Seducing the Bodyguard (4 page)

The suite was gorgeous. During her work she had stayed at more luxurious places, but this one was right up near the top of the list of elegantly beautiful. They had two bedrooms in the split-level floor plan room. The kitchen, living room and dining area were comfortable in size and the bathrooms had both the walk-in shower and a huge garden tub with jet spa features. It was like having a home away from home the minute they stepped through the doors. Her only concern was the basket of fruit sitting elegantly wrapped on the coffee table in the living area.

“Don’t eat any of that until I have a chance to check it out,” she had said. Harrison had simply laughed. She wasn’t joking. Her first priority was checking the room for potential threats, including cameras and listening devices. The latter of the checklist was more out of habit than necessity this time around. She highly doubted that anybody had placed bugs in Harrison’s room, but she was accustomed to doing her job completely, without neglecting any possible detail.

When she was on assignments the first thing she checked for was threat by human intruder, and then she proceeded to check for cameras and listening devices throughout her room. Back then she checked every crevice, every painting, lamp, phone, furniture fixture, door, peephole and anything else that could be a potential hiding place. She planned to do the same here, but Harrison wasn’t making her job easy. He was already unwrapping the fruit basket.

She resisted the urge to chastise him like a child. Instead, she took the basket from the table and carried it with her while she did her initial walk through. She heard Harrison protest as he followed behind her. When she told him not to eat any of it, she meant it.

She deviated from her normal pattern because Harrison wasn’t cooperating. So instead of checking for human threat and then threat from trespassing technology, she checked for human threat and then inspected the package in front of her.

“If you look closely enough, Harrison, you can see almost anything,” she kept her tone low. She didn’t seriously think there were bugs in the room, but she learned long ago to never assume anything. “Now please refine your speech to something else until I check the room for bugs?”

He threw his head back and laughed long and hard. “Overkill,” he panted between breaths. “Nobody has touched the darn apples,” he tried to pick one up and she grabbed his wrist to stop him. He cut her a deadly serious look of annoyance.

“It’s been done before,” she said evenly and quietly as she continued to inspect the green piece of fruit in her hand. “And if I hadn’t caught it my client would have been dead.” She put the apple up to her nose and smelled it cautiously, checking for any hint of an almond smell. She didn’t smell almonds so she ruled out cyanide.

Harrison retracted his hand. “Who the heck do you protect, Valencia? The Pope?”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t bother to tell him that her protection detail went from foreign dignitaries to high power business men, and yes, she had even spent some time with religious leaders. Fortunately, most of the people she protected had been in more private settings and she wasn’t thrust into the spotlight as much as she would be with this case. Most of the people she had protected wanted their privacy and so press conferences weren’t the norm, but it would be here. Harrison already had five television interviews lined up for this week alone. It was a very good thing she was a master at disguising her looks. If ever she needed to return to the assassination game she would be able to do it unnoticed.

“You’re not going to tell me are you?”

“No,” she stated flatly as she inspected another piece of fruit. She wouldn’t tell him that somebody had tried to kill her by sending her poisoned fruit as well; only instead of apples they had sent her a basket of oranges. Twenty-two years working for the government as an assassin had made her extremely cautious. She never ate anything that was delivered to her room, not even room service.

She briefly thought back to the first time she had been sent in to kill someone. In hindsight she could see that she was being used for her smaller stature. A grown man, or woman for that matter, wasn’t going to be able to get inside that fortress. But because of her small size, because of her exotic looks, and because of her ability to speak flawless Arabic, she had been dropped in the middle of the dessert land and given the mark to kill. She blended in with the local children, but stayed far away from playing with them. Nobody questioned her; they didn’t even give her a second look. And when she made her way into that heavily guarded fortress she knew exactly where to go to execute the kill. She carried out her mission and exited just the way she entered—unnoticed. That had been her first kill, and before that she had never seen a man die. The man who sent her in had told her this kill was for the greater good of mankind, but after a while she never truly believed it. After a while, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if maybe that kill had been nothing more than a test to see if she could do it, if she had what it took to take on harder, more complex assignments.

She pushed the thoughts from her mind. There was nothing she could do about the past. A life, once taken, wasn’t something any human had the power to give back, and she wouldn’t let the decisions she made all those years ago haunt her. She could only focus on the here and the now.

“It’s clean,” she sat the last apple in the basket after checking the basket for bugs. “I’m going to check out the rest of the place.”

“Valencia,” his voice was laced with concern.

“They’re fine to eat if you want to.” She assumed he was worried about the apples.

“I’m not worried about the apples.” He looked down at her before walking closer to her “I’m worried about you. How do you live like this?” He waved his hand around the room as if encompassing her entire life. If only he knew…but she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anybody.

She shrugged. “This is my life, Harrison. If it keeps somebody safe I’m willing to make a few sacrifices.”

“You’re making more than a few,” he grumbled. “Checking the food for poison. Checking the rooms for listening devices…who are you?”

She looked at him, contemplating his question—a question that she couldn’t fully answer. “Valencia Dugan-Mishoto,” she said in the same even tone that she said everything else before she walked away from him and began her in-depth inspection of the room.

Harrison had said he would be in the room for the remainder of the day so she figured it was a good time to do her training exercises. She could push some furniture around and have space at least. She wasn’t at home so she couldn’t spar with any of the men who handled her father’s protection, but that wasn’t an excuse to get out of shape.

She slipped into fitted black pants and a sleek cerulean fitted vest before rearranging the living room furniture and pulling the draperies shut. In her bare feet she began her warm-up utilizing breathing techniques and slow fluid motions that were both graceful and lethal. She was an hour into her training when she heard Harrison open his room door. She knew he was standing there looking at her. It hadn’t been that long and she didn’t imagine that he could possibly be ready to go somewhere when he had just, a little over an hour ago, declared that he would be in for the remainder of the day.

She broke her movements and turned to face him. “Is there something wrong?”

“You’re amazing. How do you do that?”

“Years of training,” she didn’t elaborate. She didn’t tell him that by the time she was six she knew over a hundred ways to kill with her bare hands. She didn’t tell him that she was skilled in using anything as a weapon, that when she said even a small book could be deadly she truly meant that a small book could be used to kill. She didn’t tell him that she had weapons on her person that looked like accessories. She didn’t tell him that, and she wouldn’t tell him that. “Did you need to go some place after all?”

“Dinner.”

She looked at the clock. “It’s only one o’clock.”

“I know. I wanted to give you a heads up. I forgot that I’m having dinner with Latricia Anderson at this upscale place in Downtown Scottsdale. She’s…”

“Somebody I should know about,” she stated sharply. How dare he forget to mention this woman? It wasn’t that she was upset that he was dating another woman, if he were dating her; it was that she needed to know about everybody in his life. She had told him that, and yet he still felt the need to leave something out.

“She’s just a business associate. She helped me get things sorted here for the opera to go on. I had some tie ups with the local government over the amount of trucks I would need to bring all of our stuff in—there are sets, costumes, extra lighting, everything really,” he shook his head. “They wanted more money. I have money, but I don’t have it to throw around. Latricia helped me get things squared away, but we’re supposed to meet to discuss some final details. I’ll introduce you to her tonight. She’s a real sweetheart. You’ll like her.”

She doubted that seriously, but then that was mostly because she didn’t allow herself to like too many people—in fact, she would go so far as to say that outside of family and the men who worked for her father who were like family to her, she didn’t allow herself to like anybody at all. Thomas had been the first non-family member in years that she had allowed herself to form an attachment to. Not that she had much choice in the matter. The moment she saw his bloody body laying in that dessert sand her heart latched onto him and she had to save him, she had to protect him. There was nothing about consciously allowing herself to have those feelings, she just had them.

“If you need something to wear there’s a store down in the lobby that has some nice evening attire.”

“I have something,” she said simply. Yes, she had a small suitcase. It was a tiny yellow polka dot case that allowed her to look extremely docile, but on the inside it was more than spacious enough to carry the amount of clothes she would need for any occasion. Of course she had only packed six formal dresses. Should Harrison decide to do dinner out at an upscale restaurant every night she would have to improvise. Her little black dress was very versatile. Adding and subtracting from it made it look like a different dress entirely. “You don’t have to worry,” she stated. “I know how to dress for any occasion, and I won’t embarrass you.”

“I…I didn’t think you would.” His eyes widened. “It’s just that suitcase is so…small. I don’t know any woman who can carry a suitcase that small.”

She smiled. “Now you do.”

“What about makeup and body products…shoes to go with every dress?”

She laughed. “I’m covered.” She didn’t wear a lot of makeup; in fact she didn’t wear anything more than the occasional lip gloss or soft shade of lipstick. She never needed more. Her lips had a natural deep brown line to them. Her eyelashes were long and healthy dark black that made it look as if she was wearing mascara even though she wasn’t. She didn’t need any of the makeup products out there so it saved room in her case not to bring them when she had no intention of wearing them. She had enough footwear and clothing to put together any look she needed to. But most importantly, she had all of her weapons exactly where she needed them to be.

“I’ll get my shower so I’ll be ready when you are.”

“It’s a really upscale place,” he reminded her. “Slacks won’t work…not even if it is a nice suit.”

She looked up at him. “I’m covered,” she assured him. “What’s the name of the restaurant?” She wanted to do some research before they left.

“Victoria’s Garden,” he stated. “It’s very—”

“Upscale,” she said before he could say it again.

Harrison had rented a sleek blue SUV for his duration in Arizona. She could at least breathe a little easier in the fact that he planned to drive and not hire a driver to cart him around. She didn’t trust drivers. She never really had, but ever since that one time in Cartehenia, when the driver had been the assassin after his own employer, she trusted drivers even less. Fortunately she had won, but things could have gone differently, badly, and both she and her client could have been dead.

By five o’clock she was dressed in a deep burgundy red A-line dress that hugged the curves she had perfectly. The dress came down to the top of her toes and had two splits, one on each side, but nothing that was so noticeable that it looked tacky. It was an elegant dress, but most importantly, it allowed her free range of motion if she needed to kick some butt. She also had two slender knives strapped to each upper thigh, a belt that hung from her waist that looked like nothing more than a string of pearls, but instead was a lethal wire that could cut a man’s head off if need be. She had her hair in a bun with two decorated hairpins in her hair that were actually sophisticated weapons she could toss in her enemy’s heart. Her four-inch heels had a stealth-like blade in the heel of the shoe, and right inside her handbag was yet another weapon she could use if she needed to. She was prepared for battle, even in formal attire.

She could tell from the tonation of his husky voice that they were no longer talking about the same thing here. “To leave for dinner,” she stipulated.

“Oh, right,” he didn’t move. He just stood there, looking at her as if he wanted to rip her clothes off and take her right there on the coffee table.

“What if somebody did try to kill me tonight?” He grinned as if he was finally able to make a point. “In that dress I don’t think you’ll be able to do much.”