Protector (5 page)

“Well, Jolynn, I bet it starts now.”

Sure enough, the Maserati purred to life. “Thanks any way.”

“No problem.”

Envisioning their next encounter, she imagined her blackjack dealer toppling his table as a shield against the Amazon threatening him with a socket wrench. But damn it, she’d had to learn to take care of herself. She’d had no choice in a world where even her own uncle wasn’t safe. She needed to leave now.

Charles glanced at his watch and frowned.

“Is something wrong?” Why couldn’t she just go?

Charles rubbed his hand along his jaw. “Hey, why don’t I go with you to the hospital? It’s late, and while you’re an undeniably capable lady around an engine, a dark hospital parking lot isn’t the safest place to be alone.” His face dimpled into a smile. “Please, don’t deny me my life’s dream of riding in a Maserati convertible with a redheaded lady mechanic.”

Panic pattered in her gut. She should tell him no. But then just as she’d avoided her father, turning down this man’s polite and logical request to accompany her late at night in a foreign town… it just wouldn’t make sense.

She eyed him, eyed the car. Why not? Lucy had already given him her stamp of approval. Compared to the risk in coming home, how dangerous could a short ride be through the heart of Genoa with Charles? “Get in.”

*  *  *

Relief slammed through Chuck harder than the closing door.

Thank God he wouldn’t have to scrounge for more excuses to accompany her, or worse yet, follow her and risk being made. But he needed to be sure nothing more came of that brush with the Brit.

And no way in hell could he pass up a chance for a face-to-face with her father. A meet with the mob boss could be good for their operation.

He rubbed a hand along the kink in his neck, still strung tight from his near-confrontation with the guy who’d very likely tampered with her car, a guy who’d been close to her more than once on the cruise ship. “Is it okay if I store my backpack in the trunk?”

“Go ahead.” She passed him the clunky key chain.

“I’ll be right back.” He stowed his bag.

He’d thought he could keep her at the ship by not fixing her car— ironic
as hell since he specialized in testing military jets and weaponry for a living. Or rather he had… Before…

Who would have thought Jolynn could tell a distributor wire from a battery cable? Chuck couldn’t suppress a smile remembering her chagrined expression after reconnecting the distributor.

His smile faded. A wilting flower wouldn’t be as tempting.

He had more important concerns. His cursory inspection of the undercarriage and engine hadn’t uncovered any sign of explosives. The last thing he needed was to explain away a brick of C-4. Nothing more could be done except to stick with her and make sure she got to and from the hospital in one piece.

“All set.” Chuck eased into his seat, “accidentally” knocking her purse to spill on the floor. “Sorry about that.”

Leaning forward, he checked under the dash for as long as he dared. The bumbling facade made a decent cover at times, but he hated acting the fool in front of such a competent woman.

Be honest with yourself, Tanaka.
That she was an
attractive
, competent woman made the pinch to his ego all the more uncomfortable.

Not that he planned to pursue her.

“Here you go.” Chuck stuffed the contents back in her bag.

“Thanks.”

Jolynn’s fingers brushed against his oversensitive palm. Her obvious awareness of the moment bothered him. The jolt of her touch bothered him even more. Damn.

His body didn’t seem to care she wasn’t his type. But then his body had betrayed him before.

*  *  *

Jolynn wrestled with guilt during the drive to the rehab center in the forested outskirts of Genoa. After passing two churches and a basilica, her conscience was kicking into overtime. She should be focused on her father’s condition— checking on him— finding out why the hell someone hadn’t bothered to let her know sooner. How could she be so into talking with someone she barely knew?

Maybe because he was actually a good listener. They discussed his return to college, her job. Lightweight stuff, and just what she needed to take her mind off what awaited her inside the rehab center.

By the time they reached the hospital parking lot, she decided not to overanalyze her reaction to the blackjack dealer– math whiz. Her jumbled nerves calmed with Charles Tomas in the seat next to her. She couldn’t remember when she’d simply talked with a man, her defenses always too high for anything more than banter.

She shut off the car outside the five-hundred-year-old Renaissance Italian villa that had been converted into a posh rehab center. Tuscan columns and Roman arches shone in the floodlights strategically placed along the garden grounds. And the statues… fewer and more subdued than the ones her father favored, but without question, he felt at home here.

Turning, she faced Charles, the small space in the luxury car suddenly smaller, more intimate. “Thanks for coming along so late. I hope you won’t fall asleep at work to morrow.”

“No problem. I’m used to working crazy hours across time zones.” He tipped his head to the side, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “Are you ready to go up now?”

“You
don’t have to come with me.” She avoided his gaze under the auspices of gathering her purse. “If you want to get something to eat, I can find you when I’m through.”

“I’ll pick up coffee for both of us and meet you afterward.” He pulled out a sleek new iPhone, a model so slim it looked like a serious upgrade from even hers. “I can keep myself occupied.”

As he bent to help her, Jolynn raised her head, and they bumped painfully. Chuckling, he pulled away. “Do you think we should alert the paramedics anytime we’re in the same place?”

His light teasing eased the tension coiled in the pit of her stomach. “Thanks, Charles. I needed a laugh today.”

“Glad I could help.” He held her eyes with his intense dark stare. “Take as long as you need.”

Without knocking over a gurney or flattening any nurses bearing trays full of blood samples, they safely entered a private wing of the rehab center, where her father had been recuperating from his heart attack. The smooth sounds of Italian spoken quickly flowed over her ears. Her mother had loved coming here, the reason her father had set up his first international office in this region. Memories of her mom were few, but the sound of her sitting in a beach chair practicing the language with a tutorial tape… She swallowed hard.

Her gaze swept the empty leather sofas— antique reproductions with carved cherry accents rather than the standard Naugahyde and steel that filled normal hospital settings. Finally her eyes landed on the welcome sight of her father’s friend and longtime head of security sprawled in a carved throne chair watching a television tucked in an antique armoire.

“Hello,
Hebert.” Jolynn savored the soft Cajun pronunciation of the old man’s name,
Ay-bear
.

Hebert Benoit’s familiar, square face creased into an asymmetrical smile with a chipped front tooth. He ambled to his feet and crunched her into a hug. “Welcome, welcome. ’Bout time you came.”

“Then perhaps you should have let me know about his heart attack when it happened.”

“And maybe it shouldna taken that to bring you into the family fold again.”

Except things weren’t that simple with her family. Even her feelings for this longtime protector of hers were tainted with the possibility of darker duties he must have carried out for her father over the years.

“Is he awake?”

“He never sleeps, same as always.” Hebert mopped a handkerchief over the sweat beading along his bald head. Spidery veins and bluster stained his smiling face.

“What’s he thinking, recovering on a ship, away from a fully outfitted hospital?”

Hebert brushed back a lock of her hair with a beefy hand. “He’s old, just like me, and when you’re running out of time, you just aren’t willing to waste any of it being somewhere you don’t wanna be.”

So where did that leave her now with the decision to come to Genoa?

Hebert gestured to Charles. “What’s he doin’ here?”

The blackjack dealer lounged against the door frame with his backpack dangling from one hand. “Good evening, Mr. Benoit.”

The older man grunted.

Jolynn placed a hand on Hebert’s arm and
squeezed. “Charles helped get my car started. He rode along in case it gave me trouble again.”

“Thanks, Tomas.” Hebert’s brows lowered in a deep scowl. Bushy spikes of hair touted defiance to the bare scalp. “I appreciate your watchin’ over our little girl.”

“Bear, nobody’s called me
little
since my tenth birthday.” Sighing, she realized she’d exhausted her stall tactics. “Charles, I really could use that coffee. Extra milk, two packets of Splenda.”

“It’ll be waiting.” The brief flash of Charles’s dimples bolstered her for the ordeal ahead.

By the time she’d reached the end of the hall, her feet seemed to drag her body into her father’s private suite, which had to be costing a mint. Nothing simple for Josiah Taylor. The pricier, the better to prove to everyone how far he’d come from his poor roots.

He’d started his operation with a simple sawdust joint— a nonluxury gambling club on the Texas-Louisiana border. As legal constraints on gambling put a choke hold on expansion, he’d redirected his business into a riverboat casino with seed money from a less-than-reputable source and his business expanded overseas.

Or so the story went. Not that anyone had ever been able to prove anything. And not that her whispered childhood confession of what she’d seen was ever believed. Her nanny had gone to her father…

He’d told her she was mistaken. It hadn’t been one of his employees who’d shot Uncle Simon, but one of their enemies and he would pay. She must have been traumatized by what she’d really seen.

Her father’s face then merged with now as he lay in a hospital bed surrounded by antiques that still didn’t re-create
any sense of home. Whatever medicines they’d put him on left his features bloated, his complexion pasty. Time had dulled his full head of red hair to a rusty copper with glints of silver.

“Daddy,” she whispered with all the feeling of a child waking from a nightmare in search of comfort.

God, how she wanted to keep driving with Charles, far away from Genoa. To London maybe… which made her think about the guy with the fakey Brit accent back on the ship.

No escaping.

Her father’s eyes moved beneath his lids. Jolynn backed away. His lids fluttered open, and he scanned the room for a moment in a vague, unfocused manner before halting on her. Father and daughter looked at each other for the first time since she’d graduated from college.

Jolynn plastered what she hoped was a hundred-watt smile on her face. “Hey there, old man.”

“Hello, Punkin’.”

The childhood endearment stung. Eyeing the doorway, she wondered what Charles would think if she burst back into the waiting room and begged him to run away with her to a London garret on the Thames. He could study quadratic equations while she admired him in nothing but a pair of jeans.

“You…” Her father cleared his throat with a grimace. “You all settled in on the ship?”

“There’s not much to unpack. I’ll be leaving in the morning before the ship pulls out.” Before she could stop herself, she said, “I could stay for an extra day or two if you need me.”

He shook his head gruffly. “No need. I’ve got plenty of suck-ups on the payroll for that.”

She tamped down the sting. She should have kept her mouth shut. “I’ll just go then. You should try to rest.”

She moved toward the doorway, the need to hug him a force almost stronger than her pride. Why couldn’t she fly into his arms the way she had with Bear? Bear had to be every bit as guilty as her father. Any employee that high up in her father’s chain couldn’t have clean hands.

“Hold on,” he said.

She hung her head, waiting without turning. That London garret was looking better by the minute.

“Jolynn Taylor.”

Lifting her chin, she faced him. “What, old man?”

He struggled to speak, but a fit of coughing stopped him. She flinched at the labored breathing. Concern smoked through her brain. Had she been told everything about his condition?

“Want you to do something.” Her father coughed again and clutched the small hospital pillow against his rib cage.

Why couldn’t they just hug each other instead? “What, Dad?”

“When you go back to Dallas, stay there this time.” He gripped the pillow and coughed again, the fluid rumble resonating.

Watching him struggle to breathe past the pain, Jolynn wondered how he still held the power to confuse her, to sting her feelings. She hadn’t expected a brass band reception, but had hoped for something more than this. She hated him for hurting her and loved him simply for existing.

But while she’d chosen a different— more honest— path than his, she was still his daughter, with a nose for a scam. Something more was going on here. The new suspicion made her dig in her heels. She would never have that traditional safe place with her father that other daughters seemed
to have so effortlessly. But she could stick around and fight for him to stay clean long enough to get well. She wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

“When are you going to realize I’m your daughter? I’ll leave when I’m damn well ready.” Feeling as weary as her father looked, Jolynn shoved through the door and came face-to-face with Charles Tomas.