Just Another Pretty Face (HT 459) (17 page)

"Like this." She waved her hand back and forth between them. "The way we are... here... now."

"Does that mean you just want to go straight up to the bedroom and forget the foreplay?" Pierce asked, trying for a little humor.

Nikki lifted her head then, and just looked at him. "You know what I mean."

Pierce sighed. "Yes," he said. "I'm afraid I do." He lifted his snifter to his lips, draining it in one long swallow, and then leaned forward to set it onto the glass-topped table next to Nikki's. "Do you mind telling me why?" he asked, trying very hard to stay calm.

"Because it shouldn't have happened in the first place, that's why," Nikki said. "Because I work for you. Because I can't do my job when I'm distracted by..."

"Sex?" Pierce supplied when she hesitated.

"Yes," Nikki said, trying not to blush. That wasn't what she'd been going to say—she wasn't quite sure of the word she would have used—but it would do. "And last night proved it. If I hadn't let myself get... distracted, I might have been able to prevent what happened. I might even have been able to catch whoever did it,
before
she did it."

"I could fire you," Pierce suggested.

"What?"

"I could fire you and ask Bender to send over another bodyguard," Pierce said, only half kidding. "Then you wouldn't have to worry about being distracted."

Nikki stared at him, her expression both incredulous and indignant.

Pierce suddenly had the feeling he'd gone a step too far. "It's a solution to our problem," he said, with a halfhearted attempt at a casual shrug.

"It's a solution to
your
problem, you mean." Nikki surged to her feet, incensed by his lack of sensitivity. "If you try to fire me because I won't sleep with you, I'll slap you with a sexual harassment suit so fast your head will spin. And just think what that would do to your precious reputation when the tabloids got a hold of it."

"Jeez, Nikki," Pierce said, utterly amazed by the intensity of her outburst. He got to his feet, too, putting out a hand to touch her. "Calm down."

She lifted her chin and took a deliberate step back, out of his reach.

He dropped his hand to his side. "Look, I'm sorry. It was just a joke."

"A very poor joke."

"All right, yes," he agreed. "A very poor joke. And I'm sorry for making it. Okay?"

She glared at him for a moment longer. "Okay," she said finally, grudgingly.

"You want to sit back down now? I'll get us another drink and we can start this discussion over."

Nikki sat. "I don't want another drink," she said.

"Well, I sure as hell do." He went to the bar and poured himself a healthy drink and then came back and sat down next to her, keeping a little more distance between them than he had before. "Okay, talk," he said, calmer now.

"I've given this a lot of thought," Nikki began, "and I just don't feel we can continue what we started last night."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't be your bodyguard and your... your..."

"My lover," Pierce suggested.

"Yes, all right. I can't be your bodyguard and your lover, too. What happened last night should be proof enough of that."

"Do you really think that if you hadn't been sleeping in my bed you might have stopped whoever it was from starting that fire?"

"I might have. But we'll never know, will we? Because I
was
in your bed. And I was there again this morning, too. If I'd been up and awake, doing my job like I'm supposed to, I might have seen who put that letter in the mailbox. As it is—" She shrugged.

"Do you really think you can end what's between us just like that?" He lifted his hand and gently caressed her cheek, touched by her sweet naivete. "Do you think you can make all that passion and heat inside you disappear just by willing it to go away?"

"Maybe not," she said, and stood up, unable to bear his touch without wanting to feel his arms close around her. "But I can ignore it. And if I can't—" she looked at him from across the width of the coffee table "—then you won't have to fire me, because I'll quit."

"I don't want you to do that."

"I don't want to do it, either, but I will if I have to. Walking away from a job before it's finished wouldn't hurt nearly as much as getting you killed because I didn't have my mind on what I was doing."

Pierce stared at her for a long, silent moment, awed all over again. She really was like the Amazon goddess he'd first compared her to, he thought, one of that legendary breed of fierce and honorable warrior-women. He had no doubt at all that she meant exactly what she said. She'd walk away rather than compromise her principles. And he'd lose her, right then and there, if he forced her to alter her vision of herself.

His decision made, Pierce stood up. "All right," he said, and held out his hand. "From now on it will be strictly business. Deal?"

Nikki put her hand in his. "Deal," she said, her relief evident in her voice.

And the minute this is over,
Pierce promised himself,
all deals are off.
He'd have his Amazon on her back so fast she'd think she'd been tackled by the entire defensive line of the reigning Super Bowl team.

* * *

"IT'S A VERY BASIC SYSTEM. Extremely simple to operate," Nikki said the next afternoon, explaining the security system she'd had installed in the front gates. "The mechanism works off a transmitter, like an automatic garage door opener, so you don't even have to get out of the car to open and close the gates. And they can be operated from the house at this panel." She indicated the shiny new wall-mounted panel next to the kitchen telephone. "This button opens and closes the gate. The button below it activates the intercom. Press it down to speak. Release it to listen. The camera—" she flicked a hand at the video screen that made up the left side of the panel "—will be on all the time, monitoring everyone who goes in or out. And I'll make sure there's always enough tape in the recorder, so you don't have to worry about operating that."

"And how will I know someone's at the gate?" asked Mrs. Gilmore, a touch of asperity in her voice. "I can't be looking out all the time to see."

"You won't have to," Nikki informed her. "There's a bell, just like when someone is at the front door." She glanced around the kitchen, her eyes touching each one of them—Pierce, Kathy Frye and Mrs. Gilmore—in turn. "Starting today, I don't want anyone to open the gates without first knowing who's on the other side. If someone says he's delivering groceries or flowers or whatever and you don't recognize him—or her," she said significantly, "I want you to ask for a picture ID. Have them hold it up to the camera so you can get a good look at it. I know it will aeem like a lot of bother at first, but pretty soon it will be second nature. And it's important." She turned back to the panel. "Now, this—" she indicated the red button at the bottom of the panel"—is the panic button. It's connected directly to Bender Security. If you press this button and don't call Bender Security within two minutes—the number's right there on the bulletin board—they alert the police and fire departments and the paramedics, plus dispatching security personnel of their own. Four other panic buttons have been installed in the house. By the front door—where there's also another intercom and monitor—in Mr. Kingston's bedroom, in the garden room and in the cabana. Any questions?"

Pierce clicked his heels together and gave her a snappy salute.

* * *

"DOGS?" PIERCE SAID.
"
Y
OU
really think we need dogs patrolling the grounds?"

"Unless you want me to tell Bill to go ahead and send a crew in to wire the wall," Nikki said, already knowing he didn't, because they'd discussed it. Loudly and at length. She wondered if their new tendency to argue with each other at the drop of a hat had anything to do with their sublimation of other, more basic, tendencies. She suspected it did. "I could have him install the motion-detection system in the house while he's at it," she added provocatively.

"No. Definitely not." Pierce's tone brooked no argument on that score. "I don't want my home run like some armed camp with everyone having to punch in some code every time they want to go in or out of the house.
I
don't want to have to punch a code."

"It could be set up so that it's only activated at night, after everyone's gone to bed, and turned off in the morning. That wouldn't inconvenience anyone. Much."

"And what if I wake up in the middle of the night and feel like doing a few laps or going to the cabana to work out? What if I just want to sit outside on the terrace and drink myself into a stupor?" he said. "What if Mrs. Gilmore can't sleep and gets up to make herself a cup of hot milk?"

"It would only be for a little while, until this woman is caught."

Pierce shook his head. "A security system like that is expensive to install, which means it's ex—"

"At twelve million a picture," Nikki said dryly, "I think you can afford it."

"Which means," he repeated, trying to quell her with a look, "that it's expensive to rip out. And that expense is seen as wasteful, especially by people like you. And Claire. So it becomes a permanent fixture. I don't want it."

"Then it'll have to be the dogs."

Pierce snorted to show his displeasure. "Which means, I assume, that I can look forward to having my throat ripped out by some slobbering Doberman one night on my way to the cabana?"

"Dobermans don't slobber," Nikki informed him tartly. "They're very neat, elegant dogs. Nothing like their publicity would lead you to believe." She flashed him a taunting grin. "A fact which I'm sure you can appreciate. But that's a moot point, because Bill doesn't use Dobermans."

"Why not?" Pierce growled irritably, intrigued in spite of himself. "I thought Dobermans were the world's greatest guard dogs."

"They're too easily disabled."

"By who? Schwarzenegger?"

"No, really, I'm serious," Nikki said. "If you can keep your head and not panic, just about any average adult can fend off a Doberman. Their long legs and necks make them very fragile. Besides that, the breed as a whole is too smart for security work. It makes them undependable."

Pierce lifted an eyebrow.

"If a Doberman's been hurt in the line of duty, he's apt to refuse to participate the next time the same situation comes up."

"So what does Bender use, then? Pit bulls?"

"Same thing the military uses. German shepherds. A German shepherd is all heart. It'll take a bullet and— what?" she said, catching the look in his eye.

"You're just so damn cute when you get all macho and military," Pierce said.

Nikki threw a book at him.

* * *

"I REALLY DON'T LIKE all this prying into people's private lives," Pierce said as Nikki slid her finger under the flap of a large manilla envelope. It had been delivered by messenger from Bender Security and placed directly into her hands.

"Think of it as an in-depth reference check," Nikki said as she extracted the contents of the envelope. "You do check references when you hire someone, don't you?"

"Claire does them," Pierce said. "She's my business manager," he added when Nikki's eyes widened at this sign of laxity in him. "Whenever I need to hire someone—whenever anyone in the family needs to hire someone—Claire takes care of all the initial interviewing and..." he made a limp-wristed, brushing-away motion with his hand, deliberately trying to provoke her with a show of aristocratic disdain for all the mundane little details of life "... reference checks and whatever."

"Cute," Nikki said, refusing to rise to the bait. She pushed her breakfast plate away to make room for the reports. "It looks like Bill's people did a thorough job. As usual," she commented as she laid the folders in front of her. There were six separate reports, each of varying thicknesses, each held in its own file folder. She looked across the table at Pierce, silently asking him if he was ready to proceed.

He sighed heavily. "I really, really hate this, you know?"

"I know," Nikki said, forgetting her antagonism for the moment in her effort to ease his obvious discomfort. "But it has to be done."

"It feels like I'm... I don't know... like I'm violating their trust."

"You don't have to read them," Nikki offered. "I'll read them. And if there's something you should know, I'll tell you."

Pierce shook his head. "That would be even worse, somehow. Like letting someone else do my dirty work for me so I can pretend I wasn't involved." He got up and pulled his chair over next to hers. "We'll read them together."

She waited until he'd poured himself another cup of coffee, flipping through the reports to find the one that would cause him the least distress. Prying into a person's private life was easier if you didn't know the person personally.

"Here. This one's on the pool maintenance people," she said, placing it on top of the stack. "M&E Pool Maintenance is owned and operated by two brothers, Miguel and Esteban Alvarez," she read, paraphrasing as she went. "They've been in business for over ten years and employ mostly college students in teams of two to do the actual work. There are two different teams that work on your pool on a fairly regular basis. One team is made up of two guys. The other team is a guy and a girl. One of Bill's operatives checked her out and-"

"Wait a minute. Checked her out? What exactly does that mean?"

"It means that someone called M&E Pool Maintenance and talked to—" she glanced down at the report "—Esteban Alvarez about her. They also interviewed a few of her neighbors. She's recently engaged and planning to get married this summer, plus she and her fiance were out with his parents the night of the fire, so I think it's safe to cross her off our list of possible suspects."

"You mean that girl's—" he gestured at the report "—boss and neighbors talked to complete strangers about her? Just told them anything they wanted to know?"

"Yes, basically, that's exactly what they did. It's not as coldhearted as it sounds," Nikki added, half amused and half amazed that Pierce seemed to be so outraged by it all. Surely the life of a movie star wasn't that sheltered? "I don't know exactly what approach the interviewers used. It isn't noted in the report. But the people being interviewed probably thought they were talking to an insurance adjuster or a loan officer or... I don't know... maybe the interviewer came right out and admitted to doing a background check. A good interviewer tends to go with whatever he or she thinks will work."