Bodyguard/Husband (2 page)

No way was he the FBI agent. He was too casual, too good-looking, too
unconventional.
Weren’t all FBI agents stamped from the same stiff wing-tipped mold?

But his eyes were on her and the set of his jaw didn’t go with his casual stance. Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach.

She squeezed the ruined pages of her magazine. Straightening her back she deliberately returned his scrutiny. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders tapering to an admirable waistline. As a physical therapist, Holly had a good eye for fitness, and it was obvious the T-shirt under his jacket hid an excellent set of abs.

He finally broke eye contact, his gaze casually sliding from one face to the next down the rows.

With a chill, she realized what he was doing. He was checking out all the passengers. She was sure he’d be able to identify each and every one of them later.

He started down the aisle, shifting his carry-on bag from his right shoulder to his left, his mouth tightening in a brief grimace that he quickly covered. He moved with an offhand grace that fit his clothes better than it fit his knowing gaze.

She studied him warily as he approached. His face was lean and strong, his beard-shadowed cheeks hol
low. Lines creased the corners of his mouth, but they didn’t detract from his dark good looks.

He turned his gaze back to her as he came closer, and she forgot everything except the ability of those eyes to freeze her in place as completely as a mouse under an eagle’s stare. She lowered her head, pretending to study her magazine, feeling his hot scrutiny like a sunlamp burning the top of her head.

Don’t be him….

He stopped directly beside her.

Holly peered up at him through her lashes.

Leaning down, he braced his hand on the back of her seat. “Sweetheart?”

Adrenaline shot through her, leaving her breathless.

It
was
him! She’d hoped for pleasant. She’d gotten a predator.

Her throat wouldn’t work. She couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it. Licking her lips, she tried to concentrate on drawing air into her lungs.

“You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

His voice was low and masculine, and held a note of irony that immediately raised her hackles. His finely shaped mouth turned upward at one corner as his eyes slid over her with that eagle-like intensity.

She heard a soft chuckle from the passenger in the window seat beside her, and felt her face burn. It was all she could do to shake her head.

He held her gaze for a beat. Holly could have sworn his icy glare flickered, softened, before he hefted his bag, with a soft grunt, into the overhead bin.

As he stretched, Holly realized her eyes were on a level with the front of his jeans. The very front of his jeans. They were nice jeans, soft and faded with age,
shaped by many washings to fit perfectly on his lean hips and mold his long, muscled thighs.

Cool it, Hol.
She forced herself to pull air into her lungs, trying to maintain objectivity about the muscles hugged by that faded denim.

He leaned down again and put his mouth near her ear. “Move over to the middle seat.”

His warm breath against her cheek sent shock waves through her.

“I don’t—” she started.

“Now.”

She moved. He collapsed into the aisle seat, manipulating his seat belt.

“Thank you,” he said, then leaned back and closed his eyes. A sigh escaped his lips as he relaxed. His arm brushed hers. She leaned slightly away, but his broad shoulders overflowed the tightly packed seats.

Holly waited for him to tell her who he was, what he was doing and where he’d been all this time. Every second that passed in silence ratcheted up her tension another notch. She gripped the magazine with trembling fingers, giving brief consideration to rolling it up and whacking him to get his attention. Reluctantly, she put it back into the seat pocket.

Why wasn’t he talking to her? Was this a typical FBI tactic, keep everybody off guard? It sounded like something the FBI would do.

She studied him impatiently. His straight black hair was tousled as if he’d been running. His unsettling eyes were closed, the long lashes shadowing his cheeks. There was a hint of pallor beneath his tan, and his face looked drawn and tired. Had he been ill?

A twinge of compassion pricked her, but she strictly
admonished herself. She was worrying about him and he hadn’t even bothered to tell her his name.

Finally she nudged him with her elbow. “Well?”

He opened one eye to a slit and gave her a sidelong glance.

She frowned. “Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” she whispered.

“Keep your voice down.”

“Keep—? Look, from your very odd greeting, I
assume
you’re the FB—”

Before she could even blink, two warm, callused fingers covered her mouth. He leaned close and she felt his lips move against her cheek as he whispered.

“Don’t ever say what you were about to say.” He skimmed his finger over her lips and across her cheekbone as he gently kissed the corner of her mouth.

Holly’s breath stuck in her throat.

He’d kissed her!
Oh my God, he’d kissed her.

She brushed at her cheek. His mouth was quirked in a slight smile, but his gray eyes held a warning. He raised his brows and nodded toward the woman in the window seat.

Was he telling her they couldn’t talk? This was
not
going to work. She couldn’t sit here for hours beside this man who planned on insinuating himself into her life and not even talk to him. She had too many questions.

What had Uncle Virgil gotten her into?

Resisting an urge to throw up her hands in frustration, she decided her only choice was to play along. He’d asked if she was still mad at him. She could easily respond to that.

“Well, honey,” she said sweetly, “I don’t know
where you’ve been, but we need to talk. You’re late. Very late.”

Beside her, the elderly lady closed her book and leaned closer.

That irritating smirk stayed on his sexy lips for a heartbeat, then he sighed. “Yeah, we should talk.”

He touched the arm of a passing flight attendant as a voice over the intercom informed them the plane was backing away from the gate. The attendant leaned down, and he whispered in her ear for a moment.

Next thing Holly knew, the attendant was sending her a conspiratorial wink and pointing toward the back of the plane.

“Let’s go.” He got up.

She had no choice but to follow him.

The attendant led them to the rear of the plane where the two seats of the last row were empty.

He gestured for Holly to sit in the window seat.

“No.” She wasn’t going to let him bully her out of her aisle seat again. “I’d rather have the aisle seat.”

“I’d rather you sat by the window.”

She took a deep breath, prepared to stand up for what she wanted, but one look into those icy eyes and she gave up and sat down.

“What did you tell the flight attendant?” she asked as he settled into the aisle seat.

“That we hadn’t seen each other in weeks and I wanted some privacy.” He absently rubbed his right shoulder.

Holly groaned. “And what’s the real reason you moved us back here?”

“I like my back to the wall.”

Holly stared at him. “How covert,” she murmured. She leaned toward the window, but still the fabric of
his coat brushed her shoulder, an uncomfortable reminder of how close she and this stranger were supposed to be, or at least act.

Holly doubled her hands into fists on her knees. She was ready for some answers. “Okay, I’ve been in Chicago for two weeks at a seminar that I couldn’t even enjoy because I knew that as soon as it was over I had to meet up with the FB—with you. I am tired, I’m ready to be home. I’ve hardly slept since I got here. And you’re acting like a…a
secret agent
or something.”

“I am a secret agent or something, and I told you to keep your voice down.”

“I don’t want to keep my voice down. I want to scream, but I generally try to restrain myself in public places.” She gritted her teeth. “Now, do you think you could do me the courtesy of introducing yourself?”

He rubbed his face in a weary gesture, then leaned toward her. She resisted the impulse to retreat as a faint pleasant scent of soap and the outdoors filled her nostrils and his breath tickled her ear.

“Jack O’Hara, special agent,” he whispered. “Your fiancé.”

The quiet, ominous words sent a thrill of fear through her as the plane taxied toward the runway, moving her toward the point of no return.

This stranger really was going home with her. She clenched her fists tighter and swallowed against the panicked constriction in her throat.

“Relax,” Jack O’Hara commanded softly.

Desperate to hang on to whatever control she could, she lashed out at him. “Where have you been?” she whispered fiercely. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but
weren’t we supposed to meet yesterday? Weren’t we scheduled to get married or at least pretend to, this morning?” The irony of the time frame didn’t escape her.
Meet yesterday, marry today.

“I got tied up with a case. Just got in from D.C.”

The weariness she’d already glimpsed in his manner had crept into his voice. He sounded exhausted.

Stop making excuses for him.
She sat back and folded her arms. “Oh well, that explains it,” she drawled. “You were holed up with the bad guys and had your secretary call me? This sounds like the beginning of a great relationship.”

She felt a little better. Clean, righteous anger washed away her panic. She let the anger grow, let it reach out beyond the FBI agent to encompass her great-uncle.

Uncle Virgil had manipulated her into this scheme to ferret out a killer she was working very hard at believing didn’t exist. And naturally, he’d found the only FBI agent in the entire world who looked like he came from Hollywood rather than Quantico and who wasn’t a stickler for routine and order and, by the way, appropriate FBI dress.

“Sorry I was late, but until a few hours ago I was lying in a ditch using a cell phone to negotiate with a man holding two kids hostage.”

The plane shuddered over a seam in the tarmac at that moment. Holly’s throat closed up again and her jaw dropped open. “Oh,” she whispered. His matter-of-fact description of what must have been a tense, deadly ordeal brought the reality of her situation into sharp focus.

He was a real FBI agent. He dealt in life and death on a daily basis.

She thought about the picture his words painted. “Did everything turn out okay?”

He nodded shortly. “Yeah. This time.”

His flat tone sent a shiver down her spine. Yesterday he’d been in a battle to save children, and today he was here for a reason she couldn’t put words to. Deep inside, where she didn’t want to go, a niggling little voice whispered,
What if it was all true?

What if there really was someone in her hometown who had killed her husband and her fiancé and even one of her uncle’s police detectives because of his obsession with her?

Jack O’Hara thought so. That’s why he was here.

The sick feeling that had enveloped her four weeks ago when the latest note appeared rose like bile in her throat. Three unrelated events, years apart, with only one common link…her. It was too bizarre. But then, so was sitting next to an FBI agent whose assignment was to pretend to be her husband.

The monitor suspended just in front of them blinked to life, and an annoyingly cheerful flight attendant began the litany of safety features. Holly pretended indifference like everyone else, but she gripped the armrests until her knuckles turned white, and hung on every word.

“Remember that the nearest exit may be behind you,” the voice droned.

Holly glanced quickly over her shoulder, comforted by the Exit sign so nearby, and relaxed slightly, stretching her cramped fingers.

Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on the new theory of muscle regeneration presented at the seminar, the ding in her windshield she needed to get fixed…anything but the fact that she was about to be
hurtled through the air at the mercy of a metal box with engines bigger than her car while sitting beside a man she’d met only moments ago. A man who was going home with her to live in her house as her husband.

She glanced down at his hands that would soon take hers and slip a ring onto her finger. They were large and capable looking, with long well-shaped fingers. The nails were neatly trimmed. His coat sleeve had slid up a bit, and his wrist looked kind of bony, but strong. She glanced up at his face, scrutinizing the hollow cheeks and the shadows under his eyes. Because of the hostage situation, he must not have slept in over twenty-four hours. Was that why he looked so drained?

“Well? Do I pass muster?”

She started, realizing she was doing it again. They’d hardly met and she was already drawing him into her world as someone else to worry about, to feel responsible for.

He smiled wryly at her. The curve of his mouth and the remembered feel of his firm lips against her cheek made her tremble inside like a schoolgirl. But his unsettling eyes, shadowed as old glacier ice, chilled her.

She felt her face growing warm. “You don’t look much like an FB—”

He touched her mouth lightly. “Remember what I said?”

Nervously, she moistened her lips with her tongue and accidentally tasted his fingers. The soapy clean flavor of his skin sent shivers up her spine. He tasted like a man.

He jerked his hand away.

She bit her lip, embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said, then
realized her apology could be taken more than one way. “No more mention of…that.”

She sat there for a minute, staring at her hands twisted together in her lap, and hating the feeling of helplessness that enveloped her like a shroud. “This is so foreign to me. I don’t know how to act. What to say. How is this supposed to work, anyway?”

“Did you recognize anyone on the plane?”

She frowned at his seemingly unrelated question, but he just leveled that icy stare at her.

“No. No one.”