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“I should have taken him out,” Nash said, looking at his feet and shaking his head, talking more to himself than Welkins.
“You should not have taken him out. You’re no longer in the mountains of Afghanistan. You are in the protection business. Do you understand that?” Welkins watched him as if he weren’t sure whether Nash really did, as if Nash might not be a good fit for the team after all.
And maybe he wasn’t. He was trained as a killing machine. Maybe he wasn’t good for anything else.
“You need to learn to pull back.” Welkins’s tone was more subdued as he said that.
A moment of silence passed between them while Nash thought over the incident. “I can’t regret anything I did on that assignment, sir. But I do regret if my actions caused any difficulties for the company and the team,” he said at last.
“Then take one for the team.” Welkins’s sharp gaze cut to him.
And Nash knew he was sunk. Loyalty was the one thing he would never go around, the trait he appreciated most in others, the one value he would never compromise on.
His lungs deflated. He hung his head and rubbed his hand over his face for a second.
Four cursed days at the Vegas Dog Show, guarding celebrity heiress and media darling Kayla Landon’s puff poodle, Tsini. If the boss wanted to unman him, it would have been easier to castrate him and be done with it.
The one ray of hope in the deal was that Kayla Landon had a host of assistants. She probably had a professional team showing off her dog for her, so he wouldn’t actually have to come face-to-face with her and the hordes of paparazzi that usually followed.
What kind of dog received death threats anyway? He couldn’t see something like that happening to a real dog like a rottweiler or a German shepherd.
“All right.” He pushed the words past his teeth with effort. “I don’t think a consultation with Miss Landon will be necessary.” Please. If there was a God.
“No, indeed. I have already consulted with her.”
For the first time since he’d walked into the office, Nash relaxed. Then Welkins smiled.
Terrible suspicion raised its ugly head.
The heavy smell of doom hung in the air.
“There’s more to this, isn’t there?”
“Because of the threats, Miss Landon will be traveling with her dog-show team to Vegas. You’ll be working with her 24/7.”
He closed his eyes for a minute. Her nickname was Popcorn Princess. Seriously. And he was going to have to take orders from her. Oh, hell. Was it too late to go back to the military and sign up for active duty in some combat zone instead?
“Let me spell this out. Don’t try to fix the client’s life. Don’t make this personal. Go in, get the job done, get out and collect the payment.” Welkins looked at Nash with something akin to regret. “You can’t afford to tick off anyone else.”
Meaning if he didn’t please Miss Landon, he would probably not have a job when he came back.
And the demand for washed-up commando soldiers wasn’t exactly great in the current job market. Especially for those with a near-blank résumé, since one hundred percent of his missions for the government had been top secret.
He was no longer fit for that job, or most others. But he had to keep working. Because if he stood still long enough without anything to do and occupy his mind, the darkness tended to catch up with him.
He thanked Welkins and walked out, knowing one thing for sure. Empty-headed socialites and puffy-haired poodles notwithstanding, no matter what happened, he couldn’t mess up this assignment. If he lost Welkins and WSS, he’d have nothing left.
“SO CLOSE to perfect it’s scary. I’m definitely a genius.” Elvis, her makeup artist, focused critically on her left eyebrow and did a last-minute touch-up with the spoolie. “Ay mios dio. You’re so fabulous, no one will pay any attention to the food.”
Her penthouse condo, in the most exclusive part of Philadelphia, was buzzing with activity. Kayla Landon worked on blocking out all the distractions. And kept failing.
“Let’s hope I don’t mess up any ingredients.” Not that she thought she would. She was feeling decidedly optimistic today, or rather had been. She normally used makeup time to relax, but now found herself watching the new bodyguard from the corners of her eyes instead.
Her uncle had insisted on him. She half regretted already that she’d caved. She didn’t want to have to deal with him, with the adjustment of a new man on her team.
He was gorgeous, in a scary sort of way. Six feet two inches of sinew and hard muscle, and a don’t-mess-with-me look in his amazing gold eyes. That and a strong dislike for her.
She wasn’t surprised.
Most men she met either hated her or wanted to screw her on sight. For the moment, she didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed that Nash Wilder seemed unequivocally in the first camp.
He was taking stock of her, her home and her people.
She made him wait, mostly because she could tell that it annoyed him, and also because she needed a few moments to gather herself before she faced all that raw, masculine power.
“Hey.” Her younger brother, Greg, ambled by. He gave her a sweet smile and dropped a kiss on her hair, careful not to mess up her makeup.
In a couple of hours, The Cooking Channel would be recording a show in her kitchen as part of their Celebrity Cooks at Home series. They were setting up already, making a royal mess. People she’d never seen before traipsed all over everything.
She wasn’t thrilled about opening her home to the public once again, but the show was doing a special for a charity that stood close to her heart, one that funded Asperger’s research. Greg had that mild form of autism, among a host of other issues.
He was looking at all the people, his arms crossed. He hated crowds. Not that he would act out as he used to. Now that he was a grown man, he’d learned to control his impulses. For the most part. He’d definitely gotten worse since they’d lost their parents and their older brother. Maybe tonight, after everyone was gone, she’d try to talk to him about that again.
But for now, all she did was slip the white envelope off her dressing table and hand it to him. He stuffed it into his back pocket. She wanted to ask what he wanted the money for this time, but didn’t want to humiliate him the way their father had done so often in the past. Money was a touchy issue for Greg.
Someone dropped a cookie sheet in the kitchen. The metal clanging on tiles drew her attention for a moment.
“Wish they’d let me cook what I wanted. Frilly finger food is not really my thing.” She stifled her discontent. “I suppose that’s what everyone expects from me. Easy and fancy.”
“You do what you want to do.” Greg was as supportive and protective of her as she was of him.
“I have to trust them to know what’s best for the show. We want to raise serious money.”
“Don’t trust anyone but yourself.”
He sounded so much like their father as he said that. Don’t trust anyone but yourself had been one of Will Landon’s favorite sayings.
Kayla was beginning to make it hers these days. She wondered what brought it to Greg’s mind. She’d been careful to keep all her worries and doubts from him. Still, Greg must have picked up on the increasing tension in the air.
She forced a smile. “Don’t worry about any of this. They’ll be done in a couple of hours and then they’ll be out of here.”
Greg gave a solemn nod. “I’ll be back later.”
She closed her eyes for a second as the sable brush dusted her face. Her brother was gone by the time she opened them.
“God has never made a prettier face.” Elvis smiled from ear to ear. “She must be so proud of you, querida.” He stepped behind her, a hand on his slim hip, glowing with pride as he looked her over in the mirror.
She looked for the pimple that had blossomed in the middle of her chin overnight. Vanished. She blew a kiss to Elvis. “You’re the best. Thanks.”
He whisked away the white cloth that had been protecting her clothes. “You’re welcome. Who’s the hottie over there? Yo quiero some of that.” His gaze darted that way in the mirror.
“He’ll be watching out for Tsini for the next couple of days.”
“Ay dios mio. Makes me want to write myself death threats.” Elvis fanned himself with his hand and gave her a sly look.
They grinned at each other in the mirror before he turned her swivel chair. “Go knock ‘em dead.”
“It’s a culinary show. I think they expect me to cook for them.”
She glanced at her agent and manager chatting at the other end of the den, probably discussing the dog show. A couple of vendors who’d found out that she would be there had already made contact about the possibility of celebrity product endorsement. Her agent was for it, her manager against. She was undecided. She had plenty on her schedule already, but there were a couple of free animal clinics she knew to which she could donate the income from the ads.
She pushed all that from her mind for now and slid off the chair, full of nervous energy despite the fabulous yoga session she’d had that morning. She headed for the living room, waving her security back when they moved to follow. Mike and Dave were great guys, but they were a little miffed over the new security guard, and she wanted to have her first meeting with him without their interference.
“Mr. Wilder? I’m Kayla.” She offered him her hand, even as she thought, Wilder than what? And knew from the looks of him that the answer had to be, Wilder than just about any other thing she’d ever met up with.
He held her fingers gently in his large hand. Didn’t feel the need to impress her with his strength. So far so good. There was hope yet.
“Please, call me Nash,” he said.
She hadn’t been prepared for his voice. Sexy as sin. His tone was deep-timbered, and tickled something behind her breast bone as it vibrated through her.
She put up her invisible professional force field, which protected her from an attraction toward hot men. Attraction could lead to letting her guard down. And letting her guard down always led to disaster. She was done with that. She’d learned her lesson a couple of times over.
“We can talk in here.” She motioned toward her sprawling living room overlooking Memorial Park, which was outfitted with a state-of-the-art sound system. Soft music floated in the background, the latest album of one of her friends.
“We’ll need everyone on set in fifteen minutes,” the producer called out in warning from the kitchen.
Plenty of time for a brief tête-à-tête. She settled into a space-age style red-leather pod and crossed her legs.
Nash eyed the pod across from hers then picked the ultra-modern couch instead, sat as if expecting it to break under him. He didn’t even try to disguise the derision in his eyes as he looked around. Probably didn’t expect her to notice.
People who equated her with the airhead-heiress media image used to drive her to frustration. These days, since she only stayed alive because her enemies continued to underestimate her, she didn’t mind any longer, had come to count on it, in fact.
But still, Nash Wilder sitting there and judging her before they’d ever exchanged two words got under her skin.
“So you’re the great pet detective?” She couldn’t help herself.
He focused back on her, fixed her with a glare that was probably supposed to put her in her place.
His short hair was near-black, his eyes dark gold whiskey. The two-inch scar along his jawline gave him a fierce look. The sleeves of his black T-shirt stretched across impressive biceps. He had Semper Fi tattooed on one and some sort of a shield on the other.
“I’m a bodyguard, Miss Landon,” he was saying. “I’m not a pet detective.”
And I’m not an airhead blonde, she wanted to tell him, but didn’t. Nobody ever believed her anyway.
“There are a few things I’m going to need from you.” He moved on. “A copy of your employee files, with pictures. A list of close associates. Your schedule for the past month. Your hour-by-hour schedule for the next four days of the show. The threats. The originals if the police didn’t take them.”
“I didn’t call the police.”
The police had done nothing when she’d gone to them for help about her parents’ and her brother’s deaths. Accidents. She hated that word with a hot red passion, but that was all they would tell her. They sure weren’t going to bother themselves about her pet.
“You can have a list of my employees with their pictures, but not their employee files. That would be a breach of confidentiality.”
He glared, obviously not liking that she pushed back. Tough for him. She expected a better plan for Tsini’s protection than him harassing her employees.
Other than Greg and her uncle, she had barely any family left. Her staff was her family. They looked out for her, took care of her, defended her from the paparazzi and kept her secrets. She trusted them implicitly and she wasn’t going to hand them over for any sort of interrogation by Mr. Hot and Overzealous here.
Wilder kept going with the narrow-eyed look. If he thought he could browbeat her into doing whatever he wanted, he was setting himself up for steep disappointment.
“You do that so well, Mr. Wilder. Do they teach mean looks in pet-detective school?” she began, then decided to stop there. She shouldn’t antagonize him. But she knew that he’d judged her and judged her unfairly from the moment he’d set eyes on her, probably from the moment he’d taken on the job, or before. She resented it and felt some perverse need to put him in his place. Stupid. She needed to let go of that. Whatever he thought of her, he’d come to help.
Still, every inch of him exuded how much he didn’t want to be here. The restraint that kept him in his seat was admirable. “Miss Landon—”
“Kayla.”
“All I want is to figure out where the threats came from. It would make my job easier.”
He was hired to keep an eye on Tsini for the next four days. Was he going above and beyond to impress her, or did he really care?
He didn’t look as if her good opinion mattered one whit to him, for sure. But how could he care? He didn’t know her and hadn’t even met Tsini yet.
“I like doing my job as well as I can,” he said.
That was it, then. A dedicated man. Her father would have liked him.
Tsini chose that moment to wander out of her bedroom and mosey in. She went straight to the stranger in the room and gave him a few cursory sniffs.
“And this would be my job?” He looked the standard poodle over.
“We prefer to call her Tsini.” Kayla petted her when Tsini finally made her way to the pod chair. Her gleaming white hair was done in show clip, ready for the competition. They were leaving for Vegas in the morning. “Aren’t you pretty today?”
Nash leaned back on the couch, watching the two of them. “So how much would one of these fancy things run a person?”
Not much at all. She’d rescued the abused poodle from a shelter. Some despicable breeder had been shut down just days before and about two dozen purebred poodles had ended up crammed into the already overcrowded cages. Kayla had gone there for a guard dog—right after her older brother’s death. But then she’d seen Tsini with her badly broken leg, the cutest puppy that ever lived, and when she’d been told that the surgery to reset it would cost too much so she’d have to be put down, Kayla had snapped her up quicker than the ASPCA guy could ask for her autograph.
She’d paid for the surgeries, rehabilitation and regular grooming, wanting to erase the frightened, sick mess Tsini had been. And she had succeeded at least in this one thing in her life.
Tsini had turned out to be a real girl. She liked to look pretty and liked to show it off. And it was a pleasure to take her to shows and let her. After Kayla tracked down and obtained the dog’s papers.
None of that would interest Nash who’d strutted into her home with his thinly veiled prejudices, determined to believe her a spoiled brat. “Tsini is priceless,” she said.
She reached for the star-shaped wireless phone on the see-through acrylic coffee table and rang her office as Tsini settled in at her feet. Her secretary picked up on the second ring.
“Could you please send over my schedule for the last month and the next four days? The official schedule of the dog show, too? Thanks.”
She hung up then walked over to the built-in cabinetry that was camouflaged in the wall paneling. She pressed a panel and a deep drawer slid out. She pulled out the plastic bag inside and carried it back to Nash, tossed it on his lap.
Tsini had followed her there and back, taking her time to resettle again. She was a sweet, good-natured dog. Unconditional love. Complete acceptance.
