Sweet Caroline's Keeper (9 page)

"Caroline." He spoke her name softly. "Don't be afraid. You're not in any danger. No one is going to hurt you."

He recognized the glazed look in her eyes. How many times had he seen traumatized men and women relive a terrifying moment? In her mind, Caroline was twelve again, Preston lay dead on the floor—and Aidan Colbert hovered in the shadows, the deadly weapon still in his hand.

All color drained from her face. She began swaying, just
a
fraction, the movement almost indiscernible at first. But he knew the signs. She was on the verge of fainting.

"
Caroline. . . Caroline. . ."

He rushed forward despite the horror he saw on her face as he approached. She opened her mouth on a silent scream. He suspected that in her mind she was screaming at the top of her lungs. Just as she started to topple over, Wolfe reached out and grabbed her, swooping her into his arms. She lay limp as a dishrag. He carried her out of the study, down the hall and into an area that had once been the living room. There nestled beneath the arched bay windows was a window seat. He walked across the room, sat down with Caroline in his lap and very gently patted her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered. He patted her face again. Her eyelids opened and closed. She moaned.

"Caroline?"

This time when she opened her eyes, she looked straight at Wolfe. "What happened?" she asked.

"You fainted."

She lay there in his arms, a delicious weight. Warm and soft. The delicate scent of her flowery perfume permeating the air he breathed. Her silky black hair draped over his arm.

"Oh, Wolfe, I'm so sorry. . .I was remembering that night and. . ." She bit down on her bottom lip. "It was you."

"What?'' Fear grabbed him by the throat in a stranglehold. No, it wasn't possible. She couldn't have recognized him as the man who'd shot Preston Shaw because he no longer resembled that man.

"I saw you there in the doorway, didn't I? And I thought. . .oh, God—" She sat straight up and looked at him so sadly. "I thought you were Preston's killer. For just a few seconds I thought I was twelve again and it
was that night. I looked up and saw you and thought—"
She gasped, then flung her arms around Wolfe and buried her face against his chest.

He held her securely but without force. Everything within him longed to comfort her, to find a way to put an end to her torment. But could he trust himself to act purely as her bodyguard, as an objective employee whose sole duty was to protect her?
There is no rule that says you can't comfort her, is there?
he asked himself. It seemed to him that he had spent a lifetime longing to comfort Caroline, wanting to erase the past and give her a happy future. He had sought any and all means to aid her, hoping that in some small way he could atone for what had happened to her—for what his actions had done to her. In photographs and written reports from Ellison, he had watched her grow up, change from a shy, chubby little girl into a beautiful, successful woman. How many times had he watched the videos Ellison had sent him of Caroline's high school and college graduations? He had freeze-framed her face on both videos so many times he had lost count. Exactly when his concern for a child had turned into an obsession with a woman, he wasn't quite sure.

She mumbled softly, her lips moving against his shirtfront. "Why didn't he kill me?"

Wolfe slipped his hand between her neck and his chest and cupped her jaw. She allowed him to tilt her chin just enough so that he could see her face. He looked into her eyes, the color of the blue-tinted violets that his mother had grown in pots on her kitchen windowsill. Of its own volition, his thumb tenderly raked across her parted lips.

She sighed and said his name. "Wolfe?"

"You won't ever have to come back here again," he said.
"I
promise."

"Can you answer my question?" She stared at him pleadingly. "In your line of work, you must have been confronted by hired killers more than once. Why would a professional hit man let me live? Why didn't he kill me?"

Because my job was to eliminate a rogue agent who posed a threat to our government, not to harm an innocent child.
The explanation swirled around inside his head. The desire to tell her what he was thinking became an overpowering need. Now is not the time for true confessions, he reminded himself. He had joined Peacekeepers, hoping to help others, to save the innocent whenever possible—because he had failed in his efforts to save his own younger brother and his mother from the wrath of a mean drunk. And every day of his life, since he was a boy of thirteen, Aidan Colbert had lived with the knowledge that even though he had taken his father's life, he had acted too late to save the two people dearest to him. If he could have helped his brother, his mother might still be alive, too.

"I'm not sure why he didn't kill you," Wolfe said, his voice deceptively calm. "If he was a professional, then he'd been sent to do a job. You weren't part of that job. And if you couldn't identify him, he had no reason to kill you, did he?"

"But he couldn't possibly have known that I couldn't identify him, that he had been partially bidden in the shadows and—"

Wolfe cradled her face with his hands. "Stop torturing yourself. I thought you'd gotten over this, that you had put it in the past."

"What?" She stared at him, puzzlement written plainly on her face.

Damn! He should have kept his mouth shut He'd gotten sentimental and said too much. "I assumed that since you live a very normal life and aren't under any type of psychiatric care that you had dealt with Preston Shaw's death years ago."

"I thought I had."

Wolfe scooted Caroline off his lap and helped her to her feet as he stood. "Are you all right now? You don't still feel faint, do you?" Get back in bodyguard persona, he thought. And keep it that way. He couldn't afford to let his personal feelings for Caroline show.

She stared at him, a fragile frown drooping her mouth and a wounded expression in her eyes. "I'm fine, Wolfe, thank you."

The moment she moved away from him, he wanted to grab her and pull her back into his arms. He wanted to tell her that he was David. Her David. The man she thought she could meet only in her dreams. How he wished he could admit to being her caretaker, her guardian angel, without having to confess that he was a fallen angel, a man with blood on his hands—the executioner who had killed her stepfather.

"I suppose we should check the basement next," Caroline said, her back to Wolfe.

"Certainly." He had to keep his distance from her, no matter how tempted he was to be more to her than a temporary employee.

After suggesting that she take the rooms on the left while he took the rooms on the right, Lyle had tried to avoid Roz as much as possible. Just being around the woman unnerved him. The first day Caroline introduced them, they had taken an instant dislike to each other. And that bothered him. Then and now. As a general rule, he liked everyone he met. But there was something about Roz, something in her manner, in her speech, in the way she dressed that simply drove him crazy. And it didn't help that she seemed to thrive on annoying him, on poking fun at his appearance, his demeanor and his profession.

But the most disturbing aspect of their unfriendly relationship began a few months ago. The first time he'd had one of those dreams about Roz. It wasn't the sexual content of the dream that had bothered him so much—after all, he was a man as well as a minister—but the fact that the woman in the dream had been Roz. Wasn't she the last woman on earth he would find appealing? Apparently not. If it had been only one dream, he would have dismissed it, but the first one had been followed by more—many more. Now it had reached the point that whenever he was around Roz, his body responded to her. If she ever found out that he was getting sexually aroused whenever he just looked at her, she would take great pleasure in tormenting him.

"Hey, Rev, are you about finished in there?" Roz called from the hallway. "If you are, then let's head to the attic."

"Be with you in a minute," he replied. The attic would be dark, warm and confining. Not someplace he'd want to be with Roz. He could tell her that he'd check the attic without her, but knowing her, she would veto any suggestion he made.

Taking several deep breaths and willing his traitorous body to cooperate, Lyle met Roz in the hall. When she looked at him and smiled, his stomach turned over.

"Ready?" she asked.

Why her, dear God, why her? Lyle prayed. We are totally incompatible. She's the exact opposite of everything I want in a woman. Is this some sort of test? Are you throwing temptation in my path to see if I can resist? Or is this some sort of joke you're playing on me?

"Hey, are you okay?" Roz asked. "You've got this goofy look on your face. What were you doing, praying?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Odd time to pray, don't you think? You're the only guy I know who's ever taken one look at me and started praying." Roz sashayed closer and closer, her smile slightly sinister. "Were you praying for my soul, Rev? Or for your own?"

When she reached out and ruffled his hair in a playful manner, he jumped away from her. She burst into laughter.

"What's the matter, are you afraid I'll contaminate you, that my evil ways will rub off on you?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am afraid of exactly that."

Her warm, exuberant smile faded quickly, replaced by a killer glare so sharp it could have cut through steel. The minute Lyle saw the hurt look in her eyes, he wished the words back. But it was too late.

"Let's go in the attic and check things out." Roz headed toward the door that enclosed the hidden staircase leading to the third level of the house. "I need plenty of time to get gorgeous for my late date with Gavin. He's the kind of guy who loves being around a woman like me."

Lyle wanted to explain and to apologize, but he did neither; instead he remained silent—hadn't he already said more than enough?—and followed her up the narrow winding stairs and into the attic.

"It's awfully dark up here," Roz said. "If it weren't for that one little window, we wouldn't be able to see a thing."

"Stand aside and let me see if I can find a light switch."

He fumbled around in the semidarkness and accidentally ran smack dab into a
hghtbulb
hanging at the end of an electrical cord that was attached to the ceiling. Amazingly the bulb still burned and gave off enough dim light to partially illuminate the space. Only a fraction of the area had flooring, the rest was a beehive of wooden boards and high arched beams.

"Looks pretty empty to me," Roz said. "I doubt we'll find anything up here."

As Lyle glanced around, he spotted something in a far corner, a large, bulky object. He walked toward what he soon realized was some sort of old trunk. He ran his hand over the battered lid and dust flew everywhere. The particles danced in the air and tickled his nose. Suddenly he went into a sneezing frenzy.

"Bless you," Roz said as she approached him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just allergic to dust."

"What have you found?" She eyed the dusty, battered old trunk. "Does it have a lock?"

Lyle knelt down and inspected the trunk. "Yes, it does."

"Well, hallelujah. This is the first thing, other than the doors, that we've found in the house that actually has a lock."

While he was still bent over and without warning of any kind, Roz let out an ear-splitting scream and all but jumped on top of him.

"What on earth?" he mumbled as he toppled to the floor and landed flat on his back.

Roz, who was hanging on to him for dear life, fell on top of him. He looked up to find her face only inches from his. Her slender form draped his body like a blanket.

"There are mice up here."
Roz's
voice quivered. "I hate mice!"

"You knocked me down and jumped on top of me because you saw a mouse?"
Get off me this minute. Please. If you don't, I'm not going to be responsible for what my body does in the next sixty seconds.

"Not just a mouse. Two mice. They went scurrying across the floor—over there." She pointed the direction.

God help me, Lyle prayed. His lips twitched. Roz glared at him. His mouth turned up in a smile he could not control.

"Don't you dare laugh at me," she said.