back stung where shards of metal and glass had impaled him, but he refused to tend to himself until he was certain Shelby was secure. After he’d taken a bullet for Kate Winston, he knew the threats to the Winstons were real and not only in the outside world, but behind their supposedly secure gates.
Shrugging his shoulders, he winced and continued up the stairs, concentrating on Shelby’s sweet derriere. Each of her movements took his mind off the pain in his back and his bum knee.
At the first opportunity, he’d seek out Mrs. Winston and ask her to remove him from the responsibility of watching out for Shelby. She was young, opinionated and didn’t want the added aggravation of someone following her around. He couldn’t blame her. He’d grown up in a large family and he valued his privacy. But there was inconvenience and there was danger. She needed to understand the difference.
Shelby had to figure out really quickly which was more important. But Daniel didn’t want to be the man to play babysitter to the college coed. Let someone else be.
Still, she was pretty, slim, athletic, and when she smiled, as she had when he’d pulled her from the fire, it did funny things to his insides. Apparently, she’d gone through hell being kept in the dark for two weeks, not knowing why she’d been targeted, who was keeping her, or if they’d eventually kill her. Poor kid.
She reached up to push the hair back from her forehead, the motion emphasizing her narrow waist, the swell of her hips and the sexy way she moved. His groin tightened and he had to retract his previous thought. She wasn’t a kid. At twenty-three, she was six years younger than he was. He told himself that she might as well be a baby. While he performed the role of her bodyguard, he had to get his mind and his gaze off those hips. The woman was his job, not a conquest.
Maddie climbed the steps as quickly and with as much agility as a woman half her age.
Tired and still recuperating from her ordeal in the basement, Shelby wasn’t going to complain about the stairs. She held on to the railing and climbed, wishing she could find a nice soft bed to fall into.
“You’ll have the blue guest room,” Maddie was saying. “On account of it’s the most feminine of the rooms. Your grandfather will be staying in the brown room.” She stopped and threw open the door to a room decorated in creams and browns. The bed was made from intricately carved burled wood. The mattress was covered with a cream duvet and pillows in various shades from cream to a rich, dark chocolate. In one corner stood a deep brown leather wing-back chair and a burled wood table with a wrought iron and stained glass reading lamp. Wide windows gave them a view out of the back of the house.
Directly below was a swimming pool, the water rippling in the breeze, sun sparkling off its surface.
Shelby blinked her eyes at the intensity of the sunlight. After days spent in complete darkness, it would take time before she got used to light again.
Beyond the pool lay an expansive garden and neatly trimmed grass. Trees shaded the edges of the lawn and made Shelby long to walk among them. She had to stop herself from exclaiming over the beauty of the room, the house and the surrounding grounds. O’Hara’s Bar and Grill on the Outer Banks was nothing to compare with the elegance and luxury of the Winston Estate.
Her grandfather stood beside her, his lips pressed into a thin line, the dark circles beneath his eyes more pronounced.
Maddie chattered on, “There’s a private bathroom through this door and it’s fully equipped with towels and toiletries. If you should need anything that isn’t provided, let me know.” She faced Patrick, her smile fading. “Is something wrong?”
Patrick forced a smile. “Nothing at all. This will be fine.”
Shelby could tell by the tightness of his jaw that everything was not fine. She could bet what was going through his mind. He was probably comparing their home over the bar to the Winston Estate and coming up short. She slipped her arm around him and squeezed. “Think of it as a fancy hotel. We won’t be here long,” she whispered.
He nodded and squared his shoulders. “The main thing is to keep you safe. Come on, let’s see your digs.” He winked and stepped out of the beautiful room.
Maddie crossed the hallway and opened another room. “This is the blue room where you will be staying, Miss O’Hara.” She led the way in and crossed to another door. “You have your own walk-in closet and bathroom. Mrs. Winston is having additional clothing delivered this afternoon. If there’s anything in particular you’d like her to include, just let me or Debra know and we’ll add it to the order.”
Shelby raised her hand. “Wait. What’s this about clothes?” She shook her head. “I don’t need clothes. I have my own.”
“Mrs. Winston wanted you to have anything you might need brought here.”
Shelby glanced around at the soft blue-gray painted walls, the gauzy white curtains and the beautiful driftwood-style white headboard. The room was too beautiful. Too pristine. All light and clean. Almost sterile. Had she traded a dark hell of a prison in a basement for a lighter, beautiful cage so foreign to everything she’d known and grown up with? “I’d rather have my own clothing. Please thank Mrs. Winston. But as soon as I can, I’ll go get my own.”
Maddie smiled and nodded. “I completely understand. I’ll have someone sent out to collect whatever you want from your home.”
Shelby bit down on her tongue, wanting to tell the woman what she thought of someone else digging through her drawers in her tiny bedroom above the bar. But to do so would be attacking an older woman with an open, honest, welcoming face who was only doing what she was ordered to do.
Shelby squeezed out a smile. “Thank you, Maddie. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a shower.”
“Oh, dear. After all you’ve gone through, you should soak in the whirlpool bathtub.” Maddie opened the door to the bathroom and stepped inside with more purpose than Shelby expected from a seventysomething-year-old woman.
Before she could say anything different, the woman had the water running into the tub, bath salts and bubbles sprinkled in the water and towels laid along the polished granite edge.
“Do you need help out of those clothes?” Maddie asked as she advanced toward Shelby.
Shelby backed away. “No, no. I’m quite capable of undressing myself.”
A chuckle sounded from behind her. She turned to see where it had come from.
Her grandfather stood beside Daniel, a grin spread across his face.
Daniel’s face gave no indication of what he was thinking. But was that a twitch she saw at the corner of his mouth, and were his eyes twinkling? The man’s face lit, making her insides flip. He was too good-looking for her own good.
Shelby squared her shoulders. “If everyone doesn’t mind, I’d like a little privacy.”
“Certainly, Miss O’Hara.”
Not at all used to the formality and slightly irritated by it, Shelby insisted, “Please, call me Shelby.”
The
