The Accidental Bodyguard Page 4

  She encouraged them to go to their father and talk to him. Foolishly she had caused one quarrel between the father and sons by giving some of Lucas’s and the boys’ clothes to their yardman and his family. After Lucas had caught the poor man in a pair of slacks from one of his custom-made suits from London, he had yelled at the boys for an hour. She had wept for causing all three of them so much pain. But the incident had blown over, and Lucas had bought the slacks back from the man.

  She had taken two pictures of Lucas from his albums to keep when she was in the boys’ room alone. One was a photograph of him as a man, the other of him as a boy unhappily perched on top of a huge elephant in India.

  Lucas kept a box full of articles about himself in the den. She read them all. Apparently Lucas had a professional reputation for toughness and greed. She read that he never made a move unless it was to his financial advantage, that even the women he dated were always rich—as Joan, his first wife, had been. One reporter had likened his predatory nature to that of a barracuda.

  The nights when Lucas was at home were difficult because she felt lonely and isolated in the boys’ closet, clutching the photographs of Lucas. But the worst hours were those when all the lights in the house were off and she fell asleep, only to have nightmares.

  Most nights she would slip into an old chambray shirt of Lucas’s. After Peppin shut the louvered closet door for her, she would lie there while either Peppin or Montague read aloud. This week they had been reading a book called Psychic Voyages because she had found Psychic Vampires, their favorite, too terrifying. She would lie half-listening to the weird and yet compelling stories of people who believed they had lived other lives.

  Eventually she would fall asleep, and it was never long before the dreams came—vivid, full-color visions that seemed so real and loomed larger than life.

  Tonight was worse, maybe because it had stormed.

  She was a little girl again, playing in a sun-splashed rose garden beside a vast white mansion with a dark-haired girl. At first they carefully gathered the roses, filling huge baskets with them. Then her dream changed. The sky filled with dark clouds, and the house was a blackened ruin. There was nothing in the baskets but stems and thorns. She was older, and her companion was gone. Suddenly a fanged monster with olive-black eyes sprang into the ruined rose garden and began chasing her. She knew if he caught her, he would lock her in a box and bury her alive. But as she ran, her speed slowed, and his accelerated, until she felt his hot breath on her neck and his hands clawing into her waist and dragging her into a dark cave. At first she was afraid she’d been buried alive. Then suddenly fire was all around her and she was struggling through the thick suffocating smoke, trying to find her way out. The last thing she saw was a dead man’s gray face.

  She screamed, a piercing, ear-shattering cry that dragged her back to the lumpy pallet. The louvered door was thrown open instantly, and Peppin’s small compact body crouched over hers. His fingers, which smelled of peanut butter and grape jelly and of other flavors best not identified, pressed her lips.

  His eyes were big and bright. His thin whisper was colored with excitement. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

  A door down the hall banged open.

  Montague whistled from his bed. “Psst! Dad’s coming!”

  The louvered doors that were yanked together didn’t quite close. Peppin scampered to his bed, diving under his covers a second before their door opened.

  “Another nightmare, Peppin?”

  She lay huddled beneath her blanket, her trembling easing ever so slightly when she heard his beautiful voice.

  Every night for ten nights her screams had brought him to this room.

  The storm had abated, and the night, though still, was held in a humid pall. The worst of the rain had moved out to the gulf, but she could hear the occasional drip of moisture from the eaves.

  Even as part of her mind was stampeding in panic, she lifted her head and put her eye to the thread of light that sifted through the slats. The screen saver of the kids’ computer gave off a flickering bluish glow. In the charcoal gray shadows of the moonlit room, she could just make out Lucas’s tall, broad form silhouetted in the open doorway.

  Tonight he was shirtless, and she found herself staring at his bare chest and corded muscles, and at the long white scars that crisscrossed his torso.

  Already accustomed to the lack of light, she could see the drowsiness in his silver eyes and the rumpled waves of his inky dark hair that he wore too long for a lawyer. His face was leather-dark and starkly arrogant, yet she sensed he had known pain. He seemed huge and dangerous, uncompromisingly tough and masculine. And yet she felt astonishingly safe with him in the bedroom.

  “Yes, Daddy, a really bad nightmare,” Peppin said in a breathless, thready voice.

  Lucas padded silently across the room, and the mattress groaned as he sat on the edge of his younger son’s bed.

  “What was the monster like tonight?”

  Lucas’s drawl had the power to hold her spellbound.

  “Oh—he was just awful. He had huge purple eyes just popping out of their sockets. And a tail with green spikes.”

  “Green spikes?”

  She watched Lucas’s large pale hand stroke Peppin’s hair, and it was almost as if he soothed her with those long, callused fingers.

  “You know, Peppin, I’ve had a few weird dreams lately, too.”

  “About monsters?”

  “No.” Lucas’s voice softened. “About a girl.”

  The girl in the closet lay very still. But her breathing accelerated, as did her heartbeats. His words seemed to linger inside her, registering almost hypnotically in that sweet, secret place in her soul.

  “The first dream was a nightmare. It was about this girl who was terrified. I wanted to save her but I couldn’t. She kept screaming, but when I reached her, it was too late.” His voice broke. “She died in my arms. I woke up in a cold sweat. The dream was so vivid. She was so real. I still can’t seem to get her out of my mind.”

  “I’d rather dream about a pretty girl than about a monster with big teeth any night, Dad.”

  “Big teeth, huh?” Lucas murmured.

  Lucas’s voice resonated pleasantly along the girl’s nerve endings.

  “Pointy teeth with silver tips. I was afraid he was going to eat me alive. Or…or maybe suck my blood like a giant vampire.” Peppin punctuated this last with a hideous slurping sound.

  Lucas’s hand continued its gentle strokes. “I’m here, and I’m not going to let anything or anyone into this room.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling as though Lucas was caressing her and speaking to her, feeling some undeniable powerful attraction to him.

  She sighed, wishing she could remember her own nightmare, yet thankful she couldn’t.

  She ran her fingertips over his chambray shirt, hugging the cotton fabric to her skin, liking the way his masculine scent clung to his shirt, and therefore to her.

  Lucas.

  He didn’t even know she existed.

  Her chest swelled with some unnamed emotion for him that was more potent than any she’d ever known.

  The idea of him obsessed her, consumed her.

  The boys thought that if they kept him from hiring a nanny they could keep her existence a secret. But she knew differently. Time was their enemy. Lucas was too smart not to discover her, and when he did, he would probably despise her. Still, she thrilled to the fantasy of their first encounter with every fiber of her being. Even as she dreaded it.

  A long time later, Lucas’s melodious voice trailed into silence. When he was sure his sons were both asleep, he got up and left.

  And later, when she dreamed of the monsters again and of the face with the olive-bright eyes, Lucas was there. Moving with the speed of lightning and scooping her up against his muscled chest, he carried her to safety. And there, far away from danger, he kissed her, his mouth fastening upon hers with greedy, allconsuming passion.

&nbs
p; This time when she awoke, she was hot and breathless and so filled with longing for him that she could not suppress the urge to get up and tiptoe quietly down the hall to his room.

  His bedroom door was ajar, and his large bed where she had lain and daydreamed about him was awash in moonlight.

  Silently she made her way to him.

  She gasped when she saw how beautiful he was, sleep having washed the worry from his harsh face. His bronze skin. appeared amazingly smooth, unmarred except for the long white scars that ran across his chest. Where had he gotten scars like that?

  She had come to ease her longing, but one glance at the sheets molding the tanned sprawl of his huge body only increased her longing for him a hundredfold.

  She had been alone so long. Without him for so long.

  Without him? What made her think she had been with him before? But strangely, she did.

  Would he recognize her? Would he be able to tell her who she was?

  All she knew was that he did not seem like a barracuda to her. No. To her he was very, very dear.

  Her mouth went dry. Her heart ached. Her knees trembled.

  Hugging her waist, she sank to the floor beside him, swallowing against the tight constriction in her throat.

  She clenched her hands. Never had she wanted anything so much as she wanted to run her fingertips through the thick tumble of black hair on that snowy pillow or let them glide over his wide shoulders.

  A great tenderness welled inside her as she studied his bluntly carved features and hard mouth. She remembered her dream and his kiss, and fresh desire raced through her veins. She wanted to taste him, to know him. To belong to him.

  And suddenly her loneliness made her hunger for him too much to resist.

  Even though she knew it was crazy and an invasion of his privacy, she crawled closer to his bed. There she swept the masses of her yellow hair back with one hand and leaning toward him, carefully brushed her lips against his hair that fell across his brow, next to the dark skin at his temple.

  He was as hot as if he had a fever.

  And suddenly so was she.

  Two kisses. Only two. He was so warm. Instantly her breathing was shallower, raspier. So was his. Instantly she was driven by a nearly overpowering need to trace the shape of his lips with her mouth, to deepen her kisses until he awakened and knew she was there.

  He stirred suddenly and groaned. His mouth curved in a sensual white smile, as if he was having a wanton, lascivious dream.

  She felt a blinding current of emotion, unlike anything she had ever known, leap from him to her as she jerked away from him.

  She had to leave.

  But the tantalizing taste of him remained on her lips.

  For one long second she closed her eyes and imagined him waking up and finding her. Would he know her? Would he accept her or reject her? She imagined him reaching for her, accepting her into his bed, into his life, telling her that he had always loved her.

  Dear God. What was she doing to herself?

  Then, terrified he would sense her presence, she stifled a low moan and ran down the hall to the boys’ closet, where she lay sleepless on her pallet, feeling dissatisfied, aching with new needs and desires.

  She couldn’t bear to stay in his house another day.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of ever leaving him.

  Three

  When his Lincoln slewed overfast onto Ocean Drive, radials whining, Lucas jammed the accelerator down hard. His X-rated dream last night was living proof he’d gone too damn long without a woman. He’d awakened in a sweat again, only this time the gorgeous blonde who’d decided to haunt his dreams of late had climbed into his bed and run her mouth and tongue all over him.

  He’d awakened so steamed up he’d driven to his gym to work out before going into his office.

  Now he felt hot and sticky and irritable. He’d forgotten the notice in the locker room yesterday about the water being turned off today for plumbing tests.

  “What? My fault? How the hell do you mean?” Lucas growled into his cellular phone as he jerked the steering wheel to the right. Palm trees, hot-pink oleander and sparkling views of the bay spurted past in a blur.

  Lucas was quickly coming to dislike this Mrs. Peters, the nanny who’d been a no-show yesterday.

  His fault? Until she’d said that, he’d been only half listening. He was late, and his mind had been vacillating between the girl who’d tormented his dreams and his nine o’clock appointment with the ever-uptight Stinky Brown.

  Stinky was proving to be an impossible client. He had been happy enough when Gertrude’s doctor had agreed to testify that the old lady was senile. But Stinky had been going crazy ever since he’d found out about the blackened body in Bethany Ann’s burned van. Apparently the girl had told her friends in Mexico that her grandmother had written her about changing the will. She’d also informed them of her grandmother’s sudden death and her plan to return to the ranch for her grandmother’s memorial service.

  Lucas had sent an investigator to Mexico. Ugly gossip was rife about the heiress. Wanted for questioning by the police, Bethany had vanished. Which. meant she was probably guilty as sin.

  Stinky should have been thrilled. Instead he seemed terrified that the media would get wind of the scandal and blow it all out of proportion. Stinky wanted the girl found and the rumors silenced—fast.

  “But Mr. Broderick,” came Mrs. Peters’s penetrating, dry voice over his phone, “while I am sorry that you came home early expecting to meet me there, you yourself called me yesterday afternoon and told me you’d already hired someone. That is the only reason 1 didn’t show up.”

  Lucas forced his mind from the missing heiress. An image of a pale Peppin peering at him in the foyer flashed in Lucas’s mind. Peppin’s voice had been grave. “Mrs. Peters? Why, er, no, Dad. We waited by the phone just like you said. She didn’t even call.”

  “What time did I call you, Mrs. Peters?” Lucas demanded, his stern tone almost convulsing with anger.

  “Really, Mr. Broderick, you should know that better—”

  Lucas exploded. “What time?”

  Stubborn silence from the woman.

  Then she said in an exasperated tone, “A little after two. I remember because—”

  Lucas didn’t give a damn why the blasted woman remembered.

  “I didn’t call you, Mrs. Peters. I know that because I was in a conference all afternoon.”

  “Oh. Then who—”

  “Never mind.”

  “Do you want to reschedule the interview?”

  When hell freezes over, lady. Lucas said a clipped goodbye and hung up.

  “Damn!” Lucas was coldly furious with himself for not figuring out before now that Peppin and Montague had had something to do with the six nannies who’d stood him up.

  For eleven miraculous days the boys had been so good he’d been tempted to check their shoulder blades to see if they’d sprouted wings.

  Why hadn’t he been more suspicious of that eerie feeling that some unseen angel had moved into his home and was making his life with his sons magically better?

  His mind flashed back, struggling to interpret the bizarre events of late. First, he remembered that odd experience in the Moran foyer when he’d felt—there was no other word—haunted.

  No, he had told himself to forget that. With great effort he forced the intriguing episode from his mind and thought instead about the changes in the household since he’d returned to Corpus Christi.

  The boys had been pleasant, companionable, thoughtful and neat. They’d fixed several meals for him. In fact, ever since San Antonio, Lucas’s home life had been downright idyllic. Aside from his concern over his sons’ fevers, queasy stomachs, nightmares and absences from school, aside from that act of bizarre generosity when they’d given the yardman two of his best suits, this was the one week since Peppin’s birth that being with his sons had been almost a joy.

  Lucas grew increasingly puzzled as he reme
mbered them asking him to show them how to boil broth and vegetables—even broccoli. Other than French fries and onion rings, they’d never eaten a damned vegetable in their lives. Why, they’d never touched broccoli with so much as the tip of a fork.

  And all those medical questions. All those calls to Pete. Damn it. Why?

  Lucas wasn’t the only person they’d duped. Pete had prescribed a light diet, antibiotics and bed rest.

  What had the brats really done with those pills and vegetables and bowls of soup they’d pretended to gobble down? Lucas frowned as he remembered how they’d tracked back and forth to their room with those endless bowls of broth and vegetables.

  And then it hit him.

  They were feeding something up there. Something large and ravenous that was either badly injured or diseased.

  Vegetables ruled out anything as remotely attractive as a large dog.

  It had to be something so repulsive they were sure he would never let them keep it. And why had Peppin awakened him every night screaming? Had the creature gotten loose in the house? Were they scared of it?

  Damn it! What were they hiding up there?

  Lucas switched on the radio, only to turn it off instantly when the newscaster began an update on the serial murders of several Texas lawyers. Some maniac was shooting lawyers in their homes in an executionstyle manner. The story was making headlines all over the state, and his partners and staff attorneys hadn’t been able to talk of anything else since a Houston associate had been found shot in the head in his backyard.

  Hot-pink oleander blossoms waved airily above the high white wall that hid all but the top story of Lucas’s mansion from the boulevard. Lucas swerved through the gigantic gates past the Realtor’s For Sale sign, which had been erected shortly after the divorce.

  Lucas had little liking for his three-story, ultramodern, glass-tiled monstrosity with its elaborate security system, tennis courts, pool, Jacuzzi, boathouse, docks, fishing pier and servants’ quarters, all of which were Joan’s exorbitantly priced creations.

  Lucas had grown up in small houses and felt lost in the large, overdecorated rooms. The place had become an albatross around his neck. The Realtor kept giving him lists of necessary repairs, and the first item on every list was to seal the ancient tunnel beneath his house that led to the bay. The tunnel was a curious relic from the turn-of-the-century mansion Joan had bought at great expense and torn down to build their home.