Protecting His Assets (18 page)

“Who is it?” Nolan asked, arms crossed over a chest that could distract her, even now.

“It’s your
mother
.” She clenched her eyes shut and shook her head. Pants. Where were her damn pants? “And I
don’t
need to meet her for only the second time ever…like
this
.”

“Steven? Open up, please,” Mrs. Nolan said through the door.

April opened her eyes and Nolan was coming out of the bedroom, having tugged on a pair of warmup pants but still no shirt. Why did he have pants but hers were gone? What kind of fucked-up karma was that?

“I have no pants!” she hissed, running into the bedroom. Just the dress she’d been wearing last night, and that wasn’t exactly the message of professionalism she wanted to present to the mother of the man she was supposed to be protecting with her life. “Don’t you dare open that door.”

He glanced through the peephole and chuckled. “She’s not going to go away, you know. Doug will have told her I’m up here.”

“Then you had better help me find something to wear.”

“Steven, it’s your mother. Are you going to let me in?” April groaned, wishing she could melt right through the floor as she swung the door almost all the way closed and hid behind it like a guilty teenager.

Nolan opened the door. “Hey Mother, what are you doing here?” she heard him ask. She peeked through the crack and watched the slim woman stepping forward to embrace him. He pressed an affectionate kiss on her cheek.

“You didn’t return my calls last night. And after that nasty business with Justin Fielding’s son and all the awful things they’re saying in the news, I needed to see you, to make sure you were all right.” She touched his cheek reverently, and April’s heart lurched with a sudden memory of her own mother doing almost exactly the same.

“I’m fine, but a bit busy right now,” he said. “I want to tell you everything, but can it wait for a little later?”

Mrs. Nolan took in her son’s state of undress and looked around the apartment with pursed lips. April swore under her breath as the woman stopped and saw the pair of heels April had kicked off last night. They were still in the middle of the living room. Her small clutch purse was draped over the chair.

Mrs. Nolan raised her brows with obvious distaste. “The bodyguard?”

April winced and inched backward but tripped over the towel Nolan must have discarded on the floor when he’d grabbed his pants. She landed on her butt and didn’t hear Nolan’s response, but as she sat there with her eyes closed and her back up against the wall beside the door, she heard everything else.

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Since when do you care what I do with my personal life?” he replied.

“Personal life? If I understand correctly, she was working for you.”

“I wouldn’t quite put it like that,” he said.

“And I’ve always cared. I want nothing but the best for you, and that woman is
not
it.” April gasped. She could understand why Nolan’s mother would not approve, but to put it like that was going a bit far. “I suppose you don’t know that she’s already told all the newspapers that she’s sleeping with you?”

What?

“I seriously doubt that, Mother,” Nolan said impatiently. “She would never have told anybody anything.”

“Then why did someone from the country club send me a link this morning to an online article in which someone named April Porter is quoted as calling you ‘the best money she ever made’? The same article printed a tawdry photograph of the two of you all over each other in the elevator of this very apartment building.”

April groaned. This couldn’t be happening. The photo had to be a fake—wait, the night they’d come up to find Nolan’s apartment trashed and he’d kissed her…when the elevator door had opened, she’d sworn she saw something. But she’d been distracted. Hadn’t been doing her job. This was her fault.

His mother was mid-sentence, “…besides, I thought you were seeing Jennifer Halloway. When I talked to her at the gala yesterday evening, she mentioned that she’d had dinner with you just a few nights ago.”

April put a hand over her eyes. Distracted again. Had she been so absorbed by her dance with Nolan last night that she hadn’t even seen the tall, red-haired bombshell at the party? “We did have dinner a few times, but it was never serious between us.”

She let out a sigh. She’d believed him when he told her the same thing. She shouldn’t have cared, though. After this morning, she had even less of a right to be concerned with Nolan’s casual affairs—past, present, or future. She’d practically insisted on being nothing more than one of them.

“Frankly, that’s probably a good thing. She’s not the right woman for you, either,” his mother said. “But I worry about you. It’s one thing to let off a little steam and have some fun, but your business is taking off, and you could use a real partner at your side.”

“I have a partner for my business, Mother. I think Harrison would be offended to hear that you don’t consider his contributions worthy.”

“You know that isn’t what I mean. Why do you always have to be a smart aleck?”

April sympathized wholeheartedly.

“Spit it out,” he said. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m saying that it’s time to get serious and make some serious plans for the rest of your life.” April’s heart lurched at the word “serious.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m doing,” he said, making April’s mouth fall open until she remembered that he was the king of antagonism and provocation.

“Oh, please. You don’t get serious with the
bodyguard
,” she said dismissively, and April winced. “I’ve always thought that you and Meredith would be a wonderful match.”

“Mother—”

April remembered the smile on his face when he’d been speaking to Meredith on his cell phone.
Who he’d also said was just a friend.

“Meredith is beautiful, successful, and she comes from a good family—one of the only families that stood by us during the horrible period after your father’s death,” she said. “And you’ve always loved her, at least.”

“Yes, but—”

April pressed a hand over her mouth and scrambled up off the floor.
You’ve always loved her
. She couldn’t stop hearing the words in her head. She grabbed her dress and rushed to the bathroom and closed the door, shutting out anything else Nolan and his mother might be saying about the beautiful, perfect love of Nolan’s life.

She stood under the steaming water in the shower, berating herself for her reaction. Why would it bother her if Nolan had feelings for another woman? Hadn’t she been the one to insist—just like a spooked chicken—that there was no chance of anything between them beyond last night? That it was all just fun and games, and they would each go back to their separate lives once this assignment was all wrapped up?

So why did the knowledge that Nolan’s mother didn’t find her worthy of her son hurt so much? Why did her heart ache to hear that he was in love with someone else?

Someone knocked on the door. Nolan. She didn’t answer and stayed exactly where she was until the water ran cold.

Chapter Thirteen

A
pril had taken her time getting ready. Plenty of time. Her dress was a little wrinkled, but it would get her home. She’d towel-dried her hair and pulled it all back into a damp bun. Then she called the hospital and had another painful conversation with her father. He told her to stop fussing and stay away, and she swallowed her disappointment and frustration because she didn’t want to add to his pain.

Finally, she called Nora, who tactfully refrained from asking how her night went and didn’t mention the article on the internet. She
did
confirm that the rest of the guard detail had been pulled off of Nolan’s apartment last night, although they’d left one guy over at Mrs. Nolan’s house until morning. Nora also advised that the police would allow Nolan to speak with Edward Fielding this morning…apparently at Fielding’s insistence. In fact, he’d refused to speak with anyone
but
Nolan.

When she returned to the kitchen, Nolan’s mother had left, and
he
was making eggs. She bit her lip and tugged at the hem of her skirt. He dished out the contents of the frying pan into two plates and brought them to the table.

“Steve, I…I heard a little of your conversation with Mrs. Nolan. I’m so sorry about that photograph. It never should have ended up online.”

He frowned up at her. “Did you
know
about it?”

She winced at the hard edge in his voice. “Well, I—”

“So it’s true.”

He was buying everything his mother had said—that she wasn’t up to his level, that she would stoop to selling him out to the tabloids.

Not even bothering to defend herself, she nodded. “Yes, it’s my fault.” Which was true. Because of her distraction, she’d been responsible for yet another torrid story about him showing up in the papers. She’d been responsible for the attack on him at the gala. She was so far from professional, it was laughable.

He dropped both plates to the table with a clatter. One of them loudly rocked all the way around on its rim before coming to a stop. “Enjoy your breakfast. I’m going to get dressed.”

She looked at the eggs, but couldn’t eat a thing.

Yes, their one night was definitely over now.

H
e refused to wait for her to get a taxi home so she could change and then come back for him before going to the police station. “Not my bodyguard anymore, remember? You don’t have to come with me,” he said.

She crossed her arms. “I’d like to see it through to the end.” She refused to acknowledge that she was looking for excuses to get more time with him.

“I don’t need you there,” he insisted sharply.

His coldness hurt. Where had she heard that before? She clenched her jaw and nodded. “All right, if that’s what you want. But if you do need something, just—”

“I won’t.”

She left the apartment, but stood outside in the hallway in front of the elevator, frowning. She couldn’t just leave it like that.

When she spun back around to knock on his door, he’d already opened it again. He was still pulling on his jacket as he pulled the door closed behind him when he glanced up and saw her. “You’re still here.”

She stepped forward. “Nolan, I just want to say—”

“I’ve got to get to the police station.” He tugged the sleeves of his suit and adjusted the collar of his shirt as he moved past her to the stairwell and pushed open the door.

She followed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “When the elevator door opened that night, I swore I heard something—the click of the camera I suppose. I should have checked it out. I shouldn’t have let them get away with—”

He stopped and turned to glare down at her. “I don’t care about the damn photograph,” he snapped. “The fucking article
quoted
you. You talked to them.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You think that I…” She shook her head quickly. “Nolan, that quote was bullshit. Yes, I should have been better at my job and prevented the photograph, but I never spoke to a reporter. They made that up completely, I promise.”

“How much did they pay you?”

She took a step back. “You think that I would take money for…”

He swore and ran a hand through his hair. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

She sneered. “I might be a horrible bodyguard, and a poor nobody from the wrong side of the tracks who ate dinners out of a vending machine as a kid, but that doesn’t automatically mean I’d sell you out.”

She reached for the door.

“April, I didn’t mean—”

He reached for her arm. She jerked it back.

A sound on the stairwell broke through their argument. It was like a gurgle of pain, and a choked scream of fury all at the same time. April looked up with a gasp, and as soon as she saw who stood in the stairwell watching them, a few steps down, she knew she’d made a horrible mistake.

It was the woman from the elevator in Nolan’s office, the woman from the restaurant. She’d slipped into the stairwell, and April had a good feeling that it wasn’t the first time. Whatever Edward Fielding had wanted from Nolan last night, he wasn’t the one who’d broken in and trashed his apartment, and he wasn’t the one who’d slashed Nolan’s tires.

The look on her face was twisted with such naked rage as she raised her arm…and pointed a gun straight at them.

Oh shit.
“Miss,” she said slowly, like talking to a jumper on the ledge. “Miss, you don’t want to do anything—”

“April, be careful,” Nolan said in warning, taking her hand tightly.

The woman’s face crumpled when he said
her
name. April’s. Almost as if she’d thought he would see her and be overcome with…what? Love? Regret? April winced and immediately put herself in front of Nolan.

“
April?
” she sneered. She shook the gun at them, making April more nervous. “I’ve loved you all this time, and you say another woman’s name to my face?”

“Veronica?” Nolan’s gaze shifted from the gun to the woman. He took a careful step forward. “It was one night, a long time ago. I never meant to hurt you. I’m very sorry if you thought—”

“One night wasn’t enough,” she said with a hitch in her voice. “If you’d only given me a chance, you would have seen. We could have had—”

“You’re absolutely right,” Nolan quickly agreed. “If you put the gun down, we can start over. We can have dinner or something, and—”

The woman’s arm wavered and April tensed. “How can I believe you?” she screamed, shaking the gun at April. “When I come up here and see you with
her
!”

It happened so fast. April knew the gun was going to go off. She lunged forward to protect Nolan, but he shoved her aside.

The bang reverberated in the stairwell. Nolan shouted and was thrown back against the wall. As he slid down, he left a streak of red on the concrete. “Steve!” she cried out.

Veronica was already swinging the gun her way, but April tackled her. The gun flew out of Veronica’s hand as the two of them rolled down the stairs together.

April grunted as the step jammed her in the ribs and again when she bashed her temple on the wall, and when she and Veronica stopped rolling, the woman jumped on her and backhanded her across the mouth.

April was winded. She tasted blood on her lip but ignored it. She was used to taking a hit.

She swung a punch—no wimpy slaps—and Veronica’s head cracked back, and April pushed her off her.

The woman screamed and jumped to her feet. “Back off!” Nolan stood over them with the gun trained on Veronica, his other hand pressed to the bleeding wound in his side.

She quickly raised both hands in surrender but turned a sneer toward April. “If you think he’s going to stay with you just because you had his attention for one night, you’re deluding yourself,” she spat, blood dripping from her nose. “He’s just a shallow rich boy, and he’ll move on soon enough. He always does.”

April ignored her and raced back up the steps for her purse. Nolan kept the gun trained on Veronica as she dug out her cell phone and dialed 911.

S
teve lay in a damn hospital bed. Apparently, he’d spent three hours on the operating table after the emergency room doc had declared that the bullet had chipped a rib on the way through his body, and they had to go in to check things out. They’d rolled up a gurney and made him get on it right then and there. The last thing he remembered seeing before finally giving in to the need to pass out was April’s drawn, severe expression. She hadn’t said a word to him since the ambulance had arrived at the apartment, and he’d wanted to tell her not to worry about anything, but all he’d gotten out was her name…and didn’t remember anything else.

She hadn’t returned since he regained consciousness here in the recovery room, and he was already going stir crazy lying around all by himself.

“That’s it,” he muttered, shoving aside the nurse’s call button and the tube across his arm, and struggling to sit up. His body protested the movement vociferously, sending pain shooting in all directions from the relative nucleus of the bandaged hole in his side. But he wasn’t giving up. He needed to find April.

The door opened just as he swung his legs over the mattress with a deep grunt. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be up yet,” Harrison said from the entrance.

“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?”

His friend came forward and took Nolan’s arm…then guided him back down into the bed. “That’s not helping,” Steve muttered.

“Says you.”

Harrison undid the button of his jacket and sat down in the chair beside the bed. He settled in like he had all the time in the world. “Why are you here?” Steve was getting grumpier by the minute.

“Your bodyguard called me while you were in surgery.”

His heart leaped. Where was she? “I’m fine,” Steve said. “I just want to get out of here.”

Harrison chuckled. “I have it on good authority that you’re going to be stuck in this room for at least one full night.”

“Where’s April?”

Harrison’s brow lifted knowingly, as if he’d been waiting to see how long he’d hold out before asking. “She’s been standing guard outside your room since you came out of surgery.”

Why didn’t she come in? Despite the arc of agony through his abdomen, Steve shifted to get out of bed again, but Harrison stood and stopped him. “I’ll bring her in, but Jesus, don’t pop a stitch and start bleeding. I have no desire to suffer that woman’s wrath.”

Steve frowned. “What do you mean?”

He chuckled. “She’s been very protective of you. The cops have tried to get in here to ask you a bunch of questions, but after she was done setting them straight, they left looking like first-year rookies who’d been reamed out by their commanding officer—without her even raising her voice or lifting a finger.”

Harrison went to the door and lowered his voice. “You know, we could probably use someone like her to run our security team. Nobody would
dare
steal corporate secrets with her around.”

Steve shook his head. “She’s destined for much bigger things,” he said, grinning with pride. He didn’t know if they were destined to go there together—he just knew he wanted to see her. Now. “Get her in here, would you? And then go away for a really long time.”

Harrison looked amused and left the room, but the door didn’t open again immediately. Was she really going to stay out there, avoiding him?

“Ms. Porter!” he shouted and then groaned. That hurt. But it got a reaction. The door swung open, and April stalked in. She was still wearing her dress from last night. It was wrinkled and dirty, and the bun in her hair was letting locks of her hair free to frame her face. She had a wicked black eye and another bruise tracing her jawline. But the dark smudge on her arm was blood. Dried blood.
His blood
.

Her gaze swept the room as if to confirm everything was still safe, carefully avoiding him directly until the very last possible moment. But when she locked on, there was fire in her eyes. Even with the pain meds and who knew what else flowing through his bloodstream, he was suddenly hard beneath the thin hospital gown.

“Do you require assistance, Mr. Nolan?” she asked coolly, crossing her arms. “I can fetch the doctor if you’re unable to use the call button.”

So it was going to be like that, was it?

“The only thing I need is you,” he said bluntly, but her only reaction was a tightening around her mouth. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “If that’s all you wanted, I’ll get your doctor to look you over, so that I can tell the police officers who’ve been waiting that they can come in to ask you some questions.”

He swore. “Damn it, April. Get over here. We need to talk.”

She tensed even more, like a pillar of stone that was hard and strong but would explode into a billion pieces if someone came along and pushed it over.

He shrugged. “All right, if you aren’t going to come over here, then I’ll have to get up and go to you.” He started to swing his legs over the bed again, not even having to pretend the gasp of discomfort that blew from his mouth.

She rushed over. “Oh! Get back in bed, you jerk. You’re the most disobedient, stubborn, practically certifiable—”

He let his head fall back into the pillow with a groan. It was a good thing that had worked because standing on his own might actually have been a problem. “I knew you’d give in. You’d never let anyone hurt me, not even myself.”

She snorted and put her hands on her hips. “Only because I haven’t been paid yet.”

He didn’t believe her. Not after last night. Not after this morning. She couldn’t kiss him like she did and not feel about him the way he felt about her. He remembered the hurt in her eyes when he’d turned cold and accused her of selling him out to the rags. He remembered the devastation on her face when that bullet had ripped into him.

And he remembered the way he’d felt when she went tumbling head over heels down the steps, wrestling for the gun with Veronica.

Screw expectations. Screw what was good for business. Screw his past. Screw the complications.

The future was what mattered…and he no longer had any doubt that April Porter was his future.