Her Rancher Bodyguard (5 page)

As they walked she seemed dazed, moving her feet one in front of the other without really paying attention. He kept hold of her hand, keeping her upright and moving. They ended up at his place. He led her up the steps and inside.

Thanks to Daron, the place smelled like wet dog, dirty socks and burned eggs. She wrinkled her nose but didn't say much. He pointed her toward the sofa and she complied without argument.

“Do you want something to drink?”

She laughed at the question. Boone brushed a hand across his face and shook his head.

“Iced tea?” he offered the second time around.

“Thank you.” She sat curled up on his sofa, legs tucked beneath her. She reached for the afghan, sniffed and tossed it back to the opposite end. “You have a dog.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I have a dog. And I have Daron McKay. Both of them shed, smell and leave messes.”

What had started as laughter on her end suddenly turned into quiet sobs as he poured the tea. He grabbed two glasses and headed her way. She didn't cry pretty. Or maybe she didn't cry often and so this was the proverbial dam bursting. He sat down next to her, placing the glasses on the coffee table.

She didn't look like a woman who wanted a hug. She was stiff and curled into the corner of the sofa. He let her be because his sister Janie was like that. She wanted to do it all herself, alone, even grieve. He was his mother's son, so it was hard for him to let someone grieve alone. He wanted to wrap his arms around the person and he wanted to make it all okay.

Kayla elicited that response from him quicker than he would have imagined. She was about as broken as a woman could get, hiding all of that destruction behind her brazen actions and big smiles.

He wanted her pieced back together and whole.

Not that it should matter to him. She wouldn't be in his life that long. He guessed it was a little like his Scout leader used to say about a wilderness camping trip. Leave it better than you found it.

He'd like to leave Kayla a little better off when they parted ways.

Next to him, she'd stopped crying. She shifted, moving toward him by slow degrees. When her head touched his shoulder and she sighed, he came undone just a little. Expect the unexpected, that was what he knew about her. This softness would definitely qualify as unexpected. She melted against his side, her arm digging into his ribs just the slightest bit. He shifted and somehow that put her a little closer rather than putting distance between them.

Her face was in the crook of his neck, her breath warm, her touch light. And then she shifted a bit more, and her mouth touched his. This was crossing the line. He had that thought just as her hands moved to his shoulders, turning him to face her.

She brushed her lips over his, hesitant and seeking. The third time he fell into the kiss, giving up a little control. Her hand, soft and timid, was on his cheek. He pulled her a little closer and her hand slid to the back of his neck, her fingers skating through his hair.

Outside the dog barked; a truck door closed. He pulled away. She moved back, her eyes bright.

He started to apologize but she shook her head. “Please don't say you're sorry. Even if you are. I've felt empty for so long, Boone. I've raced through life trying to fill up the empty spaces. I've kissed men who meant nothing and made me feel nothing. You have no idea how much I needed that kiss. I needed to know that I could still feel.”

What could he say to that? He sat back on the sofa and closed his eyes.

“I'm not sure I want to be your experiment, Kayla.”

“I know. I'm sorry.” She waited until he looked at her and then she grinned, a little mischievous and kind of sweet. “But it was a good kiss. I mean, if you're worried or have doubts, you shouldn't.”

Boone grinned.

“I'll apologize now for the text to Samantha.” Their shoulders were touching, her fingers laced through his.

“I don't mind if you call your sister. But we have to keep communications to a minimum so that it doesn't leak out that you're here. Family. No one else.”

“Got it. Family. No one else.”

The front door opened. Man, he'd forgotten all about that truck door a few minutes ago. He moved quickly, pulling his hand from hers. Kayla remained seated, as if nothing at all had happened.

Daron stepped into the camper, pulling off his hat, swiping a hand through his hair. He stopped when he saw the two of them.

“Oh, I didn't realize we had company.” Daron stood in the center of the room looking from one to the other of them. “Kayla, it's been a while.”

“Daron, I wish it had been longer.”

Boone looked at them. “I have to agree with Kayla on this one. What are you doing back at my place?”

Daron shrugged and headed for the kitchen. “I skipped breakfast.”

“I'm sure my mom has leftovers,” Boone offered.

“No, thanks. I don't want to impose.”

“You're imposing now. And shouldn't you be at the office?”

Daron pulled a container of juice out of the fridge and took a drink from the carton. He swiped a hand across his mouth and set the juice on the counter. “You know that our clients don't show up at the office. They call or email us. I've got one on the line right now for Lucy. I'll keep you posted on that.”

“Good to know. Kayla and I were just heading out. We're going to visit her sister.”

“That's good. Have you heard anything from the police today? I called her father. He hasn't had any threats in the past couple of days. He's been making a list of people who might dislike him enough to hurt him or his family. He'll give us a copy and the state police and FBI will get copies. I told him to think beyond the people who dislike him the most. Sometimes it's the least likely person. Someone only slightly offended but more than slightly deranged could be our man. Or woman.”

“I think that narrows it down to almost everyone he knows,” Kayla quipped.

Boone took hold of her arm and pulled her out the door with a parting shot at his partner. “I guess you plan on being here when I get back?”

Daron saluted as he opened the microwave. “Looks that way.”

“Good, then we'll take shifts at my folks.”

Daron grunted a response and Boone closed the door before he could form an objection.

“Why shifts?” Kayla asked as they headed toward his truck.

“I want to make sure one of us is watching you at all times.”

“You shouldn't have to lose sleep,” she insisted. “No one knows where I'm at.”

“Let me do my job, Kayla. And you could help by not sending texts to anyone other than family.”

“Right. I'm your job. I'm sorry.”

Great. The kiss hadn't even been his idea, and yet it still felt like his mistake. He guessed he could tell her the kiss hadn't left him empty, either. No, he wouldn't go there. Better to let sleeping dogs lie, and pretend kisses like that hadn't happened.

Chapter Five

S
omehow they ended up with the twins, Essie and Allie, riding along to the Martin Ranch. And that meant switching to an extended-cab pickup. The girls climbed in the back. Kayla took the front passenger seat and tried to ignore the man behind the wheel. Which wasn't an easy thing to accomplish.

Because breathing meant noticing. When she inhaled, she caught his scent. He smelled good. He smelled of the outdoors, clean soap and spicy aftershave that reminded one of spruce trees and autumn. She turned her attention to the window and listening to the twins discuss a horse. Allie wanted to team rope. Essie was the aspiring model. They were compromising. Both would team rope. Both would enter the beauty pageant in San Antonio.

They were sisters the way she hoped she and Samantha would become sisters. They were on their way to that kind of relationship. Even if they were twenty-some years late to the game. This past summer they'd painted Sam's kitchen together. They'd been together when their mom had gasped her last breath and went on to whatever eternal reward might have been hers.

That death had hit them both hard in different ways. Sam had felt abandoned by their mother, Sylvia. Kayla had as well, but she'd been fortunate to have found her mom sooner. And for a short time she'd been the daughter, the one person in Sylvia Martin's life who knew her and loved her and felt loved by her.

With her passing, Kayla had been forced to take a long, hard look at her own life.

The rewind hadn't been pretty to view.

“Kayla, do you think emerald or ruby would be perfect for our gowns?” Essie asked from the backseat.

Kayla smiled back at the girls. “Either. Or maybe both. You don't have to match, do you?”

The girls looked at each other, eyes widening. “Perfect,” they said in unison.

“Too easy,” Boone grumbled. “Don't expect it to always be like that. They came out of the womb tugging hair and screaming at each other. Mom said if I'd shared a cramped space for nine months, I'd be a little testy, too.”

The twins disagreed. “We love each other. We just have different opinions,” Allie leaned forward to explain.

While the banter continued. Kayla's phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket and read the text.

Poor little Kayla, her daddy didn't believe her and thought she was crying wolf. Maybe we should tell the world and then someone might believe you. Your bodyguard, for instance.

She went cold and her lungs wouldn't draw in a breath she desperately needed. The twins were still talking, although the conversation buzzed from far away. Boone said her name, not once but several times. She rolled down the window of the truck and threw the phone, watching in the rearview mirror as it bounced along the pavement of the country road.

“Oh, boy,” one of the twins said in a low whisper. “So maybe just drop us off at Oregon's shop. We can get a ride home.”

“Good idea,” Boone said.

They got to town and he pulled onto the main street of Martin's Crossing. He parked in front of Oregon's. The sign in the window said it was open. The twins bailed out the back, quiet as mice.

“We're going back to get that phone.”

“No.” She shivered in the air-conditioned cab of the truck. “No, we're not.”

“What was it, then?”

“I don't want to discuss it with you. It's a private matter between my father and myself.”

“We need that phone. That's our only link to this guy. If he keeps telling us what he's thinking, we might be able to catch him. He might slip up eventually and give himself away.”

“You're a bodyguard, not a cop.”

“Honey, I was the toughest of cops. I've policed the world and hunted down terrorists. I promise you, I'm more than a bodyguard.”

She shrank inside herself, wanting to be alone. She wanted to get away from him and the temptation to tell him all of her sorry secrets. Because he might believe her. He might. But what if he didn't? The little girl inside her still cried for someone to trust. And she didn't want to misplace that trust.

“We're going back for the phone,” he insisted.

“Fine, go back.”

“Tell me what happened.” His voice had grown harder, more insistent.

“I can't. Just get the phone and tell my father that I didn't do this.”

“You tell him. It seems to me that a little communication in this family of yours might be just the thing.”

“Some parents don't want to communicate, Boone. Don't come at me with family advice when you live up on Walton's Mountain with homemade bread, church on Sundays and all of that encouragement.”

He pulled to the side of the road where she'd thrown the phone. “I was wrong. You know how to communicate.”

She closed her eyes. “I'm sorry. It isn't you that I'm angry with.”

“No, I didn't think it was.”

He said it so gently that her heart tugged at her, telling her to trust. She closed her eyes, trying to get a grip on that wild part of herself that wanted to outrun the pain, that wanted to push away anyone who tried to break through her defenses. She was so tired of fighting.

She was in over her head with this man who caused that shift in her emotions. What did the client develop with the bodyguard? Patients and caregivers developed the Nightingale syndrome. Captives developed Stockholm syndrome. What did she have? The Kevin Costner syndrome. She smiled at the thought.

Handsome bodyguard, strong but wounded heroine. She laughed out loud. As he stepped out of the truck to retrieve her phone, he glanced back.

“You find this amusing?”

She shook her head. He was going to think she'd lost it.

“No, it isn't. I'm just trying to find humor in a really rotten situation.”

He returned a minute later with her phone, and he tossed it to her as he got behind the wheel. “What's the big secret, Stanford? What didn't your dad believe?”

“You didn't have the right to read my texts,” she told him.

“I do have the right. I thought this was just an easy gig, follow the heiress and keep her out of trouble. Instead, I'm fighting to keep you safe from a stalker, and from yourself. So if I have to read your texts in order to do my job, I will.”

“Some things are private. Why do you limp?”

“Some things are private.”

“What happened in Afghanistan, Wilder? Why do you live in a camper and not with your very awesome family? Why is Daron holing up in your place and not the big mansion his daddy bought so he could play rancher?”

“Watch those claws, Stanford.” He pushed his white cowboy hat back a smidge on his head, giving her a better look into his dark brown eyes.

“I'm just saying, we all have secrets.”

They sat there in the truck on the side of the road. “Let me tell you something about secrets. Secrets get people hurt. Or worse, killed. I'm trying to protect you, but I can't do that if you don't tell me what's going on.”

“Could we please go now?”

He pulled onto the road.

“I can't do this, not yet.” She needed time to be strong, and then she could tell him. Or tell someone. She knew it would come out. Sooner or later it was going to be revealed. If not by her, then by the blackmailers. How did they know?

“Okay. I'm not going to push.” He pulled onto the road that led to the cottage where Samantha lived.

They drove past Duke and Oregon's house. The truck bounced and bumped along the rougher dirt portion of the road. In the distance she could see the roof of Brody and Grace's house. She shifted to look at the profile of the man behind the wheel of the truck. Boone Wilder. He'd been in her life only a week. She didn't owe him her story.

But she did wonder how it would feel to tell him, to have him listen and understand. How would it feel to have someone tell her they believed her?

“My dad and I are going to have to talk. We've been sweeping things under the rug for so long. And now it looks as if someone is going to force us to face this.”

“Talk to him, then. Whatever it is, the power these blackmailers have over him is the secrecy and obviously the lack of trust between father and daughter. Take that advantage away from them and they fail.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Tell Samantha. She can help you.” He pulled the truck up behind her sister's truck.

Sam waved from the arena where she was working her barrel horse. She'd tried to teach Kayla to ride. It had not been a great experience. But she thought she might like to try again. Because riding meant trusting.

If she could trust a thousand-pound animal, maybe she could trust her father. She could trust Boone. She could trust her heart.

* * *

Boone watched from a distance as the sisters talked. They were full of smiles and hugs. Then they walked together, the horse trailing behind them. From a distance he saw Kayla run her hand down the neck of the horse. He smiled. Maybe he'd give her riding lessons. That would be a way to pass some time.

His phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and he wasn't surprised that the call was from Kayla's father. He answered.

“Did my daughter get a text?”

Hello to you, too.
Boone grinned at his own humor. “Yes, sir, she did. She isn't in the mood to talk about you or to you. I think that's a mistake. These blackmailers know your secrets. Or at least they think they do. I know the goal is to catch them and put a stop to this. But as long as you're keeping your secrets, they have all the power.”

A deadly silence hung between them for a long minute.

“Don't tell me about power, Mr. Wilder. I know all about power. And don't tell me what I already know about my daughter.” There was a break in either the connection or the other man's voice.

“I'm just saying...” Boone began. But then he didn't know how to continue. Everything sounded like an accusation, and that wasn't a bodyguard's place.

He glanced in the direction of the corral, where the sisters were talking. This simple babysitting job was taking on levels he hadn't expected, and didn't want.

“I'm going to hunt these men down,” Mr. Stanford was saying. “I'm going to make them pay.”

“It sounds as if you might want to deal with a few other things first. What is it you didn't believe?”

Mr. Stanford said a few choice words followed by, “Do your job, Wilder. You were hired to be a bodyguard, not a family counselor.”

Boone brushed a hand through his hair and let out a long breath. “I'm sorry, that was uncalled-for.”

“You bet it was. If you don't want to lose this job, remember who is paying your salary.”

Boone nodded and kept the phone to his ear. Because the salary was important to him. As much as he didn't want the money to be important, for his family and for the Wilder ranch, it was. They had medical bills to pay and kids to put through college. His career was the only thing between them and financial ruin.

“I'm protecting your daughter. I'll leave it to you to find the people threatening her life.”

“I expect you to keep Kayla safe, out of trouble, and get her to my town hall meeting in San Antonio this Friday.”

“We'll be there.”

The call ended. Boone shoved the phone into his pocket and headed for the corral and the horse that Kayla was climbing on top of. Keeping her safe meant keeping her from falling off that crazy animal of Sam's. The horse was sidestepping, aware of the novice crawling on his back as if she was hanging on to a high wire and about to fall.

“Stanford, sit up straight and take a deep breath.” He spoke quietly for fear of startling the already antsy animal. The horse hopped a little. “Sam, you have more sense than this.”

Samantha, blonde, proud and unwilling to back down, arched a brow at his comment. “I know what I'm doing, Wilder.”

“Of course you do. You're going to get her thrown.”

“Thrown?” Kayla asked with not a hint of fear. No, instead she seemed to take his comment as a challenge. She took the deep breath and visibly relaxed. “I'm not going to get thrown. I'll have you know, I've been riding since I was twenty-four.”

Both sisters laughed. He didn't.

“Fine, cowgirl, go on.” He made a shooing motion with his hands. “Show us how it's done.”

“The horse is tired. He'd prefer to just stand here. But thank you.”

Boone took the reins from Sam, eased Kayla's left foot out of the stirrup and replaced it with his. Deep breath, he reminded himself. And then he was in the saddle behind her. The horse took off.

“Move your other foot,” he told her.

She did and he slid his right foot into that stirrup. His arms were around Kayla and he wrapped her hands around the reins.

“What are you doing?” She sat poker stiff in front of him, bouncing like mad in the saddle as the horse trotted around the arena.

“Stop bouncing as if you're on a pogo stick. It's a horse. There's a beat, a rhythm. Hold the reins easy, not tight, not loose. Got it?”

“No, I don't
got
it. I don't ride, Wilder. I'm a city girl. Remember? I shop. I go out to dinner. Green Acres is not the place for me.”

He leaned into her back and for some crazy reason brushed his lips across her ear. “Smell the country air. Feel the horse moving beneath you. Green Acres is the place to be. Farm living is the life for me.”

She laughed a little and he felt her relax. He guided her hand, showing her that she didn't have to pull the reins, just let them brush the horse's neck and the animal would turn away from the pressure. A light touch of the reins against the left side of the neck and the horse turned right. She rode him toward the first barrel and eased him around it.

He could feel the tension evaporating from her body. She was letting go. She was trusting the horse.

“Your sister is giving us the stink eye,” he warned.