Bear Claw Bodyguard (15 page)

Shock slapped through her, driving her to her feet to face him. That shock should have been followed quickly by anger, which was her usual fallback response when faced with irrationality, especially in the form of someone so much larger than her. Her hands should have balled to fists and she should have given him a “What the hell?” or some version of it.

There was nothing usual about today, though, and there was nothing typical about the way her throat closed in hurt and dismay as he straightened away from the door-frame and crossed to her, not stopping until they stood toe to toe. He stared down at her, mouth tight, eyes as cold as if those deep lakes had frozen over to glaciers that had no hope of a thaw for a long, long time.

She started to reach for him, but the downward twitch of his mouth stopped her, as did the sure knowledge that he didn’t want her touching him now.

“Wait, why are you…” she began, but then trailed off as she remembered the things she’d said to get Chondra off her back when it came to him.
He doesn’t figure into this,
she had said. And was there anything more dismissive than that? She had also denied that he was her detective—even though that was how she’d been thinking of him for far too long—and she’d said she needed to get out of there. She had meant the basement, not the city, though she could certainly understand how he could make the leap given his own personal history. “Jack, wait. Listen. I didn’t mean—”

“Stop,” he said sharply. “Think about it, because whatever you say next had damn well better be the truth.”

Again, her normal response would have been anger. Again, she felt pain instead. More, she imagined his pain, as well. She hated that he’d heard the things she’d said, wished she could go back and delete them because she would have hated to hear them if the roles had been reversed. Because of that, she breathed past her instinctive and indignant denial, and said firmly, “I have
never
lied to you. Not once.”

“Last night you asked me to make love to you,” he rasped. And for a second, she thought she saw pain behind the anger as he said, “Sex is just sex. Making love is the next step in a relationship, even one in fast-forward like ours.”

Thudda-thudda
went her heart, and she blew out a soft “Oh” of understanding. “Jack, no…” she began, and reached up to touch his face as she had done time and again throughout the night until it had become in a way her own private code for “It’s you, you’re really here,” which had come to matter to her more and more as the night had gone on, though not as much as he had apparently thought.

Now, however, he flinched and backed up a step, then glared at her, and the expression immediately did away with any thought she might have had that he was in pain. The only thing she could see in him right then was a familiar sort of cold, hard judgment—the kind that said he was a cop and that meant he knew the truth of the matter, even if he didn’t really.

It also said that she had imagined the pain she had seen, or if she’d seen the flinch for real, it had been a momen
tary thing. Because guys who looked at their lovers—their wives, their children—like that weren’t the kind of guys to worry about pain. That was how they lost their lovers, wives and children, after all.

Watch the baggage,
she warned herself, well aware that he’d proven to her before that he wasn’t exactly like the others, even if right now he looked far more like one of them than was comfortable for her. But she was also well aware that he could have a point, whether she liked it or not.

“I don’t see making love as being the same thing as making a promise or commitment,” she said, trying to choose her words so it didn’t sound like she was devaluing his way of looking at things, or her own. “To me, it’s expressing the joy of liking the other person, being attracted to them, and making a mutual decision to enjoy each other’s bodies.” She paused, and when he didn’t say anything, just kept staring at her with that cold, cold look in his eyes, she said softly, “I never said anything about a relationship or a future, Jack. In fact, I was very clear two nights ago that I wasn’t looking for those things.” Why did saying that make her feel like something was tearing apart inside her when it was the truth? She continued on, though. “You were the one who said you’d had a revelation back at the encampment, that you’d changed your mind about things.”

“Yeah, I decided that maybe it was possible for me to fall for someone in the space of a few days, and that my feelings weren’t any less important just because they grew up so damned fast.” He barked a bitter laugh. “Guess I was wrong about that one.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said on a sigh that threatened to
crack as she started to realize that they’d had two totally different experiences the night before. How could they have been so exquisitely connected on every other level, and so far apart on this one?

Moreover, deep down inside, nerves were starting to stir when it connected that what she’d been feeling from him—the intensity, the passion—had been the beginnings of what he would bring to a relationship. That wasn’t the scary part, though, because it had been magnificent. The truly terrifying thing was that she knew there was an ultimatum coming, and that it would be one she couldn’t live with, not even to get that kind of loving. Which would mean walking away from it—away from
him
—instead, and the thought of it tore her up inside.

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Say you’ll stay for a while and see if there’s a chance for us together.” And, damn it, his expression softened and she saw the pain again.

I don’t do “together”
she thought as panic lumped in her throat. She didn’t say it aloud, though, because the panic wasn’t entirely coming from the fact that he was caging her in and forcing her to make a choice. Some of it—most of it—was coming from the fact that she was, for the first time in her life, tempted to say yes.

Yes, I’ll stay,
she wanted to say.
Yes, I’ll give it a try.
Heck, she would do better than try because she could do almost anything if she put her mind to it…and that was part of what terrified her, because if she set it as her goal to stay with Jack, make things work with him, what would she be giving up to succeed? She could just see herself getting lost in a life she hadn’t chosen, hadn’t wanted. Unless…

She took a breath, couldn’t believe she was going to
say it, but said it anyway. “How about you come with me instead? Not for long. Just for a few days, a week or so, and see how it goes?” The tentative, ineloquent offer made her once again feel awkward and out of her depth. In this case, though, she didn’t mind as much. This was a first for her, after all, and when she found herself holding her breath and searching his face for an answer, she realized it was something she wanted very, very badly indeed. She wanted to make love with him again, repeatedly, wanted to show him her world and expand the limits of his own.

And maybe that meant she had the potential to do “together,” or at least try it, with him.

It was only a three-count, maybe less, before he shook his head and his expression fell into one of a cop’s regret, the one that said, “Ma’am, I have bad news for you…”

“Tori—” he began, but stopped when she held up her hand.

“Never mind. I know you’ve got your life here, your career, this case…I don’t blame you. Really I don’t.” How could she? She was a bad risk on the relationship front, and she was offering him a lifestyle he didn’t want.

He cleared his throat, not looking cold now so much as fatally resigned. “If you won’t stay and I won’t go, then where does that leave us?”

“Working different ends of the same case,” she said, going for a chirpy tone that she suspected fell badly short of the mark. “Which is what I should probably be getting back to, if we’re done here.”

She didn’t wait for his response, just spun in her chair and hit the keys to pull up the first of the flagged emails. And as she stared at it, she did her damnedest not to snif
fle, wipe her face or give any other indication of the tears that had gathered and broken free.

Just go,
she urged him silently.
Stay mad at me and go.
Because if he saw she was crying he would know she wasn’t nearly so convinced as she needed to be. And if he said anything to soothe her, she would lose it. Either way, he would know just how vulnerable she was to him right now, and that if he pushed hard enough, he might get her to agree to something that she didn’t want to do.

Knowing that was almost as terrifying as walking across the militia encampment in a dead man’s hat and shirt, hoping to hell nobody noticed her.

After a moment, his footsteps moved away. She heard him cross the room and head back up the stairs, leaving her sitting alone, trying to make sense of the computer screen as she swiped away her tears.

“Damn it.” She hated crying, hated that she’d hurt him and let herself be hurt in return. Of course he wasn’t going to come with her; that hadn’t ever been on the table. For a moment there, though, she had dared to hope. And even that much had been too much. “Damn, damn, damn.”

She scrubbed at her face with her sleeve, thankful for the first time that she was entirely alone in the lab, because there was nobody there to see her struggling to pull it back together. She was there to do a job, period, end of story. And it was time to get back to work.

But when she heard a set of men’s footsteps coming down the stairs, her heart didn’t just give a
thudda-thudda,
it took up the whole percussion line of a decent dance number, rocking and rolling in her chest as she turned slowly in her chair, trying not to look desperate as she
said, “I’m glad you— Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

“I get that a lot,” the stranger said, grinning as he hit the bottom of the stairs and came through the door to the lab’s data-crunching area where she’d set up shop. “Tori Bay, right?” As he got within a few strides of her, he held out a hand. “I’m Percy.”

He was of average height, build and looks, with thinning mid-brown hair, murky eyes and decent business casual going on in the clothing department.

Her pulse sagged back to normal as she rose and shook. “As in, Mayor Percy Proudfoot?” His hand was dry and a little cool, and even up close she couldn’t really get his face imprinted on her mind. She had a feeling that five minutes after they parted, she wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup if her life had depended on it.

His grin almost made dimples. “That’s me. I’d ask for your vote, but I understand you’re not from around here.”

“Just passing through,” she said, not quite able to suppress the pang. She thought it prudent not to mention that he would have been hard pressed to get her vote anyway, given that he’d cut the P.D.’s budget to the bone during the course of his first term. In fact, she was surprised to find him nonthreatening, with an open, earnest face that inclined her to like him right off the bat.

Then again, he was a politician.

“What can I do for you?” she asked as she reclaimed her hand. Turning, she gestured to the computer. “Want me to run you through what we’ve got so far on the Death Stare investigation?”

“No, thanks, I’m up to date on that. I actually came to get you for an appointment across town.”

“Excuse me?” She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “I think there’s been a—”

He was suddenly right beside her, crowding her as he got one arm around her shoulder and his hand across her mouth, then used the other to deliver a painful jab in her kidney that had her sagging against him with a muffled, disbelieving cry.

No!

Her heart hammered suddenly in her ears and adrenaline flared in a wild surge. She stumbled back and tried to yank away from him, but he torqued her shoulder and jabbed her again, this time in the side, growling, “Quit it. See that?” He wrenched her head down, forcing her to look at the gun he had partway buried in her borrowed sweatshirt.

She moaned at the sight of a snub-nosed .38. The little gun didn’t have much power, but at close range it would do some serious damage.

“Right. Behave and it doesn’t go off. Screw with me and it does. Got it?”

Rolling her eyes in an effort to see her captor, near panic as she struggled to breathe through nasal passages gone tight from her recent tears, she nodded jerkily, tried to speak but couldn’t, and wound up whimpering instead—a sad, pitiful noise that said
Why?

“I need your help with a project,” he said, all of a sudden sounding eerily calm, as if the two of them were negotiating for a dozen more picnic tables on the common. “But first things first, we need to get out of here without attracting any real attention. So we’re going to walk nice and easy. You’re going to speak when spoken to, and do whatever it takes to get us out of here. If you don’t, I’ll
shoot you and then I’ll shoot whoever you were talking to. And I’ll keep shooting until I get clear of the building. Any questions?”

The horrible scene painted itself so vividly in her mind that she could picture the blood, hear the screams, and had to do her best not to put faces to the images. She shuddered and shook her head in a violent negative. “You’ll behave?”

A nod.
Yes.

In a flash, his hand was off her mouth, his grip shifted so it looked like they were walking together like new friends who’d hit it off right away. “Move,” he directed tersely. “Out the back and up to the parking lot. And don’t try anything.”

“I won’t,” she whispered, her voice gone thin and shaky with a terrible fear that grew as he used an official code to get them through a rear exit that she’d been told was completely sealed off. No doubt that was how he’d gotten into the building in the first place. Things got even worse when he hustled her over to a white Cadillac parked at the farthest extent of the lot, just out of range of the security cameras, and popped the trunk. She balked. “No!”

Her struggles didn’t matter, though; he was stronger and ruthless, and used his fierce grip on her arm to lever her into the cavernous trunk, which smelled of spare tire and spilled cherry soda. Once she was in there, he held the gun on her, pulled a bungee cord from a dark, dank corner and said, “Hold out your hands.”