2
The SEALs were scheduled to arrive at nine, and Tansy couldn’t believe how giddy she was. She’d changed clothes twice before she’d decided on what to wear, and had fiddled with her hair until it was perfect.
Part of her couldn’t believe Mick had talked them into taking on this guard duty. Sure, her father had as much money as God. And with that much money, you usually got what you wanted. But John Walton had no reason to remember her fondly. She’d almost killed him—a couple of inches to the right, and she would have hit him in the head instead of the shoulder—and then she hadn’t even had the courtesy to say she was sorry for hurting him.
She’d had other things on her mind, for sure, but that was no excuse for rudeness.
By nine o’clock, she was in her father’s office, in the same chair as yesterday, waiting. Walter was there, too, pretending to work, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He had one ear peeled for the sound of the front door, and when they heard the familiar ding from the hallway, he straightened with a look of relief on his face. Maybe he’d been worried they wouldn’t show up.
Tansy straightened, and on her lap, Mimi’s ears twitched. A second later, there was a quick knock on the door, and the small canine went into a frenzy of high-pitched barking.
Mick didn’t wait for the invitation to enter. Or maybe he figured he wouldn’t be able to hear it over the noise. He just opened the door and walked in. “Ms. Leighton. Mr. Leighton.” He gave them both a nod before turning to Mimi, his voice stern. “Knock it off, furball, before I turn you into earmuffs.”
Mimi subsided with a final yip, and Mick scooped her out of Tansy’s arms and then stood aside to allow the three SEALs to enter. Tansy had planned to demand Mimi back from Mick, to have something to occupy her hands, but now she forgot all about it, as John Walton walked through the door with the other two SEALs Tansy recognized from the yacht and the lifeboat.
The tall, blond one was Max. Overly tall and overly blond, with more muscles than anyone needed, and a kind of scary, Ivan Drago demeanor. If he smiled, his face would probably crack.
The second SEAL had auburn hair, and that clued her in on his name—or nickname. John had called him Rusty. It fit.
John came in last, and Tansy got her first good look at him in daylight. Without the black clothes and with no black paint on his face.
He was a little taller than average, and while he didn’t have as many muscles as Max, he had plenty. They stretched the sleeves of the T-shirt he had on, and molded the fabric to his chest.
He glanced at her when he came in, and a corner of his mouth curled up. She wasn’t sure whether it was intended to be a smile, but it looked like a greeting, or at least an acknowledgement that she was there. She smiled back, feeling a little dizzy.
He had blue eyes. Dark blue. And when he tucked that corner of his mouth in, she saw a hint of a dimple in his cheek.
Her father cleared his throat, and Tansy came back to herself with a very unaccustomed blush staining her cheeks. “Sorry.”
Mick gave her a bland look. “I was introducing your friends to your father. Since you’ve already met them all, I won’t bother to repeat.”
Tansy nodded.
“Lieutenant Vasiliev will be working with me. Petty Officer Russell will be assigned to your father, and Petty Officer Walton to you.”
Tansy nodded.
“This is the note.” Mick waved the three men closer. They crowded around the desk, broad shoulder touching broad shoulder. Tansy had always thought her father’s office was pretty big, but at the moment, there wasn’t a square inch of extra room in here, and the testosterone level was clogging the air and making it hard to breathe.
John was leaning over her shoulder to look at the note, and Tansy caught a whiff of his scent. Clean and fresh, like soap and shampoo and laundry detergent.
Nothing like the expensive cologne Kareem had slopped on every morning.
When he straightened, he gave her a quick look. Maybe he’d noticed her nostrils vibrating. Or maybe he had smelled her. Maybe she was giving off... what were they? Pheromones?
She gave him an awkward smile, more like a grimace, and got one back. Maybe he really didn’t want to be here.
Oh, God. Maybe he was married. Some military men were married, right? It wasn’t like the priesthood, where they had to be celibate?
She tried to get a look at his hand, to see whether he was wearing a ring, but he’d already stuffed them both back into the pockets of his cargo pants. All three men were dressed in T-shirts and pants with lots of pockets. Part of her had been hoping for those really dashing white uniforms, but they probably didn’t walk around in those most of the time.
And anyway, if anyone was keeping an eye on the house, the arrival of three members of Uncle Sam’s Navy wouldn’t go unnoticed. They were trying to be incognito, she guessed. Or at least inconspicuous. As if there was any way to hide those shoulders. Or the way they carried themselves. Or that sort of indefinable aura of danger that surrounded them all. As if they could explode into action at any moment and take out anyone who threatened her.
No, they definitely didn’t blend. Not even when they looked like they were trying to.
“You all know what to do,” Mick said. “Let’s get to work. Lieutenant, you’re with me.”
He dropped the Pomeranian back into Tansy’s lap, and headed for the door with Max right behind. Rusty went after them. “I’ll just wait outside.”
He caught the door as it closed and slipped out into the hallway, leaving Tansy, John, and Walter Leighton alone in the office.
“Have a seat, Petty Officer Walton,” Walter said.
John looked like he’d prefer to stand, but he took a seat on the edge of the chair next to Tansy’s, his back very straight. Mimi leaned a little closer, and her tiny, black nose twitched. Maybe she liked the way he smelled, too.
“I wanted to thank you,” Walter Leighton said, “for saving my daughter’s life last year.”
John glanced at Tansy and away again. He looked uncomfortable. “Lieutenant Vasiliev was in charge of the op, sir. I was just along for the ride.”
“You were responsible for my daughter’s safety,” Walter Leighton reminded him.
John nodded, but said, “It was a team effort, sir. I couldn’t have done my part if Max and Rusty hadn’t done theirs.”
Walter Leighton conceded defeat. “Well, however it worked out, we’re very grateful. Both for that, and for your willingness to come to Pennsylvania now, and help us with this situation. We owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay. If there’s ever anything I can do...” He trailed off.
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” John said politely. “We’re happy to be of service. And if the current situation is related to the previous situation, it’s good that we’re on hand to finish it.”
Walter Leighton nodded. “You’ll keep my daughter safe.”
“To the best of my ability, sir.” He glanced at Tansy. “We’ll have to set some ground rules.”
That looked like an invitation. And if it wasn’t, Tansy decided to take it as one. She got to her feet. “Let me show you around. You can see where everything is, and figure out the best way to deal with the... situation.”
John had risen too, as soon as she got up. He was looking at her father, not her. “Sir?”
“Go ahead,” Walter Leighton said, waving a hand. “You’ll find that whatever Tansy wants, Tansy usually gets.”
John gave her a look. He didn’t say anything, but the look said a lot. Tansy flushed. To hide it, she handed him Mimi. “Here. This is my dog. Her name is Mimi. And she’s protective, so if you’re planning to stick around, you’re going to have to make friends with her.”
John got a funny look on his face, like he was trying not to laugh, but he nodded. Mimi was looking up at him, curiously, and after a second, she stuck out a tiny pink tongue and licked his chin.
“Fierce,” John said. “Where was she while you were cruising the Mediterranean last year?”
Tansy grimaced. “Kareem suggested that I should leave her at home. He thought she might fall overboard.”
During those couple of days of being locked in the stateroom on the boat, Tansy had alternately missed Mimi’s company and been grateful that the small dog wasn’t there. Once she learned that Kareem had been part of the hijacking plot, it had become obvious that his concern hadn’t been for Mimi’s wellbeing. Tansy still wasn’t entirely sure what had been behind the request to leave the Pom at home. Maybe Kareem just didn’t like dogs.
John seemed to like dogs just fine. Or at least he liked Mimi. And vice versa. She settled into the crook of his arm as they walked toward the door, and smiled a happy doggie smile.
John opened the door and held it while Tansy passed through. Outside in the hallway he stopped for a quick word with Rusty, who had parked himself beside the door to her father’s office. He was idly checking his gun. “We’re going to take a walk around the place,” John said. “If I see anything you need to know, I’ll tag you.”
Rusty nodded. “I’m on him.”
They walked off down the hallway, leaving Rusty there outside her father’s office in case of trouble.
Tansy hadn’t expected it to be awkward. It hadn’t been awkward a year ago. She’d tried to kill him with the paperweight, he’d shot her ex-boyfriend, and then they’d taken off in a rubber boat. But the conversation hadn’t been awkward. It had been the most real conversation she’d had in years. When she’d talked her father and Mick into getting the SEALs up here to Pennsylvania for her protection, she had hoped for more of the same. Not this self-conscious, embarrassed silence.
She slanted him a sideways look. “Are you married?”
He slanted one back. His expression was hard to read, but she thought he might have been surprised. “No.” After a second he added, “Are you?”
Tansy tossed her neck and made her hair flip over her shoulder. “Of course not.”
He nodded. She waited for him to ask why she wanted to know, but he didn’t. Maybe he knew.
“You seem like you don’t want to be here. So I thought maybe I’d gotten you in trouble with your wife. Or girlfriend.”
“I don’t have one of those, either.” This time there was definitely amusement in his eyes. And that quirk of his mouth and almost-dimple again, too.
“Yeah?”
She shrugged, and fought back a blush. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I think it’s probably too late for that.”
He didn’t wait for her to say anything—what was there to say?—but continued. “It’s not that I don’t want to be here. I’m fine with being here. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t want to be here, anyway. When we’re told to go somewhere, we go. Any wife or girlfriend I’d have, would have to be OK with that.”
That was accompanied by a quick look. She wondered whether he was trying to tell her something.
Did he think she was applying for the position of girlfriend and wife?
Was she?
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tansy said, and gestured to the double doors on the other side of the conservatory they’d just entered. “Let’s go that way.”
The Leighton house was a mansion. JB had known they were wealthy, wealthy beyond imagining, but it hadn’t really sunk in all the way until he was walking around the yard taking it all in.
And calling it a yard didn’t do it justice. It was an estate. A freaking big one.
The entire small clapboard house he grew up in could have fit into the conservatory they’d passed through to get outside. And the conservatory was just one of twenty or twenty-five rooms in the house. And then there were the other buildings. A garage with six different bays, and a car in each, from an elegant black sedan—JB thought it might have been a Rolls Royce, or maybe a Bentley—to a baby blue Maserati convertible with TANSY on the vanity plate. It matched her eyes. Hard to say whether she’d gotten lucky with the standard color, or it was a custom paint job, mixed to match.
There was a pool, of course, with a pool house. He’d seen smaller pools in the Navy’s compound in Virginia, and smaller pool houses, too.
There were tennis courts, and a formal garden with edges that must have been trimmed with embroidery scissors and a ruler. There was a greenhouse, and a croquet lawn.
There was a gatehouse he’d seen on arrival, with a guard in it. Mick Callahan would have that part of the op under control, he assumed. And if he didn’t, Max would see to it that he did.
But Mick seemed competent. He’d been regular Navy back in the day, or so he’d told them when he greeted them at the front steps earlier. A young ensign during the first Gulf War in the early nineties, he’d put in his time, used the GI Bill to get an education, and had gone into private security for Walter Leighton. And was still here two decades later.
Although, JB had to admit, looking around, it was hard to imagine a nicer place to work. Mr. Leighton himself had seemed decent enough, and his concern for his daughter was to his credit.
And then, of course, there was Tansy.
He slanted her a sideways look. She looked perfectly at home here, wandering the shady paths in her designer dress and designer shoes—with high heels again—and her designer pooch skipping in front of her, with its tail wagging and its eyes bright.
It was a useless little ball of fluff, more hair than body, but he had to admit it was cute. Zero help in an emergency, of course, but it had sounded the alarm when the SEALs came into the office earlier, so maybe he could at least count on it to make noise if something happened. It wouldn’t be good for anything else.
A new guard had taken the place of the one who had been in the gatehouse when they arrived. A change in personnel was always a worry, and when the guy—young, in good shape, with his eyes hidden behind mirrored aviator glasses—came out of the gatehouse as they approached, JB tensed and put his hand on his weapon. In front of him, Mimi stopped in the middle of the path. She was almost all fur, so there was no way to tell whether the hair on the back of her neck stood up, but she rolled her tiny upper lip back to show her tiny Chiclet teeth as she made a sound like a very small handheld drill.
Yep, he could count on her to let him know when she didn’t like somebody.
“It’s all right, Mimi,” Tansy said with a laugh. “It’s just Conrad.”
Mimi clearly didn’t like ‘just Conrad,’ and looking at him, JB decided that he didn’t, either.
It wasn’t just that the guy was ridiculously good-looking, like an actor playing a security guard on TV. And it wasn’t that his teeth were straight and extremely white, and that he had more than the usual number of them.
No, it was those stupid aviator sunglasses, like he thought they made him look cool, and the fact that Mimi was making her high-pitched mini-drill growl.
Just Conrad didn’t seem to mind. He came out of the gatehouse and toward them with every gleaming tooth on display. And while JB couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses, he’d have bet his left nut that Just Conrad was doing his best to undress Tansy in his mind.
Mick Callahan had mentioned that he liked to hire former military for the Leighton security department. Just Conrad didn’t move like an operator, though. He had a swagger in his step like he knew he was hot shit, but it was more the overconfidence of a successful ladies man than someone who knew how to handle himself in a fight.
JB took a step forward, hand on his gun. And while he didn’t move far enough to bar Just Conrad’s path, the message was clear. Conrad shifted his attention from Tansy to JB and back. “What’s going on?”
His voice had a whiny undertone. Or maybe that was just in JB’s mind.
“This is John Walton,” Tansy began, with a look at him. She looked apologetic.
Whatever. JB gave Just Conrad a nod. No handshake. Conrad looked like the kind of guy who’d want to prove how strong he was, and JB wasn’t in the mood to crunch bones. Besides, Mimi was still growling. And anyone the dog didn’t like, JB wasn’t sure he liked, either.
“Stop it, Mimi,” Tansy said, scooping the dog up. Mimi continued her drill-bit routine from Tansy’s arms. “I’m sorry, Conrad. She’s a little upset today. There are a lot of new people around.”
“It’s all right.” Just Conrad dug in the pocket of his windbreaker and came up with some kind of small treat. He held it out to Mimi, who stopped growling. JB secretly hoped she’d lunge for Conrad’s hand, but no. Her tiny nose twitched and her eyes brightened.
Conrad waited patiently for her to take the morsel from his fingers. Once she had, he wiped his hand on his pants and asked, “What’s going on?”
While Tansy outlined the situation, JB watched Conrad. Shouldn’t the security guard already know about the note and the SEALs’ presence here? Or hadn’t Mick gotten around to briefing him?
If not, Mick wasn’t as on the ball as JB had thought he was. In this kind of situation, you didn’t put a guy on the gate who didn’t understand the threat level.
But maybe Conrad was just acting like he didn’t know what was going on. With the way he was hanging on every one of Tansy’s words—and the way her lips moved—maybe he already knew, but he was just taking the opportunity to hear it again. From her.
Hard to blame Conrad for that. JB liked listening to Tansy talk, too.
Except when she was talking to this jackass.
He cut into the monologue with a curt, “We should keep moving. It’s never a good idea to stand still in one spot too long.”
Tansy looked surprised and then thoughtful, while Conrad looked annoyed. He couldn’t show it, though, so he nodded sagely, like he knew exactly what JB was talking about.
“I’ll be on the gate,” he said, with a nod at Tansy that was supposed to make her believe she had nothing to worry about. Since he’d acted like he didn’t know jack shit about the threat until right this minute, JB wasn’t convinced. “I’m sure we’ll all sleep better tonight knowing that.”
He didn’t wait for Conrad’s answer, just took Tansy’s arm and turned her around. “Time to go.”
She allowed him to pull her away, although he did see her look over her shoulder and mouth a “Sorry,” to Conrad.