Protect Me, Love Read online

  It still bothered him to remember how she hadn’t trusted him enough to let him help her. She’d taken off without so much as a word, which made her look guilty as hell. They’d traced her through the flight she took to Chicago, but couldn’t turn her up after that. They’d scoured the club scene and anywhere else somebody like her might have ended up in the Midwest, but nothing shook out. She could have taken a Greyhound bus anywhere, with no way to follow that trail. He figured Canada was her best bet, maybe Europe from there. She had a stash to bankroll herself, nobody knew how much, but enough to get her hidden where she wasn’t likely to surface again. Now, even after five years, she was still under his skin like a piece of thorn he’d never been able to work out all the way.

  Meanwhile, he and Delia had cabbed it downtown from Rockefeller Center to where she lived across from Gramercy Park. He wanted to check her security system. As it turned out, she’d taken a lot of precautions, especially for a small apartment. She’d installed two tamper-resistant locks on the door to be opened from the outside and a police lock inside. Her windows were security gated, as well.

  “I spend so much time talking to people who fear for their lives, some of it must have rubbed off on me,” she said, shrugging almost sheepishly.

  Nick was surprised to see a flash of something endearing in the way she did that.

  “Go ahead with whatever you’d normally be doing now,” he said. “I want to case the place one more time on my own.”

  “Well.” She hesitated. “Normally, I take a shower when I get home.”

  “Take a shower then.”

  She looked at him with obvious suspicion in her eyes.

  “I promise not to case the bathroom while you’re in there,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, and nodded.

  The sheepishness hadn’t entirely left her. He wondered why she was looking more attractive to him all of a sudden. She’d been pretty all along, no getting around that, but he didn’t usually go for just looks. He had to find more than that in a woman, coming from inside instead of just what could be seen on the outside. Heart was what he called it. Even when he thought it was there he could be fooled, like with Rebecca back in Colorado. She’d been all toughness on the exterior, but he would have sworn she was hiding a tender self underneath. When she took off the way she did, he suspected he’d been wrong about her and she was as hard inside as out. The same could be true of Ms. Barry. She came across as cactus on the outside. She just might be cactus through and through.

  She’d gone on into the bedroom and the bathroom past that. He could hear the water running already. He’d take a closer look at the rest of the apartment now, in more detail than it was sometimes comfortable to do with the client watching. They got nervous about letting him inside their private worlds, and he understood why. He could learn a lot of things about a person just by checking out their belongings. He wondered what he’d learn about her.

  First of all, this room was softer than he’d expected of her. The walls were painted a creamy off-white. Medium-level light from a number of table lamps brought out the warm tones in the muted rose and dusty blue of the thick cushioned couch and chair. He would have pegged her for a high-tech type, but there wasn’t a hint of that anywhere here. He was drawn to a claw-footed table that looked like it belonged in somebody’s grandmother’s house. The oval oak top was crowded with photographs in antique frames. He figured they must be pictures of her family—dark hair like hers, but solid salt-of-the-earth faces. She must be the beauty of the Barry clan.

  The deep windowsill near the table was fitted with a tapestry cushion seat. Nick sat down there and looked out. The park was across the street, with a gate locked to anyone but neighborhood residents. He wondered if she had a key. He examined the window guards—accordion design, installed inside the window, fire department standard approved. Good for urban situations. The streetlight across the way glinted on the exterior windowsill. He put his face next to the glass to examine the source of that reflection. Grease—she’d covered the entire surface of the outside sill with grease.

  He’d heard of doing that to keep an intruder from getting either a foot or handhold. She appeared to have regreased the surface regularly, too, because there were no gaps or smudges from wear or weather. She must really be scared of this guy who was following her. Nick wondered if she could be exaggerating. Or was the danger as marked as she obviously believed? His job was to assume the latter. From that perspective, he approved of the greased windowsills and any other extraordinary precautions she might take.

  Nick sensed more than heard a movement behind him. Guarding people for ten years had made him so finely tuned to his environment that sometimes he wished he could turn off his hyperawareness and be half here, half not here like everybody else. He snapped his head around to establish the validity of his sensation, and there she was. She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. She hadn’t put on something provocative, as she might have if she were coming on to him, but she was provocative all the same. Her hair was damp, combed back off her face and close to the scalp. Her face was most pointedly visible that way. He hadn’t noticed how big her eyes were before, or how clear and pale her skin was. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and she didn’t need any. The shower had brought out a dewy flush on her cheeks. Nick felt an urge to reach out and touch the softness he could see there. He clenched his hand into a fist instead as he rose from the window seat.

  “You greased the sill,” he said. He motioned awkwardly toward the window. He could hear just as much awkwardness in the way his voice rasped over his words. He cleared his throat. “I hope you did that in all the rooms.”

  He knew how far that statement was from what was suddenly in his mind to say to her. He also knew that he’d been without a woman for a very long time, and when he did get involved with one again it definitely should not be her.

  DELIA COULD HARDLY believe how fast Nick hotfooted it out of her apartment after she finished her shower. She also could hardly believe how much she hated to see him go. She plopped down on the couch and leaned back against the cushions, unconcerned about the mark her damp hair was making there. She was very tired all of a sudden. Her limbs ached as if she’d been running hard into a gale-force wind till she was too exhausted to go on. Her feelings about Nick seemed to have that effect on her.

  She’d asked for this. She’d fantasized her reunion with him a thousand times before tonight, and always there was upheaval involved. She was too realistic a person to expect otherwise. It was one thing, however, to anticipate an imagined experience and quite another to find herself smack in the middle of the real-life version.

  Of course, she could always call and leave a message with his exchange saying she’d changed her mind and didn’t think they could work together because the chemistry was wrong. That certainly rang true. She could get any number of other very competent pros to bodyguard for her. She’d have fewer hassles to put up with that way for sure. Delia actually picked up the cordless phone from her coffee table. She stared at the buttons as if trying to remember what they were for. Then she lay the phone down on her lap where she’d tucked her robe around her legs to keep warm. She stared at the ceiling with her head still at the center of the damp mark, like a halo of shadow on the couch cushion.

  Chapter Five

  By morning, Delia had reconciled herself to keeping Nick around, for practical safety reasons if nothing else. He picked her up at her apartment in the morning as they’d planned before he left last night. He insisted they take a cab uptown. He said she shouldn’t risk the subway for the time being. She reluctantly agreed, though she hated to change her life for the sake of whoever was after her. He’d have won somehow then, even if he didn’t manage to catch her and do something to her. She shuddered at the thought.

  “Are you cold?” Nick asked.

  They were in her office where she’d been trying all morning to get some work done.

  “No,” she said, then thought better o
f it. “Actually, I think I might have picked up a chill.”

  Nick looked concerned. “Stress can make you sick. That happens a lot in these situations.”

  “Is that right?” He didn’t know the half of it.

  “You have to keep healthy.”

  “Why? In case I need my strength to fight off an attacker?” Or to fight off my feelings for you? she thought.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  He’d been checking windows and sweeping the place for listening devices for hours. Anybody could buy surveillance equipment now, especially in this city. Delia stayed in the outer office to maintain the illusion that she was only the office manager here. Lily Tubman, Delia’s sometime clerical worker, wasn’t in today. Delia hired her on a temporary basis to prevent her from knowing too much about the internal operations of the business. She’d work at PEI for a few months, then Delia would send her back to the temp agency saying she wasn’t needed anymore. Delia had gone through a few dozen office workers in five years that way, and several agencies, too. The transitions were more and more unsettling each time they happened. Delia especially didn’t want to lose Lily. She was a good worker, and Delia liked her personally. Still, maintaining cover had to come first.

  Speaking of cover, she’d spent the first two hours of her workday checking the office for anything that might give Nick even the smallest clue to her true identity. She used the excuse of cleaning up for the holidays. Nick appeared to take very little notice of what she was doing, anyway. His attention was focused on making the place as secure as possible. Meanwhile, she didn’t find anything that needed hiding. She’d eradicated all trace of Becky Lester long ago. Still, Delia found the effort tiring, or maybe she hadn’t rested up enough from last night’s exhaustion. She hadn’t slept well, either. Aside from her maddeningly conflicted feelings about Nick, she was very aware of being targeted. That’s what being followed really meant. She was the object of somebody’s special scrutiny. She had no idea who that somebody might be and could only guess at their motive. The strain of trying to sort out the particulars and decide how to respond to them was enough to knock the energy out of anyone.

  “I think I’m going to close up for the afternoon,” she said, intending to go home and rest.

  “Can you do that?”

  Delia almost said, “Why not?” Then she remembered her charade, the deception that was her life.

  “I just have to make a couple of calls and put a message on the phone service. We have an assistant office manager who fills in when I need her. This is a slow week for us anyway with Christmas coming. Besides, I hardly ever take time off so nobody should begrudge my doing it today.”

  She realized she was explaining too much and stopped talking. She didn’t tell him that, in fact, she hadn’t taken a single vacation or sick day in five years. That would sound too weird for somebody in a mere lower middle management job. Again, she had to keep her cover in mind at all times.

  They left the office and found a taxi. Traffic was heavy on the way downtown.

  “We’ll get out here,” she said to the cabdriver when they were within walking distance of Gramercy Park.

  She thrust the fare through the opening in the safety slide between the front and back seat before Nick could protest.

  “We were better off in the car than out here on the street,” he said as he hurried up onto the curb after her. “And wait for me. Don’t go running off on your own. You ought to have this bodyguard routine down pat by now.”

  “For other people, not for me.”

  The weather had turned cold overnight and was even colder now than when they’d been out in it that morning. Delia pulled her coat collar up around her face. She thought about putting on her hat, but she was actually enjoying the chill in the air as it revived her from her daylong torpor.

  “You’d be less visible in that beret you had on last night,” he said as if he might have read her thoughts. “Your hair makes you stand out too much.”

  The winter sun was bright enough this afternoon to shine down past the buildings onto East Twenty-first Street. She imagined it must be setting her reddish tresses aglow.

  “I like to feel the wind,” she said.

  He’d been so preoccupied with watching the street in all directions ever since they left the cab that she was surprised he’d had the opportunity to notice her hair.

  “You aren’t going to make my job easy for me, are you?”

  “You should keep me safe,” she said, “but I still want to have a life.”

  “Sometimes those two don’t come in the same package.”

  Mention of packages turned her attention to the shopping bags so many people were carrying as they hurried past. Delia hadn’t thought about the holidays or how much she enjoyed them since she’d first spotted that man behind her yesterday. She needed something to get her out of this fearful, downcast state of mind. She broke into the chorus of a Christmas song.

  She had a fairly pleasant singing voice, trained in the high school chorus and, when her father was alive, the church choir. Nonetheless, Nick looked at her as if she’d made the most outlandish sound he’d ever heard. He was still looking at her that way when she spotted the tree vendor across the street on the edge of the park and took off toward him.

  “I told you to stick with me,” said Nick as he caught up to her, his breath making puffs of white when he spoke.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I saw the trees and forgot.”

  The smell of evergreen was so pungent with memories that Delia was afraid she’d start weeping on the spot.

  “Blue spruce,” she said to get herself under control. “Blue spruce is my favorite.”

  The vendor was already pulling bundled evergreens out of the pile he’d leaned against a black iron fence. “How tall you want it?” he asked.

  Delia couldn’t think for a moment. She was too overcome by the heady scent of pine and the sound of carols tinkling from a portable tape player the man had set up on a crate among his wares.

  “How tall do you think?” she asked Nick.

  He was busy scanning the street with a disgruntled expression on his face. “Six feet,” he said without looking at her.

  “That’s pretty big,” she said.

  “I hate those dinky little things that sit on a table. You might as well not bother with a tree at all if you’re going to have one of them.”

  Delia gave Nick a quizzical look. He almost sounded like he was getting some holiday spirit. More likely he was going along with her to move her through the tree purchase as rapidly as possible.

  “You’ll have to carry it.” Delia motioned toward the tree the vendor had just pulled out of the stack. “I’ll take that one.”

  She barely had time to get the cash out of her purse when Nick grabbed the tree.

  “Help me hoist this onto my shoulder,” he said to the man.

  Nick bent his knees but kept his back straight to take the weight of the tree. He grasped it around the thickest width with his left arm.

  “You gotta hold onta it wit’ both hands,” the vendor said.

  Nick maintained his one-handed grip. Delia understood why. He had to keep his right-side, weapon hand free.

  “I’ll help,” she said as she pressed the bills on the vendor.

  “Then get in front of me,” Nick said. “Where I can see you.”

  She nodded and hurried to the top end of the tree, which had begun to wobble in Nick’s precarious grasp. She latched on and called, “Ready,” over her shoulder.

  They began walking toward the next corner. “We’ll go around the park to my place,” she said.

  “This has to be the most foolish thing anybody ever asked me to do on a job,” Nick grumbled.

  Even more foolish were Delia’s first attempts to match his gait. The tree tottered from side to side even though, unlike Nick, she was holding it with both hands.

  “Take shorter strides,” she called over her shoulder again.
“You’re about to run me down.”

  “I want to get off this street and under cover,” he growled. Still, he slowed his pace. “What if that guy who’s stalking you catches us out here in the open wrestling with this damned tree?”

  The image of Nick taking off after a desperado with the blue spruce in tow made Delia want to laugh. She swallowed the impulse and hurried along as he directed. She knew it was tension and tiredness rather than true merriment that she was feeling. All the same, she had to bite back another urge to giggle.

  NICK COULDN’T help smiling at himself. Here he was hauling a gigantic Christmas tree up the front steps to this woman’s apartment house and getting paid for his time while doing it. He wouldn’t find this duty listed in the bodyguard’s manual, even if there’d been such a publication. He had to smile at her, too, being followed all over town by some nut and having the heart to think about putting up a Christmas tree anyway. Too bad Nick wasn’t free to think like that himself. He was on the job.

  He’d propped the tree against the outside stair rail and entered the downstairs lobby ahead of Delia to make certain the area was clear. He did the same with each staircase and landing. Delia’s apartment was on the third floor. He left her at the top of the last stairway with the tree angled against the wall in a corner while he checked the hallway leading to her door. That’s when he knew something was wrong. He signaled Delia to come ahead and join him. What he’d seen indicated that she’d be better off inside the apartment.

  “What about the tree?” she called from the stairway.

  Nick put his finger to his lips to caution silence. He waved his arms back and forth, crossing them in front of him—meaning to nix the tree for now—then beckoned her to come, all with what he hoped was an expression of urgency on his face. She moved down the landing toward him as he pulled his gun from the back of his waistband out of her line of vision. With his empty hand he gestured for her to get away from the banister and keep herself against the wall. She did that without hesitation. This was the first time he’d seen her cooperate so readily. One look at her face told him why. Her green eyes were wide with fear.