Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04] Page 3

  Especially not lately. The past few days she’d been experiencing an extreme and almost paranoid feeling that she was being watched.

  But she didn’t need a bodyguard. She’d told Max as much that hot Miami night. “If you need help with the business, then hire someone on that end.”

  Max had shaken his head, looked sad. “I need help on this end, sweetie. Someone we can trust. Someone who can handle your day-to-day needs.”

  That’s when the light had dawned. “You’re talking more security.”

  Looking guilty, he’d nodded. “Yeah. I’m talking more security.”

  “Not the old twenty-four-seven-bodyguard discussion,” she’d said with a groan.

  “Yep. That old discussion.”

  Janey had sagged back against the seat. “Just up the number of rent-a-thugs so you don’t have to run all the interference yourself.”

  Then as now, she couldn’t wait to take a shower. Her own sweat plus cigarette smoke from the after-concert party clung to her clothes and hair, making her half-sick.

  “We can do that, yeah, but it still won’t be enough. I want around-the-clock protection for you—and I don’t want to see a new face in every city and have to wonder if I can count on the guy.

  “Now wait before you shoot me down,” Max had interjected when she’d geared up to protest in earnest. “I know you don’t want a personal bodyguard. I know that. But what you don’t seem to realize is that you’ve run out of room. We can’t dodge this particular bullet any longer. Between the press and the crazies out there, I’m wearing out, snooks. I can’t deal with these mobs anymore. I need to turn the reins over to someone who can actually protect you if you need protecting. Someone who can oversee your security issues as well as be there for you to count on.”

  Like Max had always been there for her to count on during her six-year “overnight” rise to success. That’s what this had really come down to. If Janey caved on the bodyguard issue, she gave in to the idea that she’d lose Max. Lose that constant, steady smile, that quick wit and warm shoulder.

  She glanced at him now as the elevator hit the Breakers’ penthouse level. The strain and fatigue on his face was telling. At first glance, in his faded designer jeans and silk designer jacket, Max didn’t look a day over fifty. That was if you didn’t look at his eyes. His eyes were tired, which meant he was tired, and that gave Janey a twinge of guilt.

  It had given her more than a twinge in Miami that night. Maybe that’s why she’d known she was going to cave. Max did need to slow down, and she was being selfish hanging on to his expert hand-holding.

  And then there was the issue of the ever-present invisible monkey she felt riding her shoulder at the oddest moments lately. Like when she was alone in her hotel room and she suddenly didn’t feel alone anymore—and not in a Casper the Friendly Ghost sort of way.

  Maybe she was getting paranoid. Or could it be she’d simply grown so self-involved that she suspected she was constantly being watched?

  Turned out she’d had good reason. When Max had taken her hand in the back of the limo that night, she’d found exactly how good.

  She remembered that moment right down to the look on his face and the sweat on his palm.

  “Janey.” Max had squeezed her hand tight. “I’ve been putting off telling you this. But it’s time you knew.” He’d waited for her to look at him. “Edwin Grimm was released from prison last week.”

  As the elevator hit their floor, Janey’s heart took a deep dive—just as it had that night.

  Max had just given her the answer to why she felt she was being watched. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d been marking off the months and years on an internal calendar. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known it was time for Grimm to be released. Her subconscious had already figured out that her worst nightmare could be coming back to haunt her.

  Despite the warm Florida night, she’d shivered. Yeah. There could be a damn good reason she’d been certain someone was watching her.

  Someone was.

  “Hire the bodyguard,” she’d told Max, shocking him when he’d been about to lay out another set of arguments. “Just hire the damn bodyguard.”

  So what does he bring her? she thought with a shake of her head as the elevator door opened and said “bodyguard” stepped out of the cab, then motioned her to follow?

  A baby.

  Oh yeah. She felt damn safe now.

  2

  It’s a gene thing,” Jase explained to his new, and so far not so nice, assignment. It was one thirty in the morning. They were in the living area of a plush penthouse suite at the Breakers—him and Ms. Indignant and Max Cogan, who had suggested they take this discussion away from the party. “My dad’s fifty-something. Looks like he’s thirty.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” the hotshot rock star said. Barefoot now but still wearing that skimpy black leather bustier and almost skirt, she paced back and forth in front of the sofa where he and Max sat behind a brushed chrome coffee table holding an arrangement of brilliant exotic flowers. An almost sickeningly sweet scent filled the air. Gardenia maybe? Hell, he didn’t know a rose from a weed, but his mom liked gardenias. She had a candle or something that smelled like this.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” Janey continued, casting an impatient glance his way. “It’s just . . . I’m used to Max is all. I rely on his . . .”

  “Suave sophistication?” Max suggested with a broad grin.

  That finally got a smile out of her. It was gone all too fast.

  “His maturity,” she clarified with a pointed look.

  “I served three tours in the Middle East, ma’am,” Jase said simply. “Afghanistan and Iraq. You tend to grow up in a hurry over there.”

  He would not get fired. Not before he even got started. Not without a fight. He couldn’t let No down.

  His client—and that appeared to be dangerously up in the flower-scented air at the moment—narrowed her eyes, considered him carefully. “How old are you?”

  He gave her his best badass look. “Old enough.”

  And then he took a chance. “Pardon me for being blunt, ma’am, but if I were to judge you by the package you’re wrapped in, I’d figure you were a spoiled, high-maintenance diva who makes decisions based on some crackpot psychic’s advice or . . . or on a mood ring or something. Or that you let your minions do your real thinking for you.

  “But I don’t take things at face value,” he continued when she stopped her pacing and locked those dark brown eyes on him.

  “See, I figure that someone who’s built a career as successful as yours,” he added, now that he had her undivided attention, “well . . . I figure there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. And I figure I’d be a fool to think otherwise. Ma’am,” he added when it looked like she might be trying to decide if she’d just been insulted or manipulated.

  In any event, some of the wind let down out of Miss High-and-Mighty’s sails—Thank you, Jesus.

  Beside him, he could see Max Cogan fighting to cover a grin.

  No such luck with his rocker. She was still scowling. But she had stopped pacing long enough to walk to the bar and open another bottle of water. Jase took the opportunity to dig a deeper toehold.

  “You tell me what you need from me, Miss Perkins, and I’ll deliver,” he assured her. “And my looks? People tend to underestimate me. You’d be surprised how many times that actually works to my advantage.” Although this, obviously, wasn’t one of those times.

  It was up to her now. He’d done his worst. She could take him at his word or screw it. He didn’t want to let E.D.E.N. down, but he’d be damned if he’d beg for the job.

  “Okay, fine,” she said after a long, grudging silence. “Just . . . fine,” she repeated on a weary sigh, and headed for one of the three bedrooms in the suite. “We’ll give it a try. I’m going to bed.”

  The door swung shut behind her with a bang.

  And Jase breathed his first breath of relief
since she’d dragged him across the room by the hand like a naughty little kid. He felt like he’d just dodged an RPG.

  “Well played,” Max said, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She’s a little tense. A lot tired. The tour’s been a pisser. We’ve been on the road for three months straight. And she has to deal with the Grimm creep being on the loose again. Give her some time. She’ll be fine with this.

  “In the meantime, looks like you’re in for now,” Max said, and stood. He handed Jase a folder. “If you want to stay in, you’d best memorize her schedule. Besides arranging security for all appearances and events and providing personal protection, it’s up to you to keep her on task. And to keep her happy and free of additional stress. Any schedule changes, you’ll hear them directly from me. Until then . . . consider this timetable,” he jabbed his finger on the schedule stapled to the top of the folder, “carved in stone.”

  Max walked to the door of a second bedroom, then paused with his hand on the door handle. “I’d trust Wes Garrett with my life. Because of that I trust his kids. If they say you’re up to the job, then I’m counting on that to be true.”

  “I’m up to it, sir.”

  “She means the world to me,” Cogan added after a long look. “Grimm . . . he almost killed her once. Don’t let him get anywhere near her again.”

  And that left Jase flipping through the contents of the folder—and wondering what the hell he’d gotten into. According to his list of duties, he wasn’t only a bodyguard. He was a fucking butler.

  Janey lay back on the hotel bed, clutched the phone in her hand, and stared at the ceiling. She’d already dialed the number once—then hung up before it ever rang.

  Juvenile. Childish. But then that was how she always felt when she thought about her mother.

  Her mother. Janey ran her nails absently across the receiver. She hadn’t seen her mother in nearly two years. Hadn’t talked to her for over a year. And Janey honestly didn’t know why she felt the need to talk to her tonight. It was late. Close to 2:00 a.m.

  And yet . . . she drew a deep breath, hit redial, put the phone to her ear, and waited. And waited while it rang and rang. She almost hung up again . . . then she heard the sound of a connection and a gravelly mumbled, “Who the hell is calling at this hour?”

  Her heart stumbled. Her throat closed up. Her fingers clutched tighter around the receiver.

  “Who’s there?” Alice Perkins growled in an angry, gritty slur.

  “Mom? Hi. It’s . . . me. Janey.”

  Silence, then, “Janey? God, girl, you got no sense of time? I was asleep.”

  Janey’s heart sank.

  What? You expected that after a year you might get something like, “Hi, sweetie. Oh, it’s so good to hear from you”?

  No. She hadn’t expected that. At least the adult in her who knew the score hadn’t—the child, however, well, the child was still waiting for some sign that her mother loved her.

  “Sorry, Mom.” This was a mistake. She wished she’d never given in to the impulse to make the call. “I was just . . . just wondering how you are, was all.”

  “Tired. That’s how I am,” Alice grumbled.

  Janey closed her eyes as silence settled, then jumped with surprise when her mother spoke again.

  “So . . . where are you?”

  “Florida. West Palm Beach, to be exact. I had a concert here tonight. Two more before we leave on Friday.”

  More silence.

  “Um . . . other than tired, how are you, Mom?” Janey prompted. “You’ve been getting the money I send, right?”

  “Every month.” Somehow Alice made it sound like a complaint. “I’ve told you before. You don’t need to do that.”

  “I want to, Mom.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need it. I’m getting by.”

  For as long as Janey could remember, her mother had never worked. There weren’t too many job opportunities for a woman who looked at life through the bottom of a bottle of Jim Beam. Janey doubted very much that without the cash she sent her mother would get by at all.

  “See you in the papers now and then.”

  “Yeah,” Janey said, feeling a little too much pride, a little too much warmth, knowing that her mother might actually follow her career. “I get my share of press these days.”

  “Embarrassing, is what it is,” Alice groused. “You look like a slut with all that makeup, wearing them short skirts that barely cover your ass.”

  Janey closed her eyes, deflated.

  “So what else did you want?” her mother asked after a protracted drought of words.

  What did she want? Good question. Something. Some little something to tell her that her mother was happy to hear from her. That she missed her.

  “Nothing,” Janey said, grounding herself back in reality. She’d never gotten much from her mother other than the back of her hand. There was no reason to think time and distance would change that. “Look. I’m sorry I bothered you. Go on back to bed. Good-bye, Mom.”

  “Yeah. Good . . . good-bye.”

  The line went dead.

  It was a long time before Janey set the receiver on the cradle and went to sleep.

  Alice Perkins, on the other hand, was dead to the world half an hour later.

  But first, she stared at the phone. Then she stared across the bedroom to the picture she’d cut out of the paper last week of Janey singing her heart out on a big concert stage.

  The girl had become something. In spite of her drunk of a mother, she’d made something of herself. When the first wave of guilt and regret rolled over her, Alice headed for her kitchen and the bottle of Beam.

  Her hands were shaking as she poured the first shot. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she whispered, begging the whiskey to dull the pain of her failures that latched on with a brutal fist and twisted.

  She was a joke as a human being. A horror of a mother. She didn’t deserve Janey. Never had. And so she pushed her away.

  Alice’s reflection stared back at her from the window over the sink. Stringy brown hair. Sallow complexion. Old, faded eyes. She’d been pretty once. Not pretty like Janey, but pretty enough.

  Now look at her. She was used up and worn-out. A drunk. How had this happened to her? She’d had such big plans. She was going to be something . . . someone important. She hadn’t meant to be an unwed mother with a baby to feed and bills to pay. She hadn’t intended to become a drunk.

  And she hadn’t intended to survive by the knife of deceit, trickery, and threats.

  God, what a mess she’d made. Of everything.

  “I’m sorry, Janey,” she mumbled. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Then as she had almost every night of her adult life, she passed out. This time, instead of at a seedy bar or under a sweaty body that reeked of booze and bad decisions, it was with her head on the kitchen table, her hair wet from the pool of tears she hadn’t wanted to shed and that the Beam hadn’t been able to stop.

  The next night, Monday, July 10th, 2:00 a.m., Blue Heron Boulevard, West Palm Beach

  Edwin Grimm lay on his back on a queen-sized bed in an upscale hotel that cost him three hundred plus a night. Compared to his six-by-six cell and his lumpy cot at the correctional facility in San Luis Obispo, California, it was a bed fit for a king.

  Freedom was not free. Neither was the skill of the high-priced hooker he’d sent packing after he’d gotten his rocks off a few minutes ago. She’d been blond like Janey. Petite. Pretty. The similarities ended there.

  But he’d needed some relief, so he’d made do. And he’d already repented for giving in to the demon lust. He’d found Jesus in prison and Jesus forgave. Now he could just lie here and relive seeing Janey again.

  His ears were still ringing. The concert tonight had been one loud, wild blast of a ride—just like the night before. God, he’d missed it. These past three years, he’d missed the rush of rocking to Janey’s beat. Groovin’ on that smoky, sultry voice.

  Watching her incredible body.

/>   She’d learned some new moves while he’d been in stir. He stared at the program he’d sprung for to the tune of twelve bucks. Pocket change now that he had access to his bank accounts again. There was a great head shot on the cover. She looked so fine. Back in the joint, he’d liked to lie at night, quiet like this, and look at her pictures. He’d found them in magazines in the prison library, ripped them out, and taped them with care onto the scarred metal bed frame above him. Some were old and dog-eared at the corners. Some were ripped and taped together. Bastard guards. Couldn’t leave a man’s private possessions alone.

  Private possessions. Like he’d really had any in that hellhole. Just those pictures of Sweet Baby Jane. And his memories of how she had smelled, how huge her deep brown eyes had gotten when he’d paid his little visit to her house three years ago. If only he’d had time to touch her. It would have all been worth it.

  He worked his hand down inside his briefs and thumbed his cock. Despite the hooker’s expert manipulations, thinking about Janey got him rock hard again.

  It had been a damn long time since that night. Damn long years of his life wasted. Just because he’d wanted to see her. Smell her. Touch her. She hadn’t understood.

  She would soon. This time, he’d make her understand. He just had to deal with some bothersome obstacles first.

  He rolled to his side, laid the program with a full-length centerfold photo of his Janey on the pillow beside him. Touched a blunt index finger to her face, eased it along the curve of her breast. He could still hear her sing. Could almost smell her now. Could come just staring at those ripe, vixen lips.

  Vixen. He liked that word, he thought, slowly working his dick. Female fox. That’s what it meant. He’d looked it up in the prison library after some slick Nancy-boy reporter had called Janey that. A vixen.

  That dumb-fuck reporter had been right about that one thing, but he didn’t know anything else about Janey. Edwin knew. He knew everything. He wished someone would have asked him tonight at the concert. Hey, Edwin, he wished they’d say, what do you know about Sweet Baby Jane?