Seducing the Bodyguard (18 page)

“Hello,” she came to stand at the foot of the bed. She was beautiful, deranged, but beautiful. Her skin was a deep brown like she was from India. Her hair was smooth and silky, but cut short into one of those pixie cuts. The cut didn’t do justice to her face, to her dark eyes or her voluptuous lips, but he’d seen worse cuts on women.

“You want to untie me?”

“No,” she shook her head. “First I have to make sure you understand. Of course you must have a few people after you if you felt the need to hire a bodyguard to protect you.”

“She’s protecting me from the person who wrote those letters; you I presume.”

“She doesn’t need to protect you from me. We love each other.” She said so honestly and sincerely that he could tell she truly believed that. Would bursting her unrealistic bubble be detrimental to his life, or should he just play along until he could get untied and get the hell out of there? “Who are you?”

She smiled at him. “I’m Shaz. Well, my full name is Shazzara Rae Mitchell, but my friends just call me Shaz.”

“Shazzara,” he repeated. “Interesting name.”

“I like it when you say my full name,” she blushed. “I’m glad we love each other.” She came to the bed and sat down beside him. “I knew it the moment I saw you on television talking about your opera. The moment I saw one of the shows I knew that you had written those words for me. I knew you loved me, Harrison.”

“Lady, I don’t even know you. Those words are made up words for a fictional story. You need help—more help than I can give you.”

Her face turned from sweet honey to stone in two seconds flat. “Don’t you dare say that. Nobody says that to me. You love me.” She stood abruptly and pulled a knife from behind her back.

“I don’t know you,” he said firmly. “I’ve never even seen you before. How could I love you?”

“How can you say that? You have seen me before. I was outside of the opera house at the shows in Detroit, and the one in Orlando, and the one in Austin. How could you not remember? You looked right at me.”

He shook his head the best he could. “I never saw you.” If she had been at all those shows he hadn’t seen her.

“You looked right at me. At one of the shows back east I was in the balcony across from you and you looked over there at me!”

“Lady, in most of those theaters the balconies are so far across from each other that I don’t bother to pay attention to who is on the other side.”

“I saw you,” she hissed. “I saw you through my opera glasses. You looked over and you smiled.”

“If I smiled it wasn’t because of you,” he stated flatly. Yeah, she had the knife, but hell he wasn’t going to be a part of her delusional state. She needed to hear the truth. “I don’t love you. I don’t know you. And honestly, I don’t want to know you. You need help, lady. My suggestion would be that you get it.”

“You bastard! You’re like all the rest of them.” She paced the room. “I thought you were different. I thought you were special.” She stopped and looked at him. “No matter.” She shook her head. “I’ll just have to kill you then.” She gripped the knife and lunged forward just as the vent above her fell down; distracting her and making her turn around. Not even a second later Valencia was dropping into the room wearing stiletto boots and a black skin hugging jumper. God, if she got killed or hurt because of him he would never forgive himself.

He watched in horror as Shazzara lunged forward, wielding the knife while Valencia evaded her. Valencia didn’t have a weapon on her…no, he was sure she did somewhere. The woman didn’t go anywhere without one, but right now she was fighting with her bare hands, or more like evading a crazy knife wielding psychopath.

“It’s because of you,” Shazzara lunged forward, threatening to drive the eight inch blade into Valencia’s chest. Valencia sidestepped, turned and got the upper hand. In less than five seconds she had Shazzara disarmed, but she didn’t stop there, she didn’t just knock her out. She pulled one long blade from the casings holding her hair up and she went in for the kill. This time she wasn’t going to let him stop her. This time she wasn’t going to leave an enemy behind alive—and she didn’t.

“Are you okay?”

“Me?” He looked at her eyes wide. She had just had a battle to the death—if he could call that a battle—and she wanted to know if he was okay. “Is it that easy for you?” He shook his head and watched her as she approached the bed and sat down in front of him. She took the other blade from the casing in her hair and set herself to work cutting the ropes binding him.

“I put a tracking device in the watch there. You really don’t pay attention, Harrison. If you did you would have realized that’s not your watch.” She shook her head as she cut the last remaining rope. “The cops will be here shortly.”

“I’ll return your watch to you once we’re back at the hotel.” She stood as he sat up. “Now that this is basically over you won’t require my services any longer. I’ll be sure to refund Drake the remaining portion of his money.”

“Valencia,” he shook his head. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Don’t go, no; he couldn’t say that. They were clearly two different people, in two different worlds. He wouldn’t ask her to stay. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said instead. She had done that for him at least and he couldn’t be angry with her over that. But she had killed as easily as she breathed. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to accept that. He didn’t know if he wanted to try.

He thought it was easy for her, and in a way it was. She hadn’t had to kill anybody in a long time, but at the same time she had no problem killing to save somebody she loved. And no matter what he thought, no matter what she tried to tell herself, she did love him. She just wished he could love her too. But he couldn’t love her. She knew that the moment he said the things he had said that fateful night, and so she, despite the ache in her heart, decided to let him go. This was for the best.

She closed her end of things by giving statements to the police. They had received another letter that morning, one they had tracked back to a Lorelei Carol and right now they were trying to decipher whether Lorelei or Dianne was the culprit. Since Shaz was Lorelei’s best friend she was in the hot seat. She blamed her sister, but Dianne hadn’t taken ownership of the responsibility yet so there was no real closure on that end. But for Valencia, her job was done. The stalker was gone and there was nothing more she needed to do here. She stuck around for as long as she was needed, but the moment they released her travel restriction she packed her bags and flew back to Hawaii. She missed him before she even walked out the door, but he didn’t miss her. He didn’t come after her. He didn’t even stick around to say goodbye. He hopped on a plane back to D.C. the moment the police told him he was free to go. He was free to go a few days before she was and he didn’t waste a second of time waiting around to even see if the district attorney might decide he wanted to press charges. Sure she was doing a job and clearly she was defending herself, but at the same time the kill hadn’t been a necessity. She could have broken some limbs and immobilized her, but a split second thought told her if she let that woman live then Harrison would never be safe. He would always have to look over his shoulder. That wasn’t a life she wanted for him. So she did what she knew she had to do. She killed to keep him safe. She would do it again if she had to. He would never understand that. She couldn’t make him understand that. And that meant they would never truly be able to be together. The loss saddened her, but she had suffered loss before and she survived—she would survive this one too.

EPILOUGE

~

Nine Months Later

“So what do you want to do?” Valencia tapped the sleek silver pen on her notebook.

“I want to go after him,” Thomas said. “And I want to make him pay for what he did to those men, for the betrayal that took the lives of dedicated men. I want him to pay.”

“He will,” Valencia assured him. “I know where we start and this is closer than any of you have ever been. Get your team together, Thomas because you’re going to need backup. You can’t do this on your own.”

“You didn’t ask,” she said. “I’m offering. I’ll meet you in Boston. You just round up the warriors because we’re heading into battle.”

She hung up the phone thinking about the task ahead of all of them. Sabian had a team of skilled men ready to die for him, for the money he offered them. They weren’t just fighting one man; they were fighting a small army. They would be severely outnumbered—a place they had all been before, but the stakes were higher now. If they didn’t stop Sabian then nobody else would. If his actions went unchecked much longer the entire world would suffer. This went beyond the betrayal of one team. This was about the betrayal of the human race. She could sit back and twiddle her thumbs. Or she could get in the game and help stop this maniac. She chose to get in the game. She chose to be a warrior first, assassin second, bodyguard third. She wouldn’t let anything happen to Thomas. If that meant she went in and killed Sabian herself then she would. She wouldn’t let anything happen to Thomas—not this time.

She was deeply in thought when the knock on the door interrupted her planning. She approached with caution. She wasn’t expecting anybody. Of course her brother and mother had been coming by a lot since she returned home. They couldn’t leave her alone when they were sure she was suffering the heartache of losing Harrison. She assured them there was no heartache, even though she knew there was. She just wanted to forget the man and move on, and if they would stop coming by treating her like she had a broken heart maybe she would be able to move onward.

When she looked out the security screen she saw Harrison standing on her doorstep. Why was he here? He had let her walk away. He had said everything he needed to say. Why was he here now? She realized a closed door wasn’t going to give her answers so she opened the door. “Harrison,” she nearly whispered his name.

“I missed you,” he said without provocation. “Nine months without you has been hell. I tried to let you go. I tried to forget you. I assured everybody it was for the best. We were just too different to make it work. I thought I could walk away and never look back, but I couldn’t. I love you, Valencia. I love you and I want forever with you. I don’t care who you were, what you did or what you have to do now to save a life. I realize now that I just don’t care about any of that because I know you’re a good person. I know you’re human and you care, and you feel—you feel a lot more than you show. I love you,” he looked at her seriously pleading with her to listen to him. “I love you and I want forever with you. So unless you don’t feel the same way about me then I’m here to stay.” He pulled a ring from his shirt pocket, a beautiful diamond and emerald marquis cut engagement ring. “I want forever with you, Valencia. Will you allow me that?”

She felt her heart leap for joy. She had missed him just as much. She had immersed herself in her work, in her task of trying to help Thomas get closure so he could finally move forward with his life, in anything that kept her from thinking about Harrison Sinclair.

“Valencia?”

She smiled and reached up to place her hand on the back of his neck. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want you here. I want forever with you too, Harrison.” She leaned in for the kiss that she knew would take them from zero to one hundred in two seconds flat. For the kiss that would connect them, bring them closer and seal their fate together. And in that moment she didn’t care about her past relationship, about the pain or the fear; she cared only about this man, about the future they would have, about the love they would finally be able to share. She had some place she had to be, but when she returned from her mission she would be returning home to him, to the man she loved and would love forever.

About the Author

Capri Montgomery is the bestselling author of books including Ride A Cowboy, Across the Lake, The Thirteenth Floor, 1965, The Admiral’s Daughter, and The Geneva Project. She enjoys nature—unless the insects are biting her, traveling, old movies, art, photography and music.

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