having you—” Lara stopped, carefully set the brush aside. Reached for a bottle of lotion and fidgeted with the cap.
“Having me...?” he prompted mildly, though he knew what she’d say. It was the perennial problem between bodyguards and their clients, almost always the reason a bodyguard’s contract was terminated prematurely. Along with protection came loss of freedom. Spontaneity. Privacy. Once the client’s original fear diminished, resentment inevitably followed.
“Having you living on top of me,” Lara mumbled without meeting his eyes. “If I was stuck with Liz, as well, I think I’d go...” She shrugged. “Nuts.”
“I’m sorry. I try to not cramp your style.” Yet the requirements of the detail made it all but impossible. He was here under cover, and only one role allowed him to plausibly stay by her side day and night.
“Oh, Trace, I didn’t mean it that way! You’ve been—” She turned and smiled up at him. “I’m very lucky to have you—I can’t believe how lucky. But if I can’t have my privacy, at least I want to be...comfortable with the people around me. And besides,” she hurried on as he opened his mouth to argue, “we agreed that whoever was hired, she’d have to really function as my personal assistant. Liz Galloway just didn’t have the—the warmth or the tact the job requires. Some of those fan letters are so silly, the people who write them so—so desperately needy... The job takes somebody with sensitivity. A sense of humor.”
“Ouch, poor Liz!” But he could see what Lara meant. The ex-policewoman wouldn’t score high on the warm-and-fuzzy scale. “All right, then. I’ll see if I can find somebody else.” Inwardly he groaned. Female BGs were rare, and therefore in demand, and of the few available not just anyone would do. He’d hire only the best for Lara. And for himself. A partner he couldn’t trust was less than useless, endangered everyone. ,
Laura shook her head. “Don’t bother, Trace. I want her. Gillian.”
“Out of twenty-seven women you’ve interviewed, why her?” The one who worried him most.
Laura shrugged. “I don’t know. She...” She shrugged again. “I liked her.”
“Okay, well, let me tell you why not. For starters, Mahler’s not a bodyguard.” And that was only for starters.
Lara tipped her head in a tiny gesture that meant, “So what?” She reached for his wrist and turned it, making a comic face at the time on his watch, then nudged him ahead of her out the door—as if he were the one who’d been delaying them. “Does it ever occur to you,” she said lightly, following him into the bedroom, “that four months have passed since anyone tried to...hurt me?”
“I haven’t exactly given anyone a chance,” he reminded her. And if she hadn’t snuck out onto Cliff Walk without him that morning in May, no one would have laid a hand on her then. “But aren’t you forgetting your pen pal?” She’d received two letters since her fall, five before, for a total of seven.
Those disturbing letters, with their effusive admiration, their seething frustration, ominously mounting expectations, coy allusions to death and violence, had been sent by a fan who signed herself Sarah XXX, and had persuaded Lara to consult him in the first place.
Lara looked stubborn. “I’m not so sure they’re connected to...Cliff Walk.”
This was an old, old argument between them. “I’m not sure they’re not. And even if we do have two separate problems—two crazies—that only strengthens my point. You need another bodyguard, not a ditzy aerobics instructor.”
“If I’m to stay cooped up indefinitely at Woodwind, I’m more in danger of losing my girlish figure than my life! Gillian would be a big help there.”
“Any competent BG can train with you, if that’s what you—”
“I don’t want a drill sergeant, Trace. I want a—” She paused, tears gathering suddenly in her wonderful eyes, then blew out a big gusty breath and gave him a wavering smile. “I want a friend, okay? All my real friends are back on the set in New York, you know. Nowadays I only have you, and you’re useless for the girl stuff.”
“Thanks, I think.” He ushered her to the door of the suite, stepped out first and glanced both ways. She made her usual face at him. More and more she was considering him a worrywart, his precautions a nuisance. They walked down the hall to the tiny elevator installed in a dumbwaiter shaft and he waited till the elevator door had closed behind them. “Look, Lara, you hired me to protect you. Well, it’s my considered professional advice that you still need protection.”
She mulled that over while they walked through the house, out through the kitchen door to the carriage house that served as a garage. She waited obediently at a safe distance while he inspected, then started the car—he didn’t expect bombs with this kind of situation but why take the chance?—then she settled onto the front seat beside him. “You know, it...wouldn’t have happened if anyone else had been there to witness it or to scream. I mean, that was the act of a coward, wouldn’t you say—jumping out from behind me like that and...?” Her voice trailed away.
He nearly took her hand where it lay fisted on the seat between them, then suppressed the impulse. Brave girl, he applauded her silently. This was the first time she’d broached the fall of her own accord. Every other time, he’d had to lead her through it, word by halting word.
He didn’t agree with her assessment, though. Someone had jumped out of the bushes behind her as she jogged or had overtaken her silently. Had—in broad daylight!—gripped Lara’s hair with one hand, close to her nape so she couldn’t look back. Had grasped the waist cord of her sweatpants with the other hand, then forced her, step by struggling step, over the cliff edge. To his mind, the act took nerve, determination—and terrible hatred. It wasn’t the act of a coward, however it might comfort her to think so. It was the act of a risk taker.
Worse yet, a well-organized, premeditated risk taker, who’d chosen his or her place of ambush with intelligence and care—a gap in the bushes, a spot where the path skirted the drop-off, where twists in the trail blocked the view at both ends.
“Gillian’s a big girl,” Lara went on when he didn’t speak. “If she’d been there with me, no one would ever have dared...”
Yes, Gillian was a big girl—five-nine or -ten. And despite her slenderness, if she taught aerobics, tai chi, she’d be strong for her size... Strong enough to shove a smaller woman off a cliff? Definitely.
“How about a compromise?” he said, instead. “It may take me a week or two to find a female BG you can live with. In the meantime, why don’t you hire one of the other applicants—”
“No. I want to hire Gillian.”
As the gates swung ponderously inward, he studied her exquisite profile. Her chin was tipped in defiance, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. He swore to himself, then pulled out onto the avenue and stepped on the gas. For weeks he’d been silently rooting for her, hoping her spirit would mend along with her bones. But why did she have to regain her spunk today of all days? “Is there something you’re not telling me about Mahler?” he asked as they passed the Newport Casino, which had the oldest grass tennis courts in America. “You’re sure you’ve never met her before?”
“I...” Lara shook her head finally. “It’s f-funny, because that’s what it feels like, but no...I’m sure not.”
Under stress,
