paused, appearing to weigh his words. His slight, rabbitlike features were more pronounced than usual. “I want you to do more than protect the young lady. I want you to watch her, form your own opinion.”
“On what?”
Again, Newland paused. He glanced around the large office as if searching for listeners hiding behind the empty chairs. “Remember, this is in confidence?”
Trace Armstrong frowned. “You don’t have to ask, you know that.”
Leaning forward, Newland continued in a conspiratorial manner. “I think the whole thing is some kind of a con. I don’t think there’s a stalker. I think Mary Wilder is playing a game. Manipulating Mr. Regent into moving up the wedding date so she can get her hooks into his money that much quicker.”
“I see,” Trace said, not sure what else to add. He’d done a half-dozen jobs for Regent Hotels in the past year or so. They always paid well and promptly. Yet in all that time, Trace had never seen the slight personal assistant so riled. So agitated. This Mary Wilder must be some piece of work.
Trace rose to his feet. “I think I can free myself for a couple of weeks. Let’s see what our Miss Wilder is up to.”
* * *
MARY HAD NO IDEA how long she slept, but the insistent ringing of the bedside phone finally brought her to wakefulness.
Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she yawned into the receiver. “Hello?”
“Mary? What took you so long to answer? I was starting to get concerned.”
“Oh, Jonathan. I decided to follow your advice and take a nap.”
“Still sleeping? Oh, well, it really doesn’t matter. Listen, dear, I’ve been doing some more thinking about this problem. Even though I’m convinced that Mark Lester is our culprit, there’s no sense taking chances. Anyway, Bob Newland knew of a private bodyguard who has an excellent reputation and I’ve decided to hire him.”
“A bodyguard? That seems a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“More extreme than your buying a gun?”
“No,” Mary admitted, “I guess not.” But the very word bodyguard conjured up an image of a hulking brute about the size of a tractor trailer with bulging biceps and corded muscles where his neck should be. In the movies, bodyguards always had names like Moose or Tank. And their intelligence quotients usually matched their names. Nevertheless, right now she needed protection, not someone who read the Encyclopedia Britannica for pleasure.
As if taking her lack of argument for concurrence, Jonathan went on, “Anyway, this guy—his name’s Armstrong, by the way—should be at your place any minute now. Tell him everything that’s been going on. Show him the note. I realize I told you to throw it away, but you haven’t yet, have you?”
“No, I haven’t. But...do you really think I need a full-time bodyguard? It’s not like I’m a rich rock star, or something.”
Jonathan’s sigh was long and deep. “You still haven’t grasped the changes yet. Mary, sweet, you may not be wealthy but I am. This whole business stinks of Mark Lester, but I could be wrong. Someone could be using you to get to me. There could be a kidnapping in the works, who knows? I’ll just feel better if I know you’re protected.”
Mary heaved a sigh of her own. She was the one who had kept insisting that her intuition be taken seriously. She was the one who kept jumping at every shadow. So why was she now trying to decline the very help she’d been asking for?
At that moment, the doorbell rang. Mary raised an eyebrow. To Jonathan she said, “Well, at least your bodyguard’s prompt. What did you say his name was—Armstrong?”
“That’s right. Be sure to see his identification before you let him in.”
“Jonathan, I’m not a child,” she said through clenched teeth. Honestly, sometimes his protective nature was a little confining. Before she could protest further, the doorbell buzzed again. And again.
This Armstrong might be prompt, but apparently patience wasn’t one of his virtues.
After finally breaking the connection with Jonathan, Mary ran her fingers through her hair, then grabbed her robe off the bed and stuffed her arms into the sleeves as she hurried into the living room.
The hulking bodybuilder in the hallway had punched the doorbell twice more while she was en route.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she called as she tiptoed up to look out the peephole. “Who is it?”
“Name’s Trace Armstrong. Sent by a Bob Newland.”
Mary couldn’t see anything through the peephole but a vague shadow. She unlocked the dead bolt, but left the brass safety latch in place and peered out the small slit. The man stood between Mary’s vision and the soft lighting behind him, casting his form into a backlit silhouette. But he sure didn’t look as large as she’d imagined. “Could I see some identification, please?”
“At least you have some common sense,” he grumbled as he handed her a plastic card case.
Mary looked at the state-issued identification card and shrugged. What was she supposed to be looking for? The card was issued to a Trace Armstrong and it looked official. Still, from his ID photo, Armstrong looked like an escaped felon. She passed his card case to him through the slit. “Just a moment,” she murmured as she shut the door in order to undo the security latch.
The door opened. Expecting the muscle-bound hulk of her imagination, Mary started when the lean figure eased across her threshold. As the diffuse light from the overhead lamp illuminated his face, Mary’s breath stopped. Trace Armstrong wasn’t pretty-boy handsome, but he literally reeked of raw, masculine power.
Closing the door softly behind him, he thrust his hand in her direction. “Mary Wilder? I hear you’ve been having a little problem.”
Mary slipped her hand into his and looked up, losing herself in the most incredible pair of eyes she’d ever seen.
Chapter Two
Trace Armstrong leaned casually against the doorframe. Mary was caught in time, her gaze locked with his. His hazel eyes, reflecting golden light like those of a panther, flickered over her, cataloging and assessing.
Trace wasn’t as large a man as she’d expected. Instead of blatantly protruding muscles on an apelike frame, he was as lithe and sinewy as a jaguar.
Spare and rangy, yet wide-shouldered, he exuded a powerful catlike aura. A lush head of pitch-black hair fell in shaggy abandon, the ends curling against his collar. He wore black Levi’s, a creamy shirt and a charcoal sport coat. Mary thought the sport coat was a rare concession; like a tiger wearing a bow tie. He looked uncomfortable and a little surprised every time he moved his shoulders.
When he tilted his head, Mary noticed sooty stubble darkening the bottom of his face, framing an angular, aggressive jawline. But his most arresting feature were those startling eyes that continued to study her with laserlike intensity.
There
