To the Edge (12 page)

Jillian rose, too. "Oh, wait, won't you at least have a cup of
coffee, make sure you're steady before you leave?" she pressed when Lydia headed toward the door.

"I'm good.
I'm fine,"
she insisted with a reassuring smile. "Really. Quit worrying. Besides, I've got to get to work."

Ignoring Garrett, who leaned indolently against the island countertop with one bare foot propped on top of the other, silently sipping his coffee, Jillian walked with her toward the foyer. "You're working the salon today?" Lydia sometimes moonlighted at the Breakers Hotel.

"Just for a few hours." She stooped to pick up her purse and sling it over her shoulder. "Peg called. She's sick and wondered if I'd cover for her."

At the door, she snatched the garment bag off the floor before Jillian could get to it. "Here you go. Have fun tonight."

Jillian folded the dress over her arm. "Fun is not on the agenda. I'm doing this as a favor to a friend. And I owe you big-time for doing this and for putting up with—"

Though Lydia still looked a little shell-shocked, she cut Jillian off with a shake of her head. "I'm just glad to know you've got someone looking out for you."

Behind her, she heard Garrett grunt. She didn't have to turn around to know he was also smirking.

"If this is what I can expect from now on," she said in a clipped voice, after she shut the door behind Lydia, "we're going to have to have a little discussion of the ground rules. You are not going to terrorize my friends and my coworkers, a la Captain Commando, are we clear?"

Nolan watched Jillian's face and worked hard to appear unaffected as she tossed the garment bag on the back of the sofa on her way by, then, as stiff as a raw recruit, marched to the kitchen. Unaffected, however, was the absolute antithesis of his reaction as he listened to her rummage around in her cabinets for a coffee mug. But he was damned if he was going to let her see that.

That's why he was camouflaging his semierection by leaning into the counter.

Muscle memory applied to more than combat readiness. He hadn't met the man who didn't experience an automatic, involuntary physical response to the scent of a woman fresh from a shower, the look of a woman very obviously naked beneath a thin short robe, the heat of a woman when she was revved on a healthy burst of anger.

And then there was the lingering reminder of what had almost happened in this kitchen last night.

Almost
was the operative word. Nothing had happened. He'd gotten it back together sometime during the night and was determined that nothing was going to happen. Not today or any other day while this little dog and pony show played out. He wasn't ruled by muscle memory—much to Skippy's dismay.

"I said, are we clear?" she repeated in a snappish princess-to-peasant tone.

He deliberately downed another swallow of coffee before he looked up and met all that righteous outrage. And the grim, determined set of those incredible lips. And the hard points of her nipples pressing against silk that hid the contours of her first-class body with roughly the same effectiveness as oh, say ... nothing.

"This is what we're clear about." He forced himself to
meet
her eyes again and hold the line. "Whatever it takes, I'll do my job. You don't like my methods? That's a big 'too bad, so sad.' What you like or don't like is a nonissue.

"The only issue," he continued when he could see her winding up to tell him what she thought of his take on the situation, "is keeping you alive until this creep is caught. Until then, I make the calls. I set the rules. That means what I say is carved in the proverbial stone. What I do is the gospel according to me. And what happens is what I deem appropriate to happen."

He watched her through narrowed eyes, letting her have a moment to digest the utter intractability of his statements.

"Now"
he said, pushing his point home to make sure she felt the jab of his very sharp stick, "are we clear?" Anger radiated off of her in steamy waves. Her cheeks flamed red. She'd shoved her hair behind her ears and even the tips of her ears looked hot. And while she tried valiantly to stem an adrenaline response that was as involuntary as it was familiar to him, her hands trembled as she wrapped them around her mug.

"Are we clear, Jillian?" he repeated, his voice as rigid as his resolve to make her understand there wasn't an inch of wiggle
room in the game plan.

She drew in and let out a breath on a controlled exhalation, then stared beyond him toward the prospect of her immediate
future. When her green eyes finally met his, he saw resignation but not defeat.

"All right," he said, with no inclination to gloat over his victory, "we've got work to do. Get dressed and, while you're doing it, start thinking about who all is on that list."

"List?" The word came out weary but not combative.

"Your security code," he reminded her. "I need names. And then you're going to tell me everything you know about everyone you work with, starting with Lydia Grace." .

"You can't be serious." She read the look on his face correctly and traded protest for exasperation. "Lydia isn't doing this. She's a kid, for God's sake. A good kid."

"Who has access to your penthouse," he pointed out, "and your dressing room and I'm guessing your e-mail at the station."

When her expression confirmed his assumptions, he restated his intentions. "We start with Lydia. And then we work through everyone from grips to producers. When we're finished with them, we're going over the subjects of your special reports."

"That," she said, dragging the hair back from her face with widespread fingers, "at least makes sense."

"Because you've pissed off a lot of people with your exposes?"

"Some," she agreed, "but mainly because they are not my friends and the people I work with are."

"You're saying you count Wellington among your friends?"

Another long, slow blink from eyes so jewel green he wondered if she wore tinted contacts. "Grant is pompous, small-minded, and conniving, but he's harmless."

"So is a poisonous snake until you harass it."

She pushed out a hard laugh. "I don't harass Grant."

"But he harasses you. He cuts you off—or attempts to cut you off—at the knees every chance he gets."

Her expression turned to professional concern. "It's that obvious?"

He debated for a moment, then decided he'd just as well get it over with. He gathered the contents of the dossier he'd been preparing to reread when Lydia's surprise entrance into the
penthouse interrupted him. Watching Jillian's face, he shoved it across the countertop toward her.

Her gaze flicked to his, her eyebrows furrowed. "What's this?"
She reached for the folder, thick with printed paper.

"Your file."

Her hand froze midair before she snatched it back as if that snake they'd just discussed had made a strike at her. All the color had drained from her face when her gaze met his. "I have a file?"

Her extreme reaction puzzled him. 'This surprises you?"

"Surprises me? It outrages me! Someone has been snooping into
my life? Spying on me?"

He crossed his forearms on the counter and got comfortable.
 
"Pardon my skepticism, but I find it a little tough to swallow that the daughter of one of the most high-profile businessmen in the United States, a woman who has been under the protection of various security agencies for the better part of her life, a former Olympic gymnast—and, let's not forget, a media personality—wouldn't realize that somewhere someone had compiled a truckload of information on her. Hell, you're a journalist. You dig up dirt on people all the time. You know how easy it is to come by."

She plopped her tidy butt down on a bar stool like the muscles holding her up had deflated. "Bits and pieces, yes. Courthouse records. Credit checks. Public documents. But this," she waved a hand over the thick folder, "this is obviously
much more than bits and pieces."

"Which is why I know Grant Wellington is a backstabber who would love to see you out of that coanchor seat and replaced
by someone with less talent, less sex appeal, and who represented less of a threat to his longevity."

She was still staring at the folder like it was a violation on her life and her privacy—which, of course, it was.

"Get over it," he said, more softly than he'd intended when she dropped her head wearily and cupped it in her hand.

Poor little rich girl,
he thought with an unbidden kernel of sympathy.
All that sterling didn't come with guarantees of happily ever after, did it?

"Let's just do this, OK?" On a deep breath, he physically as well as mentally pulled away from the turmoil he sensed roiling around inside of her. He wasn't here to play woman's home companion or worry about her state of mind. He was here to keep her safe. Finding out who was doing this was the most direct route to getting the job done and getting out of here.
        

"Get dressed. We'll get to work. Oh... and that dinner We're taking a pass."

"Excuse me?"

She recovered quick; he'd give her that.

"It's a no-go on the festivities tonight. There's no way I can check the place out on this short notice, and if I can't protect you—"

"I'm the keynote," she interrupted. "It's a benefit for the cancer society."

He scratched his nose with the back of his hand, stood up straight then stalled a wince when the slice on his ribs gnawed with sharp teeth.

"Keynote," he repeated, feeling an impending sense of doom.

She nodded.

Well, hell. Didn't it just fucking figure?

9

"I don't like this." Nolan tucked
 
his cell phone
between his shoulder and ear later that day and worked the stud into the right cuff of the dress shirt that had arranged to be delivered along with the tux about an hour ago.

"Ye
ah, yeah. You're working under protest. I'll make a note of it in your personnel file," Ethan said drolly on the other
end of the line.

Nolan told him what he could do with his personnel file. "When you're done bitching, tell me what you've got for us to work on. "

He
bit down harder on the bullet and reviewed the notes he'd taken from the "chat" he and his charge had had earlier in the day. Jillian hadn't exactly parted with information willingly, but he'd gathered a fairly long, marginally detailed list of candidates who might want her dead.

"It's wide-open territory. We could take the angle that the threats could coming from any number of individuals holding a grudge Darin Kincaid."

"With Jillian's life as payment."

"Exactly," Nolan agreed.

"A man doesn't land in Kincaid's position of power without crunching a few digits on the way up. I don't want to go there just yet, though. Hunting down that avenue would be massive and exhausting. Time would be better spent with something a little more tangible. I think we'd be closer to the mark looking at some of the public figures she's nailed in her special reports."