Protector for Hire (7 page)

“Just don’t ignore her, Schwartz.”

“Ignore her?”

“Right. I know you don’t need anyone else for company, but she’s different.”

“Yeah, she is.”

The words left his mouth before he had a chance to think them through, and he wanted to kick himself instead of the damn tree. Luckily, Grant didn’t seem to notice.

Hell, that wasn’t true. Grant noticed everything. The guy was a counterintelligence expert, for crying out loud. A fly could take a shit with its left rear leg lifted and Grant would notice it lifted the right one last time.

Which meant Grant was just being kind. Schwartz tried to decide whether to be annoyed or touched.

“I really appreciate you doing this, man,” Grant said. “Seriously, I sleep better at night knowing you’re looking out for her.”

“No problem.”

“You’re sure I can’t do more to help? It only takes a day to reach your place from Fort Lewis. I could drive over on the weekend and—”

“No.”

“What about Sheri? Or Mac? Or Mom offered to—”

“No.” His voice was more forceful this time, and he hated snapping at his brother like that. But dammit, he needed to stop this now. He had to keep his distance from the family. “Look, I gotta go.”

“Okay.” Grant cleared his throat. “We’re all here for you, Schwartz. The whole family, you know. If you need anything—”

“I don’t.”

Lie. Fucking stupid lie. He swallowed hard and looked back at the curl of smoke drifting from the cabin’s chimney. He thought about smoke and ashes and fire and mangled metal and closed his eyes against the onslaught of memories.

“If you change your mind, we’re here,” Grant said. “Always.”

“Got it.”

“Tell Janelle hi, okay?”

“Sure.”

“And Schwartz? Don’t ignore her.”

Schwartz grunted and disconnected the call. Then he stared at the phone, wondering what delusional world his brother lived in if he thought there was any way he could possibly ignore Janelle Rebecca Keebler.

…

It was after midnight again, and Schwartz lay sleepless in bed.

Again.

The sleeplessness was nothing new.

What
was
new were the thoughts now keeping him awake. Instead of twisted metal and the screams of dying men, he was picturing Janelle’s face over dinner. She’d insisted on doing her share of the meal prep, so he’d let her boil spaghetti while he opened the jar of sauce.

Real fuckin’ gourmet. Hardly the sort of thing she was used to eating in the cafés and fancy restaurants in San Francisco, but she gobbled it up like a champ and asked for seconds.

“Glad you’re not picky about food,” he’d said as she practically licked the plate clean.

“No, but I am picky about coffee. Seriously, Schwartz—that stuff tastes like someone soaked rusty nails in muddy water.”

“That’s a familiar flavor profile for you?”

“Come on—when can we go to that town you were talking about and get some real coffee?”

“We’ll see,” he’d told her, fighting to keep his expression stern as she’d pantomimed choking and gagging on another sip of the potent brew.

Schwartz rolled over in bed and tried not to think about her easy smile or smell the floral notes in her hair or hear the lilt of her voice as she said his name. God, how long had it been since a woman had said it aloud like that? Or moaned it? Or screamed it?

A long time. Too long.

He rolled over again and punched the pillow.
No.
That wasn’t going to happen.

Protecting someone meant not getting involved. Not like that, anyway. More than anything—certainly more than sex—he needed to be someone people could count on to do a job. Not to fuck things up with people’s lives at risk.

He closed his eyes and listened to the swish of tamarack branches outside his window. It was a soothing sound, something he’d grown used to. A lullaby of sorts.

He was almost asleep when he heard the scream.

Chapter Four

Schwartz’s heart pounded in his throat as he threw back the covers and leaped out of bed. He grabbed the pistol from where he’d stashed it in the cupboard above his bed, his gut clenching as the scream sounded again.

“No! Stop, please! Don’t do this!”

Janelle.
Oh God, what was happening?

He rounded the corner into the office, raising the pistol to annihilate the threat. He remembered how to do that, even now.

But there was no threat.

Not real, anyway, though he damn well knew how real the imaginary ones could feel.

“No!” she screamed again, and thrashed beneath the covers on the rollaway bed. A nightmare. Her eyes were shut tight and she was fighting an invisible attacker, her battle cries fierce and tortured and so goddamn real he wanted to fight them for her.

“Janelle,” he whispered.

She didn’t stir, but her face creased into a nightmare grimace as she fisted the sheet in her hands. She was sweaty and wild and flushed in the moonlight.

Schwartz set the gun on his desk, far out of reach. Then he knelt beside the rollaway and touched the side of her face.

“Janelle,” he whispered again. “Wake up. You’re having a—”

Pow!

The punch was so swift and so fierce, he never saw it coming. Christ almighty, the woman had a mean right hook.

He caught her wrist before she could swing again, pinning both her hands to her sides. “Janelle,” he said, more loudly this time. “Wake up. You’re dreaming. A nightmare.”

She opened her eyes and blinked at him. “Schwartz?”

“It’s just me.”

“Oh my God, I was having a bad dream.”

“No shit. Where’d you learn to punch like that?”

She struggled to sit up, and he dropped his hands to his sides as she fumbled to hold the sheets against her chest. “I punched you?” She touched a fingertip to his cheekbone, and he felt himself wince.

“Ow.”

“I’m so sorry! Here, let me go get you some ice.”

“Stay put,” he said, ready to pin her down on the bed again if he needed to. “I’m fine. I’ll probably have a black eye, but it doesn’t hurt. Seriously, who taught you to hit like that?”

“Your mother.”

“No kidding?” He felt himself starting to grin. “That sounds about right. Stella was teaching us hand-to-hand combat before we were potty-trained.”

“I don’t think she meant for me to use it on you.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure she’d approve.” Schwartz sat back on his heels, wanting to put a little space between them. Her hair was disheveled and sweaty, and her face was flushed in the moonlight.

He’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

“Want to tell me about the dream?”

She shrugged, looking down at her hands. “It was about Jacques. About what I saw him do.”

Schwartz nodded. He’d read the report, of course, but seeing it firsthand would have been a whole different ball game. “I read the details, so you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Good. I’d just as soon not relive it.”

“It was the first time you’d seen him do something like that?”

“Of course! You don’t think I would have run like hell at the first clue he was capable of something like that? I had no idea—”

“Okay, okay. I believe you. It’s just hard for me to imagine going from thinking someone’s the sort of person you want to spend the rest of your life with, to realizing he’s a homicidal drug lord.”

“Yeah. Well, clearly my judgment is a little fucked up.”

The darkness in her voice was something he hadn’t heard before, and he drew back a little more. “Hey,” he said, trying to keep his tone soft. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, it’s true.” She looked up at him, and his heart nearly split in two at the sight of tears pooling in her eyes. “My inability to assess someone’s true character is the stuff of legends.”

She was eyeing him oddly now, and Schwartz leaned back to put a few more inches of space between them.

“Want me to get you some water?”

“No. I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just—maybe I won’t go back to sleep.”

“What?”

“I have a deadline coming up for one of my biggest clients. I should probably get to work.”

He glanced at the wall clock. “It’s twelve thirty.”

“I’ll be quiet. I won’t disturb you, I promise.”

“That’s not the point.” He wasn’t sure what the point was or why he was sitting here arguing with her. He should get the hell out of here and head back to bed before he gave in to the temptation to reach out and push the sheet off those beautiful bare shoulders. She was wearing that pink tank top thing again with the tiny little straps and the fabric he remembered was as soft as forest moss.

Janelle sighed. “Look, I just don’t want to have the dream again. I’m afraid.” She looked down at her hands. “If I get up and start working, I won’t have to risk having the nightmare again.”

“Sure. Sleep deprivation is always a good solution.”

“What?”

“There’s a reason it’s used as a method of torture.”

“Yeah? Well, between that and the nightmares, I’d rather pick the form of torture that lets me be conscious and in control.”

She looked so lost and afraid that Schwartz wanted to gather her in his arms and hold her until she stopped shaking. A stupid idea. Still, he couldn’t leave her alone like this.

He frowned, already regretting the words he was about to utter. “Do you want to share my bed?”

“What?”

“If it’ll help, I mean. We can keep our distance from each other. I just thought maybe—”

“Yes,” she said, already vaulting off the rollaway. “I know it’s stupid, but I feel better having you there. I promise to keep my hands to myself. I promise I won’t touch you or grope you or—”

She was still uttering promises as she pulled his sweatshirt over her head and scrambled out of the room, but he’d stopped listening.

Because the truth was that he hoped like hell she’d break every single one of them.

…

Janelle wasn’t sure which of them drifted off first, but she woke with a start at three in the morning with Schwartz slumbering peacefully beside her.

She glanced around the darkened room, trying to figure out what had jarred her from sleep. The scrape of tree branches against the side of the house? The soft whimpers from Sherman having a dog dream out in the living room? The distant howling of coyotes or wolves or whatever the hell was making all that canine racket off in the distance?

It was funny, really. She’d spent her whole life surrounded by a cacophony of city sounds—the blare of horns, the clatter of streetcars, the shouts of people on the streets.

She’d expected to be enveloped in a blanket of silence here in the Montana wilderness, but that wasn’t the case at all. The sounds were still out there. They were just different sounds. Strange sounds, as unfamiliar to her as the man now sleeping beside her.

She turned on her side to look at him. He lay on his back with his hands balled into fists beside him. He didn’t snore the way Jacques used to sometimes, which surprised her. For some reason, she’d expected that a man who looked like a lumberjack would saw logs when he slept.

But Schwartz Patton was turning out to be nothing like she’d expected.

Jacques turned out to be nothing like you’d expected
.
You’re not exactly batting a thousand when it comes to judging a man.

Right.

There was that.

Janelle couldn’t deny the blaze of attraction surging between her and Schwartz. She was pretty sure he felt it, too, but he was keeping his distance. He’d been quick to nix any possibility of anything happening between them when he’d allowed her into his bed this time.

“You’re kidding me with this, right?” she’d asked as she stood at the foot of the bed earlier, watching him drag a giant bolster pillow out of the closet.

“What?” he’d asked as he dropped the pillow lengthwise down the middle of the bed.

“You’re putting up a barrier between us?”

“Damn right I am.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I know. Why would they make a pillow that looks like a giant purple hot dog?”

She rolled her eyes and flopped onto her side of the bed, glaring daggers at the pillow. “It’s not purple, it’s aubergine.”

“What?”

“Aubergine. Like eggplant.”

He shook his head. “No, it definitely looks more like a hot dog than an eggplant.”

“It’s not a hot dog, it’s a bolster. Very trendy. Where did you even get this thing?”

“Some website my sister likes. It had to do with a clay farm or something like that.”

“Clay farm?”

“Yeah. That’s the name of the site.”

“Pottery Barn?”

“That’s right. I got it so I have something to lean on when I want to work in bed.”

She rolled her eyes and looked at the pillow again. What did it say that he’d avoided contact with his sister for a decade, but still relied on her advice for home décor? She knew from her own sister that Schwartz had kept in touch with his family in strange ways. He didn’t trust anyone but Grant with his contact information, but he sent thoughtful gifts for birthdays and weddings and Veteran’s Day. When Grant had proposed to her sister, Schwartz had sent flowers to Anna and a card of congratulations. He called his mother on her birthday and Mother’s Day, but he never came to visit.

He clearly didn’t hate his family, so what was the deal with the avoidance?

She sighed and poked at the stupid bolster pillow. “So aside from whether it’s an eggplant or a hot dog, it’s a blockade between us?”

“Yep.” Schwartz flopped down on the opposite side of the bed and turned his back to her and the bolster.

“You don’t trust me to keep my hands off you?” she asked.

“Maybe I don’t trust myself to keep my hands off you.”

“Which is it?”

“Good night, Janelle.” He’d flipped off the bedside lamp, plunging them into darkness for a moment. In the silence, she heard him sigh. “If you get scared or you have another nightmare, wake me up, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Mmmph.”

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by then, and she could see the outline of his shoulder above the bolster. The moon was out, and there were pinpricks of stars scattered across the black felt sky spread above the treetops.