Protect Me (10 page)

“You’re
not in uniform,” Boran laughed, a familiar lilt accenting his words. It was
true. Among this crowd Hope looked close to normal in her setting-ambiguous
black clothes, but as a bodyguard, her dress was unusually casual. Most
employers liked their bodyguards to look the part. Boran’s six-foot-plus frame
filled it out nicely.

She
gave him a small, conspiratorial smile. “Mr. Stone isn’t like our last
employer. He prefers the subtle approach,” Hope told Boran in an undertone. It
wasn’t information she’d usually share, but over three years as colleagues
deserved some kind of acknowledgment, and she was startlingly glad to see him.
A touch of familiarity in a brave new world.

His
thick eyebrows flew up high on his forehead. He immediately glanced over at
Rick. So Javier was right, everyone else in the world really did know who Rick
was.

“What
about you?” Hope asked. “Who are you with?”

Boran
caught her eye and jerked his head to indicate a squat man in a truly heinous
Hawaiian shirt. She cocked her head in a silent
who is he?

“Rich
guy.” Boran shrugged. “Invests a lot of money in a lot of people, including
your client. Not the brightest spark, but it’s a hell of a lot easier work than
Africa.”

The two
of them blew out a low sigh together and stared out over the ocean for a
moment. They were required by unofficial bodyguard law to act relieved, but
Hope suspected she wasn’t the only one who missed Botswana a little.

“Hope!
I’m going over… uh, there,” Rick’s voice called, and she jerked her head
around. He was standing a few yards away ignoring a tall man who was hopelessly
talking at him. Hope nodded and glanced back at Boran.

“I’d
better…”

Boran
clapped her on the shoulder. “I miss you at my back, Lasser,” he said, and
ambled off with a parting grin.

Hope
moved toward Rick, feeling warmed. At least there was someone on her side, even
if Rick wasn’t there anymore.

She was
kept busy for a long time shadowing Rick’s footsteps; he kept turning to check
that she was there and consulting her on a variety of topics - everything from
the future of the oil industry (Hope had no opinion) to what beer he should
drink (Hope had no opinion) to whether Boran’s client, who kept leering at Hope
when Rick wasn’t looking, was a jerk (Hope definitely had an opinion, but she
kept it to herself).

Finally,
finally things seemed to wind down and people started to disembark off the boat
that, once again, had never actually left the dock. Everyone gave each other
kisses and practically pulled out their handkerchiefs to wave farewell to
people they’d be seeing the next day. Rick participated in this with the
closest thing to impatience that she’d ever seen in him, and then headed for
his car without a word to Hope. He beeped it open and reached out for the door.

Here
Hope put her foot down. She shook her head, walked in front of him, and put a
hand over the driver’s side door handle.

“One of
us is trained in getaway driving. The one of us is not you. If it’s just the
two of us, I’m driving,” she hissed.

The man
in the Hawaiian shirt snorted and gave a raucous laugh. Behind him, Boran gave
Hope a sympathetic look and pulled open the door of a sleek black limo. The
subtle push didn’t work. “Ha, dream on, chicky! Rick doesn’t let anyone touch
his car, let alone - ”

Rick
angled his shoulders away from Hawaiian Shirt and curved a lopsided grin at
Hope. He dug into his pocket and tossed something to her. Hope caught it
automatically and looked down at the extra set of keys in her hand.

Had he
planned this?

“You
can drive my car,” he said with casual authority that made Hawaiian Shirt stop
laughing and scratch his head.

A tall
guy with an atrocious hat standing a few yards off looked almost personally
offended. He moved in close to them, staring longingly at the sleek red curves
of Rick’s car. “But Rick, you said…”

Rick
held up a hand, not bothering to look over, and the man fell silent.

“I said
she can drive it.” He looked at Hope with those intense brown eyes for another
moment and she just looked back silently, not sure what to do or where this was
coming from. Finally Rick gave her another small smile, walked around, and got
in on the passenger side. He gestured to Hope from inside and she hopped in.

Rick
stretched out, lying nearly flat in his seat. “C’mon, quick, go!” he urged.
“Before everyone else piles in.”

“You
should sit up and put your seatbelt on properly,” Hope admonished, but she
twisted the key in the ignition and moved out fast. God knew she didn’t want
the yacht crew to come along. They were out of sight of the ocean by the time
Rick clicked his seatbelt into place, grinning and looking more awake than he’d
looked all day.

“So how
did you know that guy?” he asked almost immediately. Hope gave him a few points
for at least not beating around the bush.

“Africa,”
she said succinctly. “We were colleagues.”

Rick
seemed to consider this.

“Africa,
huh. That’s quite a ways away. How’d you get over there?”

Hope
sighed. “You’ve read my resume,” she pointed out. “And now I know you’re… Uh,
well. You know what I’ve done.”

Rick
gave her a sardonic smile from the passenger seat and she winced a little. Nice
save, Lasser. Way to not tell your boss you thought he was a complete moron
until a day ago.

“I know
that you provided security to some South African prince,” Rick agreed. “And I
know that you managed to come out on top in several firefights. That’s why I
hired you. But I don’t know how you got there or why.”

Hope’s
lips flattened into a thin line and her knuckles whitened around the steering
wheel. She stared out at the road, but all she could see were dusty plains and
crowded cities, fighting each other for space in her head.

“You
don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Rick said, his voice more gentle
now. Hope forced herself not to jerk in surprise at the sound of his voice
intruding into her thoughts, which were tinged by Dutch and Tswana accents.
“I’m not demanding to know as your employer. I’m just… asking.”

The
tension in her shoulders eased and her grip on the steering wheel loosened.
That made it easier, somehow.

“I
trained with the Secret Service, briefly - very briefly. They let me go because
I wasn’t good at teamwork.” Hope’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “I
couldn’t adapt to the team structure; kept making my own decisions if I thought
the team leader was wrong.”

Out of
the corner of her eye she saw Rick frown. “That doesn’t seem right,” he said
indignantly. “They should appreciate people who can think out of the box.”

Hope
spared a wry glance at him before focusing her gaze on the road again.

“This
isn’t
Top Gun
, Rick. If your job is to follow, you’re supposed to
follow. I’m not blaming them, that’s the job. They’re hiring team players, not
mavericks.” She fell silent for a moment and then moved on quickly. “Anyway,
Secret Service is great training even if you don’t pass it, and this company
took a chance on me because honestly, how many people are willing to go to
Africa? Especially when there’s a war on.”

“A
war?” She didn’t have to look at him to know she had Rick’s full attention.

“A
fairly civilized one.” She shrugged. “You know who - no, you probably don’t.
The Afrikaners are…”

“Dutch
people who settled in South Africa ages ago. I’m not totally uninformed,” Rick
said drily. Clearly her cut-off comment had not escaped him.

“Right,
well. They own a lot of land in South Africa, and it borders on Botswana, which
is owned by a few different tribes. The Afrikaners were claiming some land at
the border, and the Botswana disagreed. Mostly what I did was escort my client
back and forth between arguments with the Afrikaner leadership.”

“Which
one was right?” Rick asked.

Hope
grinned at the windshield. “Who cares? I was guarding Thabo, who wasn’t a
prince, by the way. He was the kgosi - that’s chief, basically, or king, as you
like - of the tribe whose land the Afrikaners wanted. He was a pretty decent
fellow, all told. Raised an eyebrow at me when I first showed up and told me
I’d better do my job like the men, and then we were alright.”

“So…
did you win?” Rick asked tentatively.

Her
smile faded and she pulled a hand off the wheel to rub at her cheek. “I guess.
For now. Willem Gouws - that’s the Afrikaner leader - is a determined cuss, and
he’s got more money than the Botswana can dream of. And they really, really
hate to lose to the Africans. It’s sort of a blood feud, in a way. It’s not
something Americans really get, but when your ancestors have been fighting for
hundreds of years, things are different. They’ll do pretty much anything to
win, no matter what the fight’s about. Or who’s really in the right.”

“Sounds
like that particular fight did matter to you, a bit,” Rick said softly, Boran
long forgotten about.

They
drove in silence for miles. The fancy mechanics of the car took Hope a little
bit to get adjusted for, but she couldn’t deny the familiar buzz of adrenaline
under her skin when she got comfortable enough to really press down the pedal
and the engine roared in response.

“Like
the car?” Rick said. She didn’t have to glance over to know he was smirking at
her.

Hope
shrugged and did her best stone face. “It’s nice,” she said flatly, and Rick
snorted. She ruthlessly suppressed a smile.

She
could have left it at that, but between checking the mirrors and angling over
to the next lane, Hope found herself asking, “Why do you see them?” Out of the
corner of her eye she saw Rick move like he was startled by the question. Or
maybe just by her talking to him at all.

This
was so, so stupid. She’d been getting too close, and then they’d screwed
everything up, and now they had the perfect opportunity to let it go. And yet
here she was, reaching out with her fingertips, testing the gap.

After a
long pause, a much longer pause than Rick usually took, he asked, “What do you
mean?”

Oh come
on, he could not possibly be confused. The man was apparently some kind of
genius and now he was just baiting her. So irritation tinged her voice when
Hope responded, “You know what I mean. You don’t like them. They’re - you don’t
like them. So why do you see them?”

The
spark of anger in her voice caught and flamed to life; Hope didn’t have to be
looking at Rick to know that his jaw tightened and he turned his head to stare
straight ahead.

“Maybe
I’m just like them,” he said. The bitterness was only visible from the right
angle. “Two days ago you thought I was functionally illiterate, and now you’re
asking why I waste my time with people that you think are vapid and weak.”

Hope
didn’t bother to argue with him. Why lie?

Somewhere
deep in his throat Rick growled and he reached up to drag his fingers through
his hair.

“I’m
trying to run a company, Lasser.” There was a discordant bitter note in his
voice, the kind that only came after years of resentment. Hope wanted to study his
face, so she didn’t allow herself to look away from the road at all. “I’m the
lucky bastard who inherited Stone Industries, so I’ve got to keep it going.”

“Why?”
Hope couldn’t help asking. The view outside the windshield was flat and dark.
“You clearly don’t enjoy it. Do you really need a fleet of cars that bad? Do
something else.”

There
was a pause, and when Rick spoke, he sounded weary. “You think it’s just me who
needs the money? Got more people than me dependent on a paycheck,” The first
time he’d been so formal with her name since they’d met, Hope couldn’t stop
herself from noting. “I could afford to quit tomorrow and live like this
forever, but I didn’t just inherit a fortune. I inherited a responsibility.
That means doing my job, and sometimes that job is making nice with people who
have lots of money to invest. You see?”

“Oh.
Seems…” Hope bit off her words and shook her head, amazed at herself. When had
her tongue gotten so free? She kept wanting to hear what Rick would say next,
that was the problem. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to say anything. I
apologize.”

At
that, Rick twisted around in his seat to look at her.

“That’s
not true,” he said quietly, before turning to face front again. Which was good,
because it meant Hope could breathe properly again. “Don’t - look, even if I
hate what you’re saying, even if I hated you for saying it, you still have a
right to your opinion, okay? Don’t apologize for it.” The side of his mouth
pulled up in half a grin. “Just expect me to argue with you.”

“Deal,”
Hope said, and he laughed.

Rick
fell quiet and Hope found herself turning her head to chance a glance at him.
He looked uncharacteristically serious, almost sad, his profile highlighted
with the California sun and his dark eyes narrowed to glare straight into it.