2
Fear shot through Wendy. But she wasn’t afraid of the man who’d entered her bedroom with his gun drawn. She was afraid that the two men in her room would kill each other. Hart was already reaching for his weapon as he tried shoving Wendy behind him for her protection.
But who would protect him?
“Daddy!” she yelled as she jumped between the men and their guns. “Don’t shoot!” She held a hand out to each of them, pushing Hart back as she held off her father. “Either of you! Don’t shoot each other!”
Her father blinked dark eyes that were still bleary with sleep as he focused on her and the stranger in her bedroom. “What’s going on, Wendy? Who the hell is he?”
“He’s my…my…” She couldn’t say “bodyguard” because her father’s next question would be why she needed one. And she didn’t want to tell her father about Luther Mills and the threats. Not yet. She trusted the police department to keep them safe. But if Hart was telling the truth and someone within the department couldn’t be trusted…then she might have to tell her father, to implore him and her mother to leave town until after the trial. As long as she didn’t have to worry about them, she would be fine.
Despite Luther Mills and those threats, she didn’t need a bodyguard. She didn’t need Hart Fisher. But since he was there, in her bedroom, in the middle of the night, she needed to explain his presence.
“Wendy?” her father prodded.
She felt like a teenager who’d been caught necking on the living room couch with her boyfriend. Except her father had never caught her with anyone when she was a teenager. She’d been too busy studying back then.
“Boyfriend,” she blurted out. “He’s my boyfriend.” Mortified, her face flushed with heat, especially when she felt Hart staring at her in astonishment. She turned to him and silently implored him to play along with her.
She didn’t want her parents to learn about the threats because they wouldn’t be worried about themselves. They would be worried about her, and they already worried too much about her, about if she was taking care of herself, if she was working too much, if she was eating right…
Her father’s brow creased with more lines than he already had. Her parents had been well into their forties when they’d finally had the baby they’d wanted for so long. It didn’t matter that she was twenty-seven now; Wendy would always be their baby.
Her father had kept the gun grasped in his hand. But with her standing between him and Hart, he’d lowered the barrel. “You were arguing,” he said, suspicion in his voice. He wasn’t readily accepting her explanation, but then, it was no wonder since Wendy could not even remember the last time she’d had a boyfriend. “I heard raised voices.”
“He, uh, surprised me,” Wendy said. “Scared me…” That was no lie.
“Of course he did, breaking into our damn house like this!” her father angrily exclaimed. Then he turned his focus on Hart and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”
“Shh, Daddy,” Wendy implored him. “You’re going to wake up Mom.”
And if the police noticed all the lights coming on inside the house, they would probably storm in with more guns drawn.
She glanced down as she realized she wore only that big T-shirt. If the officers saw her like this, she would never hear the end of it around the station. Wendy grabbed a pair of yoga pants and quickly pulled them on.
“Your mother’s knee was bothering her, so she took some pain pills,” Dad said. “She won’t wake up for another six hours.”
That was good. At least, if the police stormed inside, her mother wouldn’t wake up.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Hart said. “I hadn’t wanted to disturb either you or your wife.”
That much Wendy believed was definitely true. Could she believe the rest of what he’d told her, though? That the chief had hired the Payne Protection to guard the principals in Luther Mills’s trial?
It made more sense than his working for Luther. Part of the reason she’d had a crush on him, besides his movie star good looks, was that he’d been such a good cop. He’d made so many arrests.
“I just really needed to see Wendy,” he continued. Then he holstered his weapon and held out his hand. “I’m Hart Fisher.”
Her father stared at his hand for a long moment. “And how do you know my daughter?”
“We used to work together,” Hart replied. “I was a River City detective.”
“Oh.” Her father nodded. “Of course…”
Had she mentioned Hart to him? She might as well have. She’d told her mother about her crush, and her parents told each other everything. Her face heated even more as her discomfort increased. She tended to share too much with her mother.
Her father extended his hand and heartily shook Hart’s. Maybe a little too heartily. Even though he was pushing seventy, her father was a big man, and the former football coach still worked out regularly.
“I’m Ben Thompson.” He greeted Hart, but he wasn’t smiling.
“I am really sorry,” Hart said again. “I just need to speak with Wendy for a few moments, if that’s all right with you, sir?”
Her father grunted. “That’s not up to me.” He looked at Wendy, really looked at her in that way fathers had that made their children squirm. Or in the way that coaches made their players squirm. “Do you want him to stay, Wendy?”
Now she felt compelled to apologize. “I’m sorry, Dad…”
“You’re an adult,” her father said.
Sometimes she wondered if he really believed that, though. But he must have been trying to prove that he did because he stepped into the hall and pulled her bedroom door shut—leaving her alone with Hart Fisher. Her bodyguard.
That was what he was. Not her boyfriend.
She didn’t want him as either. Not anymore. Now was not the time for her to start dating anyone, not when everyone and everything she cared about had been threatened.
Her face was still so hot that she probably could have melted an ice cube on her forehead.
“I don’t want my parents to know about the threats,” she explained. “That’s why I told my dad that you’re my boyfriend.” She didn’t want Hart to think she wanted that—that she wanted him. Just a short time ago, when he’d been lying on top of her, she’d thought he might have wanted her, too.
But that wasn’t possible. He still wouldn’t have noticed her if he hadn’t been assigned to protect her.
Hart nodded. “I get it,” he assured her. “And now I need to get you to that meeting.”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “Do you still not trust me, even after I covered for you with your dad?”
