The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (2 page)

“I’m a big girl, Dad” I sighed,
straightening as I stood and winced.
 
Everything began to spin, but after a moment, the spinning
subsided.
 
Which was about as good as I
was going to get, it seemed.
 
“You know
I love you, Dad.
 
But I think you have a
tendency to believe I’m still five years old and need my rocking horse fixed,”
I breathed out and smiled at him softly, shaking my head.
 
“But I’m thirty-three years old,” I reminded
my father with another shake of my head as I squeezed his hands.
 
“And I have my own life, and you need to
stop worrying about me, or you’re going to develop an ulcer.
 
The guy probably rammed me because of my
rainbow bumper stickers or something.
 
I
honestly can’t think of a single reason why overseas fishing moguls would even
know I existed, let alone would want to make me sleep with the fishes.
 
Oh, God, that was such a terrible
joke…”
 
I sat back down on the bed,
holding my side and taking small, panting breaths.
 
I tried to focus on the problem at hand.
 
“Does Amelia know I was in the accident?”

“The whole orchestra knows—they
sent you those flowers,” said my father, waving his hand in the direction of a
few dozen roses on a side table with an impatient shake of his head.
 
“And the doctors say that if you
take it
easy
, you’ll still be able to make your concert on Friday.”

“I’d better,” I groaned, casting my
eyes heavenward.
 
“That one piece has
been such a bastard, and I’ve spent far too much time practicing, and put in
too much work not to—”

“Elizabeth,” said my father
sternly, then.
 
Dad’s never been very
good at stern, and the older I get, the mellower he becomes.
 
So this was surprising.

“Yes?” I asked heavily.
 

“Today, because of me, you were
almost killed.”
 
His eyes were so
pain-filled, I wanted to give him a tight hug, but I sat where I was, biting my
lip.
 
“And that’s…that’s unthinkable to
me that harm could have come to you
because
of me.
 
And it doesn’t matter if you think so or
not, but the fishing business has gotten very cutthroat these past few
years…”
 
He didn’t look at me as he was
saying it.
 
He was examining the ring
that my mother gave him, years ago, the blood-red garnet flashing with a real,
raw fire against the pale skin of his hand under the sickly fluorescent
hospital lights.
 
“I couldn’t bear to
lose you, not like this.
 
So, I’ve taken
matters into my own hands.”
 
He glanced
up at me, his eyes narrowed, and his mouth in a thin, hard line.

That wasn’t ominous at
all
.
 
I swallowed, frowning.
 
“Dad?”

“They’re discharging you from the
hospital now,” he said quickly, glancing back over his shoulder toward the
hospital room door with that uncanny way he had.
 
No nurse had come by, but he knew I’d be discharged soon?
 
That’s my dad, psychic extraordinaire.
 
“I’ll take you back to my house, not your
apartment…I wouldn’t hear of anything else—it’s closer, and you can rest for a
little while, borrow one of my cars,” he said, raising his hand as I began to
protest.
 
“And then we’ll discuss the
measures that need to be taken to keep you safe.”

“Measures?” I practically squeaked,
then began to shake my head adamantly.
 
“Dad, no
measures
—”

“Ah, Ms. Grayson, it’s good to see
you up!” said the nurse, then, striding confidently into the room with a bright
smile.
 
She was very pretty, with curly
blonde hair swept up into a ponytail and a wide, comforting smile.
 
I’d just been through a major accident—I
shouldn’t have been noticing how pretty she was.
 
But I did anyway.
 
She
tapped a pen onto her clipboard and flipped through a few pages before glancing
back up with another grin.
 
“Let’s see
if you’re all right, then we’ll see about getting you discharged.”

My father gave me a smug little
smile, and I groaned with a grin, glancing at the ceiling.
 
He was right again.
 
I’m telling you, psychic extraordinaire.

“One last thing,” said my dad, and
he looked even more nervous about this one.
 
“Um…your car was totaled.
 
Smashed like a bug, actually—you know how I told you about SMART cars
not exactly being that safe in accidents—”

I sighed, rubbing at the spot
between my eyes with a suddenly tired palm.
 
“Just great.”
 
My poor, adorable,
snub-nosed baby.
 
I’d loved that little
car.

But then what my dad said next made
me forget everything else:

“—And remember, honey, your violin
was in the back seat?”

I stared at him, eyes wide, all of
the blood draining out of my face.

“So it’s…I mean the violin was
smashed into splinters,” said my father miserably, holding his breath as he
watched me.

I felt a lot of things in that
moment.
 
Waves of raw emotion moving
through me as quickly as a storm.

To be perfectly fair, to be a
violinist in the Boston Philharmonic, you tend to have a lot of violins.
 
And I do—I have about five or six.
 
But not all of them are concert quality, and
I’m going to be honest here:
 
that
violin sung for me like no other instrument I’ve ever held.

It felt like losing a limb.

I finally picked an emotion to
settle on.

“Did they catch the guy?” I asked
with a long, slow blink, the kind a crocodile makes before it strikes.
 
I think that took Dad by surprise.
 
He’d been bracing himself, I think, for a
nice long bit of yelling and expletives by yours truly.
 
That I was calm and reasonable seemed to shock
my father who stood there with his mouth open and slowly shook his head.

“Great,” I grunted as the nurse
poked and prodded my middle.
 
I began to
grin slowly, a little like the Grinch.
 
“Because I’m going to find that sonofabitch who
destroyed my violin,
and I’m going to kill him with these bare hands.”

“That’s my girl,” said Dad then,
with a wide, toothy grin.

Chapter 2:
 
Bodyguard

I didn’t look like hell.
 
I looked
worse
than hell.
 
Like a cheap, warmed-over version that’s
seen much,
much
better days.

I flipped the passenger side visor
back up with a grimace, taking slow, shallow breaths because it was still
hurting a bit too much to make sudden movements.
 
I had so much on my mind that even as I looked out of the car
window, I didn’t even see the old buildings passing us by—I was just thinking
of a seemingly unending list of things that Needed To Be Done.
 
For example, I
really
needed to take
some more painkillers, and then I had to call Verity’s Violin Shop down by the
art museum, and I had to make sure that—

“Would madam like the temperature a
bit cooler?” asked Ben, my father’s chauffeur, shaking me from my
thoughts.
 
He looked a little pained
that I had to be riding up with him up in the front seat, but the nurses at the
hospital seemed to think that sliding into the back seat of a limo wouldn’t be
good for my stitches.
 

And yes, Dad has a town car and a
few retro cars, but he
insisted—
much to my chagrin—that we drive back to
his house in his limo because people would actually notice if someone tried to
rear end it.
 
Which, I suppose, he did
have a point.
 
It’d be impossible for an
assailant to casually rear end a car about as long as an ocean liner.

“No, the temperature’s great, Ben,”
I said, cracking him a lopsided smile.
 
He still looked pained, his bright blue eyes surrounded with worried
wrinkles, but put his gaze back on the road, flexing his leather gloves against
the steering wheel.
 
I tried not to
think about the driver of the SUV who’d rammed me.
 
He’d been wearing leather gloves, too.

“So what’s this surprise you have
cooked up for me, Dad?” I asked back into the interior of the limo.
 
My father sat in the very center of the
leather back seat, his walking cane between his legs, and his hands resting on
the top of the cane as if he was ready to break out into a music video.
 
He was grinning widely and that’s the
exact
sort of grin he gave me when he told me I couldn’t date until I was seventeen
(at the time, he hadn’t even known that what I
really
wanted to date
were girls…).

So that sort of grin always worries
me.

“You’ll see!” he practically
chirped.

I sighed and slumped against the
seat as we rounded the familiar, graceful curve in the road, and the Grayson
mansion came towering into view.

Our family has been in possession
of that impressive, sprawling stone structure for about two hundred years,
which goes to show you that certain things (like enjoying living in something
that looks like a castle) run in the family.
 
It has actual
turrets
(one of which I took over when I was a kid
and wanted to play “knights, dragons and princesses” with the maids’ kids.
 
I was always the knight), big wooden doors
that would look more at home in a castle in Europe than in a mansion outside of
Boston, and a big garden of roses surrounding the whole thing.
 
It was June, so the riot of roses were in
bloom.
 

As we parked out front on the
gravel drive and I opened the door, the wild scent of red and pink spilled into
my nose as I inhaled deeply.
 
There was
birdsong spouting from some of the ornamental trees, and the fountain out
front—featuring a creepy little naked cherubim with a wry smile and tiny
wings—was bubbling happily as the sun shone down, touching me with warmth.

In short, it seemed like everything
was right with the world.
 
And I guess,
in some ways, it was.
 
I’d just narrowly
avoided becoming goo, smashed between my tiny car and a concrete barrier.
 
I’d say that, all things considered, I was
pretty lucky.

But it was also pretty…well,
unnerving
that I had no idea where that attack had come from.

Or why.

And I had absolutely no idea if it
would happen again—something I was desperately trying to not think about.

“Madam should really have let
me
get the door,” said Ben, his voice strained as he all but sprinted around
the car to help me up and out of the passenger seat as I struggled to stand.

“Ben, you’re a peach, and I hope my
dad realizes what an awesome guy he has in you,” I grunted, sweat breaking out
on my forehead as pain ripped through me, Ben’s hand at my elbow as he helped
me upright.
 
“I’m just not used to
having a chauffeur anymore, I’m sorry,” I told him taking a quavering
breath.
 
“You’re always been too nice to
me,” I grinned up at him fondly.

He returned my smile, but shook his
head.
 
“Madam does not look well,” he
said succinctly, holding on to my elbow as I threatened to fall backwards a
little.
 
I wrested my elbow out of his
hand gently, smoothed the front of my skirt and took a deep breath as my father
folded himself out of the back seat and glided over to the both of us, his cane
crunching against the gravel as sharply as his Armani shoes.

“I’m fine, Ben,” I promised the
hovering chauffeur with another smile.
 
I’d known Ben my whole life—this is the guy who’d taken me to every
violin practice I’d ever had as a kid, every school concert, then every string
quartet concert when I’d joined one in high school.
 
He’d waited patiently for me during endless music lessons, always
had a bit of wise advice or kindness to give the gangly, awkward kid who was way
more obsessed with music than with people.

“Alice probably has lunch on the
table,” said my father, and Ben nodded, sliding my crutches out of the limo,
handing them to my father, then hopping back into the driver’s seat to take the
limo to the garage.
 
My father’s hand at
my elbow replaced Ben’s, and then he was helping me steer toward the sprawling
porch with its columns and marble and wide open front door where Alice stood,
her hands on her hips, and her plump mouth in a round O of consternation.

“Elizabeth Grayson, what sort of
trouble did you get yourself into
this
time?” she asked, striding
forward and all but picking me up as she swung her arm around my middle to
steady me, and propel me up the stairs.
 
Alice is a marvel:
 
the cook and
housekeeper and, now, only maid for my father.
 
She also volunteers at about a thousand charitable organizations, sews
costumes for the local children’s theater and still manages to find time to
garden, her passion.
 
Her long brown
hair, now sprinkled with shocks of gray, was drawn up into the braid that was
looped around her head, and she wore her uniform of choice:
 
jeans and a flowy peasant blouse.