Her father moved to her bedside, his eyes softening the minute he looked down at her. “Hey, muffin. How are you feeling?”
“A little embarrassed that you called me muffin.” She licked at her ridiculously dry lips. “Connor protected me. He got me out of the way of that bullet and took the brunt of the crowd as they ran away. Am I in the emergency room?”
“Yes.” Her father took her hand. “Your mother is going to cut her trip to San Francisco short.”
Her mom was visiting friends. They were supposed to go on a tour of wine country. She never got to do anything for herself. “No. I’m fine. I’m sure it’s just a bump.”
“You have a knot on your head and the doctor says I’m supposed to watch you overnight, but other than that they’re releasing you as soon as you’re awake and feel strong enough to walk,” Connor explained.
“You’ll come back home, and I’ll have a security detail for you in a few hours.” Her father pulled out his phone.
If she let him dial those numbers, any freedom she had would be chucked right out the window. “Dad, no. I’m not going to Arlington. I’m going to my place and it’s all right because I already hired a bodyguard.”
Connor’s eyebrow lifted in a quizzical stare. She shrugged because there was no way she wasn’t going to hire him now.
Her father shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I don’t know who this man is and I don’t trust him. For all I know, you hired him off Craigslist and he’s a serial killer. Maybe he set up the whole scenario to con a job out of you. Have you thought of that?”
She came by her conspiracy-theory tendencies honestly. Her dad could come up with some whoppers. “Dad, he didn’t set anything up. I wouldn’t hire someone off the Internet.”
Connor cleared his throat. “Really?”
He had a way of making her feel dumb. “It’s not the same. You came with a reference.”
“From a man you met on the Internet,” Connor replied in that annoyingly hot, arrogant way of his.
“Are you kidding me?” Her father was suddenly standing next to Connor, and she had the distinct sense that she was being ganged up on.
“Niall is a friend. He’s an activist in California and I’ve been speaking to him for weeks. He’s a good guy.”
Connor shook his head at her dad. “He actually is a decent guy, but there’s no way for her to know it. She’s never talked to him in person.”
“We Skype almost every day.”
“Every day for a couple of weeks but you’re only messaging. For all you know he’s some creepy old dude looking to add to his harem of stolen brides.”
Her dad turned, fully engaging Connor. “She always does this. She’s far too trusting and I swear it’s going to get her killed one day. When she turned eighteen, do you know what she did? She hopped a bus to Guatemala with a bunch of hippies to pray to some hippie deity and smoke god only knows what in the middle of the rain forest.”
“We were building sanitation systems for poor villages.” She sighed and kind of wished her concussion had been worse so she didn’t have to sit through a recitation of her sins.
Her father gritted his teeth. “She left a note.”
“Because there was no way you would have let me go,” she pointed out.
Connor stared down at her. “Of course he wouldn’t have let you go. You’re the daughter of a senator of the United States of America. You’re a high-value target to many South American groups.”
Her father nodded. “That’s what I explained to her. Kidnapping important people is big business in that part of the world, but did she listen?”
“I also didn’t get kidnapped because I didn’t run around with a sign that said, ‘Hey, Daddy’s got cash. Please kidnap me.’ I’m not an idiot. I know how to blend in.”
“You couldn’t blend in if you tried.” Connor’s deep rumble made her wonder exactly what he meant by that.
She sat up and found her head surprisingly clear. “It doesn’t matter what either one of you thinks. I’m going home. I have work to do.”
Natalia Kuilikov was going to be a big story—if she could find out what had happened to the woman. Lara had come across a lead but she hadn’t been able to act on it for a few days. She definitely didn’t intend to be locked in her father’s Arlington mansion with a bunch of Secret Service wannabes on her twenty-four seven.
“You’re supposed to rest. And if you don’t think I can force you to come home with me, you’re wrong.” Her dad’s cell phone was right back in his hand, almost a bigger threat than that gun had been.
“Sir, if you force her to go with you, I think she’ll run at the first opportunity. If you want to ruin what seems to be a perfectly fine relationship with your daughter, this is the way to do it,” Connor pointed out.
There was the voice of reason. “Yeah, what he said.”
Her father flushed, his cheeks going red. It was what he did when anyone backed him into a corner. “What the hell am I supposed to do? Someone took a shot at her. I can’t let that go.”
“I’m going to look into it. The cops are already checking all the cameras in a three-block radius. We’ll figure out where he came from and where he’s going. If we can get a plate number, we’ll find this guy. But I think it’s for the best that we keep the incident out of the papers. The last thing Lara needs is a bunch of media attention,” Connor explained.
Her father huffed as though he hadn’t even thought about it. He turned to her. “If they start checking into your background . . .”
Connor finished for him. “They’ll very likely put together enough to out her as an infamous blogger.”
Her father’s jaw dropped. “He knows?”
“Of course I know,” Connor replied simply. “I told you. I’m her security. I need to know everything. And in this case, one bodyguard is likely better than a whole team. No one will question what I’m doing with her. We’ll say I’m her new boyfriend. She can’t hide behind that if she’s got three dudes in suits with communication devices in their ears. I’m easy to explain away, and I have the flexibility to protect her and work with the police to figure out who tried to kill her.”
“Boyfriend?” It made her a little antsy. “Couldn’t we say you’re my cousin or something?”
“No.” No explanation. Just no.
“Or you could be my life coach.”
“No.”
Fine. He didn’t really look like a life coach. Maybe a personal trainer. She started to give him that option.
He simply looked down. “Whatever you’re going to say, the answer is no. Now, if you’re feeling up to it, go and get dressed. I want us gone before the press figures out where we are.”
“I wondered why you took her to this place.” Her father was looking at Connor with something like respect in his eyes. “There were closer hospitals.”
“I think if your office releases a statement that you’re so happy your daughter is safe after today’s seemingly random act of violence, the press will back off. If they scent the truth, they’ll be all over her and it won’t take long for one of them to put the puzzle pieces together. It could certainly open her up to numerous lawsuits, and it could truly harm you politically.”
Her stomach clenched at the thought of hurting her dad. It wasn’t fair that her actions could blow back on him, but at least Connor had given them a viable alternative. “I’ll say nothing beyond how scared I was.” Although it would give her a good platform. “Then I can use it as a call to further protect citizens from guns.”
Connor and her dad both groaned. Almost identically.
Connor ignored her very practical option, preferring to continue talking to her dad. “Have your staff draw up a statement for her, too. We’ll nip this in the bud while I start trying to figure out what’s happening.”
Her father turned to Connor. “Look, I thank you for protecting my daughter and you seem like a guy with a good head on his shoulders, but I don’t know you
. I don’t know a thing about you. I can’t trust my daughter’s life in the hands of a man I don’t know anything about.”
Connor withdrew a letter on very official crisp linen stationary. “This is a letter of recommendation.”
The senator barely glanced at it. “It will take too much time to verify this is actually from Captain Spencer, whom I’ve also never met. Besides, I’m not much of a Navy man. My family’s roots are Army.”
Connor reached into his pocket. “I understand. I don’t like to use this reference very often, sir, but I think if you call this number, you’ll feel better about your daughter employing me.”
Her father took the card, looked at it for a moment, and then stared back up at Connor. “Is this what I think it is?”
“I did some work for him back in the day. Please feel free to ask him anything you like about me.”
Her dad held the card up. “Don’t think I won’t know if this is a fake. I’ll be back.”
He stepped out.
“Who’s your reference?” Whoever it was had her father jumping to attention. Very few people could do that.
Connor shrugged. “An old acquaintance.” His eyes hardened, his whole body losing that calm presence he’d had with her father and becoming predatory. “Now, we’re going to talk about how this will work because I will no longer buy your bullshit that you don’t need a bodyguard. In fact, I’m fairly certain you need a keeper.”
“A keeper?”
He leaned in, nearly pinning her to the bed. “Yes. You need someone to make sure you don’t get yourself killed. The good news is I no longer have to hold back and hope you’ll let me do my job. In about three minutes your father will walk back in here and he’ll be completely on my side. There’s nowhere left to run, little girl. From here on out, it’s going to be my way all the way, and the first rule of this partnership is that I’m in charge.”
“That’s rude and I don’t have to put up with it.” She was deeply grateful for the blanket between them because her nipples were acting up again. “I’m your employer.”
There was that sexy caveman smirk again. “No, you’re not. As far as anyone knows, I’m your boyfriend and we’ll have to keep up that pretense in public. I’ve found whenever I’m going undercover it’s best to keep up the pretense in private, too. You’re less likely to slip up that way. Now that I think about it, I should really thank that fucker on the bike since I hated the thought of sleeping on your couch.”
His mouth hovered above hers, and suddenly her lungs didn’t seem to function. He was close, heat radiating off his body in waves. All she had to do was lean forward a little before her lips would touch his and she would know what it meant to kiss him. “There’s nowhere else to sleep at my place.”
“Sure there is. Do you like the right or the left side of the bed, sweetheart? Actually it doesn’t matter. I’ll take the side closest to the door.”
The thought of sleeping next to him was a little too tantalizing. It had been forever since she’d slept next to a man, and even then he’d been more of an overgrown boy who stole the covers and claimed he couldn’t sleep if she was too close to him. Tom hadn’t been a cuddler. Not that Connor would be. Somehow she couldn’t see him wrapping that lean body around a female to sleep. What would it be like to turn over in the early-morning light and have him resting between her and whatever might come through her door? She would feel so safe. But she couldn’t give in because she wasn’t about to let him think she was some doormat. “Or I can fire you. Then I wouldn’t have to pretend anything at all. I don’t like your attitude.”
“Oh, you might not like what I’m saying to you because you’re not used to having to play by anyone else’s rules, but I think you like me. I think you like me just fine.”
She managed to shake her head.
With a little twist of his hand, he pulled the blanket from her, unveiling her rigid nipples against the superthin material of the hospital gown. He looked down. “Cold, sweetheart?”
She pushed against his chest. “Asshole.”
He stepped back but didn’t go far. He sat on the edge of her bed with a little sigh, as though he was sad their play was over. “I’ll take care of you, Lara. I won’t let anyone hurt you, but you might not always like how I do it.”
She was feeling stubborn. Stupid, actually, because she was still thinking about kissing him. This was dangerous. She wasn’t about to get involved with a meathead who thought he could be all nice and polite one moment then take-charge, protect-the-little-woman the next. Nope. She didn’t care that her nipples liked him just fine. She was more than the sum total of her girl parts. Her biggest girl part was her brain, and her brain didn’t like him. Mostly. “Or we could just call it quits here.”
“Oh, we’re past that choice. Unless you want your father to take over. I think you’ll find he’s very comfortable with handing you over to me now. And I’ll allow you to work. Hell, I’ll help you. If you go with your father, you can’t work out of his place and you can’t ever let the guards he hires know what it is you do for a living.”
Damn it. Connor was right.
“I still think you should sleep on the couch.”
When he really smiled, fine lines crinkled slightly around his eyes. She was already beginning to differentiate his smiles. There was the arrogant smirk that seemed to be the most common in his repertoire. There was a little half smile that seemed to come when she said something he thought was stupid. Yeah, she could read that on his face. And then there was the smile that kind of lit up the room.
“How about I promise not to make love to you until you beg me? Would that make you feel safer?”
She blushed and wished he wasn’t sitting so close. “That’s not ever going to happen.”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about, sweetheart.” He raised his hand and brushed his index finger against her nose, a sweetly affectionate gesture. “Who knows you were hiring a bodyguard?”
“Kiki.”
“The girl from the coffeehouse?”
She nodded. “Oh, and Tom.”
A single brow arched over his eyes. “Who is Tom?”
“He’s a friend. He’s cool. He clerks for a judge. Our fathers have been friends for years.” For some reason, she didn’t want to tell him that Tom had almost been her husband. She deserved to keep a few secrets.
“Tonight you’re going to call them and explain our situation. If anyone asks, they need to say we met through mutual friends at a party and we’ve been talking online for a couple of months. We decided it was time to move this relationship to the next level.”
“See, to me the next logical level would be on my couch. And there’s no way they buy any of that story. We’re really close.”
The door opened and her father walked in, looking a little pale. He slid his cell phone into his pocket. “Lara, you do whatever this man tells you.”
“He just said he intended to sleep with me. Should I do that?”
Connor rolled his dark eyes. “I believe I told her I wouldn’t touch her in any physical way unless she begged me. Your daughter is apparently afraid that if I stay in her apartment, she’ll be overcome with lust. I’m a little worried about it, too, but I think I can handle her.”
“Connor.” She hit him with her pillow.
“Senator Armstrong, I’m sorry. Your daughter brings out the sarcastic jerk in me. I’ll keep it reined in. I’ll step out and give you two a moment. Lara, we need to get moving if we’re going to avoid those reporters.” He left the room, not quite shutting the door behind him.
“Dad, who was his reference?”
“The president.”
“Of the United States? POTUS? POTUS was his freaking reference?” Who the hell was this man?
Her father nodded. “I just had a nice chat with Zack Hayes. He claims Connor is one of the most honorable men he’s ever met and that I couldn’t be putting my daughter in better hands. He also invited your mother and me to a private d
inner.”
“But he usually ignores you.”
“I don’t know that I would use the word ignore. We’ve met on several occasions, but he’s never met with me privately. Apparently your bodyguard is also a POTUS whisperer. Lara, do you understand what it would mean to become friendly with Hayes?”
It would mean backing from a popular president. It would mean taking a bigger position within the party. It would mean her father could get his agenda pushed through. Still, Lara didn’t entirely trust Zack Hayes. She would likely never trust anyone who had reached such a pinnacle in politics, but there was something going on with this president. Her confidential informant had hinted that the leader of the free world was tied to some unsavory