Seduction in Session (5 page)

She bit that fucking gorgeous bottom lip, and he would bet she hadn’t been sleeping well. Would she sleep well in his arms? Would she cuddle up and lay her head on his chest and curl like a kitten around his body?

“I guess it would be all right for a night. You should know, though, that I cook, but it’s one hundred percent vegan.”

Damn. He was willing to do a lot for his friends. “No problem. I’ll eat anything you put in front of me and I’ll do the dishes. You cook. I’ll clean. We could be a good team.”

He would be the team leader. She just wouldn’t know it.

She smiled and he had to admit it was kind of breathtaking. When Lara Armstrong’s lips curled up, the rest of the world sort of melted away.

Staring into her blue eyes would have rocked his world if that buzzing sound hadn’t stopped with a hard squeal. Connor’s instincts flared and he looked up just in time to see the motorcycle stop and its black-helmeted rider lift a hand.

Connor caught sight of a semiautomatic in the rider’s fist—pointed right at Lara’s head.

It looked like his job started now.

L
ara looked up at Connor, an unfamiliar rush of excitement crackling along her skin. He was different than she’d imagined. When she’d seen him outside the coffeehouse, she’d assumed he’d be a big, gorgeous, unintelligent frat boy like the ones she’d barely been able to tolerate in college. They’d only cared about the next party and all that entailed.

But Connor was different. Yes, he’d taken her into the nastiest bar she’d ever seen, but because it looked as if he couldn’t afford more. He didn’t even have the money for a plane ticket home.

What had Niall been thinking? She chatted on, but it was nearly impossible to take her eyes off Connor. The man needed to stop the bodyguard business and go to Hollywood.

She had the distinct feeling that once he got into her condo, he wouldn’t leave until he wanted to. Still, she couldn’t find the will to tell him no and send him to some ratty motel. Her couch was pretty comfy. She’d fallen asleep there many a night.

It had been years since she’d had someone sleep over. She’d meant to jump back in the dating pool with another scared minnow like
herself. Connor was a shark. A hungry, down-on-his-luck, might-munch-on-anything-he-saw shark.

But the good news was the two of them spending time together wasn’t a date. She had to get her mind off that notion. Their interaction was purely professional and she intended to keep it that way because she was only interested in one man. Niall.

“Down!” He shoved her off the bench.

One minute she was talking about the Metro and how to avoid traffic, and the next Connor was shouting at her. “What do you mean ‘down’?”

She turned her head and saw instantly. A man had stopped in the middle of traffic, his arm raised. She glimpsed the faintest glint of metal before Connor tackled her with his big body. Lara went down hard on the concrete to her right. Pain flashed through her shoulder. Her head knocked against the ground and the world went a little fuzzy.

Something was wrong with her hearing. A persistent ringing resounded in her ears. Her vision was tunneling, getting dark at the edges.

“We need to move, Lara.” Connor was all around her. His arms enveloped her, his weight pinning her down. He was warm, so warm. Had she thought of him as a shark? Sharks were cold and she would bet they didn’t smell delicious, like sandalwood and soap.

She shook her head because her legs didn’t want to work. “No. I need rest.”

“Shit.” He cursed but kept on covering her.

Screeches and shouts sounded everywhere. The high-pitched engine revved again. Rubber squealed against the cement. Flashes of what seemed like hundreds of shoes rushed by impatiently. One of them even stepped right on Connor’s hand and he cursed again. He knew a lot of cuss words. He was very creative with them.

Another pain flashed through her as something crushed her foot. The pain jolted her into clarity. A gun. She’d seen one just before Connor pushed her down. She’d hit her head and now he was literally
covering her body with his own, protecting her from the mass panic the shooter had incited.

He was in danger. She had to get it together.

“We need to move before they come back.” Connor’s voice was deep and calm, as though nothing was really wrong.

She nodded but winced. Every single muscle in her body seemed to ache and her head pounded, throbbing to the beat of the feet fleeing the scene.

“Let’s make for the bar and we’ll hole up there until the cops come.” He eased off her. “I want to make sure the shooter’s really gone. Don’t move.”

It seemed as if the worst of the rampage was done, and the street had become eerily quiet. In the distance, she heard the sound of sirens, but the afternoon traffic clogged the roads, so it could be crucial minutes before they made it here.

Connor stood over her, stretching his hand down to offer his help. “The little fucker got away. I hope like hell some of these CCTV cameras caught his plate.”

She started to reach for him, but her vision wavered once more.

“Damn it.” Connor leaned down and wrapped an arm around her shoulders before tucking the other under her knees. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all. “You have to go to the hospital. There’s a knot on your head.”

When he cradled her to his chest, the pain didn’t seem so bad anymore.

“What happened? Why did someone shoot at the bus stop?” she asked, trying to piece it all together.

He strode to the bar but someone inside had locked the door. “Bastards,” he muttered under his breath and stomped back toward the bench, scanning their surroundings as if he expected more danger. “He wasn’t shooting at the bus stop, sweetheart. He was shooting at you.”

“Why would anyone shoot at me?” It didn’t make sense. Nor did her exhaustion. How had she gotten so tired?

“Well, I think we can safely say the little e-mail you received is just the beginning. Ah, there we go.” He hugged her against his body and carried her down the street. “I need an ambulance!”

He was still calling out when everything around her went dark.

*   *   *

I
still don’t understand what you’re doing here.”

She could hear her father, but he seemed far away. And really annoyed.

“If my daughter needs help, by god, I’ll be the one to provide it. How exactly do you know the incident wasn’t what the police said?”

“The police will say what I want them to. We need to keep this quiet for obvious reasons, but it was hardly random, sir.”

That dark voice tugged at her. Connor, her bodyguard. Her big, strong, cavemanny bodyguard. She shouldn’t like his voice. It shouldn’t sound so smooth and yummy. “The shooter stopped in the middle of the street and leveled that gun at her.”

“How do you know he wasn’t aiming for you?”

“Because I’ve been doing this for a while.” There was nothing but patience in Connor’s voice. “I spent fifteen years in the military and another year in private security. This is what I do and it’s why your daughter hired me.”

“Well, you did a shitty job since she’s here in the hospital.”

Lara forced her eyes open because it was obvious they weren’t going to clear up this argument on their own. “I didn’t get shot so I would say he’s done a bang-up job so far.”

Her father moved to her bedside, his eyes softening the minute he looked down at her. “Hey, muffin. How are you feeling?”

“A little embarrassed that you called me muffin.” She licked at her ridiculously dry lips. “Connor protected me. He got me out of the way
of that bullet and took the brunt of the crowd as they ran away. Am I in the emergency room?”

“Yes.” Her father took her hand. “Your mother is going to cut her trip to San Francisco short.”

Her mom was visiting friends. They were supposed to go on a tour of wine country. She never got to do anything for herself. “No. I’m fine. I’m sure it’s just a bump.”

“You have a knot on your head and the doctor says I’m supposed to watch you overnight, but other than that they’re releasing you as soon as you’re awake and feel strong enough to walk,” Connor explained.

“You’ll come back home, and I’ll have a security detail for you in a few hours.” Her father pulled out his phone.

If she let him dial those numbers, any freedom she had would be chucked right out the window. “Dad, no. I’m not going to Arlington. I’m going to my place and it’s all right because I already hired a bodyguard.”

Connor’s eyebrow lifted in a quizzical stare. She shrugged because there was no way she wasn’t going to hire him now.

Her father shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I don’t know who this man is and I don’t trust him. For all I know, you hired him off Craigslist and he’s a serial killer. Maybe he set up the whole scenario to con a job out of you. Have you thought of that?”

She came by her conspiracy-theory tendencies honestly. Her dad could come up with some whoppers. “Dad, he didn’t set anything up. I wouldn’t hire someone off the Internet.”

Connor cleared his throat. “Really?”

He had a way of making her feel dumb. “It’s not the same. You came with a reference.”

“From a man you met on the Internet,” Connor replied in that annoyingly hot, arrogant way of his.

“Are you kidding me?” Her father was suddenly standing next to Connor, and she had the distinct sense that she was being ganged up on.

“Niall is a friend. He’s an activist in California and I’ve been speaking to him for weeks. He’s a good guy.”

Connor shook his head at her dad. “He actually is a decent guy, but there’s no way for her to know it. She’s never talked to him in person.”

“We Skype almost every day.”

“Every day for a couple of weeks but you’re only messaging. For all you know he’s some creepy old dude looking to add to his harem of stolen brides.”

Her dad turned, fully engaging Connor. “She always does this. She’s far too trusting and I swear it’s going to get her killed one day. When she turned eighteen, do you know what she did? She hopped a bus to Guatemala with a bunch of hippies to pray to some hippie deity and smoke god only knows what in the middle of the rain forest.”

“We were building sanitation systems for poor villages.” She sighed and kind of wished her concussion had been worse so she didn’t have to sit through a recitation of her sins.

Her father gritted his teeth. “She left a note.”

“Because there was no way you would have let me go,” she pointed out.

Connor stared down at her. “Of course he wouldn’t have let you go. You’re the daughter of a senator of the United States of America. You’re a high-value target to many South American groups.”

Her father nodded. “That’s what I explained to her. Kidnapping important people is big business in that part of the world, but did she listen?”

“I also didn’t get kidnapped because I didn’t run around with a sign that said, ‘Hey, Daddy’s got cash. Please kidnap me
.
’ I’m not an idiot. I know how to blend in.”

“You couldn’t blend in if you tried.” Connor’s deep rumble made her wonder exactly what he meant by that.

She sat up and found her head surprisingly clear. “It doesn’t matter what either one of you thinks. I’m going home. I have work to do.”

Natalia Kuilikov was going to be a big story—if she could find out what had happened to the woman. Lara had come across a lead but she hadn’t been able to act on it for a few days. She definitely didn’t intend
to be locked in her father’s Arlington mansion with a bunch of Secret Service wannabes on her twenty-four seven.

“You’re supposed to rest. And if you don’t think I can force you to come home with me, you’re wrong.” Her dad’s cell phone was right back in his hand, almost a bigger threat than that gun had been.

“Sir, if you force her to go with you, I think she’ll run at the first opportunity. If you want to ruin what seems to be a perfectly fine relationship with your daughter, this is the way to do it,” Connor pointed out.

There was the voice of reason. “Yeah, what he said.”

Her father flushed, his cheeks going red. It was what he did when anyone backed him into a corner. “What the hell am I supposed to do? Someone took a shot at her. I can’t let that go.”

“I’m going to look into it. The cops are already checking all the cameras in a three-block radius. We’ll figure out where he came from and where he’s going. If we can get a plate number, we’ll find this guy. But I think it’s for the best that we keep the incident out of the papers. The last thing Lara needs is a bunch of media attention,” Connor explained.

Her father huffed as though he hadn’t even thought about it. He turned to her. “If they start checking into your background . . .”

Connor finished for him. “They’ll very likely put together enough to out her as an infamous blogger.”

Her father’s jaw dropped. “He knows?”

“Of course I know,” Connor replied simply. “I told you. I’m her security. I need to know everything. And in this case, one bodyguard is likely better than a whole team. No one will question what I’m doing with her. We’ll say I’m her new boyfriend. She can’t hide behind that if she’s got three dudes in suits with communication devices in their ears. I’m easy to explain away, and I have the flexibility to protect her and work with the police to figure out who tried to kill her.”

“Boyfriend?” It made her a little antsy. “Couldn’t we say you’re my cousin or something?”

“No.” No explanation. Just no.

“Or you could be my life coach.”

“No.”

Fine. He didn’t really look like a life coach. Maybe a personal trainer. She started to give him that option.

He simply looked down. “Whatever you’re going to say, the answer is no. Now, if you’re feeling up to it, go and get dressed. I want us gone before the press figures out where we are.”

“I wondered why you took her to this place.” Her father was looking at Connor with something like respect in his eyes. “There were closer hospitals.”

“I think if your office releases a statement that you’re so happy your daughter is safe after today’s seemingly random act of violence, the press will back off. If they scent the truth, they’ll be all over her and it won’t take long for one of them to put the puzzle pieces together. It could certainly open her up to numerous lawsuits, and it could truly harm you politically.”