Buch lesen: «Soldier Bodyguard»

Chapter 1

Crazy like a fox. Cooper Payne had never understood that phrase until now. He stared across his desk at Xavier Bentler. This wasn’t Cooper’s first experience with an interfering grandfather; his wife’s guardian/grandfather had been a control freak who had manipulated his granddaughters even from beyond the grave.

“I can’t lie to one of my employees,” he told the elderly man.

Xavier Bentler was eighty-six years old, but he looked like he was in his sixties. Cooper couldn’t believe that he’d had a heart attack a few months ago. Had he really had one? Or just how manipulative was the old man? The heart attack had compelled Cooper’s friend and employee, Cole Bentler, to fly home for the first time in years—although he hadn’t been gone very long.

Was this assignment just another ploy for Xavier to get his grandson Cole home to California again?

“I’m not asking you to lie to him,” Xavier said with a cagey grin. “Maybe you can just withhold some information so that he’ll accept the job.”

Cooper shook his head and ran his hand over his military-short black hair. He was not going to do that again. The last time he’d sent off one of his bodyguards without briefing him fully on the assignment he had nearly lost him—for good. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take again, especially as all the bodyguards who worked for Cooper’s franchise of the Payne Protection Agency were his friends and—in the case of Nikki Payne—family.

Hell, after what he’d gone through with his friends, who had all served in the same Marine Corps unit that he had, they were family, too.

“I can’t do that,” Cooper said. He wouldn’t betray a friend...again.

Of course last time it had been more of a joke. But there had been nothing funny about nearly losing Jordan “Manny” Mannes. And this time the danger was even greater.

“You said that a man already died,” Cooper reminded the older man.

Xavier Bentler uttered a weary-sounding sigh. “That was most unfortunate. But what’s more unfortunate is that his won’t be the last death. I am certain that someone else is going to die.”

And Cooper was afraid that person would be his friend if he assigned this job to Cole. He narrowed his eyes as he studied the old man, suspicious of how he could be so certain someone else was going to die. He doubted the guy had what Cooper’s mother did—her uncanny ability to just know that something was going to happen. Everybody had pretty much envied that ability until now. At least Cooper didn’t envy it since he sometimes possessed the ability himself.

Like now...

“Cole can prevent that murder, though,” Xavier Bentler continued, “if he protects her.”

Cooper had that feeling again—a bad feeling—that he knew who that person was. But still he had to ask, “Shawna?”

The older man nodded and grinned, obviously delighted that Cooper knew who she was. But that was not a good thing. He also knew what she’d already put Cole through. If she died...

Cole would be devastated, no matter what he felt for her yet.

“So you understand,” Xavier said, as if he’d successfully argued his case, even though the old guy was a businessman, not a lawyer. “And you will make Cole take this assignment.”

Cooper sighed before bobbing his head in a reluctant nod of acquiescence. He did understand that if something happened to Shawna, no matter how badly she’d hurt him, Cole would never forgive himself. Even if Cole didn’t want to personally protect her, Cooper had to make sure that nothing happened to her. He just hoped that he wouldn’t lose his friend. Either Cole would refuse to take the job and resign from the Payne Protection Agency. Or he would accept the assignment and...

Cole would be the next person to lose his life.

Seeing Shawna Rolfe like this, dressed all in black with tears streaming down her face, was why Cole had ended their engagement. He’d worried that one day she would wind up mourning him like this. Instead she was mourning another man, the one who had become her husband. There was a hollow feeling in Cole’s chest as if he’d lost something, as well.

But he had never had it, not for real. If Shawna had ever loved him, she wouldn’t have fallen so quickly for someone else. She wouldn’t have let another man put a ring on her finger within months of taking off Cole’s. And that hadn’t been just another engagement ring. It had been the wedding band that she still wore. The yellow gold reflected the sunshine glinting through the stained-glass windows of the church as she lifted her hand to wipe away the tears streaking from beneath her dark glasses. She didn’t need the glasses inside the church, so she was probably using them to hide her swollen eyes. But they couldn’t hide the fact that she’d been crying and still was.

And that hollowness inside Cole turned to an intense ache. He had never been able to handle Shawna’s tears, even when they were just kids in elementary school. He had always beaten up the boys who’d made her cry.

But he couldn’t beat up her husband. There was nothing left of him except the ashes in the urn sitting on a podium at the front of the church. There hadn’t been much left of him to cremate. A car bomb had blown him to bits.

Why? What reason would anyone have to murder a high school band teacher? Many of those students now played a medley of what they’d claimed had been their beloved teacher’s favorite songs. The arrangement was rough as several of them stopped to dissolve into sobs. If Cole believed what he was seeing, then he had to accept that everyone had loved Emery Little. But Cole had grown up knowing how deceptive appearances could be.

Grandfather didn’t think the car bomb had been meant for Little. He thought it had been meant for Shawna. It made no more sense to kill a nurse than it did to kill a band teacher. Just a short while ago—as he’d been getting pressed into this assignment—Cole had asked that question. “What reason would anyone have for wanting either of them dead?”

All the Payne Protection bodyguards had been gathered around the conference room table. Cooper had probably called them all in for reinforcements as he’d told Cole what his next assignment would be: protecting his former fiancée.

Thinking it was some sick joke like they sometimes played on each other, Cole had laughed.

But his laughter had evaporated when Cooper had informed him what had happened—and that Cole’s grandfather had flown from his estate in northern California out to River City, Michigan, to request their protection services.

“What reason?” Cole had asked again because none of it made sense. It must have been a horrible mistake. “What’s the murderer’s motive?”

“Jealousy,” Nikki Payne had offered, and her auburn brows had arched over her brown eyes as she’d studied him.

He was the only one who would have a reason to be jealous. But maybe Lars Ecklund, Nikki’s fiancé and Cole’s friend, hadn’t shared his history with her. So Cole told her, “I broke my engagement to Shawna a long time ago.”

They had been engaged a long time as well—first with the promise ring he’d given her when they’d graduated high school and then with the engagement ring he’d given her when he’d returned from boot camp. When he’d broken up with her six years ago, before his unit’s most dangerous mission, Shawna had tried to give back the engagement ring—a two-karat solitaire he’d bought after he’d inherited his father’s estate. But he hadn’t wanted it back. He hadn’t even thought he’d make it back from that mission. But he had—to find her already married to another man.

“I have no reason to be jealous,” he’d insisted.

But he was.

As he stood there and watched Shawna weep over another man, jealousy churned his stomach into an acidic pool of bile. No. Everyone hadn’t loved Emery Little. He hated the man, for making Shawna cry. Most of all he hated him for making Shawna love him, the way she hadn’t really loved Cole.

He shouldn’t have lied in that meeting—because his boss had used that lie against him. “If you have no reason for jealousy, then you have no reason to refuse this assignment,” Cooper had pointed out. “You better file a flight manifest. You need to fly out right away so you don’t miss the funeral.”

Now he wished like hell that he had. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t bear listening to everyone sing praises about Shawna’s husband while she wept over him. At least he wasn’t suffering alone. When Cooper had turned the tables on him, Cole had spun it back around on all of his friends.

“I’ll take it on one condition,” he’d said.

Much like his little sister, Cooper had arched one of his dark brows. Maybe he’d been silently reprimanding an employee for placing conditions on a job or maybe he’d just wanted to know what that condition was.

“You all work this assignment with me.” Maybe Cole had been counting on Cooper refusing because he’d never wanted his friends to know much about his old life. And he’d certainly never intended to show it to them.

“That doesn’t sound like the best use of Payne Protection resources,” Cooper had said.

And Cole had snorted. “Hasn’t the past taught us we’re the safest and the most efficient when we all work together?”

Cooper hadn’t been able to argue that. So they all stood in the pew with him: Cooper, Manny, Dane, Lars and Nikki. His grandfather hadn’t hired just one bodyguard; he’d hired all of Payne Protection. At least, all of Cooper’s franchise. There were still two others, run by Cooper’s brothers, Logan and Parker.

All of Cole’s coworkers and friends were here, so he wasn’t alone. And he sure as hell wasn’t the only one suffering. Not at this funeral...

Finally, it ended with Shawna filing out of that front pew to take her husband’s ashes. Still so slender and petite, she looked too delicate to lift the heavy urn, but she handled it easily if reluctantly. She still wore her hair long, the silky black tresses skimming down her back nearly to her thin waist. It flowed as she turned away from the front of the church. But she paused again at that first pew before starting down the aisle. And a little girl stepped out to take her hand.

Cole’s breath left his lungs. She had a child. He had no doubt the little girl was Shawna’s. With her long, silky black hair and pale skin, she looked exactly like Shawna had when he’d met her so many years ago on the elementary school playground, tears streaming down her face because some bully had knocked her down and she’d skinned her knees. This little girl’s knees weren’t skinned, but she was crying, her heart broken over the loss of her father.

Of course Cole should not have been shocked to see the child. He’d heard Shawna and her husband had started a family. That was why his visit home when his grandfather had his heart attack had been so brief. He hadn’t wanted to risk running into Shawna then.

He should have refused this assignment. But how?

He’d loved Shawna too much to risk her getting hurt—even because of him. So he couldn’t let anyone else hurt her either. What if the bomb had been meant for her? What if the person tried again and killed Shawna or her child?

He couldn’t risk it—just like his grandfather. The cagey old bastard had known. Xavier Bentler stepped out of the pew behind the little girl and started down the aisle with the child and her mother. Shawna was his nurse; she was supposed to be taking care of him. But it appeared to be the other way around, at least at the moment.

They continued down the aisle toward the pew in the back that Cole and his friends had slipped into when they’d arrived a few minutes late. Shawna was looking down, one arm wrapped around that urn while her other arm was stretched out, her fingers linked with her daughter’s small ones. He didn’t expect her to notice him.

But just as she neared the pew, she glanced up and even through her dark glasses, their eyes met and held. She paused for a moment—until the little girl tugged her forward and Cole’s grandfather put his hand on her back. Over her head, Xavier met Cole’s gaze and nodded. Then he guided Shawna out of the church to the long black car waiting at the bottom of the church steps.

They had already inspected that vehicle, making certain no explosive devices had been planted on it. But still Dane slipped out of the other side of the pew and down the stairs to join the driver in the front seat. Astin, the chauffeur, had worked for Grandfather for years. He could handle the driving, but he didn’t have the gun Dane carried.

Cole hoped Dane didn’t have to use it, not with the child in the car. At least the trip would be a short, and hopefully uneventful, one.

Even before the minister announced that Xavier Bentler had invited everyone back to his home for a memorial luncheon, Cole knew that was where he would be heading next. Home. Not that the monstrous mansion had ever really felt like home.

Cole glanced at his friends. Manny wouldn’t be surprised; he knew more than the others did about Cole’s life. But now everyone would know exactly how damn rich he was—so rich it was embarrassing. That was one of the reasons why he hated talking about himself or the past. But that wasn’t the only reason. It hurt too damn much when he thought of it because he always thought of her.

He was home.

And Cole Bentler looked even more handsome than he did every time she’d thought of him over the past six years. His hair was dark gold and his eyes such a deep blue. He seemed taller than she remembered him and much more muscular, but then some of her memories were of the boy Cole had been, not of the man he had become.

Just as she’d been warned, he had changed after joining the Marines. Not after boot camp. After boot camp, he’d come home and proposed to her. It was after all the missions, after leaving for months on end, that he had returned tense and distant and different.

It was easier to remember the sweet, sensitive boy with whom she’d fallen in love than the cold, unemotional man who’d broken her heart.

What in the world was he doing here? As Shawna settled into the back seat of the limousine and Xavier Bentler sat across from her, head down as if unwilling to meet her gaze, she knew. “You told him?”

That was where Xavier had gone. Some time yesterday, he had slipped away for several long hours. She hadn’t been too concerned at the time. She’d figured he’d sneaked away to play a round of golf and smoke the cigars she’d banned from the house. She should have known Cole’s grandfather had been up to something; he usually was.

And as usual he was completely unabashed at getting caught. He nodded.

But she was still surprised that Cole had showed up. Even after he’d heard about her husband’s funeral, she doubted he’d have any compulsion to attend it.

“I hired him to be your bodyguard,” he added.

And she gasped.

So did Maisy. “Why does Mommy need a bodyguard?” Then her blue eyes widened in realization and fear. “So nobody kills you like they killed...” Her voice cracked with sobs.

Shawna slid across the seat and wrapped her free arm around the child’s thin shoulders. Her heart broke every time she heard her daughter cry and saw her fear. Shawna had done her best to try to shield the five-year-old from all the news broadcasts. But even if Maisy hadn’t heard it from the media, she would have known about the car bomb. The explosion had woken her up.

Fighting to keep her voice calm and steady, she told Xavier, “I don’t need a bodyguard.” She glared at him, hoping he would take the hint.

“Yes, you do!” But it was Maisy who argued with her. “You need to make sure nobody tries to kill you, too!”

Shawna’s heart broke again at the terror in the child’s voice. She pulled her daughter closer and held her trembling body. “You don’t have to worry about that,” she assured her. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

Maisy’s head bobbed up and down in a quick nod. “I know,” she agreed. She fluttered her long black lashes and stared up at her with those deep blue eyes of hers and added, “Because Grampa X hired you a bodyguard.”

But the man he’d hired to protect her was the one who’d already hurt her more than anyone else ever had. Who would protect her from him?

Especially if he ever learned the truth...