Bodyguard/Husband (17 page)

“You told me you’d had surgery, but this…” Holly’s throat ached, her eyes were blurry. She stepped closer to him, feeling the sudden tightening of his muscles, the guarded stance. He wanted to withdraw. She laid her hand on his chest, her fingers brushing the scars. “Two surgeries? Three?”

He winced as if her touch burned him.

“What kind of man are you that you can do this, over and over again? Court death to protect a stranger?” She felt tears spill over and drip down her cheek.

He grabbed her wrist, and she waited for him to push her away but he didn’t. He just stood there, his
gaze dark and filled with the hunger she’d come to expect and crave.

“I’m just a man,” he said hoarsely.

“No,” she whispered, reaching up with her other hand to touch his cheek. “Not just a man. A hero.”

His hand tightened, then pushed hers away. “Holly, don’t—”

She wrapped her fingers around his nape, burying them in his thick, silky black hair, and pulled his head down until their lips were only millimeters apart. “Kiss me, Jack. Not because someone is watching. Because you want to. Because you almost died, and I need to know you’re real and alive.”

She felt disembodied, as if she were watching herself from the corner of the room. Was this brazen creature her? She’d never initiated anything with a man, not even a kiss. She’d always been too shy, too afraid of being rejected.

And never more than now. She had no idea what Jack would do. He’d set the tone of their relationship from the beginning. Professional, caring but stopping short of being emotionally involved. Every time they’d stepped into the privacy of her home, she’d felt it. The pulling back, the distance. He was her bodyguard, nothing more.

Her thoughts fed her insecurity and she stopped, thinking to escape with at least a smidgen of dignity before he rejected her, but he gripped her shoulders. Too late. She steeled herself for a lecture on their respective roles.

To her amazement the ice she’d expected to see in his eyes had melted into a dark flowing river and he pulled her close. She put her hands on his chest where
smooth, hot skin sprinkled with soft hair overlay muscles wrapped like steel bands across his torso.

He looked at her mouth, and her insides turned to liquid heat. She’d never wanted any man the way she wanted him. He was everything she admired, everything she desired. Strength, control, determination. She reached up and touched his lips with hers, sighing softly as he angled his head.

Then he kissed her. No man had ever done the things Jack did to her with his lips and tongue. She moaned as he took her mouth in a sensual imitation of the act of love—teasing, thrusting, withdrawing, then delving again.

Holly met his erotic kiss and gave it back to him, more uninhibited than she’d ever thought she could be. She molded herself against him, losing herself in the scent and taste and feel of him, savoring his strength surrounding her.

He caressed her back, pressing her closer, until she felt the heat and hardness of his arousal against her. Her heart pounded and every molecule in her body throbbed in tandem with that steel-hard shaft that rubbed so intimately against her. She slid one hand down to touch it through his wet khaki pants, to feel for herself that it was real, that it was for her.

When she did, he gasped and tore his mouth from hers.

“Don’t,” he groaned, his jaw bulging with tension.

For an instant Holly ignored him. She was aching with need, blinded by desire. Then Jack grabbed her wrist.

“Stop it.”

Holly twisted out of his grasp, embarrassed. “I’m sorry—” she started, but he shook his head.

When she looked up at him, his face was set, his eyes heavy-lidded, but beginning to take on their glacial edge.

“I can’t…” he said, his voice choked.

Holly strained away from him, but he held her too tightly, too close. She could still feel him hot and hard against her. If they had gone much further, had he touched her the way she’d touched him, he would have known how much she was affected by him.

“Listen to me, Holly. I don’t want this.”

She cringed at his bald statement. Pulling away, she ducked her head. How foolish she’d been to think that finally, she had found someone she could trust to keep her safe. Someone strong and dependable. Someone who cared about her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Holly, you need to understand—”

Lifting her chin, she met his gaze, hers hazy with humiliation and tears. “I do understand. You’re here to catch a killer. I stepped over the line. This…” She waved her hand, and a tiny sob escaped her lips. “This was a demonstration played out as silhouettes in the window for the viewing pleasure of the sick maniac out there.”

She swiped tears from her face with an angry gesture. “Well, good job, Agent—excuse me,
Special
Agent O’Hara.”

Jack didn’t move. His shoulders were straight, his head held high, his expression blank.

She searched his face. She knew what his silence meant. This time he didn’t have any comfort, any explanation for her. He’d said they needed to act like newlyweds, and acting was all he’d been doing.

A pain deeper than anything she’d ever felt, even
when her husband died, stabbed her, almost doubling her over. She tore her gaze away from his face. Feeling worse than naked in her wet clothes, she stepped away.

“I’m going to take a shower and go to bed,” she said, proud of her ability to control the quiver in her voice.

He let her go without a word.

Chapter Nine

Wednesday, June 25

“God,—Who laughs in heaven perhaps, that such as I
Should make ado for such as she—
‘Defiled’ I wrote? ‘defiled’ I thought her?”

It is not your fault, is it, my dearest love? He is the defiler. You the defiled. You must even suffer his lewd kisses and caresses in public. It sickens me to see him putting his hands on you.

I saw the plea in your brown eyes as you looked at me in the rearview mirror last night as I sped away. You’re ready aren’t you? To come home at last to me. We were so happy. We had such fun, long ago, before others turned your heart away. Remember your promise to me?

“Escape me? Never— Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,”

I’m so tired of waiting, my dearest love. It’s almost time.

I
T WAS HOT AND MUGGY
even in the shade at the roadside barbecue place where Jack and his boss Mitchell Decker had arranged to meet. Jack hadn’t wanted to leave Holly alone after their close call last night, so he’d wrested a promise from her that she would spend the morning with her aunt Bode and Debi.

He got up from the rough-hewn picnic table and paced, angling upwind from the meat smoker behind the building that belched out hickory smoke and sizzling fat. When he’d first arrived about twenty minutes ago, he’d entered the screened seating area at Wayne’s Real Tennessee Pit BBQ and asked for a bottle of water, but all the young woman offered him was iced tea or cola.

He’d opted for iced tea. The ice was only a memory now.

He contemplated another glass of the sickly sweet stuff but decided his stomach couldn’t take it. He wished he could take off his jacket and feel the faint breeze, but the weight of his service weapon pressing his shirt damply against his back was a constant reminder of his role, so he just kept pacing.

Holly had been subdued this morning. He’d tried to get her to take a run with him and had even offered her one of his special mushroom-and-ham omelettes, but nothing worked.

He knew he’d hurt her. But what she didn’t understand and what he couldn’t tell her was that he hadn’t spoken last night because he couldn’t. If he’d looked at her, if he’d said one word to her, he might have given in to his urges. And if he’d done that, the consequences would be far worse.

If he hoped to keep her safe, he had to keep his
mind on his job—and it was taking all his strength to do that.

She could have been injured last night, and all because he’d been distracted by how sexy her bottom looked in her exercise gear rather than paying attention to their surroundings. That car never should have gotten so close.

How was Holly so thoroughly destroying the detachment he’d built his career—his life on? The thirteen-year-old boy who had lain injured and helpless while his mother was murdered had sworn that nothing like that would ever happen again as long as he was able to prevent it.

He’d kept that oath. His life was devoted to catching killers, to saving lives. But he went home alone. He’d always thought it was better that way.

Maybe he’d always been wrong.

“O’Hara? Did I miss the turn for Hell?”

Jack looked up to see his boss walking toward him. He stood and held out his hand.

Mitchell Decker was a tall, solidly built man in his late thirties. His medium-brown hair was cut short and touched with gray at the temples. His face, with its high, defined cheekbones and straight, no-nonsense mouth, revealed nothing of what he was thinking. His direct blue gaze was intimidating to all but the most honest and straightforward of people.

When he grasped Jack’s hand, Jack felt not only Decker’s strength, but his integrity, his convictions and his friendship.

Decker’s manner was gruff, his words few, but he watched over the Division of Unsolved Mysteries like a father over his kids.

“This isn’t Hell,” Jack said. “Folks from here vacation in Hell to cool off.”

A corner of Decker’s mouth quirked up, and he sat down. “What’s wrong, Ice Man?”

Jack met Decker’s gaze. “Wrong?”

“You look tired. Your new bride keeping you busy?”

Jack shot Decker a quelling glance, and quickly filled him in on their near miss the night before.

“I’ll get the local field agents to help go over the car. They won’t miss a molecule.”

Jack nodded. “So, what’s up?”

“I just came from Jackson. Divers located Ralph Peyton’s car earlier. It was in the Barnett Reservoir.”

“Was there a body?”

Decker nodded. “Still strapped in. Definitely male. The divers reported that the driver’s seat belt had been tampered with and the door locks were jammed. And the passenger window was down.”

“Are you saying someone else went into the lake with him?”

“It looks that way. They’re pulling the car out now and CSI is on the scene. The body will be autopsied. I’ll let you know as soon as we have the results and confirmation of the victim’s identity.”

“Damn.” It had to be the pharmacist. Jack thought about Holly, still clinging to the forlorn hope that maybe Ralph Peyton hadn’t died. His gut clenched at the thought of bringing her this news. “This is going to be rough on Holly.”

“How’s your bride holding up?”

Jack grimaced at Decker’s use of the word
bride.
But he couldn’t help smiling. “She’s scared, but she’s tough. And gutsy.”

Decker raised his eyebrows and shot an odd look at Jack.

“What?” Jack asked, meeting his gaze.

“Nothing.”

“What about Sheffield? Have they located him yet?”

Decker shook his head. “He wasn’t at his last known address.”

“Did the landlord say how long he’d been gone?”

“Apparently only about a week.”

So one of his suspects was missing. “I’ll have Virgil tell his officers to keep an eye out for him here. I assume they’re checking telephone records and credit cards?”

“They are, and the chief of police assured me you’ll be called as soon as they have anything.”

Decker stood. “Anything else you need?”

“What about the DNA on the book and the notes?”

“The lab’s got it. I’ll check as soon as I get back.”

“Thanks, Decker. As soon as we locate Sheffield, I want to require him to submit a DNA sample.”

“Have you got anything linking him to the crimes?”

Jack looked Decker in the eye. “Not yet, but if he’s the killer it’s only a matter of time.”

H
OLLY PACED BACK AND FORTH
in the sterile white corridor outside of the Cardiac Care Unit, ripping a paper cup into shreds, and being no less hard on herself. She was a medical professional. How had she allowed this to happen?

“Hol, come and sit down. You’re wearing a hole in the floor, and you’re making a mess.” Debi bent down and scooped up shreds of paper cup off the floor.
“Aunt Bode is in good hands. The doctor said she was doing okay.”

Holly squeezed her burning eyes shut and allowed Debi to brush the remaining bits of shredded paper out of her hands. She rubbed her temple. “The doctor said ‘as well as can be expected.’ That’s not the same as okay.”

Debi pulled her into the waiting room, where a television was dialed to CNN and a large group of people were apparently using their relative’s heart attack as an excuse for a boisterous family reunion.

“I should have seen it coming,” Holly said, as Debi urged her toward a chair on the other side of the room from the loud extended family. She perched on its edge, unable to relax enough to sit back. “She was coughing. Her face was pale. I should have been paying more attention.”

“You are so hard on yourself. Aunt Bode’s been coughing for years. Please relax. You want some more water?”

“What time is it? Jack should be back by now.” Holly gave a little hiccuping laugh. “I can’t even call him. I don’t know what his cell phone number is. He probably didn’t want me to have it—”

“There he is,” Debi interrupted, touching Holly’s arm.

Holly twisted in her chair. There he was. He stood there, tall and rock steady, his gaze cataloging the room. Holly’s burning eyes and pounding temples felt soothed just by the sight of him.

Before she even realized she was moving, she was out of the chair and across the room and flinging herself into his arms. “Jack!” She burrowed her nose in the hollow of his neck and breathed deeply. The scent
of soap and sun filled her senses. “I am so glad you’re here.”

His arms tightened around her. “Your uncle’s neighbor told me about your aunt.”