Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (59 page)

Jonas’s chest rose and fell in deep, uneven gasps. His icy eyes were hooded as he sought her out across the garage. Tires were squealing now. Horns were honking. Men were shouting.

He held out his hand, reaching for her. Faith ran to him.

“Faith?” He collapsed to his knees. His arm dropped to his side. But his gaze still held hers. “Honey?”

“Police. Freeze.” Men in uniform were swarming around Jonas, every one of their guns leveled at her bleeding—maybe dying—hero.

“No!” she shouted. “He didn’t do anything. Don’t hurt him!”

She heard Liza shouting behind her. But the vile words were quickly muffled.

She only knew the man whose color was draining from his face, whose beautiful blue eyes were growing too heavy to hold open. “Oh, Jonas. Please don’t die.”

He was within her grasp when unseen hands snaked around her and lifted her from behind. “No!” She fought against the hands that were keeping her from the man she loved. “Let me go!”

It took three men to pick her up and carry her away. To stuff her inside an unmarked car and pin her to the back seat.

She’d never gotten to touch him. She’d never said she loved him.

She pasted her face to the window, pulling at the restraining hands, keeping Jonas in her sights long enough to see the police and several paramedics closing in on him. He couldn’t even move. He couldn’t defend himself. Faith’s eyes flooded with tears, but she angrily brushed them away to keep Jonas in her sight.

“We’re The Watchers, miss. You’re our first priority.” The man who held her in the seat tried to explain why they were taking her away. “He’d want it this way.”

“Jonas?”

“Be safe.” His lips mouthed the words, but there was no rich dark sound to fill her ears and warm her heart.

He’d collapsed to the floor by the time the car left the garage and sped away from the hospital.

Chapter Twelve

Forty-two days was a hell of a long time to be alone without having contact with any of the people you loved. Faith stared out the window of her D.C. hotel room at the two gold-leafed trees in the park across the street. In spite of the bustle of midday traffic, the October rain was dreary and depressing.

How had Jonas ever survived being alone for all those years?

Oh, God, how she ached for him. She longed for one intense look from those ice-colored eyes. Or one brush of his callused fingertips in tender restraint across her forehead. Or one gruff, awkward word as he curbed his language in a boyish effort to please her. She needed a look, a touch—a soul-rendering kiss—to sustain her, and drive away her last memory of Jonas, downed and dying, so that she could be safe.

The only thing she’d been told was that he was alive. That he’d been taken into surgery immediately and put into intensive care. Her uncle Wes had recovered from Liza Shelton’s cyanide poisoning as well, and he and Gran were sequestered in some other hotel in some other city, awaiting the outcome of Liza’s trial.

Faith had testified before judges and lawyers and subcommittees she’d never known existed. The daughter of a rogue FBI agent, using her father’s connections to exact revenge for his suicide and sell top secret weapons research to the highest bidder was a woman that everyone wanted a piece of. Liza Shelton had been charged with treason, four charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and two attempted murders. With Faith’s account of William Rutherford’s death, her identification of Jermaine Collier—whose real name was Clyde Avery—her explanation of the information on the disk and her account of some key memories of her father, Liza Shelton would be spending the rest of her life in prison.

As soon as today’s verdict was announced.

Faith breathed in deeply and let the curtain drape back over the window. The agent guarding her this afternoon was already diving into the elegant lunch prepared by this five-star hotel’s restaurant. She shook her head when he offered her a plate, but picked up a bottle of water and carried it to the couch where she curled her legs beneath her and turned the pages of the magazine she wasn’t reading.

Even the buzzer of the hotel room’s door couldn’t startle her from her lonesome-hearted depression. She nodded when the agent jumped up from his lunch and motioned her to stay put. She listened to the brusque exchange of voices when he opened the door without really hearing any of the words.

But she did sit up straight when a different man walked into the room. She guessed him to be about fifty years old. The arrogant posture of his shoulders made him seem taller than his six feet or so of height. He had short, dark hair and dark-framed glasses that gave him an air of intelligence and authority.

“I’m George Murphy.”

He smiled and held out his hand. Faith slowly stood and moved toward him to shake his hand. This was Jonas’s friend. His boss from The Watchers who’d given them information to help them survive. “Mr. Murphy. Why are you here?”

For one god-awful moment she thought he’d come to tell her that Jonas hadn’t survived his wounds, after all.

“Liza Shelton’s been found guilty,” he announced without any setup or fanfare. “You’re free to go.”

Faith hugged her arms around her waist and braced for the bad news. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“We have a mutual friend. And he needs your help.”

T
HE SETTING WAS
familiar as Faith steered her rental car around the twists of White Horse Road. There were glimpses of autumn gold among the tall lodgepole pines, and the hazy evening air was heavy with dampness that would turn to snow by nightfall. But the steep slopes of the mountain still rose in a formidable barrier on one side and dropped off into a carpet of green treetops on the other.

She checked her map and drove past the driveway to Jonas’s old cabin. George Murphy had told her that Jonas was refurbishing an older, even more remote place farther up the mountain. He didn’t need the reminder of Sheriff Prince’s dead body to wake up to each morning.

Idly, she wondered if Jonas’s perspective on mornings had gotten any worse. The magnitude of prejudice and misperceptions he faced every day would have crippled a lesser man.

When she found the right driveway, Faith slowed the car and turned. She hoped she was doing the right thing. According to George Murphy, Jonas had pretty much given up on work and people and life. The beast of the mountain was wasting away, pining for something he’d lost.

But Jonas Beck had never given up on her. Not once. She wouldn’t give up on him, either.

She parked her car at the base of the drive and walked up as Murphy had suggested. She found Jonas beside the quaint, sturdy cabin, chopping wood with a powerful fury. He was dressed in his jeans, work boots and wore gloves. But he had shucked off his flannel shirt, and a mixture of sweat and the bracing, cold air beaded across his wide, muscular back.

She made no sound. None at all. But she was ten feet away when he spun around, brandishing the ax like a weapon. “Get the hell off my…”

Faith boldly stared, drinking in every detail as he stood in shocked silence. He truly was a battered warrior, standing bare-chested and damp with sweat. The pink skin of the newly healed bullet wound in his shoulder, the marks of stitches across his rib cage, and the scar that cut across his left cheek stood out against the healthy tan of a man who’d been working outdoors.

He was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

“Liza Shelton’s in prison,” she stated simply, wrapping up the nightmare she’d endured.

“I heard.” His hungry blue eyes dropped to the record book she carried in her hand. His words were a harsh, pain-filled growl. “If you’ve come to pay me back, I won’t take a penny.”

So he wanted to talk tough, huh? Faith felt the oddest urge to smile. She knew now that it was all a sham. A protective front to guard his big, beaten heart. She planted her hands on her hips and gave him attitude right back. “I’m not here to pay you anything. I’m here to collect what you owe me.”

“What?” He buried the ax in the chopping stump and reached for his shirt. As he pulled it on, he asked, “What do I owe you?”

“The truth.” Faith took a deep breath of the clean mountain air and put her own heart on the line. “You’re hopelessly in love with me, aren’t you, Mr. Beck?”

A muscle leaped in his jaw and he looked away, high into the sky. Faith caught her breath when his beautiful blue gaze came back and collided with hers. “Do you know how hard it was for me to let you go?”

She took that as a yes. Faith released the breath she’d been holding and almost laughed. Her mule-headed hero could be so noble. “How hard are you willing to fight to have me stay?”

Jonas listened to the challenge in her voice. He memorized the golden, wind-tossed waves of her hair and the pretty eyes shimmering with a sheen of unshed tears. Her jeans hugged the curve of her hips and the length of her legs. His body tightened at the ripe swell of her breasts pushing in uneven breaths against the zipper of her dark green jacket. And his heart beat hard with the promise of hope.

But twenty-some-odd years of thinking of himself as a devil-eyed monster wasn’t a curse that was easily broken. She was still ten feet away, and she hadn’t said the words he most needed to hear. “I don’t want you to stay out of some sense of obligation. I’d have taken that bullet for anyone I was hired to protect. Keeping you safe was the right thing to do. I’m a hard man to live with. I still have a lot to learn about manners and patience and—”

“You stubborn son of a bitch.”

Not the words he’d expected to hear. Not from those lips. “Faith—”

“I love you.” She was walking toward him now. No, marching. Striding. Advancing for battle. Jonas pulled up to all six feet six inches of himself, bracing for the fight he saw in her eyes. “I need you. To hold me. To be there for me. To need me. I need a rock. A soul mate to make my life complete.” She was right there in front of him now, boldly looking him in the eye. She poked a finger against his heart. “I.” She had the nerve to poke him again. “Love.”

He scooped her up in his arms and never let her finish the sentence. “I love you, too, honey.”

He claimed her lips and plunged his tongue inside to taste the essence of her love for him. He tunneled his fingers into her hair and cupped the sweet curve of her rump with a possessive need that softened into humility as her arms wound around his neck and her lush, hot mouth gave back every bit of passion and love and welcome that he craved.

The hard shell of hurt that had closed off his heart to the world shattered into a million pieces. She wrapped her legs around his hips and he carried her up onto the porch and into the cabin. He laid her on the quilt on top of his bed and lost himself in the miracle of kissing and loving and being loved by Faith.

Night had fallen by the time his sated body found the willingness to rest. Faith dozed peacefully in his arms, snuggled close, one hand resting with gentle acceptance against the new scar on his cheek. Badges of honor, she’d called them, as she’d kissed each wound. Not marks of shame or fear.

He was still too awed by the blessing of her love to sleep himself, so he was awake and ready to listen when she stirred against his chest.

“Jonas?” She stroked her fingertips across his lips and he kissed each one. “You’re going to marry me, aren’t you? I mean, Wes and Gran raised me to be a lady, and sleeping with you all the time just isn’t—”

He brushed his knuckles beneath her chin and tipped her mouth up for a long, lingering kiss. When he finally pulled back, he was smiling. “I’m going to marry you.”

And then he actually laughed. It felt good. It felt right. “No one else will argue with me.” And then Faith was laughing, too. And then they were making love to each other all over again.

He had a feeling laughter would never hurt again.

Later, in the earliest hours of the morning, Jonas got up and opened the curtains of the east-facing window of his bedroom. He climbed back beneath the covers and pulled Faith into his arms, his soul at peace as he watched the sunrise.

And they loved happily ever after.

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ISBN: 978-1-4603-1102-8

Keeping Watch

Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Books S.A.

The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

Heart of the Night

Copyright © 2003 by Mona Gay Thomas

Accidental Bodyguard

Copyright © 2003 by Julie Miller

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.