Protect Me, Love Part 1

Protect Me, Love.

by Alice Orr.

Prologue.

Becky Lester of Denver, Colorado, woke up with Nick Avery on her mind.

For the first time in four years, she felt almost completely happy. Because of that, she didn't let herself return to consciousness fight off. She kept the feeling of Nick in her heart, as if she were still dreaming of him, the way he'd looked that day in the study of the main house of the Lester estate. She'd seen him many times before, of course, when he'd first started working as a bodyguard for her father. She simply hadn't noticed Nick as a mana"as a highly desirable mana"until that particular moment, maybe he-cause she needed to notice him, because now she needed a fantasy.

She'd been rushing past the study, late as usual to some hot evening that wouldn't turn out to be so hot after all. Nick was talking to Mortimer Lancer, the Lester family lawyer and chief trustee of the estate. Becky had pa.s.sed the open doorway before she registered what she'd seen. She backtracked then, and Nick must have heard her because he turned around. That was the moment the dream of him began. He was built exactly the way she liked a man to bea"tall and rangy with long-muscled thighs, tight in the hips, wide and hard at the shoulders. He also obviously didn't mind letting that show. Otherwise, he wouldn't have had on close-fitting jeans and a blue chambray shirt that stretched taut across his ample chest. And that was only his body. His face was just right for fantasy, tooa"dark brows over eyes arrogant enough to be a challenge; a mouth that all but said out loud, "I want to kiss you right this minute," and thick, somewhat overlong, dark haft that was meant to be tousled on a woman's pillow.

Becky took all of this in, that particular day, along with the way her knees were threatening to forget their function of holding her upright. In response she locked those knees tight. She did her best most of the time to make people think she was all fluff between the ears, but she drew the line at actually feeling that way herself. Yet, at that moment, she'd have sworn she had cotton candy for brains. All of a sudden, Nick Avery had made her feel like that, and she wasn't sure whether this was good or bad.

Meanwhile, he'd been giving her the once-over, too. She was decked out in one of her deliberately bimbo id outfitsa"too tight, too short and too black for a sensible woman to wear. He slid his gaze over her. She all but shivered, and not because she had too few clothes on in the still chilly Colorado springtime. Of course, he probably thought she was on the skinny side. Most men told her so, but she couldn't help that. It had been well over three years since she was able to get a full meal down and keep it there. She hoped Nick might think she was pretty anyway. Or, maybe it was enough for her to look at how gorgeous he was and daydream about it, obsess over it, hang on to it.

Over the several weeks since, she'd played that fantasy out like a Colorado River fishing line. It gave her something to think about besides the way, three-plus years ago, her beloved father had died, her stepmother along with him. There was n.o.body left now, except maybe Morty Lancer, the housekeeper Penelope Wren and her caretaker husband Tobias, to care whether Becky had a dream in her head or not. She had a brother, Samuel, but he was tucked away in a mental inst.i.tution. She wasn't allowed to see him much because of how upset he got when she was around, and she could barely remember the time before he was put away. He resented her so intensely that she couldn't in-elude him in the very short list of people who gave a d.a.m.n about her anyway. The last time she saw him, he'd scowled like he wanted to kill her, then chucked a vase at her head. Luckily, he'd missed, but she hadn't missed the hatred in his eyes. She'd decided right then that she didn't have a brother, not really, and she wrote him out of any corner he might have claimed in her heart.

All of which made Becky feel even more alone and ripe for an imaginary infatuation with the heartthrob bodyguard. She'd flirted with Nick in the weeks since that day in the study, but even her most vampy smiles and teasing comments got her nowhere. He was too much of a standup guy to get involved with the boss's daughter, even when the boss wasn't around any longer. Still, just thinking about him made her stretch long and lazy like a cat as she gradually awoke to another Colorado morning. She was coming out of that stretch when her arm hit something hard beneath the sheet on the other side of the bed. For a delicious instant she wondered if her fantasy had come to life and Nick was beside her. She rolled toward that impossible dream with her lips parted to receive a kiss as her eyes drifted open.

What Becky saw froze her to stone. She sat up fast, too shocked to scream. A man's arm protruded from under the sheet and dangled off the opposite side of the bed. She could tell just from looking at the angle of the arm that he was dead. She could also tell by the flabbiness of the skin that he wasn't Nick Avery. She reached over and grabbed the sheet, flipping the fabric aside to reveal what lay underneath. It was a man's body all right, and he was nude. His skin was so white it would have been pallid even while he was alive, with rolls of extra flesh under his arms and around his waist where Nick was lean and hard. This man's back was to her. Still, with the first lucid thought she was able to piece together in her paralyzed mind, she realized. that she knew him.

She would have rolled him over so she could see his face, but she couldn't stand to touch what she sensed would be a cold corpse. She could get up and walk around to his side of the bed, but she was too frightened to move that far just yet. Instead, she eased herself up onto her knees, clutching her side of the sheet to her chest, suddenly modest in the presence of this poor, lifeless man. She leaned over far enough away not to touch any part of him but sufficiently close to see his face. She clamped her hand over her mouth. The sheet slipped from her body as a m.u.f.fled scream made a strangled sound behind her fingers. As she'd thought, the dead man next to her was Morty Lancer. His eyes were open and staring at the opposite wall. His mouth was open, too, as if in surprise, and there was a b.l.o.o.d.y gash in his chest.

Becky doubled over with her head between her knees and gulped mouthfuls of air to fight the spasms in her stomach. Those spasms wrenched through her for a long, tortuous moment, until her stunned psyche began to comprehend the significance of Morty being dead and naked in her bed. Gradually, she straightened into a kneeling posture. Her hand moved from her mouth and drifted out in front of her as if on marionette strings. That was when her brain finally unscrambled what might have been the scariest message of all. Her hand and forearm were spotted with blood. She allowed herself the fleeting, desperate conclusion that she had touched the b.l.o.o.d.y body just now and that would explain the stains on herself, but of course that didn't make sense. She hadn't allowed herself to touch him.

Becky rolled slowly off her knees to a sitting position on the bed. She stared at her hand till her stomach started to retch again and she had to look away. That was when she saw the knife. It was lying on the pale peach rug at her side of the bed, the thick rug she liked so well on winter mornings when this huge stone house could be' chilly as a tomb. The pale rug fibers bore the same stains that marked her hand and arm.

Becky leaned over to see the knife more clearly. The blade was long, and the wooden handle showed a distinct palm print in crimson. She stared at that palm print for a moment, then down at her own hand while thoughts formed themselves in her head, like t.i.tles on a movie screen. The words were stark black on a white background as her mind snapped with a jarring jolt from its shocked state into sudden alertness. She realized then, with undeniable certainty, that the print on that knife was hers.

"My G.o.d," she blurted out loud. "I killed him." The sound of her voice lurched her to an even sharper level of alertness, and she knew at once that what she'd said wasn't true. She'd gone to sleep alone last night, and she hadn't awakened till a moment ago when her idyllic dream of infatuation ended and this horrible nightmare began. Her next thought was even clearer. If she hadn't killed Morty, then she was being set up to make it look as if she did. The pieces fell together into what might have been a paranoid conspiracy theory if she hadn't suddenly been so sure it was true. She'd had an argument with Morty just the other day about letting her borrow on her trust fund because she'd overspent her allowance. They'd had that same argument at least a hundred times before. This time, however, they happened to be outside the pool house with several people listening in. Becky had even said Morty made her so exasperated that sometimes she wanted to kill him. That, along with the generally reckless way she lived her life these days, added up to pegging Becky as number one suspect. She sighed what was nearly a sob and nodded her head. Somebody was setting her up, all right. She even knew what their motive would be. Her full inheritance was coming to her in a few months when she turned twenty-five. With Morty no longer around to protect her legal interests and with her out of the way in prison or on death row, a lot of people were destined to make out like bandits. Especially one person, who was crazy enough to think up a deal like this one and maybe smart enough to carry it out, too. But there was no time to think about her brother Samuel now. She had to get herself out of this mess. Becky swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood up slowly. She was dizzy, and her legs quivered under her. She was also standing very near the knife blade. She suppressed the urge to leap away in disgust. She had to steady herself all over. If she didn't think straight now, she could spend the rest of her life, he ever short a duration that might be, paying for it. S had to depend on herself now, not even her fantasy Ni could help her. He was an ex-cop, after all. He'd lo at this room and her and come to one conclusion, tl she was guilty as sin. He'd think she'd lured Merry her bed then murdered him. Becky was definitely on own with no more time for daydreams; She needed a plan, a plan for her escape. From tl morning on, Rebecca Radley Lester and the life she known would have to be history. As she walked shakily across the carpet to her bathroom to wash the blood, from her hands, Becky could already feel the emp ness of loss widening inside hera"the loss of her hen her friends, her ident.i.ty, and of Nick Avery, too.

Chapter One.

Five years later.

Delia Made Barry enjoyed Christmas in Manhattan. Everybody was always in a hurry here, but at this time of year there was a happy, expectant quality to their haste. When she let herself be swept along by the crowd on Fifth Avenue, the lightness of her feet lifted the weight from the part of her that had been heavy-hearted for the past five years. She could almost believe she was a normal person again, with a family to buy gifts for and a full life awaiting her at home. The images that haunted her dreams were replaced for the moment by the red, green, and gold of the season. She opened up her usually carefully guarded self and let in the bright storefronts and the glitter of moving display windows populated by bustling elves and sky-treading reindeer. She let herself believe she was a child again and Santa would he coming very soon. In Delia's five years as a New Yorker, she hadn't seen many white Christmases, though the cold was certainly sharp here in winter. This was one of those frigid days. She was glad she'd worn her long, heavy COat, the one that made her look like a version of King Wenceslas.

She held the hem closed to shield "her ankles against the wind, knifing down Fifth Avenue as a reminder that December was in full tilt and Christmas only days away. Still, this wasn't the winter she'd once known, roaring off the Rocky Mountains onto the Colorado plateau, burying the world in deep white as pure as the holiday promise of a new beginning each year. Delia ducked her head and told herself the sudden stinging in her eyes was from the wind. That was the trouble with the holidays. They made her remember, and memory was not her friend. She was an Easterner now, with her previous history submerged beneath an avalanche of necessity. She kept that mountain of subterfuge intact every day. Her safety, her very life, depended on maintaining her new persona. She even felt like she actually was that creation now, a native of this revved-up, fast paced, snapped-to-attention city she'd adopted as protective camouflage. Even so, something of the tourist remained beneath her carefully constructed urbanite facade, along with the yearning to be as ordinary as all of these bustling people with their over-full shopping bags and long lists of places to go and things to do. It was those not quite submerged remnants of her former serf that pushed Delia through the revolving door into Saks Fifth Avenue on the tide of the lunch hour rush. The first floor of Saks at holiday time was a sight to behold, with the most beautiful treasures of all civilizationa"silks and scents, jewels and twinkling crystal, luxuriant lotions and perfumes from Padsa"in glorious array as if he-fore a queen. Suddenly, if only for a single reckless instant, she was Becky Lester again with a bank account that could circle the globe and her own long list of people to find gifts for.

At the first jewelry counter, she pushed herself out of the streaming aisle of shoppers, drawn by the sparkle of precious gems like a chilled wanderer to fire. She'd acc.u.mulated high-ticket baubles like these herself in that other life, filled a safe full of velvet-lined trays with them. Then, they'd been a form of security, the diamond-hard proof that she had some value in the world. They'd turned out to be another kind of security, even salvation, when that world came crashing down on her one terrifying morning five years ago. She'd fled with what she could carry, a change of clothes and the contents of those velvet-lined trays dumped into a gym bag. On that fateful morning, Delia also took with her the possibility of staying free and alive. She would be safe as long as she was careful to keep the connection severed between a headstrong, flamboyant young fugitive from a murder charge and the no-nonsense woman she'd since become. Still, there was a hint of her former self left as she bent over the jewelry case, dazzled for an instant by its sparkle. She was, of course, not recognizable as Becky. She'd been anorexic thin five years ago. She was heavier and healthier now, with flesh and curves she'd never hoped to have back then. She was also dark-haired rather than blond, with her hair grown past her shoulders instead of spiky short. Even more drastic was the transformation in her style and hearing. She'd been p.r.o.ne to zingy little outfits in those days, lots of midriff showing in summer and tight leather in winter. By contrast, Delia Marie Barry had a closetful of tailored suits, all chic and flattering but definitely strictly business. Even the way she carried herself had undergone a drastic change. Self-possessed and purposeful, that's what her city sidewalk stride said about her today. She hadn't darted restlessly from one place to the next since the day circ.u.mstance set her on a path so crammed with things to watch out for and take care of that there was hardly a second left for restlessness. The only place she let the more zany side of herself loose these days was in her mind, and may he once in a while at the Hester Street Settlement House where she volunteered as often as possible. She allowed herself only one slim connection with her past. It was there on her right hand now, pressed again at the gla.s.s of the Saks Fifth Avenue display case, She'd taken off her gloves and stuffed them into her coat pocket as she pa.s.sed through the revolving door. On the smallest finger of that hand she wore the tiny ring given to her by her mother just before she died. Delia was fourteen then, ten years away from calling herself by that name. She'd never worn the ring for fear of losing it. She'd tucked it into the bottom of the first of those velvet trays that would one day fill a wall safe nearly to the top. She'd kept it hidden, hers alone to look at and cherish. The narrow golden band of interwoven aspen leaves was the only piece of jewelry she didn't sell five years ago. She'd slipped it on her finger instead, the one memento she allowed herself to keep herself tethered, however tenuously, to some history of herself. Otherwise she feared she might break loose from earth entirely and be set adrift in a universe where n.o.body, not even herself, could ever know who she really was. That tiny anchor sparkled now, in the discreetly modulated light of Christmas at Saks, for everyone to see.

Delia turned out to be a natural for the bodyguard business. She'd spent the last years of her Denver life shadowed constantly. She was a wealthy young heiress then, a prime target for kidnappers and con artists.

She'd also been so rebellious that she wouldn't allow herself to be accompanied directly. The men a.s.signed to her protection had to follow her around. In that period, from the deaths of her father and stepmother in a fiery helicopter crash in the Rockies to the morning of her escape from an inevitable homicide charge, she'd learned every possible way to evade her bodyguard. She'd also learned a lot about the protection business just by watching them watching her.

Delia knew the world of the wealthy and powerful from the inside out, how they live, how they think, what they require. Five years ago, when she'd needed a business to go into, personal security was tailor-made for her. She'd sold her jewelry for enough to get started, and keep going until Protective Enterprises Incorporated became profitable, with something left over to invest. The trick was to accomplish all of that while maintaining the low profile necessary to avoid detection by whoever might still be after hera"the police, the Lester family, the person or persons who'd set her up for a very long fall in the first place. Her cover had to be deep and flawless.

Delia Made Barrya"office manager, a.s.signment coordinator, functionary extraordinairea"was the answer. As far as anybody knew, Delia ran the company for a fict.i.tious gentleman named Joseph Singleton. Meanwhile, PEI's Total Confidentiality System her an excuse for being secretive. n.o.body other Delia and the bodyguard himself knew what services an individual customer had contracted for or why. Thus, Delia kept one hand from knowing what the other was doing while her cover story remained comfortably intact. Her obsession with secrecy turned out to be very good for business, as well. The wealthy and powerful live in fear of robbers, kidnappers, extortion and swindlers, of enemies in general, and visibility makes them targets. PEI offered the closest thing to anonymity they could find. In less than three years, PEI was far enough into the black to afford the fancy Rockefeller Center address, which attracted steady customers.

Delia strolled the block from Saks to 30 Rockefeller Center, almost secure in the belief that the Total Confidentiality System protected both her clients and herself. Almost secure, but not quite.

Chapter Two.

Delia thought of herself as having a three hundred sixty degree awareness. She'd trained herself to be especially vigilant on foot, so much so that she sometimes missed out on what she might be looking at because of what she had to be intent upon looking for. Some might have said she could relax now. Five years had pa.s.sed without incident. She'd even weathered that touchy situation last fall when one of Morty Lancer's twin daughters came to PEI to have her sister guarded for a while. Delia'd given an Academy Award performance, ad no one ever made the connection between her and Morty. Still, she tried to be on her toes every minute whether she liked living that way or not. The truth was, sometimes she got so sick of her life she wanted to scream. She didn't do that, of course. Screaming attracted too much attention, and the best security device was to keep yourself from being noticed. So she did her screaming on the inside.

The worst part was not being able to get close to anybody because that would require too much trust on her part. Trust had been her watchword for so long she sometimes wondered if she'd be able to trust anybody now at all. All of which made for a lonely life she might not have been able to stand if it weren't for her work. She filled her life with her business. She kept herself at it long and hard. She'd done that this afternoon, which was why she happened to be leaving the office later than usual.

She usually tried to get out of here while the streets were still crowded from building front to curb with hundreds and thousands of nine-to-rivers hustling to get where they wanted to go at the end of the workday. She'd slide right into that press of souls who paid little or no attention to her though she kept a close eye on them. She also quit work at a different time each day. A predictable routine can be the downfall of anyone trying to avoid discovery. Even making allowance for varying her routine, tonight she was leaving" the office later than she would have preferred.

The twenty-eighth floor was deserted with no light shining from any of the doorways. The shadowed cavern of the long, narrow corridor suddenly reminded her of a tomb. The minute she heard herself having that thought, she knew she was spooked. She got that way at times. It came with the territory of being constantly watchful. She always turned out to have spooked herself over nothing. She reminded herself of that now as she hurried toward the elevators. Still, the skin on the back of her neck felt as if it might be trying to shrink off her spine.

She poked the elevator b.u.t.ton several times in rapid succession though she knew that wouldn't make it arrive any faster. She wanted to get out of this building, which was putting her more in mind of a mausoleum by the minute. The clunk of the elevator landing at her floor and the doors opening were music to her ears. She was also relieved to find the car occupied until it occurred to her that she'd never seen this guy around here before. She was inside by then with her finger pressing the door-close b.u.t.ton. She might be able to switch to the door-open b.u.t.ton and make a dash for it back onto twenty-eight, but what then? If this was a bad guy, he could easily follow her out into the deserted hallway, and she'd be on her own with him again. The lobby b.u.t.ton was already lit, and the door was closing. She told herself he was probably okay and did her best to relax.

She could feel the eyes of the cat's other occupant watching her. Reaching into her coat pocket, she gripped the thin, black canister of pepper spray she kept there. She wished it were Mace instead, but that was illegal in New York State. There were places to get it, but she was as leery of getting into trouble with the police and having the past catch up with her that way as she was of the bad guys who might be after her. She restrained herself from punching the lobby b.u.t.ton again and gripped the metal canister so hard she was in danger of peppering her pocket lining.

The elevator reached the lobby level at last, without stopping for a single additional pa.s.senger. Delia really was getting out of here late tonight. In the lobby, the guard usually on duty was nowhere to be seen. Delia took a right toward the Rockefeller Plaza end of the building. She fully expected her elevator companion to be hot on her heels, but when she glanced behind her she saw him headed in the opposite direction toward the Sixth Avenue exit. He was also glancing back at her with a very wary expression on his face. She understood then what must have happened. He'd been watching her jumpy performance in the elevator so closely because he thought he might be trapped in there with a nut case who could leap on him at any moment. Delia almost laughed out loud at how close she'd come to staining his well-tailored topcoat with a liberal dose of pepper spray.

Still, she kept herself alert. She took a few deep breaths to make sure she was calm, as well, as she pa.s.sed through the revolving doors out of 30 Rock Center and into the street. The spectacle of the Plaza Christmas tree took her by surprise as always, towering into the sky just across from the entrance to her office building. What looked like a million colored lights sparkled from the branches of the majestic pine that was one of the city's most popular yuletide attractions. Delia permitted herself a moment of holiday heart-swell before returning full attention to her immediate surroundings.

That's when she saw him. She was checking window reflections, as was her habit, pretending to examine the merchandise while she scanned the crowd behind her for exactly what she'd just spotteda"a person whose general demeanor didn't quite fit the profile of a random face in the crowd. He was a tall man and big enough to give her considerable trouble in a confrontation. He was also just a bit too watchful, especially in her direction. Delia's years in hiding, along with her experience in the protection business, had given her an extra keen sense for detecting such behavior. That detection apparatus was out of tune back in the elevator. She'd been spooked then, and that could knock everything out of kilter. She wasn't spooked now. She was almost a hundred percent certain that this man was on her tail. Still, she didn't run away or even pick up speed. She steadied her pace into her usual gait. The man might have followed her on other occasions. If that was the case and if he was good at the shadowing game, he'd be likely to notice any unusual behavior on her part, such as taking off at a gallop down the street.

The holiday crowd was too dense here to make much progress anyway, even at a run. Tourists lined the opposite sidewalk several deep and spilled over the curb into the street to gape up at the tree. Delia had turned right out of 30 Rock Center toward Forty-ninth Street. She continued in that direction to the corner then turned onto Forty-ninth and crossed the road pavement in the direction of Fifth Avenue. She glanced back over her shoulder as she crossed. The tall man was still following. She returned her attention to looking for an opportunity, whatever it might be, to get away from him. A crowd lined this side of the Plaza, as well, leaning toward the bra.s.s rail to watch the ice skaters spin around Rockefeller Center Rink beneath the imposing tree. Bright strains of holiday music piped from speakers camouflaged by decorative evergreens. Excitement charged the air. Delia kept herself steely calm by contrast as she searched for an escape route.

She eased her black wool beret out of her left coat pocket while her other hand once again gripped the pepper canister on the right. She generally kept her hair a dark brownish, innocuous shade, only faintly auburn, but the hairdresser had missed that mark this time. The result was more conspicuously coppery than she'd intended and far easier to pick out in a crowd than Delia's usual mousey dark brown would have been. She needed a chance to be out of her pursuer's range of vision long enough to make her first move at disappearing while she was still right in front of him. She spotted that chance halfway down the block.

A gla.s.s kiosk framed in polished bra.s.s marked the street level access to the lower concourse of Rockefeller Plaza. Too many people were already trying to squeeze into the small, domed enclosure. Delia wedged in among them, shoving herself into the center of the pack. Despite her "Excuse me's," there were grumblings and remarks about rude New Yorkers from every side. She concentrated on wriggling out of her coat with one hand while jamming her beret on her head and stuffing her hair under it with the other. The gla.s.s-and-bra.s.s elevator car purred to a stop three people in front of her. The elevator door, which const.i.tuted the inside wall of the kiosk, eased open and the press of bodies tumbled through, carrying Delia with it.

Her maneuverings with her coat and hat had further irritated her fellow pa.s.sengers. She took a couple of elbows to the fibs in response, but she didn't care. She was inside the elevator and headed downward, leaving the street and her human shadow behind. She'd caught sight of him hurrying past as she jammed herself into the kiosk elevator. He was peering ahead into the street crowd at the time. That single glimpse of his exasperated expression convinced Delia she'd been fight. He was searching the street for her.

The elevator door opened at the lower level, and Delia spilled out along with the crowd. She ignored their parting accusatory glances, too relieved to be bothered by a bit of public embarra.s.sment. The sparkling white marble concourse seemed too pristine a place for anything very horrible to happen. That lightened her state of mind only a little and not enough to keep her from coming to the obvious and unavoidable conclusion. She needed help, and it had to be somebody good. It also had to be somebody she didn't usually employ at PEI.

She needed to keep this personal situation as separate from her work life as possible. The elevator had deposited her only a few feet from the entrance to the Sea Grill Restaurant. She walked to the doorway and glanced in the direction of the bar. She'd be able to sit down there and think for a moment, though she already had an answer to her dilemma in mind.

She'd kept track of Nick Avery through the bodyguard network ever since she started PEI, but she'd never hired him. That would have been too risky, both to her hidden ident.i.ty and to her determination to avoid personal involvements. She'd never completely abandoned the fantasy of him that kept her company in her loneliest moments. She'd specifically kept track of when he was here in New York, where he generally spent any time he might have between jobs. She even knew where he stayed when he was in town, at an out-of-the-way hotel in Soho. She'd imagined going there many times, just to catch a glimpse of him, but she never had. He was in Manhattan now. She rummaged in her coat pocket, under the canister of pepper spray, for the quarters she kept them. She picked up a coin then dropped it again. She couldn't call Nick. It was too risky. Still, as she declined the steward's offer to take her coat and headed past the gleaming tables and away from the gla.s.s wall onto the white marble concourse, Delia's heart was beating very hard with what felt like antic.i.p.ation.

Chapter Three.

Nick Avery had been living in hotels so long they'd begun to feel like home to him, or as much" like home as he cared to deal with. He'd have an a.s.signment here, an a.s.signment there all over the country. He'told himself it wasn't practical to set up a base residence he'd hardly ever be in. Actually, he liked living this way, most of the time. He thought of himself as in tune with one of the major lessons he'd learned about living in general: nothing lasts very long and you're smart to have a bag half packed and ready for takeoff the minute things fall through. He'd had that bag in his closet for the past five years.

He was saving up a nest egg, too, though he hadn't yet decided exactly what for. The great escape maybe. Someday he'd cut loose from even the spindly roots he had now and kick back someplace where it was warm forever and he didn't speak the language. That way he wouldn't be tempted to tell any of the too many secrets he knew about too many people. Or, maybe what he'd been building up was a cushion thick enough to keep from mangling any limbs when everything finally fell through for good and he came plummeting down. He figured it was mostly the cushion he had in mind. Be sides, he was one hundred percent Scot. He carried caution in his bones.

When Nick was in Manhattan, he stayed at the Tivoli Hotel on Mercer Street in Soho. He preferred to go back to the same place in each city he frequented. This small illusion of belonging somewhere saved him from having to think of himself as totally on the drift. He usually chose a hotel like this one, with character and plenty of street life around the neighborhood. Maybe the Tivoli was his version of a hometown. This would be the second Christmas in a row he'd spent here. Last year there'd been a card slipped under his door on Christmas Eve with a peace dove on the front and "Happy Holidays from the Management" printed in red foil letters on the inside. All of the staff had signed, even the day maids. A couple of them wrote brief, semi personal messages along with their names. Mindy, the night clerk, wrote something more personal than semi, but he'd ignored it. He didn't intend to mess up the comfortable thing he had going here by getting involved with somebody on staff. He might still have that card tucked into one of the handy, pack rat pockets of his bag in the closet. Something kept him from throwing it out. In general, however, his att.i.tude was that holidays didn't have much to do with him. They were about family, and he didn't really have one.

Thinking about that now turned Nick restless. He hopped up off the bed, which was the only really comfortable seat in the room, and paced to the window. He was on the front side of the hotel with brick buildings across the narrow street and people bustling back and forth on the sidewalk below. Many of them were loaded down with packages, probably from the fancy shops over on West Broadway. He could see the tinseled paper twinkle in the streetlights even from up here. He paced back to the bed but didn't sit down. Holidays! There was no getting away from them.

The television set murmured and flickered from the corner of the room. He hadn't been watching, only using it for background noise. The picture switched from some silly sitcom to a commercial of a guy in a Santa Claus hat in front of a bank of CD players, then cellular phones, then TV sets. Nick grabbed the remote from the bedside table and gave the Off b.u.t.ton a savage punch. He needed a new a.s.signment. He needed to get out of this room. He'd go to a movie. He was only a few blocks from the Angelika. That was one place he could count on them not to be playing It's A Wonderful Life, Nick grabbed his brown suede jacket from the chair near the window and was almost to the door when the phone rang. He hesitated. He really didn't want to talk to anybody. Then he remembered that n.o.body ever called him here except about a job. He'd just been thinking he needed a job. He picked up the phone. "Avery, here."

n.o.body answered, but he could hear breathing.

"This is Nick Avery. Can I help you?"

"I hope so."

The voice on the other end of the line was calm but pitched unnaturally low, almost to a whisper, as if she didn't want anybody around her to hear. Nick recognized the sound of someone who might be in trouble. "Who is this?"

It occurred to Nick that calls from possible customers went to his service first. Then they called him to make sure he wanted to respond. Where did this woman get his direct number? How did she know he was in town anyway?

"This is Delia Marie Barry. I'm with Protective Enterprises, Inc.," she said. That answered Nick's immediate questions. He'd instructed his service to give his direct number to any of the bodyguard services that might want to hire him. The surprise was that this was the first time PEI had called. He was one of the top names in the bodyguard game, even if he did say so himself. Still, PEI seemed to avoid him like the plague. He'd wondered who at Delia Barry's office had tossed in the blackball on Nick Avery. Now they were calling at last, probably because it was the holidays and everybody wanted vacation time so the great PEI was in a bind for talent. Nick was considering whether or not to blow them off as he said, "What can I do for you?"

Delia went into the Sea Grill's ladies" room as soon as she got off the pay phone outside of it. She needed to calm herself. She hadn't known his voice would have such an effect on her. "Avery, here." It was an abrupt sort of greeting in the first place, but she would have been startled by anything he said. She was that unprepared. She'd fantasized about calling him many times; just as she had about going to his hotel. She would plan out what she had to say, like a script for a Scene, so she wouldn't get on the phone and be the way she was a few minutes agoa"stunned and confused. She'd never actually made any of those fantasy calls. Unfortunately, tonight she had. Now she could hardly remember what she'd said. Had it been something stupid? She couldn't be sure. She'd hoped to be alone in the ladies" room.

Unfortunately, she'd forgotten about the presence of a washroom attendant. The one on duty that evening was a Atce Orr kindly looking woman in an extremely clean, white ruffled ap.r.o.n. She smiled as she held out a hand towel made of paper so fine it could pa.s.s for cloth. Delia took the towel and did her best to return the smile,. though she was about ready to jump out of her skin with anxiety. She stared into the mirror but didn't really see herself. She had to get in control and stay that way. She turned on the sink tap and dampened the paper towel with warm water then touched it to her throat where she could feel the tightness intensifying and her pulse working. The attendant walked away as if she were busy with other things rather than trying to avoid staring at Delia in her obviously troubled state.

This day had turned out badly enOUgh already, with Delia finding herself under surveillance and all the terrifying possibilities that brought to mind. As if all of that wasn't enough to drive her crazy, she'd called Nick Avery. She should have stopped to think. She might have decided against it. Too late for that now. He was on his way here. And she'd given him her name.

Delia's first urge was to dry her hands, leave the attendant a tip and make a run for it, back through the restaurant to the concourse and out the door before Nick got here. There were lots of exits from Rockefeller Plaza. Whoever was following her couldn't be at all of them, unless he wasn't alone. Delia found it hard to believe there was a phalanx of operatives out there lying in wait for Delia Marie Barry n6e Rebecca Radley Lester. Still, she'd be taking a chance at least by her choice of exits, like Russian roulette with escape routes.

She tried to calculate what would be the best, as in safest, alternative, but her mind refused to cooperate. All she could think about was how Nick's voice on the phone thrilled through her like a sudden shattering of gla.s.s. She reminded herself that she was in trouble. She needed help. She needed protection. She needed a bodyguard, and Nick best suited those needs at the moment. That consideration had to remain foremost in her mind. Every ounce of common sense she possessed told her this was true. She must go through with meeting him tonight. She'd do her best to keep him from recognizing her. She'd already invented a cover story to go with her much altered appearance. She really did look entirely different from five years ago. Men tended to be easily fooled by superficials like hair color and style, makeup, clothing type. She'd changed all of that dramatically. Would he recognize her voice the way she'd recognized hisa"immediately? Had they really talked all that much five years ago? She'd had a smart-aleck tone back then, anyway.

Delia balled the paper towel up tight and pushed it through the waste chute door. She absolutely could not let herself think about the past. If she did, she'd come undone for sure. She had an important acting job ahead of her tonight. She couldn't afford to be undone. The acting part was what would save her. She'd be playing Delia Marie Barry, a woman who hadn't yet been born five years ago.

She rummaged in her bag for a dollar and put it in the china tip plate. The attendant thanked her, and Delia smiled back, much more broadly than before. She was getting into character, a character she was about to play to the hilt.

Chapter Four.

By the time Nick arrived, Delia had her story down pat. She'd even' taken off her gold ring, the one with the circle of aspen leaves her mother had given her. There was little chance Nick had ever seen it, but she slipped it off anyway. Now she was ready for hima"or so she thought, until she saw him. Suddenly, she could barely breathe much less think.

He was just as she remembered, strong-boned in the face, tall in the body. Yet he was different. For one thing, his eyes had lost their arrogance. They were cool but not so challenging. His features had a haggard edge she was certain hadn't been there before, as if the time since might not have been easy for him. His handsome-ness had been almost too smooth five years ago. This new, life-marred face might he less picture perfect, but she found it even more affecting than she had the last time she'd seen him.

The last time she'd seen him was in her fantasiesa"He was halfway across the restaurant, striding toward the bar in a suede jacket and dark slacks, but she was seeing his long, naked flank on the bed beside her. The sheen of his skin in the moonlight from a window drew her fingers to slide along the contour of him, over the jut of his hipbone where she could feel the skeleton beneath the skin and slip her thumb into the shadowed hollow below the bone. She ran the flat of her palm across his thigh to that curious juncture where smooth flesh became a dark pelt of hair, wffy yet soft to her touch. Her movements were hypnotic, in sync with her entrancement. Such a sweet and tender moment with so few to match it, at least in her real life.

Delia felt the moistness in her eyes and ducked her head while she blinked it back. When she looked up again, he was at the end of the bar. His eyes met hers, and she felt the breath catch in her throat. Then his glance moved on. A few seconds pa.s.sed before her mind could truly register what had happened. He didn't recognize her. The disappointment of that struck her like a blow, all the harder because she hadn't expected to be disappointed by the achievement of her goal. Her disguise had worked. She didn't look anything like she had back in Colorado. Or... Another possibility hit her with even more impact. He'd meant so much to her five years ago she'd never imagined that, just maybe, she hadn't been particularly important to him at all.

He had returned his glance to the bar, and he'd begun to walk toward her. She had to get a grip on her emotions. She was generally so in control. Yet right now she felt herself literally carried away on a wave of memory and sensation stronger than any control. She couldn't let that happen. She held her breath for a moment and concentrated on pulling her straying emotions back within reach. She must keep her purpose in mind. She could sort out the rest of it later. She let her breath out in a gush then raised her hand to signal Nick toward her.

He quickened his pace down the bar. "Delia Barry?"

"Yes," she said and extended her hand. "You must be Nick Avery."

She made her voice confident and straightforward, totally unlike the bantering sarcastic tone of her younger, more mixed-up years. She was in charge of herself again. When he took her hand, she was even ready for the shock of touching him, as ready as she could be. She looked directly into his eyes and steeled herself against the flutter inside that threatened to undo her calm exterior. He held her gaze a moment longer than expected. He let go of her hand then and took the stool next. to hers. Delia felt the relief of no longer touching him and the desire to grab his hand again at the same instant.

"You said on the phone that this was an urgent case," he began.

"Yes, it is." She was surprised to hear her voice ring out, still clear and confident.

"Who's the client?"

He'd lifted his hand in a casual motion to get the bartender's attention. Slowly, he put his hand down and turned toward Delia. His scrutiny was even more intense than it had been a moment ago. She took a deep breath and willed herself to suppress the blaze his eyes threatened to raise on her cheeks.

"A personal situation has come up for me," she said before he could question further.

"What kind of situation?"

The bartender had arrived. Delia waited while Nick ordered a beer. Her mineral water with a slice of lime sat untouched on the bar, the ice melting in the tall gla.s.s." Nick turned toward her.

"An old boyfriend," she said, just as she'd planned. "He's been stalking me. He followed me from the office tonight. I came in here to lose him."

"An old boyfriend," Nick repeated. He looked her up and down quickly as if confirming for himself whether or not she might be stalking material. "How long has he been after you?"

"A few weeks now." She turned away from Nick and stared into her mineral water. It was easier to lie when she wasn't looking at him.

"He's been more persistent lately;"

"Has he threatened you with anything specific?" Delia had antic.i.p.ated his questions, and her answers were ready. Bodyguarding was her business, too. She knew the routine.

"He doesn't need to make overt threats. I know what lies capable of."

Keep it simple, she'd counseled herself in planning her approach to this conversation. There are fewer details to remember that way.