Single Mom's Bodyguard Read online

  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

  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.”

  “What makes you think that’s what this is about?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “You asked me earlier, why. That’s the only reason I can think of. Blue is who matters most to me.”

  For once his face wasn’t quite that unreadable. An expression passed through eyes that were once again a lighter shade of caramel. Skepticism.

  She bristled and pulled her fingers from his arm. Why had she been hanging on to him? She hadn’t even realized that she had been, that she’d been clutching at him like he was her anchor in a storm of fears and self-doubts.

  But what she didn’t doubt was her love for Blue. “I love my son,” she said. “He matters most to me.”

  “You contacted an adoption lawyer,” he said. “You must have been thinking about giving him up.”

  She sucked in a breath as pain and regret jabbed at her heart. “I was pregnant and alone and scared.” But it was no excuse. She never should have made that call.

  “So was my biological mother,” he mused. “She gave me up. Actually she left me in a school bathroom.”

  “You’re adopted?” she asked with surprise. Had Lars ever told her that? He’d said Dane didn’t like kids, that he’d never wanted a family. Was it because he’d never had one?

  He nodded.

  He was what Blue might have become if she’d gone through with the adoption. Cold. Expressionless.

  “I wouldn’t have given him up,” she insisted. “I knew the minute I’d made the appointment that it was a mistake.” Guilt over making that call weighed heavily on her. She hoped Blue never learned what she’d done, what she’d momentarily considered.

  “But you still met with the lawyer,” Dane pointed out. It was as if he was determined to think the worst of her.

  It shouldn’t have mattered to her what he thought of her at all. But for some reason it did. Maybe because he was Lars’s best friend or maybe because of how she’d felt in his arms.

  Both safe and unsettled.

  “I tried to break the appointment,” she explained. “But he threatened to call the police or Social Services for a safety check if I didn’t meet and talk with him. He said he needed assurances that I wasn’t going to hurt myself like some young pregnant women do.” Then he had hurt her instead. Stolen her baby.

  Dane nodded, and yet she wasn’t certain he really believed her.

  “I’m telling the truth,” she insisted and now frustration overwhelmed her. She needed him to believe her. “About everything. About my baby. About the crying. The calls.”

  “When I asked you why earlier,” he said, “I was asking why you called me.”

  Her lips parted with a gasp, and heat rushed to her face. “Lars gave me your number. He said that I should call you if I needed help and he was...”

  “If he was unavailable,” Dane supplied the words she’d been unwilling to admit. “He would have come if you’d called him tonight. And he probably would have gotten here faster than I did.”

  “You got here fast,” she assured him. His arrival had probably scared off her intruder.

  “I wasn’t fast enough to catch whoever you heard in the house,” he pointed out. “Lars might have caught him.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not even sure if he and Nikki went home tonight or if they’re out somewhere celebrating their engagement.” She hoped they were out somewhere celebrating. They both deserved to.

  He nodded. “That’s true. They might not be home. It’s good you called me instead. But Lars will want to know what’s going on.”

  She reached out again and grasped his arm, which was so muscular, so hard, as if he really was carved from granite. “No, my brother can absolutely not know.”

  “Emilia—”

  “You know Lars.” Probably better than Lars knew him. “He can’t know,” she insisted. “He would overreact and move back in here. Or he would try to move me and Blue in with him and Nikki.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Dane said.

  “It would be a terrible idea,” she said and cringed at the thought of her brother hovering protectively, like he had been since he’d found her. She had been relieved when he’d moved in with Nikki, until the crying started.

  But she wasn’t thinking of just herself. She didn’t want him to put his life and his happiness on hold because of her. “He and Nikki just got engaged. They need this time alone—to get to know each other better.”

  “It was too fast,” he said.

  “No!” she said, jumping to their defense as they had to hers. As they would now if she told them she needed their help. “That’s not what I meant. They’re perfect for each other.” The only other couple as perfect was Penny and Woodrow.

  His brow furrowed slightly. “But you said they need to get to know each other better.”

  “What I meant was that they deserve to enjoy each other without worrying about me. I’ve already caused them too much trouble.” Regret overwhelmed her, but she blinked away the threat of tears. “They were nearly killed because of me. I don’t want them in danger.”

  Finally his expression cracked as his mouth curved into a slight grin. “So you’d rather put me in danger.”

  Her face heated even more, burning with embarrassment. She pulled her hand away from his arm again. Maybe it was touching him that rattled her brain so that she didn’t know what she was saying. “Of course not. That’s not what I meant.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m used to being in danger. And so is Lars.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I don’t want him to know. I don’t want to put him through anything else.”

  Dane’s face wasn’t expressionless now as it twisted into a grimace. “Lars is my best friend. I don’t want to keep anything from him.”

  “That’s why you need to,” she said. “You need to protect him.”

  “I need to protect you,” Dane said.

  She wanted to argue that she could take care of herself. But she couldn’t. She didn’t have a gun like he had. She had regained some of her strength, but she still wasn’t strong enough to fight off an intruder. She needed Dane’s protection.

  Just his protection.

  A ragged sigh slipped through his lips along with a curse.

  She flinched, hating that she was becoming a burden to him. “I’m sorry...”

  “You’re right,” he said almost begrudgingly. “I need to protect Lars, too.”

  * * *

  Dane needed to protect his friend—from himself. If Lars knew his sister was in danger again, he would track down the person responsible and kill him. Dane couldn’t take the risk of his best friend winding up dead or in prison.

  And for some reason, Dane wanted to be the one to keep Emilia safe. He wanted to be the one to find out who
was trying to hurt her. And he wanted to hurt that person—himself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice soft as tears pooled again in her beautiful blue eyes.

  He struggled to draw a breath into lungs that felt suddenly very constricted, as if there was a heavy pressure on his chest. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  Because she was sweet. And innocent. And good.

  Or at least that was what her brother thought. Maybe Lars was wrong about her, though. Maybe there was more to Emilia Ecklund than anyone knew.

  After all, she had a child and her brother hadn’t even known she was dating anyone. Was she seeing someone now? Someone who might be trying to scare her?

  He shrugged. “I guess I don’t know that,” he admitted. “All I know about you is what your brother has told me.” And that was a lot. He had constantly bragged about his little sister.

  Maybe that was why Dane had felt a connection with her. Before they had ever met, he’d felt like he’d known her. But he actually only knew what Lars knew.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. But this time she was smiling. “Lars talks too much.”

  Dane nodded. “Definitely.”

  Would Lars speak to him again after Dane carried out his plan to keep both him and Emilia safe?

  “You don’t,” she said.

  He’d never really had anyone to talk to before. “That’s probably why people tell me things,” he said. “They know their secrets are safe with me.”

  He’d kept secrets for Lars. But could he keep secrets from Lars?

  “You really won’t tell him anything?”

  He shook his head. “Not until I catch whoever’s messing with you.”

  “How will you do that?” she asked.

  In order to catch whoever was sneaking into her house, he only had one option. “I’ll have to move in with you.”

  Her eyes widened, and she gasped. “That won’t work.”

  “You can’t stay here alone,” he said. “Not with what’s been going on.”

  “I can change the locks.”

  “And tip off the person that you’re onto them? We’ll never catch him then.” Not that they’d catch him this way, either—with a man living in the house. But the only way Dane could make sure nothing happened to Emilia or her son was to be with her at all times.