Because a Husband Is Forever (5 page)

It was obvious by his tone that he didn't believe in destiny, fate or curses. But then, neither did she. Normally. There'd just been something about this cameo when she'd looked at it…

She bit her lower lip, realizing that she'd never gotten the woman in the shop to tell her if Amanda's fiancé had ever returned. “I don't know if they buried her in it.”

“You didn't ask? I thought you dissected everyone you came in contact with.”

She took no offense at the clinical description. “I asked, but then she had this old grandfather clock there and it chimed. I realized I was going to be late for the program if I didn't get started back.” She fingered the small oval as she rolled a thought over in her head. “I'm going to have to get back up there and ask her what happened.” And have her on the show, she added silently. She looked at him. “There is more to the legend that she did tell me.”

“And now you're going to tell me.” Resignation echoed in his voice. “All right, what is it? If you kiss a frog while you're wearing it, he turns into a prince?”

She thought of saying something about trying that theory out by kissing him, but let the moment pass. She prided herself on not being the antagonistic type. “No, the wearer has true love enter her life.”

This time, he did hoot. He hated seeing seemingly intelligent people taken. His mother had been like that. An eternal optimist who bought into every sob story that came her way. She was the softest touch in the neighborhood. His father had been the hardest.

“And you bought that?”

This time she did take offense. Dakota squared her shoulders. “No, I bought the necklace,” she said deliberately, “because it was pretty. The last thing I am looking for is so-called true love.”

He heard what she wasn't saying and studied her for a moment. Maybe things weren't quite so perfect in her world, either. “Sounds a little bitter.”

A swell of hurt threatened to blanket her. She packed it away before it could get the better of her. John wasn't worth it, wasn't worth a single tear. Now that she looked back, she realized she really didn't love him, she loved the idea of him, the idea of love and having someone to love.

“Not bitter, realistic,” she told Ian, then shrugged as she broke apart a bread stick she had no intention of eating, reducing it to minuscule crumbs. “People don't stay together the way they did in my parents' genera
tion.” Her voice became a little wistful, as well as sad. “Maybe it's because they don't love that way anymore.”

There was something about her expression, about the look in her eyes that drew him in despite himself. “What way?”

“Undyingly. From the bottom of their toes.” She dusted off her hands, then wiped her fingertips in her napkin. “Now it's a matter of boundaries and space and constantly looking out for yourself—”

If you didn't look out for yourself, he thought, you got cut down. “What's wrong with that?”

She didn't expect him to understand. But rather than retreat, passion swelled in her voice.

“It shouldn't be about maintaining your own space, it's supposed to be about melding, about looking out for your loved one, not yourself. Marriage takes work, it takes selflessness.”

He leaned back and studied her. His ex would have called Dakota an embarrassment to her gender. Maybe the woman was deeper than he first thought. “That's definitely not women's lib.”

Dakota frowned, waving a hand at his words. “I hate labels.” She raised her chin like someone ready for a fight. “But if you want one, then fine, that's people lib.” To her surprise, he laughed. She felt anger flaring. “Did I say something funny?”

“No, just unexpected.” He supposed that was part of her appeal. She said the unexpected. If asked, he would have said that he had her pegged as a modern woman to
the nth degree, interested in putting all men in their place. In his experience, women of privilege usually were.

The lighting played along her face, making him aware of her flawless complexion and incredible bone structure. Ian felt a vague, distant stirring and recognized it for what it was. Desire. He would have had to be a dead man not to notice that the woman was damn sexy. He would have had to have been a fool to act on it or think that any action might have led somewhere.

He turned his attention back to his meal. And to getting out of there in one piece.

 

The restlessness that had placed her behind the wheel of her BMW this morning refused to abate. Instead, as the minutes slipped by, it grew. Especially when Ian would look at her. She couldn't begin to guess what was going on in his mind, only that his eyes were making her warm.

The moment he finished, she signaled for the tab. When the food server arrived, she signed her name to the charge receipt that was already waiting for her.

“How much was that?” Ian asked, digging into his pocket for his wallet.

“Put that away,” she told him. “You're not paying for this.”

He did as she said, but he didn't like it. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but it went against his grain to allow a woman to pay for him. Even a woman he barely knew. “I'm not used to not paying.”

“If we go out, you can pay,” she told him flippantly as she slid out of the booth. “This, however, is on the show.”

Damn, what the hell had made her say something like that? They weren't about to go out. Even though Ian had looked at her in a way that made her squirm inside, he certainly hadn't said or indicated that he was interested in making this personal. She doubted he knew
how
to make anything personal.

Shrugging, Ian placed a hand to the small of her back, escorting her out of the dining area and to the front of the restaurant. She looked back at Ian. The man did have his good points, she mused.

Once outside, Dakota noticed fallen leaves playing tag with the wind. She raised the collar of her jacket, thinking she should have brought a coat along.

Stepping toward the curb, Ian raised his hand at a passing cab. Its Off Duty sign not lit, the vehicle still flew right by him.

“I should have brought the car,” he muttered. As she watched, Ian edged his way to the corner, waiting for the next cab.

One came less than a minute later. It pulled up right in front of them. Hand on the door, Ian turned to the woman who was standing at his side. She hadn't said anything for at least a minute. He wondered if he'd insulted her somehow.

“Well, thanks for lunch.”

A smile played along her lips. “You're welcome. You did well.”

“I've been eating on my own since before I was two.”

She laughed, unaware that the sound filtered right into his system, increasing his discomfort. “I meant the show.”

He was still unconvinced that his presence had been necessary. “Yeah, well, that would have gone better if Taylor had been your only guest.”

She looked up into his face, her smile burrowing a small hole right into his gut. “Not from where I was sitting.”

For a moment, as their eyes met, Dakota found herself holding her breath. She thought that he was going to kiss her. She realized that she wanted him to, even though they didn't know each other. There'd been an attraction building from the moment she'd taken the makeup brush and applied it to his cheekbones.

Get real, you're vulnerable because that two-faced liar cheated on you, nothing else.

The thought was sobering. She took a step back, hunching her shoulders against the chill in the air. “Maybe I'll see you around.”

“Maybe,” he acknowledged, folding his frame into the car.

And maybe not, she concluded silently as she watched the cab pull away from the curb and then merge into the midafternoon traffic.

The wind felt even chillier as she hurried back to the studio.

A
s Dakota strode into the building, her mind was still on the man with whom she'd just shared lunch. Alan Curtis waylaid her the moment she entered the long corridor on the way to her dressing room. At six-three and 230 pounds, he wasn't someone she could easily circumvent. In the producer's rather wide shadow was MacKenzie, grinning from ear to ear. Since the other woman had left with Randy Taylor but he was nowhere to be seen, Dakota wasn't quite sure what to make of her friend's expression. She raised her brow silently in MacKenzie's direction, who just grinned wider, if that was possible.

“You're here!”

For a big man, Alan had a very high voice when he was excited, and he was clearly excited. Were they up for an award? Dakota wondered. She did a quick calculation and remembered that all the major awards were over for the year and it was too soon for the big nominations.

“Looks like it.” Taking a few steps, she managed to get closer to her dressing room, but not by much. “Were you waiting for me?”

She usually went over the production notes for the next day's show after that day's taping was over, but it wasn't something she adhered to religiously. If Alan wanted to see her, he was being rather haphazard about it, she thought.

“Yes!” he declared with no less enthusiasm. His voice went up another octave.

“Then why didn't you page me?” It was obvious that he had to have been the one to page MacKenzie at the restaurant, and although she didn't wear her pager like a vital part of her body the way MacKenzie did, it was in her purse along with her cell phone. Neither had made a sound during her meal.

“Because I wanted you to finish having that late dinner with the bodyguard guy.” The last time she'd seen Alan's eyes gleaming like this, he'd misread the directions on his eye drops and doubled the dosage.

“Oh-kay.” Dakota drew out the word as she tried to fathom what the producer was talking about. The man wasn't in the matchmaking business, so what did it matter to him who she had lunch with and for how
long? Unable to come up with a reason, she finally had to ask, “Why?”

“Because I want you two to have a rapport with each other.”

Well, that certainly didn't clear anything up. She looked toward MacKenzie for some enlightenment. “Again, why?”

Impatient, MacKenzie jumped into the exchange, which was going nowhere. “The phones have been ringing off the hook.”

Dakota tried to make some kind of sense out of the fragments she was being thrown. “Are they calling about the segment?”

“About the segment, about Russell and Taylor—” Alan began.

MacKenzie's eagerness got the better of her. It was obvious that whatever was going on, she took it to be a good thing. “And about what you said.”

Dakota looked at her, confused. As far as she knew, she hadn't said anything extraordinary during the show. The unusual thing was that they had gone with just one segment and let it take over the entire program.

“I said a lot of things during the show, Zee, you're going to have to be a little more specific than that.” Several people walked by, and she shifted out of the way. The miniparade temporarily separated her from Alan and MacKenzie.

Alan raised his voice to be heard above the other voices. “Let's go into your dressing room.”

“I don't think I like the sound of that.” Utterly curious now, she led the way into the room, closing the door as soon as the other two were in. She nodded at the chair before the vanity table. “Should I be sitting for this?” The question was addressed to Alan, but her eyes shifted toward MacKenzie for an answer.

Her friend ended the mystery. “Remember how you've said that you'd have a difficult time functioning with a bodyguard underfoot all the time, watching your back and parts thereof?”

It had begun as an off-the-cuff remark that had elicited laughter from the audience, just as she'd meant it to, even though her underlying feelings had been there. It had dovetailed into this segment rather well. Born a child of privilege, she didn't believe in entourages or in keeping an extended staff around her. She preferred her own company and to take care of any details that needed seeing to herself.

“Yes?” Her voice was wary as she waited for MacKenzie to continue.

This time Alan cut in. “Well, your audience wants to see you deal with it.”

“The audience?” she repeated, a slight thoughtful frown crossing her face. “You mean the people who were here today?” Had they taken some kind of an exit poll?

“No, your
audience,
” he emphasized the last word. “The faithful followers who give up an hour of their life every day at two just to sit and watch you on the television. Eighty percent said they wanted you to have a
bodyguard for a week or two and then get back to them with all the details.” Alan looked immensely pleased. She could almost see him rubbing his hands together. “I guess they want to live vicariously.”

She liked pleasing her audience, but there were limits. And she'd meant what she said about not liking the idea of having some stranger share her space, day in and day out. Dakota shook her head, her long hair moving back and forth like a blond storm.

“Not through me, not this way.” She saw Alan open his mouth to protest, but she beat him to the punch. “I'm a talk-show host, not a life host.”

He said the one thing that was guaranteed to make her capitulate. “This could boost ratings. Sweeps are coming up, and we need a gimmick.”

She groaned and rolled her eyes. Glancing toward MacKenzie, she saw no help in that quarter.

“Please don't make me do this, Alan.” But even as she made the entreaty, the sinking sensation that her fate had already been sealed overtook her.

Alan looked utterly confused at her reluctance. “What's the matter? I thought you'd be thrilled to live with a good-looking man.”

She'd just assumed that he'd been around during her working hours. This was even worse than she thought. “I have to live with him?”

Alan nodded. The details had already been worked out with the man who had returned with MacKenzie. “For a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks?” she echoed incredulously. My God, that was an eternity. She tried to suppress a wave of annoyance. One would think that after all this time, she wouldn't have to resort to gimmicks to hang on to her audience.

“Couldn't I just live with a Bengal tiger for a couple of weeks instead? Damn it, Alan, it's an invasion of privacy, it's living with an albatross around my neck, it's—”

Alan looked at her innocently as he said the magic words. “It's sweeps month.”

She sighed, knowing that he was right, that at the last staff meeting, she'd found that they didn't have a gimmick in place for the occasion that governed the lives of everyone in television. During sweeps month everyone tried to outdo the other for the tiniest percentage point. Resignation did not feel good.

She looked at MacKenzie. “Do I at least get to choose which one?”

She couldn't read MacKenzie's expression as the latter said, “The audience already chose for you.”

“Of course they did.” Dakota was afraid to ask. Maybe because she already knew the answer. It was Ian. Why else would Alan care if she was building “a rapport” or not? Still, she heard herself asking, “And which one did they pick?”

“They picked Ian.” MacKenzie told her.

A spark of hope rose to the surface of the quicksand in which she found herself standing. “He's never going to go for this.”

MacKenzie wasn't fazed. “Randy was very excited about the idea. A little put off that he wasn't the one the audience wanted, but he still thinks this is a great idea.”

It didn't matter what the other man thought of the idea. He wasn't the one who would endure being a bodyguard to a woman whose body didn't need guarding.

“Ian is not going to go for this,” Dakota repeated. She might not know him all that well, but she recognized stubbornness when she saw it.

Alan began again, more insistently this time. “But if he does—”

Never happen
, she thought happily.

She loved her show, didn't mind doing strange stunts, but they only lasted for a few hours at the most. This threatened to take out a large chunk of her life, and she didn't want to volunteer it. The last thing she wanted was to have a good-looking man hovering over her as if she was some dolt incapable of tying her own shoes or crossing the street without getting hit by a car.

“Then I'm on board,” she told him with the casual assurance of someone who felt that could never happen.

Alan grinned. “Then you'd better prepare your boarding pass.”

The sinking feeling was back, larger than before. “Why?”

Alan beamed, well pleased with himself. “Because I offered to hook them up with someone who could do a commercial for their firm. I'm having the station underwrite the costs.”

It didn't get any better than that. She could see how the men, especially Randy, would have a difficult time turning that down.

So she was going to have a roommate for the next two weeks. “You play dirty.”

Alan made his way to the door, then stopped to look at her before leaving. “Never said I didn't.”

 

“No.”

The single word was a cross between some unintelligible guttural sound and a bear growling. All the more intimidating because it had come out of Ian's barely moving lips.

Randy had pounced on his friend with the news the moment he'd walked into the office. He'd been behind Ian by five minutes and was still hearing the promises ringing in his ears.

The two men now stood facing each other on opposite sides of the small reception desk. Wanda, Randy's younger sister who manned the desk when she wasn't taking classes at NYU, had wisely chosen to retreat from the field until the battle was over.

“Russell, just think about the possibilities—” Randy begged.

“No,” Ian repeated more firmly. “Look, I did the show because you asked me to, even though I didn't think we needed it. I am not going to play nursemaid to some celebrity as a publicity stunt.”

For the life of him, Randy couldn't see what the big
deal was. Or the difference—other than a slew of benefits and a stack of money. “It's not a stunt, Russell, and why should this be any different from anything you do as a regular bodyguard?”

As far as he was concerned, there was a world of difference. “Because in all the other cases, there was a real threat, a possible danger. We were keeping someone safe and out of harm's way. This is just a game, a lark dreamed up by some publicity guy with nothing to do—”

“That's what he does do,” Randy pointed out. “Come up with gimmicks to help the show. In this case, it's helping us as well.”

“I don't need that kind of help,” Ian insisted. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He never should have said yes to Taylor in the first place. They were doing well enough without this. “It's a game,” he repeated. “And I'm no good with nothing to do.”

Randy threw up his hands, clearly annoyed with his partner's stubbornness.

“Then pretend she has a stalker. Pretend you're keeping her safe. Damn it, Russell, have a little imagination. The bodyguard business is about keeping our clients safe from overzealous fans and the invading photographers. From what I saw of that audience today, Dakota Delany's got a hell of a lot of fans.” He paused, then added more quietly, “John Lennon was killed by a fan.”

Okay, so maybe Taylor had a point. That still didn't
mean he had to be the one to do this. There was something about being in that woman's company that told him he shouldn't be. But it wasn't something he was about to share with Taylor, who felt that everything with supple hips bore exploring.

“Why can't you do it?”

Randy raised his wide shoulders and let them drop in an almost helpless movement. “Because they want you. The producer said you and Dakota had chemistry.”

Ian swung around and looked at him incredulously. “We had what?”

“Chemistry,” Randy enunciated. “That's when two people—”

Ian glared at him. “I know what chemistry is. And we—she and I—don't have it.”

Ian found the smirk on Randy's face particularly irritating.

“I don't know about that,” Randy murmured under his breath.

Eyes narrowing, Ian got into his face. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Randy raised his hands to ward off his partner's words. “Hey, stay focused. We're arguing about you doing this. I don't want this to escalate into some kind of a full-out war between us.” He tried again, his voice softening. “I was right about this, Ian. On the way over here I got three calls on my cell phone alone. Wanda's been fielding calls. Business is already picking up.”

The calls would have come one way or another. “We're heading into the award season in a couple of months,” Ian pointed out.

“I don't want just seasonal work, do you?”

Ian frowned. No, he didn't want just seasonal work. He wanted to be kept busy all year round. Maybe then the heartache of not being around his son, of not being able to watch Scottie grow up, wouldn't keep eating away at him the way that it was.

A sense of resignation slipped in. So he'd do this. What would it hurt? He pinned Randy with a look. “If I do this, it's going to be my way.”

Randy raised both hands up in innocent surrender. As if, Ian thought jadedly. “Absolutely.”

“I'm going to approach this seriously,” Ian qualified, “as if this Delany woman actually needed a professional bodyguard to protect her.”

“Wouldn't have it any other way,” Randy agreed. “Oh, one more thing. The studio wants you to live at her apartment for the duration of the assignment.”

He'd only done that twice before and hadn't liked it either time. He definitely didn't like giving up his freedom, especially not when there was nothing more than a whim involved. “Taylor—”