Protecting Plain Jane (10 page)

“I couldn’t stay out there any longer. I had to get inside.”

“I had to let that shooter go so I could run after you. You want me to cite you for driving without a license, inflicting property damage or scaring the crap out of me?”

He
was scared? Huh? Her fingers drifted beneath the hard edges of his vest, needing something to hold on to to stop their trembling. She felt the abundant warmth and rapid beat of his heart beneath her fingertips and realized she wasn’t the only one shaking here. “I’ll pay for any damages. I’ll buy you a whole new truck. Where’s my backpack? I can write you a check from my trust fund right now.”

“Missing the point.” With cooler air rushing in between them, he turned away, raking his fingers through his short hair, leaving a mess of shiny wet spikes in their wake. When he faced her again, he propped his hands on his hips, assuming a posture that she guessed was supposed to make him look less threatening. He failed. “Normally I’m an easygoing man. But you are pushing my buttons right and left, lady. How was I supposed to know whether you’d been hit or not?”

With Trip standing between her and her bedroom door now, Charlotte had nowhere to go unless she made a mad dash to the bathroom. He deserved better than another door slamming in his face. Besides, after sharing that much forced contact with his thickly muscled body, she wasn’t sure her legs would carry her that far.

She hugged her arms around her middle, mentally trying to hold her ground. “I couldn’t think. I saw the man in the woods with the gun. I mean, I didn’t see his face, but I saw the flash and then the window shattered. I had to do something.”

She held her breath as he closed the distance between them again, then released it on a shaky sigh when he reached out with a single finger to unwind a lock of hair that had twirled around the temple of her glasses. The gentleness of the gesture, the husky softness of his tone, were completely at odds with the drenched warrior who’d been pushing
her
buttons a moment earlier. “
Are
you hurt?” He reached into his pocket and held up a tiny metal ball in his palm. “Thank God he was just shooting BBs.”

“BBs?”

“I picked this one up off the street. I’ll call in my team to sweep the area as soon as they’re done at Mt. Washington—see if we can find any trace of the shooter.” He looped the curl around his finger and rubbed it with his thumb. “He didn’t get to you, did he? No cuts or bruises?”

Charlotte slowly shook her head, savoring his touch on her hair almost as if it was a caress against her skin. “If he wanted to kill me, why not use real bullets?”

“You tell me.”

Her voice hushed to match his. “Someone wanted my attention.”

“Someone wanted to scare you.”

“He succeeded.” But neither of them laughed at the joke. Instead, she leaned toward the warmth of his hand near her temple. But when his fingers tunneled a little deeper and brushed against her damaged earlobe, she jerked away. “Please don’t.”

“Sorry, I thought I was reading the okay signal.”

“You were. I mean, what does that mean?”

His eyes narrowed a moment in confusion, but then he reached for that single tendril of hair again. “It means you’re interested in seeing what up close and personal is like between us. But not too close.”

She nodded. “Just don’t touch my ear.”

“Sensitive, hmm?”

More than he knew.

“Your hair’s wild.”

“It’s out of control.”

“It’s so soft.” He was inspecting the curl with an almost scientific fascination. “Yet it’s strong enough to hold on to me.”

Was this…banter? Why wasn’t he moving away? Why wasn’t she pushing him away? She thought all the rain would leave her chilled, but with him so close, she felt…feverish.

“I really am sorry about the truck. And your hat. And the stitches in your arm.” Wow. She was a freak. But he still had her hair curled around his finger, stroking it. It was a sensual, soothing gesture, an intimate one between a man and a woman. They’d argued and now they were making up. It felt so…

Normal.

Her whole body began to shake now. She so couldn’t do this.

“Trip,” she wanted to confess, “I’m not like any other woman you’re likely to meet.”

“I noticed.” His hard face turned boyish with a sly half grin. “You sure know how to keep a man on his toes.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” She reached up to straighten her glasses and to tuck the curl, still warm from his touch, behind her ear and beyond his reach. “I wasn’t always this way—with the phobias and panic attacks. But I guess it’s who I am now. I appreciate you doing the favor for Audrey and Alex, and checking in on me. But we have security here. It’s probably better if you go now, before I find some other way to ruin your—”

“Miss Mayweather?”

Charlotte clenched her toes into the carpet at the sharp rap at the open door behind Trip. She hadn’t locked up. She hadn’t barricaded herself in the way she needed to. And now she had a man in her room. Two men.

“Ma’am. Just wanted to return this.”

Bud held his cap in one hand as he rolled a toothpick with his tongue from one side of his mouth to the other and held out a cell phone. Her new cell phone. How had she forgotten, for even one moment, that the outside world wanted to hurt her?
“Did you get my message?”
A strange man’s laughter echoed in her memory and chilled her to the bone.

“That’s not my phone,” she lied.

“I found it in the back of the limo. Who else’s would it be?”

“I don’t want it. These are my private quarters. Please leave.”

“You need to step back into the hall, my friend.” Trip swept past her—in one stride, two.

Charlotte reached for his hand. He stopped.

She’d just dismissed him, just denied wanting to feel anything like a normal man-woman relationship with him. And now she was clinging to his hand.

For a split second, he seemed just as stunned by the impulsive contact as she was. But then, before she could tell herself to let go, he folded his strong fingers around hers and pulled her close behind him, shielding her from an unwanted visitor more effectively than the carved Etruscan bronze had.

Trip’s deep voice took command of the room. “You’ve been dismissed,” he paused to read the name on the gray uniform, “Bud.”

“I’m just trying to do a nice thing here.”

She buried her face between Trip’s shoulder blades, clutching both hands around his. “He called me on that phone.”

“Whoa, I didn’t call anybody. I didn’t use any of your minutes.” Trip was pushing Bud out the door. “I’m just returning what I found.”

“I don’t want it. Take it away.”

“You heard the lady. Wait.” Trip pulled one of the black gloves off his belt. He understood the
he
Charlotte was talking about. “I’ll take the phone. Now go.”

As Trip wrapped up the cell and closed the door, she could hear Bud whining all the way down the hall. “Thanks for going out of your way, Bud. Just trying to do my job, ma’am. Lousy thanks.”

Trip turned before the voice faded. “When did you get another call from the killer?”

“How did he get that number? It was a brand-new phone.”

He squeezed her fingers. “Charlotte, when?”

“At the cemetery. Just after I got that note. He was laughing at me, at…rattling me. That’s why I panicked.”

Trip swore. “That means he was close enough to watch you. He’s getting off on your distress. Who has that kind of access to you?”

“No one does.” With a jerky shrug, Charlotte pulled her fingers away from the warmth and strength of Trip’s hand. Trying to hug away the chill that shook her from inside and out, she stepped around him and turned the doorknob. “At least, no one does when I’m locked in here. You’d better go, too.”

Every muscle inside Charlotte reached out to the comforting, abundant heat of Trip’s body when he walked up behind her. But her mind wouldn’t give in and move the way her body wanted her to.

“There’s safety in numbers, Charlotte—not isolation. Whatever’s happening isn’t going to stop just because you lock that door.”

“What’s happening is that someone’s trying to drive me crazy. The phone calls, the notes, the loud noises—they’re all things that happened to me when I was kidnapped. I know what they all mean now—the taunting and the terror. If this guy knows everything that happened—if that’s what is waiting for me…”

“Why would someone want to do that to you?”

“I don’t know.” Her shoulders sagged. “But I can’t go through that again. I’m not strong like I used to be. I just can’t do it. Security and predictability in my routine mean everything to me now. Trip?”

Damn, couldn’t the man take a hint? Now he was wandering through her sitting room, peeking into her bedroom and bath. He looked at the artifacts set on nearly every table and desk, checked the books on her floor-to-ceiling shelves, studied pictures on the walls. Charlotte huddled at the door and watched him circle.

“You know, when I was growing up, a lot of people misjudged me because I was already about this big when I started high school. Plus, I wasn’t…the best student on the planet. I didn’t like it when people pointed it out to me.” He stopped in front of her wall of books, stroking the spine of one leather volume and then pointing to one of her degrees she had hanging on the wall. “You must be pretty smart.”

“You’re not a stupid bully, Trip.”

“I said that out loud, huh?” His self-deprecating smile tickled something deep inside her, waking a compassion she wouldn’t have thought a man of Trip’s skills and strength would need or want. His eyes sought hers, and dared to look beneath the surface, from clear across the room. “My point is, people can change. If we’re not who we want to be, we have the power to do something about it. I have dyslexia. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve outgrown some of it as I’ve matured, and retrained my brain on how to read things. But it takes me time, you know, to read books and take tests and fill out forms. I’ve got so much to catch up on that I’m never gonna know everything I want to.”

Charlotte took a step into the room. “How is that like surviving a kidnapping and having every decision you make, every person you meet, colored by that nightmare?”

“I’m guessing you’ve never been called stupid.”

Her heart ached for the young man he’d once been. She couldn’t imagine absorbing such an insult, especially as an adolescent. But surely that was all behind him. He was a grown man now, exuding enough confidence to fill the room. “I imagine it’s a struggle—something you should take pride in for overcoming. Clearly, you’re an intelligent man or you wouldn’t have the job you do. You wouldn’t be able to break down doors with tables or rig up leashes from handcuffs.”

“Thanks. But I didn’t always see myself that way.” Trip strolled back toward the door. “You want to change. You cared about your friend who died and wanted to be there to honor him. You love that mutt of yours to pieces. Your eyes—” he shook his head, as if in wonder “—say everything you think and feel.” He waved his fingers in front of her face. “You’re the one who took
my
hand.”

He was standing right in front of her now. She answered to the letters emblazoned at the middle of his chest. “I was more afraid of Bud than I was of you. It doesn’t mean I’m ready to be normal again, that I’m ready to make myself a target for some sadistic stalker who seems to know exactly what scares me the most. How am I supposed to fight when I don’t know who or why I’m fighting?”

“All I’m saying is, you can change if you want to. You can be stronger. I’ll protect you all the way until you get there if you say the word. But it won’t be easy. I discovered I didn’t have all my demons licked when I met you in that museum the other night.”

Charlotte tilted her head to find a curiously indulgent smile waiting for her. “What does that mean?”

“In some ways, every time I run into you, it’s like high school all over again. You make me feel like I have to prove something, and I haven’t had to prove anything to anyone for a long time.”

“You don’t have to prove anything.”

“Yeah, I do. You still don’t trust me.”

Well, he’d certainly kept his word about one thing. He didn’t lie. So they both had things they wanted to change.
Good luck with that.
“If we were in high school, I’d be the four-eyed brainiac in college-prep classes and you’d be the resident bad boy in shop or auto mechanics. Our paths would never cross.”

Her smile faded along with his. But then something warm and mischievous colored his eyes. Before she could speculate on the change, he slid his finger and thumb beneath her chin and tipped it up another notch. He caught her startled gasp beneath his lips and pressed his mouth against hers. The kiss was tender, warm, brief.

He paused for a moment, his breath whispering against her skin. Then he tunneled his fingers into the curls at her nape, dipped his head and kissed her again. More firmly this time—a little less gentle, a little more possessive. He caught her bottom lip between both of his and drew his tongue along the curve, triggering a moist arrow of heat that made her fingers latch on to his biceps and her insides go liquid. Her lips pouted out, chasing his, foolishly wanting more, when he pulled away. Trip grinned. “Then I’m glad we’re not in high school.”

She didn’t deserve that grin, wasn’t sure she could even remember the last time a man had kissed her—didn’t think a grown man as sexy and strong as Trip ever had. Charlotte’s brain was spinning with questions, and she felt a little too flustered to speak coherently at the moment.

Fortunately, Trip Jones had no trouble with words or kisses or flaky plain Janes with a quirk for every day of the week. He scooted her to one side and opened the door. “Lock this behind me. And remember, you haven’t seen the last of me yet. I’ve got your back.”

She pushed the door shut after he stepped into the hallway, then scrambled the code on the keypad to lock it securely. She turned and leaned back against the door, drawing in a weary, thoughtful breath. Could she really conquer her phobias the way Trip had apparently conquered his reading disorder? Could she stand up to a killer who seemed to want to literally scare her to death? Could she ever be normal enough to act on this unexpected bond she was building with Trip?