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“Dear old Dad may be a powerful judge, but his power doesn’t reach everywhere.”
“That doesn’t explain how you found out.”
He couldn’t explain the “how” of that. There were things about him she didn’t know. He kept much better secrets than her father. “But I’m right.”
“One of the cases my father’s prosecuting has gotten … messy. The police are investigating.”
“You’re really going to put your faith in the three-man shop they call a police department?” He couldn’t keep the cynicism from his voice. “Security around you is awe-inspiring. I should get my men to make notes.”
“No need to be sarcastic. I’m taking precautions. This isn’t the first time someone has threatened our family because of my father’s job.”
“But this is the most serious threat.” If he told her about the paper trail, he would have to explain how he got it. But that was a last resort. If he couldn’t convince her to accept his help any other way, he would tell her what he could about the work he did outside the music industry.
“You seem to know a lot about what’s going on in my life.”
She studied him with deep brown eyes that still had the power to draw him in and lure him past reason.
“I told you, Celia. I care enough to keep tabs. I care enough to want to make sure you’re okay.”
“Thank you. That’s … nice.” Her braced shoulders eased, some of her defensiveness draining away, as well. “I appreciate your concern, even if it’s a little confusing. I will be careful. Now that you’ve fulfilled your sense of … obligation or whatever, I truly do need to pack up and go home.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.” He raised a hand and plastered on his best smile. “Don’t bother saying no. I can carry your books, like old times.”
“Except for your whole secret-service-style protective detail.”
“You’ll be safe with me.” More than she could know.
“That’s what we thought eighteen years ago.” She stopped and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me.”
His mind exploded with images of their teenage passion, out-of-control hormones that had led them to reckless sex. A lot of sex. He cleared his throat. Too bad his brain still hitched on the past.
“Apology not needed but accepted.” He knew he’d let her down then, and damned if he would repeat the mistake. “Let me take you out to dinner, and we can talk over an idea I have for making sure you’re safe until the trial’s over.”
“Thank you, but no.” She closed the laptop on her desk and tucked it in a case. “I have end-of-the-year grades to finish.”
“You have to eat.”
“And I will. I have half of a leftover panino waiting in my refrigerator at home.”
She might be a more poised woman now, but there was no missing the old Celia stubbornness. She’d dug in her heels, and it would take serious maneuvering to budge her.
“Fine, then you leave me no choice. I’ll talk now. This threat against your life is real. Very real. In my line of work—” his real line of work, which only a handful of people knew about “—I have access to security sources you can’t imagine. You need protection beyond anything the local police department can provide and more than your father can buy.”
“You’re being overly dramatic.”
“Drug lords, Celia, have unlimited funds and no scruples.” He’d taken the fall for those types as a teenager to keep his mother safe. And it was his own fault for putting himself in their path by working in that club as a last-ditch effort to make enough money to support Celia and their baby on the way. “They will hurt you, badly, even kill you, in hopes of swaying your father.”
“Do you think I don’t already know this?” Her jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth, the only slip in her carefully controlled composure. “I’ve done everything I can.”
He saw his opening and took it. “Not everything.”
“Fine, Mr. Know-It-All,” she said with a sigh, sweeping back her silky hair from her face. “What else can I do?”
Clasping her arms, he stepped closer, willing himself not to cave to the temptation to gather her soft body close against him and kiss her until she was too dizzy to disagree. Although if he had to use passion to persuade her, then so be it. Because one way or another, he would convince her. “Let my bodyguards protect you. Come with me on my European tour.”
Two
Go on a European tour? With Malcolm?
Celia grabbed the edge of her desk for balance and choked back her shock at his outlandish offer. He couldn’t possibly be serious. Not after eighteen years apart, with only a few short letters and a couple of phone calls exchanged in the beginning. They’d broken up, drifted away from each other, eventually cut off contact completely after the baby’s adoption was complete.
Back at the start of Malcolm’s music career, she’d been in her early twenties, under the care of a good therapist and going to college. She’d dreamed of what it would be like if Malcolm showed up on her doorstep. What if he swept her off her feet and they picked up where they’d left off?
But those fantasies never came to fruition. They only held her back, and she’d learned to make her own realities—concrete and reasonable plans for the future.
Even if he had shown up before, she wasn’t sure then or now if she would have gone with him. Her mental health had been a hard-won battle. It could have been risky, in her fragile state, to trade stability for the upheaval of a life on the road with a high-profile music star.
But it sure would have been nice to have the choice, for him to have cared enough to come back and offer. His ridiculous request now was too little, too late.
Celia hitched her floral computer bag over her shoulder and eyed her office door a few short steps away. “Joke’s over, Malcolm. Of course I’m not going to Europe with you. Thanks for the laugh, though. I’m heading home now rather than stick around through my planning period since, for the first day in forever, I’m not slated for bus duty. You may have time to waste playing games, but I have grades to tabulate.”
His hand fell to rest on her bare arm, stopping her. “I’m completely serious.”
Hair prickled. Goose bumps rose. And damn it, desire stirred in her belly.
After all this time, her body still reacted to his touch, and she resented the hell out of that fact. “You’re never serious. Just ask the tabloid reporters. They fill articles with tales of your charm on and off camera.”
He angled closer, his grip firm, stoking long-buried embers. “When it comes to you, I’ve always been one hundred percent serious.”
And wasn’t that an about-face for them? She used to be the wild, adventurous one while Malcolm worked hard to secure his future. Or at least, she’d thought he’d been serious about the future—until he’d ended up in handcuffs, arrested.
Her breath hitched in her throat for three heavy heartbeats before she regained her equilibrium. “Then I’ll be the rational one here. There’s truly no way I’m leaving for Europe with you. Thank you again for the offer to protect me, but you’re off the hook.”
He tipped his head to the side, his face so close a puff of her breath would rustle the stubborn lock of hair that fell over his forehead. “You used to fantasize about making love in Paris in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.” His voice went husky and seductive, those million-dollar vocal cords stroking her as effectively as any glide of his fingers.
She moved his hand slowly—and deliberately—off her arm. “Now I’m really not going anywhere with you.”
“Fine. I’ll cancel my concert tour and become your shadow until we’re sure you’re safe.” He grinned unrepentantly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “But my fans will be so pissed. They can get rabid sometimes, dangerous even, and above all, my goal is to keep you safe.”
Was he for real?
“This is too bizarre.” She clenched her fists to resist the urge to pull her hair—or his. “How did you say you found out about the Martin case?”
He hesitated for the barest instant before answering, “I have contacts.”
“Money can buy anything.” She couldn’t help but think of how he’d once disdained her father’s portfolio and now he could buy her dad out more than twice over.
“Extra cash would have bought us both some help eighteen years ago.”
And just that fast, their final fight came rolling back over her, how he’d insisted on playing the gig at that seedy music joint because it paid well. He’d been determined for them to get married and be a family. She’d been equally as certain they were both too young to make that happen. He’d gotten arrested in a drug raid on the bar, and she’d been sent to a Swiss “boarding school” to have her baby.
Even now, she saw the regret in his eyes, mixed with censure. She couldn’t go down this path with him, not again. Tears of rage and pain and loss welled inside her, and while she understood how unhealthy it was to bottle her emotions, she refused to crumble in front of him.
She needed to get out of there before she lost it altogether and succumbed to the temptation to throw herself into the comfort of his arms, to bury her face in his shirt.
To inhale the scent of him until it filled her senses.
“Things would have turned out better for you with more financial options,” Celia said, reminded of how he’d lost out on the promise of a scholarship to Juilliard. “But no amount of money would have changed the choices I made. What we shared is in the past.” Securing her computer tote bag on her shoulder, she pushed past him. “Thank you for worrying about me, but we’re done here. Goodbye, Malcolm.”
She rushed by, her foot knocking and jangling a box of tambourines on her way out into the gymnasium. Malcolm could stay or go, but he wasn’t her concern anymore. The custodian would lock her office after he swept up. She had to get away from Malcolm before she made a fool of herself over him.
Again.
Her sandals slapped an even but fast pace through the exit and directly into the teachers’ parking lot. Thank heavens she didn’t have to march through the halls with the whole school watching and whispering. Tears burning her eyes, she registered the sound of his footsteps behind her, but she kept moving out into the muggy afternoon.
The parking lot was all but empty, another hour still left in the school day. In the distance, the playground hummed with the cheers of happy children. What a double-edged sword it was working here, a job she loved but with constant reminders of what she’d given up.
Her head fell back, and she blinked hard. The sunshine blinded her, making her eyes water all the more. Damn Malcolm Douglas for coming into her life again and damn her own foolish attraction to him that hadn’t dimmed one bit. She swiped away the tears and charged ahead to her little green sedan. Heat steamed up from the asphalt. Magnolia-scented wind rustled the trees and rolled across the parking lot. A flyer flapped under the windshield wiper.
She stopped in her tracks, her hand flying to her throat. Was that another veiled warning from her father’s latest enemy?
Every day for a week, she’d found a flyer under her wiper, all relating to death. A funeral parlor. Cemetery plots. Life insurance. The police had called it a coincidence.
She pinched the paper out from under the blade, shuffling her computer bag higher up onto her shoulder. The flyer advertised …
A coupon for flowers? A sigh of relief shuddered through her.
An absolutely benign piece of paper. She laughed, crumpling the ad in her hand. She was actually getting paranoid, which meant whoever was trying to scare her had won. She fished out her keys and thumbed the unlock button on the key fob. Then she reached to slide her computer bag onto the passenger seat …
And stopped short.
A black rose rested precisely in the cup holder. There was no mistaking the ominous message. Somehow that macabre rosebud had gotten into her car. Someone had been in her locked vehicle.
Bile rose in her throat. Her mind raced back to the florist ad under her windshield wiper. She pulled the paper out of her computer bag and flattened the coupon on the seat.
Panic snapped through her veins, her emotions already on edge from the unexpected encounter with Malcolm. She bolted out of her sedan, stumbling as she backed away. Her body slammed into someone. A hard male chest. She stifled a scream and spun fast to find Malcolm standing behind her.
He cupped the back of her head. “What’s wrong?”
With his fingers in her hair and her nerves in shambles, she couldn’t even pretend to be composed. “There’s a black rose in my car—completely creepy. I don’t know how it got there since I locked up this morning. I know I did, because I had to use my key fob to get in.”
“We call the cops, now.”
She shook her head, nudging his hand aside. “The police chief will write it up and say I’m paranoid about some disgruntled students.”
The old chief would make veiled references to mental instability in her past, something her father had tried to keep under wraps. Few knew. Still, for them, a stigma lingered. Unfair—not to mention dangerous since she wasn’t being taken seriously.
From the thunderclouds gathering in Malcolm’s eyes, he was definitely taking her seriously. He clasped her shoulders in broad, warm hands, gently urging her to the side and into the long shadows of his bodyguards. Malcolm strode past her to the sedan, looking first at the rose, then kneeling to peer under the car.
For a bomb or something?
She swallowed hard, stepping back. “Malcolm, let’s just call the police after all. Please, get away from my car.”
Standing, he faced her again, casting a tall and broad-shouldered shadow over her in a phantom caress. “We’re in agreement on that.” He charged forward and clasped her arm, the calluses on his fingers rasping against her skin. “Let’s go.”
“Did you see something under there?”
“No, but I haven’t looked under the hood. I’m getting you out of here while my men make sure it’s safe before the rest of the school comes pouring out.”
The rest of the school? The sound of the children playing ball in the distance struck fear in her gut. The faces of her teacher friends and students scrolled through her head. To put an entire school in harm’s way? She couldn’t fathom whoever was threatening her would risk drawing this much attention—would risk this many lives. But there was definitely something more sinister about this latest threat, and that rattled her.
Malcolm tugged her farther from the vehicle.
“Where are we going?” She looked back over her shoulder at the redbrick building with the flags flapping in the wind. “I need to warn everyone.”
“My bodyguards are already taking care of that,” he reassured her. “We’re going to my limo. It has reinforced windows and an armor-plated body. We can talk there and figure out your next move.”
Reinforced windows? Armor plating? Security in front and behind? He truly did have all the money he’d once dreamed of, access to resources beyond her own local law enforcement. Enough resources to protect her from all threats, real or imagined.
She shivered in apprehension and didn’t bother denying herself the comforting protection of Malcolm’s presence all the way to his stretch Cadillac.
Malcolm stopped seeing red once he had Celia tucked into the safety of his armored limousine and the chauffer was headed for her home.
Two of his bodyguards had stayed with her vehicle to wait for the police—and report the details back to him without the filter of local authorities. He didn’t think there was anything else wrong with her vehicle, but better to be certain and put all of his financial resources to work. He’d done all he could for now to make sure Celia and the school weren’t in danger.
He scrolled through messages on his cell phone for updates from his security detail, all too aware of the warm presence of Celia in the seat beside him. Once he had her safely settled, he would work with his contacts to find substantial proof to nail that drug-dealing bastard Martin for these threats. Malcolm had taken the fall for a drug-dealing scumbag in return for them leaving his mother alone. He hadn’t known who to turn to then.
He wasn’t a flat-broke teenager anymore. He had the resources and power to be there for Celia now in a way he hadn’t before. Maybe then he could finally forgive himself for letting her down.
As they drove down the azalea-lined Main Street, he felt the weight of her glare.
Malcolm tucked away his phone and gave her his undivided attention. “What’s wrong?”
“Something that just occurred to me. Did you put that flower in my car to scare me so I would come with you?” She stared at him suspiciously.
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe right now. I haven’t seen you in nearly two decades. And the day you show up, offering to protect me, this happens. The thought that they were here, at the school, near my students …” Gasping for air, she grabbed her knees and leaned forward. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
He palmed between her shoulder blades, holding himself back from the urge to gather her close, just to touch her again. “You know me. You know how much I wanted to take care of you before. You of all people know how much it frustrated me that my dad wasn’t there to take care of my mom. Now, ask me again if I put the rose in your car?”
Sweeping her hair aside with her hands, she eyed him, her breath still shallow. “Okay, I believe you, and I’m sorry. Although a part of me wishes you had done it because then I wouldn’t have to be this worried.”
“It’s going to be all right. Anyone coming after you will have to get through me,” he said, tamping down the frustration of his teenage years when there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do for Celia or his mom. Times were different now. His bank balance was definitely different. “The police are going to look over your car and secure the parking lot if there’s a problem.”
“Ten minutes ago you said the police can’t protect me.”
Dark brown locks slithered over his arm, every bit as soft as he remembered. He eased his hand away while he still could. He might not believe in the power of love anymore, but he sure as hell respected the power of lust. His body still reacted to her, but this wasn’t just any woman who’d caught his eye. This was Celia. The power of the attraction—as strong as ever—had caught him unawares. But he’d come here to make up for the past. What they’d shared was over. “We still need to let the police know. Where is your father? At the courthouse?”
