The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (3 page)

“I got into an accident, Al,” I
told her as she helped me up the last set of steps and into the house itself,
my father bringing my crutches behind us.
 
“It wasn’t my fault,” I amended quickly as she began to protest.

“Al, can you bring some coffee and
possibly a baked good for our recently hospitalized Elizabeth?” asked my
father, his mouth twitching with a grin as Alice, again, was about to go on a
tirade after my statement.
 
She opened
and shut her mouth, sighed with a very longsuffering roll of her eyes and
turned, bustling toward the kitchens to do just that.

“Oh, so’s you know, that woman’s
already here!
 
I put her in your study!”
Al called before rounding the hallway corner.

“That woman?” I asked, one brow
up.
 
My father grimaced, shaking his
head, putting a gentle arm around my shoulders as he began to help steer me
through the foyer.
 
It’s an impressive
looking foyer.
 
All black and white
marble tile, and pale blue walls and Greek busts of attractive women on
pedestals.
 
My dad is kind of classical
in style, hence the creepy looking cherub in the fountain outside.

“I don’t suppose you’d wait in the
hall while I greeted her?” asked my father in a soft murmur as we approached
his study.
 
The warm mahogany door was
open, and I could already smell the scent of pipe tobacco and the old, deeply
comforting aroma of thousands and thousands of books.

“I want to know what this is
about,” I sighed, all of the fight leaving me as the pain began to burn through
my muscles again.
 
I felt like an old
woman as I considered the fact that, pretty soon, I’d eat a slice of coffee
cake and then be able to take my pain pills.
 
They wouldn’t come a moment too soon—every inch of my body ached with an
intense kind of pain I’d never felt before.

My father sighed too, for a long
moment, casting his eyes heavenward, probably thinking to himself that there
were other parents in the world who had had much less head-strong kids.
 
“All right,” he said then, in a normal tone
of voice.
 

He helped me through the study
door, the sunlight spilling through the tall ceiling-to-floor length windows
with their many panes of glass, the leather binding on some of the older books
soaking up the sunshine, the globe in the mahogany corner turning—an odd thing
to notice, I realize, but I only caught a glimpse of that, because my eyes were
drawn, instead, to the woman who’d set the thing spinning.

She was tall, impressively so,
taller than my father, even.
 
She could
have played for women’s basketball was the thought that asked for attention in
the back of my head, but I hardly even registered that.
 
She was muscular, the kind of easy muscle
resting beneath her jeans and leather jacket and too-tight red t-shirt that
made me think she was a gym rat or maybe a trainer.
 
She looked like she worked for her body, and she enjoyed showing
it off, which—I have to admit—I enjoyed looking at it.
 
She had a sharp, angular face that was
handsome, devastatingly so, but not beautiful.
 
The lines of her chin, the planes of her face, were too hard, like she’d
seen too much pain.
 
A perpetual worry
line from frowning too often stood pronounced on her otherwise smooth
forehead.
 
Her thick
 
black hair was spiked and curved forward—total
butch—and her hazel eyes, too hard to pin down if they were mostly brown or
mostly green or mostly blue, immediately glanced my way.
 
There was a small smile on her lips, the
only soft thing about her, as she put her hands in her pockets, cocking her
left hip in our direction and widening her stance as if she owned the place.

God, she was gorgeous.
 
My mouth was suddenly dry as I leaned
against my father, taking in this magnetic creature and realizing that I
really
looked like hell.

Great.
 
What a lovely way to meet a devastatingly attractive woman:
stitched up and barely alive and looking like a warmed over, cheap version of
hell.

“Ms. O’Connell, it’s good to see you again,” purred
my father, using the tone of voice that piles on the charm like a five layer
cake, the tone he always pulls out when he’s at the office.
 
He helped me over to one of the two
high-backed leather chairs in front of his too-big carved wooden desk.
 
It was an antique, and he’d once told me
when I was a kid that Ben Franklin had used it for writing his letters.
 
I don’t know if I quite believe that, but
it’s a pretty big, solid thing that I often pretended was a boat, and I was its
captain, when my father was away on business trips.
 

Dad straightened and inclined his head, gesturing
toward the other leather chair to the woman standing in the corner.
 
Ms. O’Connell.
 
My breathing was coming too fast, almost panting like the kind of
reaction a cartoon wolf does as he first ogles a gorgeous hand-painted
dame.
 
Who
was
this woman?
 

Her smile grew, and she stalked
over to the chair, flopping down in it with a graceless ease.
 
My eyes were drawn to her with a magnetic
pull—I couldn’t stop staring at her.
 
She
had this aura of immense power and grace, like maybe she was a dancer as well
as being a gym rat.
 
Normally women who
work out a ton (and I’ve dated a few—I know) have too many muscles to pull off
graceful
.
 
Oh, strong they’ve got in spades, but
graceful is a whole other ball game.

And this woman was winning at both.

“It’s good to see you again,
sir.
 
It’s nice to meet you, miss,” she
said, her mouth rolling up lazily at the corners.
 
But there was nothing indolent about her eyes.
 
They seemed to pierce me, pinning me in
place as she stared at me.
 
It’s as if
she was assessing me and she reached her assessment in a heartbeat or so.
 
She glanced back to my father who sat behind
the desk, setting his cane against the side of it.

“Elizabeth, I’d like you to meet
Layne O’Connell,” he said, nodding to her as he crossed his arms over his chest
and leaned back in his leather desk chair.
 
“Layne, this is my daughter, Elizabeth Grayson.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Layne
repeated, one brow up, a wide, easy smile on her face, the kind that makes you
want to smile back.
 
But I was too tense
for that.
 
There was something going on
here, something that—despite the unspeakably attractive person sitting next to
me—I was probably going to dislike.

“Likewise,” I told her, but I was
watching my father out of the corner of my eye.
 
He had his fingers crossed on his stomach now as he leaned back.

“Elizabeth,” he said then softly,
delicately, like he was about to tell me a very bad piece of news as he
gestured toward Layne, sitting to my left.
 

And he was definitely about to tell
me a bad piece of news.
 

He cleared his throat and then
pasted on his most dazzling smile.
 
“Layne is your new bodyguard.”

I stared at him flatly, then turned
to look at Layne, who was still smiling, but now she was watching for my
reaction, her eyebrows up as she rolled her shoulders back, her head to the
side as she considered me, a bit of her black hair sweeping in front of her
eyes like an even more heart-throb-y female version of James Dean.
 

I could never have predicted
this.
 

I’ve got a temper on me, a lovely
bit of inheritance from my mother, and sometimes I can’t help my first
reaction.

Which was this:

“
Absolutely
not,” I said,
standing quickly, the leather chair squeaking in protest as it was shoved out
behind me, its feet scraping against the old wood floor.
 
“Absolutely
not
, Dad” I said, shaking
my head emphatically.
 
“Are you
kidding
me?” I practically yelled.
 
I was
spluttering, but the anger ripping through me was a pleasant change from paying
far too much attention to the pain I was in, so I stuck with it.
 
Layne was glancing up at me in amusement,
her hazel eyes flashing as she tried to keep the smile from showing on her
mouth.
 
And failed.

“Elizabeth,
please
,” said my
father, eyes round as he gestured quickly for me to take my seat again.
 
An action I had absolutely no intention of
doing.

“You didn’t even
consult
me—you
already
hired
her?”
 
Smoke was
practically spiraling out of my nose and ears, but I kept going.
 
“How could you make such an important
decision without me?
 
I’m sorry, Layne,”
I told her then, pivoting on my better leg, the one that didn’t have the
stitches in the thigh.
 
I stared down at
her, my hands on my hips.
 
She lounged
back, meeting my gaze with a single elegant brow raised.
 
She could have looked at me like that all
day, but I was in no mood to be paying attention to anything below my waist,
which was stirring in spite of myself.
 
“I’m sure you’re wonderful,” I huffed, “and an excellent bodyguard, but
we have no need of your services,” I said, all in a rush.
 

And then I sat back down, because
the black pinpoints around my vision were starting to rush back.

“Layne, stay right where you are,”
said my father, a stern quality beginning to leak into his words.
 
I stared daggers at him, but he wasn’t
looking at me—not directly.
 
He was
looking at Layne.
 

She shrugged, leaning farther back
in the chair.
 
She looked like she was
lounging at a dance club and not at her new employer’s office, a fact I rather
liked.
 
But I wasn’t supposed to like
anything
about
her.

My father knew how I felt about
this.

And he’d gone ahead and done it
anyway.

Once, when I was a teenager, my
father had insisted I get a bodyguard.
 
I’d refused rather emphatically, with all the drama a teenager can
muster.
 
After several long, drawn-out
arguments (really the only time I can ever remember my father and I having a
shouting match), he’d backed off.
 

I was already the weirdo in school,
arriving with a chauffeur, and having a bodyguard hang around me was going to
ruin any chance I had of getting even a single friend.
 
And eventually I’d outgrown most of my
awkwardness, and I
had
gotten friends.
 
But it would have been impossible to do with a secret-services type man
or woman following me around in tinted glasses, a serious frown and a
sidearm.
 

I was, and will always be, grateful
for the upbringing I had.
 
I was a rich
kid.
 
I know that in the grand scheme of
the world, that’s pretty darn lucky.
 
But I’d had my share of sacrifices, too, my freedom being the foremost
of them.
 
Growing up being constantly
watched, under lock and key and being fretted over like you’re some sort of
emperor’s daughter makes you value your autonomy more than anything in the
world.
 
And, to top it all off, I
purposefully had wanted to make my own way in the world, and I’d worked my ass
off to get where I was, one of the violinists in the Boston Philharmonic.
 
Which I’d like to point out is a really
difficult job to get.

In short, my life was complicated
enough without adding a
bodyguard
on top of it.
 
I valued my autonomy more than anything
else—something I’d worked years at achieving completely and fully—and I loved
my freedom just a little bit too much to have someone following me around all
day, hovering at my shoulder.

I couldn’t imagine my world with a
bodyguard in it.
 
It’d be
demeaning.
 
Demoralizing.
 
Frustrating.
 
Terrible.
 
I would be
followed everywhere, have to answer to someone else when making any minute
decision.
 
I wasn’t answerable to
anyone
anymore.
 
I was headstrong, stubborn,
fiercely independent.

I couldn’t imagine being any other
way.

“No,” I told my father.

“Yes,” said my father, his brows
raised.
 
“Elizabeth,
please
see
reason,” he hissed then, leaning forward, his eyes flashing dangerously.
 
“You were almost just
killed
.”
 
Pain passed over his face, and I think he
was weighing whether to say the next part or not.
 
But then he said it anyway:
 
“and I doubt that a single foiled attempt will stop whoever’s after
us.
 
There are going to be more
attempts.
 
And your life is in danger.”

I took a deep breath and let it
out, doing my best to see reason.
 
My
father, of course, was right.
 
I was
already looking over my shoulder too much, and the “accident” had
just
happened
to me.
 
Yes, it wasn’t my fault and
really had nothing to do with me that someone was after me—it was because of my
father, something he couldn’t really help either.