Single Mom's Bodyguard Page 18

  Careful to keep her steps light—like Garek Kozminski the former cat burglar had taught her—she moved silently through the house. She’d thought she had seen the light moving behind the blinds at the kitchen window.

  It made sense that someone might have slipped in through the back door. She had been watching the front. She wouldn’t have missed someone.

  But Cole Bentler had the back. He’d left earlier, leaving Manny alone with Emilia and Blue. Maybe he’d slipped away again.

  Something was going on with him.

  The last thing Lars needed was another friend keeping secrets—like Dane had kept Emilia’s secret from him. He had been so upset.

  Nikki passed the kitchen counter where the knife block sat. One of those knives had been used on Emilia and on the father of her baby. But now another one was missing.

  She sucked in a breath as she realized where it was—the point of it pressed against her back—at the bottom of her rib cage. If it pushed through her flesh, it would hit some organs.

  Nikki knew more about computers and guns than human anatomy, though. Her kidneys and liver were back there somewhere. But she might have a better shot of surviving getting stabbed in the back than taking a knife in the heart like poor Bradley Zeinstra.

  But then a soft voice tremulously threatened, “Put down the gun or I will impale you.”

  And she laughed.

  “Nikki!” The knife fell to the floor with a clank. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that it was you!”

  Nikki turned around and hugged the young woman. “I’m so proud of you!”

  “Why?” Emilia asked, appalled. “I almost stabbed you!”

  “That’s good,” Nikki said. “You were defending yourself.”

  Emilia shook her head. “You’re all crazy—all you bodyguards.”

  Nikki’s heart swelled with pride. She was finally the bodyguard she’d wanted to be for so many years. She’d begged her brothers to let her be one of them. But they’d never agreed, until recently. Until she’d taken on the assignment of protecting Blue.

  That assignment should have ended several weeks ago, though. The baby and his mother should no longer need protection. And maybe they wouldn’t.

  “It’s good you’re defending yourself,” Nikki explained. “You grabbed the knife.”

  “I almost didn’t,” Emilia admitted. “The last time I grabbed one, the guy took it away from me.” And used it on her.

  Nikki flinched as she caught a glimpse of the white bandage wound around Emilia’s wrist. They could have lost her then. “You should have a gun,” she said.

  Emilia shook her head again. “No.”

  Before Nikki could ask why she was so adamant, Blue began to cry. From being his nanny for a few weeks, Nikki knew his cries. This wasn’t an “I’m wet” cry. Or hungry. Or even lonely. This was a cry of fear.

  His mother must have recognized it, too, because she ran for the stairs. Emilia was taller than Nikki, her legs longer. She couldn’t overtake her. She couldn’t protect her, either, if she were running straight into a trap in the nursery.

  * * *

  “It must have been just a bad dream,” Emilia murmured as she settled a sleeping Blue back into his crib. He’d been so scared, though, trembling with fear over whatever nightmare had awakened him.

  Nikki released the breath she must have been holding in a ragged sigh. “I thought there might be someone inside the house. That’s why I came inside.”

  Emilia tensed. “I didn’t hear anyone until I found you in the kitchen.”

  “I saw a light,” Nikki explained. “Like someone had a flashlight.”

  Emilia held up her cell phone. “I was using the light on it to walk around.”

  “Why aren’t you in bed?” Nikki asked, and she stepped closer, peering at Emilia in the faint glow of the nursery night light.

  Suddenly self-conscious, Emilia lifted a hand to her face. She knew she had big dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked like she felt—like hell.

  Emilia shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.” And it had been too hard to lie in her bed without Dane, without his strong arm wrapped tightly and protectively around her.

  But she’d shot that arm. So she didn’t blame him for wanting to leave.

  “Are you having nightmares?” Nikki asked.

  Emilia would have had to be able to sleep to actually dream. She shook her head.

  “It’s understandable if you had them,” Nikki assured her. “After everything you’ve been through.”

  Like she’d told Dane, that was all her fault—because of her mistakes. He hadn’t argued with her.

  “And if you’re afraid, that makes sense, too,” Nikki said. “You have every reason to be afraid.”

  Emilia smiled and gestured at her and the gun. “Blue and I have the most protection anyone could have right now. I know we’re safe.”

  “Yes,” Nikki agreed. “You are. So you should go to sleep.”

  “I can’t,” she said. Nikki wasn’t just her bodyguard or her future sister-in-law. She’d proved herself to be a friend, as well. So Emilia confessed, “It’s because of Dane.”

  “You’re worried about him,” Nikki said with a nod of agreement. “He shouldn’t have gone off alone, not after that attack at his place a few nights ago.”

  Emilia’s stomach lurched. She hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t considered that his leaving would actually put him in danger. He should have stayed—for so many reasons—but most of all for his own protection.

  She reached out and grasped Nikki’s arm. “Do you know where he is? Do you know if he’s safe?”

  “I’ve been watching you and the house,” Nikki said. “I saw him leave, but I have no idea where he was going.”

  And Emilia had been too proud and stupid to ask him to stay. What if she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life? What if she never got the chance to see him again?

  She would never get the chance to tell him how she’d just realized she felt about him...

  Chapter 22

  As Lars stared down the barrel of the gun, he raised his hands in the air. “It’s me,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”

  But Dane didn’t lower the gun.

  Lars couldn’t blame him for wanting to shoot him, though, not after how he’d been treating him. “Or do you want one free shot?”

  Dane’s lips curved into a slight grin. And he cocked the gun.

  Lars’s pulse leaped with a momentary flash of fear that his friend—his ex-friend—might actually shoot him.

  But instead of pulling the trigger, Dane uncocked it and tucked the Glock back into his holster. “Don’t sneak up on me like that again.”

  “You’re one to talk about sneaking,” Lars said. “You’ve been sneaking around with my sister.”

  Dane groaned. Probably because Lars sounded like a broken record about it.

  But now he knew he needed to stop. He just had to have his say first. “You should have told me what was going on with her.”

  “She asked me not to,” Dane said.

  And suddenly Lars understood everything. Dane was notorious for keeping secrets. He’d kept all of Lars’s, even when the other guys had pressed him for the truth. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have known.”

  “You realized something was going on with her,” Dane reminded him. “That’s why you asked me to watch out for her.”

  “But why didn’t she come to me?” Lars asked, and his heart ached that once again his sister had turned to someone else for help instead of him.

  “She didn’t want to worry you,” Dane explained. “You’d just moved in with Nikki, just gotten engaged. She didn’t want to impinge on your happiness.”

  That sounded like Emilia, selfless and sen
sitive. But he was worried there was more to it than that. He’d acted like such an ass with her.

  “Is that really the only reason?” he persisted.

  Dane sighed. “She didn’t think you would believe her,” he admitted. “Hell, she wasn’t sure what to believe. She thought she might be losing her mind.”

  Anguish pierced him at the thought of the terror his sister had endured. Alone. She was so young to have gone through so much. “Thank you for being there for her,” he said. “For protecting her.”

  Dane never accepted gratitude, so Lars wasn’t surprised when he shrugged it off and said, “I didn’t do that great a job of it.”

  “She’s alive,” Lars said. “And she has Blue. That’s a great job.” He narrowed his eyes and studied his friend’s face. His bruises were darker now. Unfortunately they weren’t all from the men who’d attacked him outside his apartment. “That’s all you were doing, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Dane asked.

  “It was just a job,” Lars said. “You pretending to be involved, that was just the cover to explain you moving in with her?” Just like Nikki had posed as a nanny months ago to protect Blue.

  He’d been such an idiot.

  “I should have known you wouldn’t get involved with my sister,” Lars said. “Hell, you won’t get involved with anyone, let alone a woman with a kid.”

  He, better than anyone, knew about Dane’s aversion to family. Dane had almost quit Payne Protection because it was too much family.

  “Will you please accept my apology?” he implored his friend. He had to know they were all right, that they could go back to being the best friends they’d been since boot camp.

  But Dane shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Lars asked. “Don’t all the years we’ve been friends mean anything to you?”

  He had once told Emilia how he couldn’t read Dane, about how he couldn’t tell if the man really cared about anything or anyone. After that, she would have been a fool if she’d fallen for him. While she’d made some mistakes, she wasn’t a fool.

  “I won’t accept your apology,” Dane said, “because I don’t deserve it.”

  Lars tensed as he realized what his friend meant.

  * * *

  Dane braced himself for the blow he was certain was coming—that he had coming. He’d just admitted to Lars that it hadn’t all been a cover. He had crossed the line with Emilia, more than once.

  But when Lars finally bellowed, it was with laughter. Instead of losing his temper, had he lost his mind?

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Dane asked.

  Manny was the one with the concussion. Not Lars. But he must have lost his comprehension.

  “I get it,” Lars said. “It wasn’t an act.”

  “Yeah...”

  So why wasn’t Lars hitting him again?

  “None of it was an act,” Lars continued. “You really do care about her.”

  Dane tensed. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “So you don’t care about her at all?” Lars asked, and the amusement was gone. “You were just using her?”

  “Of course not.” If anything she’d used him.

  And once she hadn’t needed his protection anymore, she’d basically told him to leave, to get out of her house and out of her life.

  She didn’t need him. She didn’t care about him.

  He shouldn’t have expected that she would.

  “I wanted to keep her safe,” he explained. “That’s why I agreed—”

  “So it was her idea?”

  “No.” It had been his. Had he used it as an excuse to get close to her? “Because she didn’t want anyone to know what was going on.”

  A muscle twitched along Lars’s tightly clenched jaw. “She didn’t want me to know.”

  “Or Nikki.”

  “Because she knew Nikki would tell me,” Lars said. But instead of sounding upset, he sounded resigned now.

  Maybe that was why he hadn’t swung at Dane again.

  “I should have told you,” Dane admitted. But then he wouldn’t have had an excuse to move in with her, to be that close to her. So close that nothing had separated them but skin...

  So close that he’d become a part of her. And she would forever be a part of him.

  “I’d beat you up,” Lars said. “But I can see you’re already beating yourself up enough for the both of us.”

  “I thought I could catch the son of a bitch in the act,” Dane admitted. “I thought I could get him as he was breaking in or something. But he keeps slipping away from me.”

  Just like Emilia had slipped away.

  “I don’t think it’s him you’re upset about,” Lars said.

  “Of course I am,” Dane said. “You’re the one who must have lost your damn mind. First you’re laughing, now you’re talking crazy. I want that son of a bitch caught!”

  Lars’s blond brows arched high over eyes that widened with shock.

  Shock that Dane couldn’t understand.

  “He terrorized her for weeks,” he reminded Lars.

  Hadn’t the guy been paying attention earlier?

  “He broke in and cut her wrist,” he said. “Hell, he just ran her and Blue and Manny off the road. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Lars shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just not used to seeing you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Emotional,” Lars said.

  He uttered a pithy curse. “Emotional? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Lars chuckled again. “I never thought I’d see you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Scared,” Lars said. “All those dangerous missions we went on—I never saw a hint of fear in you. You didn’t care about yourself. You didn’t care about anything. But now you do.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dane murmured, as he began to sweat, a trickle running between his shoulder blades. “You’re talking crazy. I’m not scared.”

  Not for himself. Sure, he was scared for Emilia and for Blue. He wanted them to be safe.

  “What reason would I have to be afraid?” he asked. “Sure, four guys jumped me a few nights ago. And I was shot. But it’s not like any of that hasn’t happened to me before.”

  Lars grinned. “Something has happened to you that hasn’t before. That’s why you’re scared.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “And you’re in love,” Lars declared. “You’ve fallen for my sister.”

  Dane shook his head. “No...” It wasn’t possible. He wasn’t capable. “No.”

  But Lars wasn’t listening. He just kept laughing at him.

  * * *

  He hadn’t been able to sleep. Hell, he hadn’t even tried. Too much adrenaline had been rushing through his body yet.

  He’d come so close.

  So close to getting the baby.

  So close to getting shot.

  So close to getting caught.

  He shuddered as he remembered Nicholas Payne pursuing him to the edge of the woods. If that other shot hadn’t rang out...

  He wasn’t sure he would have escaped the younger man. He wouldn’t have escaped Dane Sutton at the inn, either, if the woman’s scream hadn’t distracted him.

  She’d helped him—without even realizing it—both days. But she’d also nearly shot him. And that hysterical screaming...

  She was crazy. She didn’t deserve to be a mother. She didn’t deserve Daniel. That was the baby’s name, not that horrific nickname she used. Blue.

  That was something one called a pet. Or a stuffed animal or a car. It was a color. Not a name.

  No. She didn’t deserve t
he baby.

  And he didn’t deserve to get caught.

  Nicholas Payne had already questioned him once. But he hadn’t been able to press charges that time. He wouldn’t be able to press them now, either.

  Unless he caught him in the act.

  That was what would happen if he tried to grab the baby again. Daniel had too many bodyguards.

  So once again the plan would need to change. Fortunately Bradley Zeinstra hadn’t had time to cash the last check he’d written him. So there was extra money now, enough to hire even more help.

  There wasn’t enough money or muscle to take out all those bodyguards. No. He couldn’t get Daniel. So he’d have to find a way to compel Emilia Ecklund to bring her son to him.

  Perhaps as some sort of exchange. While she and Daniel had a lot of security, everyone else she cared about did not. She’d nearly given up her son once. She would again—with the right incentive.

  If someone else she cared about was about to lose his life.

  Chapter 23

  Her heart beating fast and hard, Emilia asked, “Are you sure he’s all right?”

  “I just told you,” Nikki said, “he’s at Payne Protection with Lars.”

  And that was why she was concerned. “They shouldn’t be alone together.”

  Nikki sighed. “Probably not. But they won’t be alone long. Once Manny gets here to relieve me I’m going to join them.”

  “That’s good.” If anyone could stop Lars from committing murder, it was his fiancée. “Don’t let them kill each other.”

  “They’re fine,” Nikki assured her. “They’re working together on a lead.”

  And her heart raced again. “A lead?”

  Could they actually have a suspect?

  “It could be nothing,” Nikki cautioned. “So don’t get your hopes up.”

  She wouldn’t make that mistake again. She’d gotten her hopes up that Dane might actually be capable of falling in love with her. But she should have known better.

  “I’m going to join them at the office to get some records for them.” Nikki was infamous for computer hacking. For years, that was all her brothers had let her do.

  “I want to go with you,” Emilia said.