Because a Husband Is Forever (6 page)

“They're paying us double our usual fee to do it, plus free publicity.” Randy held up his hand and continued more quickly, “Plus the producer's going to have the studio underwriting a commercial for the firm.”

“Just to have us do this?”

“It's called sweetening the pot,” Randy said. “I told them that you'd be reluctant.”

Ian laughed shortly. “That's the first time I've ever heard you understate something.”

“Then you'll do it?”

Ian parked himself on the edge of the desk. Something in his gut told him he was going to regret this, but for the good of the company, he was going to have to take this bullet.

“If I don't, you'll probably nag me to death.” He might as well be prepared. “When do I start?”

Randy's eyes avoided his. “Tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” As if on cue, the phone rang. Ian nodded toward the instrument. “What about business?”

Randy placed his hand on the receiver but didn't pick up yet. “If it gets too much for me to handle, I can call in some favors. I know a couple of guys on the job who wouldn't mind moonlighting.”

A lot of policemen made extra money in either security work or acting as temporary bodyguards. Right now he was willing to change places with any of them. “Maybe one of them wouldn't mind taking my assignment.”

Randy shook his head. “Hey, what's the problem? From where I was sitting, that was one mighty fine lady.”

Maybe that
was
the problem. “I'm not interested in ‘mighty fine' ladies.”

Randy shut his eyes as if searching for strength. The phone continued ringing. “You were divorced, Ian, you weren't neutered. There are times I really do despair
about you.” With a heartfelt sigh, he picked up the telephone receiver. “Bodyguard, Inc. How can I help you?”

Ian tuned him out as he went to the door. If this was going to happen tomorrow, he needed to go home to pack.

And to seriously rethink the career choice that had brought him to this junction. Ian headed toward the elevator. Paperwork was beginning not to sound so bad.

 

She was not an early riser.

Early to Dakota meant that the world was already well bathed in sunlight, people were brewing coffee and, like as not, on their way to whatever life had to offer them that day. Dawn was something she customarily visited from the other side of the night.

Which was what made her impromptu trip upstate so unexpected, most of all to her. It was definitely not a habit she felt the least bit inclined to acquire.

She was not one of those people who bounced out of bed unless, like that one time back home, there was an earthquake demanding her attention. So when she heard first the doorbell, then a hard, firm knock on the front door of her thirtieth-floor penthouse apartment, she pretty much thought she was dreaming.

As the knocking persisted, growing louder, the dream turned into a nightmare and then vanished altogether, leaving her brain enshrouded in a fog thick enough to sock in any airport.

The knocking turned into banging, the sound vibrating in her head.

More than half-asleep, she tumbled out of bed, the comforter pooling behind her on the floor like an afterthought. She made one futile attempt at shoving her feet into slippers, had a fifty-percent success rate and half stumbled, half dragged herself to the front door. Anything to stop the awful banging.

She felt around on the wall in the general vicinity of the light switch. After finding it, she threw it on and blinked as the light blinded her.

“What!” she demanded angrily as she yanked open the door.

Ian stood on the other side of the door, magnificent in his anger and obvious disapproval. Marching into the apartment, he firmly shut the door behind him. The sound resonated in her chest. If looks could kill, she had a feeling she would have found herself skewered on a spit, about to become a large piece of charcoal.

“Are you crazy?” he demanded. The woman hadn't even bothered to ask who it was. He could have been some serial killer, looking to gain access to her apartment. Or, at the very least, he could have been a stalker. Maybe this woman
did
need someone in her life to keep her safe. Apparently she didn't have the brains of a pair of size-six shoes.

Sucking in air, Dakota dragged a hand through her hair. It fell haphazardly about her face. Clarity to her brain still refused to surface.

“I must be,” she agreed vaguely. “I'm having a conversation in my dream. Or maybe it's a nightmare.
There's some man standing in my foyer, yelling at me.” She squinted. “Wait, he looks just like that man who was on my show yesterday.”

Ian glared at her as if she was babbling in some foreign tongue. Only slowly did he become aware of the fact that the woman was wearing some football jersey that had seen a dozen or so too many cycles in the washing machine and had worn to the thickness of overused gauze. In addition, it apparently had shrunk rather badly. With the light shining behind her, he could see the complete outline of her body, covered by the thin fabric.

Muscles he wasn't aware of having tightened all throughout his body.

Ian fixed his glare on the top of her tousled hair. That way, he felt a hell of a lot less unsettled. “You don't open the door like that.”

“Only way I know how to open it.” She blinked several times, trying to get a lock on the situation. “Did you come here to argue?”

“I came here to be your bodyguard,” he reminded her tersely.

It took her a moment to process. She squinted at him again. “Doesn't that mean I'm supposed to be the one in charge?”

Had she been completely conscious and in possession of all her faculties, she would have seen that the expression on his face was foreboding. “Within limits.”

“How about games?”

He couldn't begin to follow her. “What?”

She took a deep breath before continuing. “Am I in charge of games?”

That made less than no sense to him. He sniffed the air around her. No, she wasn't drunk or getting over the effects of being in that condition. “Yes, sure, games.” Maybe the woman was just plain crazy, he decided.

“Fine,” she exhaled the word. “We're playing Simon Says. Simon says go back to bed. 'Night.”

And as he watched, Dakota turned on her heel and stumbled out of the room. It was only then that he realized she was wearing just one slipper.

And that in all likelihood he had been celibate much too long.

U
sually Dakota could go back to sleep no matter what. Even during the earthquake episode, once her bed had stopped shuddering like a wet dog coming out of the river, she was able to fall asleep again.

But having some brooding, good-looking man she hardly knew hovering around her apartment was different. All she managed to achieve was a half sleep filled with dreams of him that seemed very, very real while she was having them.

She gave up a half hour later. After getting out of bed, she got dressed before venturing from her bedroom. The rest of the apartment was very quiet. There was no sound, no evidence that there was someone else here.

Maybe she'd somehow dreamed up the whole thing.

On her way to the kitchen and some life-affirming coffee, she peeked into the room she'd converted into her office then stopped dead.

Ian perused the bookcase in the room that his pseudo client obviously used as an office. A desk and two bookcases filled the sunny room. Photographs were hung on every available wall space. Photographs of Dakota with celebrities she'd had on the show.

On her desk were more private photographs. One of a man he vaguely recognized and a smiling woman who looked like an older version of Dakota. Those had to be her parents. There was one of her and the man who'd secretly been his boyhood hero: Waylon Montgomery. Ian had been eleven when he'd arrived at the conclusion that no man was a hero. But until then, the man who played Savage Ben's owner had been it for him. Another photograph was of her and a man he assumed was her brother.

Two frames stood empty, and this aroused his curiosity. He was just about to examine them when he heard her voice and turned around.

“You weren't a dream,” she said. He was there, his back to the door. For a man who stood approximately six feet tall, he still somehow managed to look larger than life.

She looked a great deal more presentable. The football jersey had been replaced by a navy miniskirt with white accents and a navy sweater that showed off her
assets. Still, the fact that she was no longer wearing a gauzelike jersey allowed him to look somewhere other than just her eyes.

“Nobody's ever accused me of being that,” he commented, mildly amused. He nodded at the frame he was holding. “What's with the empty frames?”

There'd been two photographs, one of John alone and one taken of the two of them at the last fund-raiser they'd attended. Both photographs had met a quick demise when she'd discovered just how closely John liked working with his patients after they'd recovered. “I didn't like the pictures that were there anymore.”

Part of his job was to read people, and she was almost transparent. “Boyfriend?” he guessed.

She shrugged a tad too carelessly in his estimation, confirming his suspicions as she walked into the room. “Something like that.”

He set the frame back down in its space. “Oh.”

On the defensive, Dakota raised her eyes to his. “What, ‘oh'?”

Ian looked at her for a long moment. “You were serious about him.”

Self-preservation had her wanting to deny it, but there was no point in lying. Ian's X-ray vision would probably alert him to it anyway.

“More than he was about me, apparently.” She went on the offensive. “Is this what a bodyguard does, ask questions he shouldn't? I thought you were the strong, silent type.”

As far as he was concerned, he didn't have a type. He just did his job to the best of his ability. “Just trying to get the lay of the land.”

With effort, she forced herself to stop being defensive. John was history, and as part of hers, she was going to have to deal with it. For now she had something else to deal with, this man in her apartment. “You're taking this whole thing seriously, aren't you?”

He took everything seriously, but saying so would probably start her off on some tangent, so he merely said, “The kind of money your studio is paying for this, there's no other way to take it but seriously.”

“You could try having fun with this.”

Spoken like someone who'd been pampered all her life, he thought. “I'm not being paid to have fun.” Ian looked at her intently. “Being a bodyguard is very serious business.”

His eyes had turned a very interesting shade of gray, she thought. Almost like dusk settling in over the horizon. Just what she needed getting in her way, a dour man. He had to lighten up. “I don't have a stalker,” she asserted.

Ian's expression never changed. “That you know of.”

“Thanks for that cheerful thought.”

“That's the only effective way for a bodyguard to operate. As if each client had someone out there who could harm them at any given moment. I'm supposed to keep you safe.”

Dakota suddenly grinned at him and was determined
to have a little fun. Sidling up to Ian, she left enough room between their bodies for a flea to get through. A flea that had successfully completed a crash diet. “And what's to keep you safe?”

She was trying to shake him up. But knowing didn't prevent the flare of heat from igniting inside of him. The earlier image of her body, almost completely visible and highly inviting, flashed across his mind. Ian banked down it and his reaction.

“I'm packing a gun,” he informed her evenly, answering her question.

Releasing the breath she was holding, Dakota laughed as she stepped back. “That'll do it.”

Moving out of the room, she nearly tripped over the suitcase she hadn't noticed before. Off balance, she had no time to steady herself. In a heartbeat, strong hands were on either side of her shoulders, keeping her body from ignobly meeting the rug.

As she looked up at him, she found that she had somehow managed to lose the air from her lungs. It took her a second to recover and covertly attempt to draw in air.

She hoped she could cover the moment with a smile. “You
do
take this protecting thing very seriously, don't you?”

He released her, aware that he'd held her a beat too long and that the sensation of having her so close was more pleasant than it should have been. He was going to have to watch that, he told himself.

“The studio opted for the whole package,” he reminded her.

And what a package it was, she caught herself thinking. Trying to get her bearings, she looked down at the culprit that had caused her to trip. She didn't believe in clutter. Consequently she knew where everything was within her apartment and could easily maneuver around it in the dark. This hadn't been there earlier.

“A suitcase?”

He nodded as he pushed it to the side with his foot. “For my clothes.”

It took a second for his words to sink in. “You agreed to
stay
here?” She would have bet anything he would have vetoed that part of it.

“I do for the more intense assignments.”

She could feel the space around her shrinking by the second. “And I'm an intense assignment?”

He shrugged, obviously far less troubled by his choice of words than she was. “Like I said, the studio wanted the whole package.”

She sighed, shaking her head. She and Alan Curtis were going to have a very long talk when she came in today. Saying yes to the producer's proposal didn't mean she'd given him carte blanche with her life.

But for now she was going to have to make the best of it. Her father had taught her that making the best of it was how one survived. “C'mon, I'll show you to your room.”

Ian made no move to pick up his suitcase and follow
her. “I thought this would do.” He nodded toward the sofa. “I could sack out there.”

“This is my office.” It was going to be hard enough to share her apartment with him. She wasn't about to share her work space as well. “I have a spare bedroom.” Her tone made things final.

With another half shrug, Ian picked up his suitcase. “You're the boss.”

She smiled as she led the way out. “I think I could get used to the sound of that.”

He realized he was staring at her hips again and drew his eyes up to look at the back of her head. A second later he replayed her comment. He could easily see her running off with that as some kind of promise. “Within reason.”

Turning toward the small corridor, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Meaning?”

His lips never curved. “Meaning that if you wanted to run naked into a crowd of people, I'd have to override you.”

Turning just before reaching the bedroom, she took his words as a direct challenge. “If I wanted to be naked, what right do you have to stop me?”

“I'm being paid to use my judgment about how to keep you safe. Running naked into the crowd somehow strikes me as not really keeping you safe—for long.”

She laughed lightly, conceding the point. And then the skin along her neck turned to goose bumps. About to open the door, she realized that she hadn't been in this room since John had moved out. She should have real
ized something was not quite right with the arrangement when he'd told her he wanted a room of his own. At the time, she'd just thought he needed work space. She hadn't realized that they had different definitions for the word.

She'd had Eva, the woman who came in once a month to clean, air the bedroom out so that not even a telltale scent of his cologne was left in the room.

But the woman had forgotten to vacuum out the memories, she thought.

“I guess I'll just have to keep my clothes on,” he murmured.

Everything within the room was brand-new. The curtains, the bedspread, everything that carried with it even the slightest memory was gone.

She felt oddly liberated as she stood now, looking in.

Ian walked to the closet and opened the sliding mirrored door to deposit his suitcase. As he did so, he noticed that there was a blue shirt hanging at the far left of the closet, all the way against one wall.

He pulled it out and held it up. “Or throw this on.”

She had once thrown on that shirt, she recalled. As a joke. John had been fussing about his clothing, telling her that she was wrinkling his jacket when she'd laughingly pushed him back on the bed. To tease him, she'd donned one of his shirts over some very fancy underwear. He'd been more concerned about the condition of his custom-made shirt than he had about what was underneath it at the time.

She should have realized they were worlds apart then.

Had he left the shirt here on purpose, in hopes of haunting her, of making her call him in order to tell him that she hadn't meant to throw him out?

If he had, he'd certainly misjudged her.

Pulling the blue garment off its hanger, she bunched the shirt into a ball and threw it into the wastepaper basket. She tossed her head, sending her long, blond hair flying over her shoulder.

“Not if it was the last garment on earth and the world was slipping into another Ice Age.”

Ian heard something beyond the words. “Hurt you that badly, did he?”

It wasn't hurt, not after the initial ten minutes. “No, just made me realize what an idiot I was for settling.”

He cocked his head slightly to the side, as if trying to make sense out of what she was saying. “Settling?”

For reasons she couldn't fathom, it made her impatient to explain.

“I wanted what my parents had. What they
have,
” she corrected. Anyone in the room with her parents could easily see the two still loved each other as much now as they had the day they got married. “Happiness. I thought that maybe John could give it to me. I got fooled by the trappings and ignored the man beneath.” She stopped abruptly and looked at him accusingly. “Do we have to have this conversation?”

“No.” There was passion there when she spoke, he thought. In her eyes. They grew brighter, lighter if that
was possible. As it was, it looked as if God had taken His cue for how the sky should look from her eyes.

She had to change the subject. It made her no happier to think about having to share the next two weeks—and her apartment—with a stranger who had caught her audience's fancy. A stranger who intended to shadow her every move. She wondered if the ratings were worth it.

“What do you need, in order to settle in?” she asked, doing her best not to sound as if she was talking about an upcoming execution.

His suitcase inside the closet, he slid the door closed again, then looked at her. “I'm ‘in,'” he informed her simply.

She laughed and shook her head. When John had moved in, he had needed seven trips to bring in all his belongings. She was a firm believer in quality. With him, it had been quantity. Lots and lots of quantity. Her huge apartment had been crowded.

It appeared that Ian Russell was even more of a minimalist than she was. “Don't require much, do you?”

His eyes met hers again. “Just cooperation.”

She banked down the shiver that found its way up and down her spine. “Ah, well, that's going to be the hard part, I suspect.” She turned and walked out of the room.

He was right behind her. “It can be as easy or as hard as you make it.”

She stopped and turned to look at him. “In other words, it's all up to me.”

He spread his hands. “In any words, it's all up to you.”

She wasn't buying that for one moment. This was not an easygoing man, this was a man who was accustomed to being obeyed.

“As long as I do what you tell me.”

He smiled just then and she was struck by the way his face seemed to change and soften. “Those are the words,” he agreed.

Her breath had lodged in her lungs again. What the hell was wrong with her this morning? she upbraided herself. “You should do that more often.”

A slight look of confusion told her that he didn't follow her reference. “Do what?”

She subdued the urge to trace his smile with her fingertips. Coffee, she told herself, she needed coffee. “Smile.”

He looked at her steadily. “I wasn't aware that I was.”