon doing them harm versus getting the tray delivered and returning to the kitchen for the next one.

She signed the room charge slip and added a generous tip, not only because of Royce’s scrutiny but partially in pity for the checkered bow tie and cummerbund the poor man had to wear. She’d always thought periwinkle blue was sort of a pretty color before this, but the combination of it and olive green just wasn’t nice.

Once he was gone, the three of them sat down at the glass-topped table. For a few minutes, the only sounds in the room was silverware softly clicking against the plates.

Royce was almost half-done with his burger before he spoke again. “So, Charity, are you a student?”

“Like in college?” Charity said, her upper lip raised in a sneer.

Royce nodded.

“Not for me,” Charity said.

Royce put down his fork. “So you’re working?”

“I would,” Charity said. “But nobody seems inclined to help me have the American dream.”

If Charity had come across as snippy in the interviews as she was acting now, JC understood why she was unemployed. But based on what the private detective had been able to dig up, the kid had had some hard knocks and she suspected some of Charity’s bravado was more for show. “I have a few contacts,” JC said. “I’d be happy to make some calls.”

“We’ll see,” Charity said.

JC snuck a look at the clock in the kitchen. She did not live in a world where one wasted a whole morning. Not that meeting Charity had been a waste. No, that was totally worth it. But to miss a whole morning of work was going to set her back substantially. “I have to be at the Wallington in an hour,” she said, looking at Royce.

He nodded. “That hotel is fairly new, at the far end of the strip. Will take about fifteen minutes to get there.”

JC pushed back her chair. “I’m going to get ready,” she said.

Charity stood up, too. “I’m going down to the pool.”

She smiled at the young woman. “Great. Have a good afternoon. Let’s plan to eat dinner together at seven.”

* * *

He knew there really was no reason that Charity couldn’t use the hotel services. While they’d arrived back at the hotel together, it was still unlikely that anyone would readily connect her to Jules. And, even if scumbag Bobby had somehow already wrangled a way out of jail, he wouldn’t know to come to the Periwinkle.

Besides, it wasn’t his job to protect Charity.

But for whatever reason, it seemed as if Charity was important to Jules, and that quite frankly made her important to Royce. Even if she was uneducated, unemployed and not terribly concerned about either.

Not in school, not working. Not impressive. If she intended to shake down Jules for money, he hoped Jules was smarter than that.