JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) (2 page)

Carrington

I had to admit I wasn’t too impressed when Ash Grayson walked into my office with a tiny, blond woman trailing behind him. He’d said he’d be coming over with the operative he planned to assign to the case, but this woman couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. She was so tiny I could probably just blow on her to make her fall over. I mean, she was beautiful. Dressed in a sophisticated pants suit, she had curves on her curves and that perky little nose was almost a distraction from her full lips. Almost, but not quite. But I couldn’t see how someone so little, so beautiful, could take on the kind of people who were threatening my daughter.

“Mr. Grayson,” I said, moving around my desk to greet Ash Grayson with a shake of the hand.

“Mr. Matthews,” Ash said politely. “Thank you for giving us a second chance.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to look formidable even as my eyes wanted to shift back to his companion. “I understand family obligations. Just as long as you understand that this is my priority and I expect you and your operatives to be at the top of your game while you’re working for me.”

“Of course.”

Mr. Grayson turned to the tiny woman beside him, touching the small of her back to draw her closer into our little circle of companionship.

“This is Joselyn Grant Hernandez. She will be working directly with you and your daughter.”

“Ms. Hernandez,” I said, offering her a hand.

She glanced at Ash as she stepped forward and took my hand. Hers was so much smaller than mine was that it practically disappeared. She was so tiny I felt like I could break her just by shaking her hand.

“She prefers to be called Joss,” Grayson told me.

“Joss,” I said, studying her deep blue eyes. “Do you have much experience with children?”

Something flashed in her eyes, and she quickly pulled her hand from mine, backing up almost as though I’d asked her if she did pornography on the side.

“Did I say something?”

“She doesn’t speak,” Grayson said, as though that was perfectly normal. But it wasn’t—and it was the last straw.

I grabbed his arm and tugged him across the room.

“Is this some sort of joke? First you blow me off, and then you offer me a bodyguard who’s not much bigger than my daughter and she doesn’t speak!”

“I can assure you that Joss is a very capable operative.”

“This is my daughter’s life we’re talking about here, Mr. Grayson. Obviously you don’t take this very seriously, but I do. And I won’t sign off on this…this ghost of a person!”

I was about to order them both out of my office when she suddenly moved up behind me, grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, then used it to flip me onto the ground. It all happened so fast that I’m not even sure how she did it. One second I was standing, facing Grayson, the next the air was forced out of my lungs as she slammed me into the ground and shoved her knee into my chest.

“What the hell?!”

I lifted my shoulders off the floor to get up, but her tiny body managed to shift in just the right way to pin me down again. There was no way I was getting up. It was unbelievable. Yesterday, I was chasing down would-be kidnappers, and today I was being bested by a woman half my size.

What the hell?

But if this woman could keep my daughter safe—and clearly she had the skills—my ego meant nothing.

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands to show I meant no one any harm. “I get it.”

She climbed to her feet and sort of shook herself, glancing at Grayson. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw the self-satisfied look on her face and knew he must approve.

I stood, dusting myself off as I did.

“Do you wish to proceed?” Grayson asked, deadpan.

My eyes moved to Joss again, studying her with new respect. She met my eye for a long second, then shifted, clearly uncomfortable with being so closely observed. I suddenly wanted to know what her story was. It’d been a long time since I’d been curious about a woman, but this one definitely had my attention.

“Okay.”

“We have a team at your house right now, prepared to put in cameras and motion detectors that are connected to software back at our offices. We’ll need you to sign the consent forms so we can get that going.”

I slowly, reluctantly, moved my eyes from Joss and forced myself to focus on the mundane part of the situation. Gray Wolf required more signatures than the bank when I bought my house. But it was all pretty standard, just them protecting themselves if things went badly. As a businessman, I could understand that.

When the business was out of the way, Grayson stood and turned to Joss. They had taken seats in the chairs in front of my desk. Now he bent down close to her and whispered something in her ear. She nodded, her eyes jumping to me before moving back to him. He whispered again, but she didn’t seem interested in hearing what he had to say because she pulled back, a dark expression flashing over her face.

Grayson hesitated, then he turned to me. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Matthews,” he said. “If you have any more questions, feel free to call my office.”

“I will.”

I clearly wasn’t going to get any answers out of his operative.

“All we ask is that you do everything that had been outlined for you.”

I nodded. “We will.”

Grayson’s eyes fell on Joss one more time. I got the impression he was concerned for her for reasons I couldn’t begin to guess. But I was curious. What was her story? Why didn’t she speak? It was all very fascinating, and I found myself hoping I would learn more about this woman over the next few weeks.

But, more, I hoped she was as capable as they both claimed. My first priority was my daughter’s safety.

***

The drive to my daughter’s school later that afternoon was understandably silent. But there was something about her silence that made me feel the need to fill it.

“How long have you worked for Gray Wolf?”

Joss held up two fingers.

“Two years?”

She nodded.

“Have you known Ash Grayson long?”

She nodded again, a little more enthusiastically. Then she held up both hands, all her fingers splayed, then two fingers.

“Twelve years?”

She nodded.

I glanced at her, taking in her flawless skin and her thick ponytail. She looked like she was no more than twelve herself. But, given that Gray Wolf claimed all their operatives were ex-military, she had to be in her mid-twenties at the least.

“Were you in the Army?”

She held up four fingers.

“Four years, or four years ago?”

She didn’t do anything to respond, her eyes wandering out the window. I supposed that was her way of saying she didn’t really want to talk. But I did.

“I know that Grayson was a Green Beret. But they don’t allow women into the Green Berets yet, do they?”

She made a face. Clearly that was a sore subject.

“You didn’t serve with him?”

She shook her head, then pointed to her feet. Her boots.

“Boot camp?”

She nodded.

“You met him in boot camp.” That meant she was slightly older than I’d guessed. That surprised me. “And you’ve been friends ever since?”

She shrugged.

This was going to be more difficult than I’d imagined. Trying to understand what she was attempting to get across was not going to be easy. What was going to happen if someone came after my daughter and she couldn’t warn us to get out of the way? What would happen if there was a threat she couldn’t communicate properly?

I still had this terrible uneasy feeling about all this.

We arrived at the school. It was a very expensive private school in the hills. My daughter went to school with the sons and daughters of celebrities like Elton John and Ben Affleck. But it sounds more impressive than it really was.

I got out of the car and walked around to lean against the back door. I drive an Escalade, a tall car with lots of space in the back for the road trips my daughter and I often take together. Joss stepped out and stood beside me. She wasn’t quite as short as I had thought. She stood just below my shoulder. It was the thinness of her petite, yet curvy, body that made her look so small. I still felt like if I touched her wrong she would break.

She took out her phone and wrote something in the text dialogue box, then handed it to me.

Is this where it happened?

“They were parked there, down at the end of the block.”

She walked off, walking slowly to the place I’d pointed out. She paused when she got there, turning in a slow circle, her eyes on the building roofs the first rotation, lower down the second. Then she stepped out into the street and kicked at something I couldn’t quite distinguish. She typed into her phone again, waited a second, read something on the screen, then pushed it into her back pocket as she turned and headed back toward me.

“Daddy!”

I turned and held out my arms just in time to catch my daughter as she launched herself at me. I picked her up and spun her around, laughing as she buried her face in my shoulder. She was the light of my life, the one thing that gave every minute of my day meaning. I kissed her cheek, breathing in the scent of her.

“How was school?”

“Boring.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Miss Jones wouldn’t let us go to choir because some of the kids wouldn’t be quiet. And that’s the only thing I look forward to every day!”

“I’m sorry, baby,” I said, as I set her carefully on the ground. I took her hand, and we turned to face Joss. Joss had stopped at the front of the SUV, her arms crossed over her chest as she watched us through an unreadable, cautious expression. She was clearly uncomfortable, and I couldn’t imagine why. Not everyone liked me, but everyone always loved my adorable little girl.

“McKelty,” I said, “this is Joss Grant Hernandez. She’s going to hang out with you for a couple of weeks.”

McKelty’s bottom lip came out. “Like that other man?”

“Yes, baby,” I said, kneeling beside her. “But only for a little while.”

McKelty studied Joss for a long minute. Then she stepped forward and offered her hand.

“Hi.”

Joss studied her for a second, raised a hand in a silent greeting, and then looked at me. She gestured toward the car.

Time to go.

I agreed.

“Let’s go, darling,” I said, tugging the back door open as my daughter continued to look at this curious, tiny, beautiful woman.

This was definitely going to be an interesting few weeks.

Joss

“What kind of a name is Joss?” the little girl asked.

I pretended I didn’t hear her. It’s not that I had anything against the child. She was beautiful. She had long, dark red hair that was slightly darker than her father’s, and blue eyes that were pale and wide, the kind of eyes that you just want to watch all day long for all the emotion that danced in them. And she seemed kind enough in an innocent, childish sort of way. I just didn’t do kids.

“Do you like being a protector?” she asked.

I glanced at her father. He shrugged with one shoulder.

“That’s what I told her the last one was. I had to tell her something.”

“How many kids have you protected?” the girl asked.

That nearly broke my heart. If only she knew.

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out the window, watching the city fly by as we moved higher and higher into the hills. If I closed my eyes, these hills would turn into the flat farmlands of home. In fact, if I concentrated hard enough, these hills would turn into one particular stretch of farmlands just a few miles from the place I called home for five and a half years. And I would see a dark truck with rust on one fender moving steadily along beside a corn crop that was just about ready to be harvested. There were soybeans on the other side of the road, low green plants that would be harvested soon, too. I would see the warm summer night that changed my life irrevocably. Again.

So I didn’t close my eyes.

“Do you like kids?”

I could feel the eyes of not just the kid on me, but the father, too. I knew he still wasn’t terribly impressed with me, and I couldn’t really blame him. I don’t think I would have been, either. This was his child we were talking about. If she were mine…

But she wasn’t mine.

“Why would you be a protector of children if you didn’t like kids?”

“McKelty, you need to sit back in your seat,” her father suddenly reminded her. “You can ask all the questions you want, but you should probably wait until we get home.”

“Okay,” the kid said in a voice that spoke volumes. She was not happy. And, really, could I blame her?

We rode in silence the rest of the way to the Matthews’ family home. I’d stayed with a lot of clients in a lot of impressive homes. In fact, one of my former targets lived just three blocks from where the father slowed the car and pulled up to a security gate. He punched in a number then drove slowly up a long, curved driveway. The house was quite large for just two people. It was probably the most impressive house I’d ever seen. It stood three-stories high with pale stone decorating the entire façade. There were balconies that stood out from four separate places along the front of the house and gables that were painted a brilliant white. I almost wanted to shade my eyes from the brilliance of it all. And the walkway, the five or six steps up to the front door, was made of marble. It probably cost more than I earned in a year just to pay for one of those steps.

The father climbed out of the car and had his daughter in his arms before I could even set a foot on the driveway. I followed some distance behind them as they chatted about school and work and half a dozen things before they even reached the front door. I found myself wondering how long it took David’s team to put in the cameras in this house. The cameras were specially designed by David to virtually disappear against almost any surface. I knew where they were, so I could usually point them out when necessary, but even I found it difficult to see them in this house. The ceilings were impossibly high and the décor was incredibly bright and clean and too perfect for a home that housed a small child.

The father led the way to the kitchen where he proceeded to get the child a snack. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and texted David, letting him know we’d arrived.

Everything set,
he texted back.

That was good to know.

I wandered over to one corner of the kitchen where there was a small, closed circuit television that showed a view of the front gate and the street. I caught the father’s eye and gestured to it.

“I had a camera put in about six months ago when the first emails started coming.”

I nodded. That was smart.

I gestured around me, asking if there were cameras anywhere else. It took him a second, but then he caught my meaning.

“No. I didn’t want cameras inside the house. It seems like an invasion of privacy.”

I walked over to the side door and pulled it open to see where it led. There was a four-car garage on this side of the house. The door revealed a large workshop and space for three cars, two of which were currently occupied. There was a Mercedes sedan and a vintage 1966 Ford Mustang convertible. I stepped into the garage and to the bay holding the Mustang, admiring the smooth lines of the beautiful car. My dad had a Mustang when I was a kid. It wasn’t completely restored the way this one was, but it was his baby. I remembered how he used to talk about it, how he had all these dreams to fix it up and give it to me as my first car. I remembered the look in his eyes when he talked about it. It was one of my favorite memories of my dad.

I held my fingers just above the thick, smooth blue paint, wanting to feel the cool metal beneath my fingers, but almost reluctant at the same time. My dad was a good man. He worked hard. He had a small mechanics shop that he ran out of an old barn behind our house. I used to get off the bus after school and run out there to help him with whatever project he had going at the time. And then came the day, when I was about thirteen, when I ran out there and he wasn’t there anymore.

It was a heart attack, my mom said.

The car was sold for parts, the house sold for less than we owed on the mortgage. He took out a second and a third, so we were underwater even before my mom found out there was no life insurance. I almost couldn’t blame her for the way things went from there. What could she do? She was a single mother who never learned a trade, who never thought she’d have to go to work. She never even graduated high school. I always told myself I should be grateful that she waited until just before my eighteenth birthday. At least then I had a chance. I could go to the military instead of foster care.

I’d thought about doing the same thing after—

“Do you want a sandwich?”

I turned, almost startled to find the father standing there. Carrington. It was such a stuffy name for a man who looked almost jolly. He was a redhead, one of those with the shade of red hair that was almost unnaturally red, but not orange. More of a pale mahogany. His skin wasn’t terribly pale like some redheads, but not dark, either. There weren’t a lot of freckles, just smooth, almost creamy skin. And he had a broad jaw and a thin nose that was a little crooked, like it had been broken once. His eyes were a deep green, not as clear as Ash’s or David’s, but a deeper, jeweled color that was unreadable. Broad shoulders and slender hips rounded out a hot body that was hot in a way that was different from the men I worked with on a daily basis. I mean, no one could possibly be as sexy as Kirkland, or as teddy bear like as Donovan. And then there was the eroticism of Ash’s aloofness and David’s angry hands-off attitude. But Carrington was a whole new sort of sexy. The kind that I never thought I’d be drawn to.

Not that I was all that drawn to it now.

“A sandwich?” he repeated.

I shook my head no.

I gave the garage one more glance, then went back into the kitchen, gesturing toward the archway where we made our initial entrance.

“You want me to show you around?”

I shook my head. It was better if I did it on my own. More efficient.

He just studied my face a long moment, tension in his shoulders that I didn’t quite understand. Then he gestured toward the archway.

“Help yourself.”

I wandered through the house, impressed with the décor. But I could also tell how the house was divided into public areas and private ones. The public areas were crisp, clean. The private ones were cozier. There was a playroom toward the back of the first floor that was filled with things little girls love: dollhouses and tea sets and wooden ponies. There were also a few game systems with games scattered around that were both centered on family play and a few of the adult variety. I supposed the daddy was something of a gamer in his spare time.

There was a study on the first floor that had shelves and shelves of books, both fiction and nonfiction, some of them impressive first editions of rare works. I ran my fingertips reverently over a few spines, impressed with something I could never have afforded to give to someone I once knew, someone who would have given an arm and a leg for just one of these.

Upstairs, on the second floor, were bedrooms. Three of them were clearly guest rooms. The child’s room was once again filled with a little girl’s dream. A bed covered in a lacy, beautiful canopy. A dressing table covered with pretend makeup and hair clips and scrunchies. Everything was pink and green and the palest blue. Her favorite colors, I supposed. And the master bedroom. It was a sad room, really. No pictures, no real décor. Just a large bed and a closet full of suits.

The third floor was unused. It looked as though it might have once been some sort of studio. Perhaps for an artist. But whatever it once was, it was just full of dust and decay now.

I was making my way back down the third floor steps when Carrington came around the corner.

“I wanted to show you to your room,” he said, his eyes moving to the steps behind me. He clearly wasn’t pleased with my solo tour of the house, but he refrained from saying anything.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a door beside the front stairs and across the wide landing from the child’s room.

I debated the benefits of being closer to the child against being close to the stairs. Normally, I would have preferred being as close to the target as possible, even when in separate rooms. But decided since we were on the second floor and the front stairs were the most obvious choice of entry of any potential threat, I decided this room would be adequate.

The father—Carrington—studied my face as I made my decision.

“This is going to be very difficult if we don’t find a way to communicate.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my back pocket and held it up, then gestured to him.

“My phone?”

I nodded.

He pulled his out and handed it, almost reluctantly, to me. I dialed my own phone number, waited for my phone to ring, then disconnected the call and handed it back to him. Then I texted him.

We can communicate through text messages,
I wrote.

He made something like a groaning sound, but then nodded.

“I like to spend some time alone with McKelty after a long day. You don’t mind keeping yourself entertained for the rest of the evening, do you?”

I shook my head, almost relieved if I was honest with myself.

“We have a routine,” he continued. “I have breakfast with my daughter every morning, take her to school, and then pick her up myself every day. Normally we go back to the office together then hang out together all evening. I don’t do babysitters or nannies. The last guy I hired thought that was odd—”

I shook my head, then made a gesture with my hand to show that I thought it was fine, whatever was good for him.

He buried his hands in the front of his pants and studied me a moment longer. Then he sort of sighed. “Anyway, maybe we can discuss what happens next in the morning before I get McKelty up for school.”

He was just as anxious as I was to call this day over. I turned and let myself into the bedroom he’d assigned me, wishing I’d brought my bag up from downstairs. I’d briefly thought of grabbing it when I walked through the foyer the second time, but I had left it.

The room was nice, almost bigger than my entire cottage back at the compound. Not that I needed much these days. Hell, I was happy just to have a place to lay my head. When I was a kid, it was often that we had to sleep in the car or, when that got repossessed, in a shelter with our few belongings tied to our wrists and ankles so that they wouldn’t get stolen. This was absolute luxury compared to that.

I walked over to the windows and discovered that they looked down over part of the first floor’s roof. From there I could see the top of the garage and a large portion of the front drive. I could even see a small piece of the back yard if I twisted and strained enough.

I turned and looked at the bed. It was tall and wide, covered in a soft comforter that was likely twice as expensive as the one that currently sat on my bed back at the compound. I’d certainly be comfortable until this job was done.

The house was quiet when I slipped out to retrieve my bag. I had it in my hand and a clear walk to the stairs. But then I heard voices and curiosity got the better of me. I thought they were in the long sitting room into which the entry way opened, but when I peeked around the corner I realized they were enjoying the early fall evening from chairs on the long, wide stone deck.

“Why is she here?” McKelty asked her father.

“To watch over us.”

“Why?”

Carrington leaned close and kissed his daughter’s forehead. “Because I thought it was for the best. That’s all you really need to know, my love.”