Chapter Nine
Jody was glad to have a bodyguard. She really was — especially one with dark, flashing eyes, slabs of muscle, and the kind of rugged looks that helped distract her from the fact that someone wanted her dead. But a bodyguard who insisted on stalking around every corner like a predator did seem a bit over the top.
Of course, the man had started out as her potential killer, and part of her still struggled with that. But a far greater part of her trusted him, as crazy as that seemed. Bone deep, she knew he meant her no harm. She slung her bag over her shoulder and followed Cruz closely.
“Do you really think this is necessary?”
“You wanted a bodyguard? You got one,” he said without glancing back.
When she’d first announced the idea, she’d surprised herself as much as him. Once again, she hadn’t exactly thought things out. Should they discuss terms? Payment? God, could she even afford his fee, whatever it was? She doubted it. And damn, she really ought to ask, because she’d learned the hard way about verbal agreements.
Or maybe not, because she didn’t want to talk business with Cruz. She didn’t want to be his client. She wanted to be his…his…
She got stuck there. What did she want to be? His friend? His future one-night stand? More?
She caught herself staring at the stacks of muscle on his shoulders and gulped. Maybe she ought to stick to client, after all.
“Do we really have to snoop around like this?” she asked as he peered into the condo’s foyer, holding up his fist in some kind of sign. Mr. Military on high alert.
She placed her hand on his shoulder. Big mistake, because she nearly started kneading the muscle and purring to herself.
“Do you want to be shot at again? Let’s go.”
He hurried her across the parking lot and into the car. Before she even had her seat belt buckled, he gunned the engine and took off.
“Whoa, Nelly,” she murmured, hanging on to the door. Maybe the previous night wasn’t an exception. Maybe Cruz always drove like a maniac.
She crossed her arms and watched scrubby bushes and a row of condos blur past. A minute later, she opened her mouth in spite of herself. “How exactly did you get into bodyguarding?”
He turned and shot her a look that matched his tone. “It all started at this party at a fancy club…”
She swatted his arm. “I mean, how did you start in the business?”
He sighed. “Do you really want to know?”
Yes, she did. She wanted to learn everything about this fascinating man. This assassin-protector. This contradiction on two feet.
“I do. Really,” she whispered.
For a moment, his eyes softened, and the electrons zipping back and forth between their bodies strained even harder, trying to draw them closer. Then Cruz blinked, leaned back, and grunted one of his not-quite-replies.
“How did you get into surfing?”
The question was meant to shut her up, she figured, but heck, she’d be happy to talk about that all day.
“My dad got us started — my sisters and me. He was a pro surfer for a while. His parents surfed, too. Did you ever see those old movies where women balance on men’s shoulders while they surf?” She laughed out loud. “My grandparents did that. So I pretty much grew up with surfing.” She waved toward the ocean as they raced along. “I’ve always loved it, and I thought it would make a great job. Making your own hours. Being out in the sun, in the water, riding the waves. And when you catch the perfect ride…” She closed her eyes, imagining herself inside the barrel of a breaking wave. The roar of the water, the drop in temperature in that gravity-defying pocket of air. The feeling of harnessing one of nature’s greatest powers. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and finished the thought. “It’s a job, but it’s not a job.”
She braced herself for the lecture that was sure to follow. How much of a job is number eleven on the women’s tour? When are you going to earn real money? Her father never said that, but just about everyone else did.
Cruz remained silent, digesting her words for the next half mile before he finally replied.
“I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get?
He motioned back the way they’d come. “That asshole — Richard, I mean.”
Oh, she knew who he meant, all right.
“Why do you work for him?” Cruz finished.
Jody frowned. Because I didn’t listen to my father?
She tried the kind of answer most people could understand. “There’s a thing called money, Cruz. Maybe you don’t have to worry about it on that fancy estate of yours—”
“It’s not my estate,” he cut in. “And believe me, I know about money. I know about hard work. What I don’t get is selling yourself out.”
She choked on her next words, then jabbed a finger at the steering wheel. “Pull over. Stop. Stop the car right now.”
He threw a hand up in a placating gesture, but she wasn’t having any of that.
“Stop the car,” she ordered.
For an agonizingly long second, she wondered if he would ignore her, but to his credit, he turned into the next pullout.
“Whoa. Hang on,” he protested.
She was that close to jumping out of the car and slamming the door, but she didn’t. Not yet, anyway.
“I am not selling out,” she hissed, staring at her reflection in the vanity mirror of the visor. “I am not selling out.”
“No? Then why agree to modeling if you dislike it so much?”
She crossed her arms. He would never understand. “Maybe I want to get rich.”
He looked at her — really looked at her, like no one at the party had bothered to do — then snorted. “Liar.”
She nearly smiled at the conviction in his voice. It felt good to have someone believe in her, even if that was a man she barely knew.
“Maybe I want to be famous,” she said, testing him.
He cut the engine and turned to her. “If you wanted to be famous, you already would be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He flapped a hand. “I’ve seen how some women market themselves with their own YouTube channels and stuff. You could sell those ‘assets’ of yours.”
“Assets?” she protested, shrill as an angry cat.
Cruz threw his hands up. “Your word, not mine.”
She made a face. Damn. She’d have to be more careful what she said around him.
“I bet you get lots of offers,” he went on.
She rubbed her hands over the scar on her leg. Actually, she did. Ever since she was fifteen — regardless of the scars. But her dad had protected her from preying agents and made sure she kept her head screwed on right.
You don’t need them, her dad had warned her. They take all the pureness out of the sport. The fun.
How right he was. Representing products she didn’t believe in wasn’t any fun. The Elements fragrance line had engaged a prominent photographer for this gig — a man who’d shot several Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. But, damn. She’d always had a different image of how she might make it into the pages of that magazine.
“I know how it goes.” Cruz’s voice grew chilly. “If you have the looks, you can get rich and famous for nothing more than notoriety. But you don’t strike me as the kind of person who wants that.”
She stared at the sunlight sparkling off the waves. Some of her closest friends didn’t know her as well as Cruz.
“So why do you do it?” he asked, more softly this time.
She ran her fists over her thighs, deliberating whether to tell him. She hadn’t even explained to her father, for goodness’ sake. Which might have been why she ended up telling Cruz, just to get it all off her chest.
“My family needs the money.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“My dad…” she started then trailed off. This wasn’t just her secret. It was her father’s, too. Should she really share that with Cruz?
If Cruz had pushed and prodded and insisted, she might have clammed up. But he just sat there, letting her tell as much — or as little — of her story as she was comfortable with.
“My dad is my main sponsor — well, the surf shop is. That way, I can compete on the tour without being trapped in too many contracts. Even back in his day, my dad hated how commercial the pro tour was becoming, and now it’s even worse. Especially the women’s tour, where some of the sponsors don’t see us as athletes — more like so much tits and ass. I’ve even heard a couple admit as much — off-camera, of course.” She scowled, remembering the first time she’d discovered how right her father was. “Having my dad’s business sponsor me is a win-win, because it really has brought attention to his shop.”
So what’s the problem? Cruz’s furrowed brow implied.
“The problem is, he’s gained enough attention for bigger operations to want to buy him out. They have the money to buy the place out from under him, too. He’s been holding out, and I thought everything was okay, but I just found out he mortgaged the business.”
“Your dad has a problem he never told you about?”
She made a face. No, her dad didn’t have an addiction or owe money to a loan shark or anything like that. “Problem? Yeah, he has a problem. He loves us too much.”
Now Cruz really looked confused.
“He sponsored me so I could surf on my terms and make the most of my chance, in part because he couldn’t make the most of his chance, back in the day.”
“Why couldn’t he?”
She couldn’t resist a smile, because the story always lit her up inside. “He quit the pro tour after he met my mom and my sister and me. When I was little, I mean. My mom was a single mother with two young kids. But one day, my mother and Ross met on a bridge. So technically, he’s my stepdad, but he’s always been just Dad to me.” Now she was beaming, because she loved imagining the scene, though she only had the vaguest memories of that day. “My mom’s car broke down in the middle of the bridge, and no one stopped to help her. No one. She was stuck with the two of us crying in the back, but then my dad came along.” She chuckled. “He always says it was destiny.”
“Destiny…” Cruz’s face grew serious. Deadly serious.
Jody nodded. “And my mom always said it was love at first sight.”
Most men rolled their eyes at that, but Cruz just studied her with his lips drawn in a tight line.
“His pickup wasn’t much better than our car, but he towed us home — my mom couldn’t even afford tow insurance — and, well… The rest was history. They fell in love, got married, and he adopted my sister and me. He quit the pro tour and opened his shop to help make ends meet. And it worked. We went from barely getting by to doing okay.” Jody took a deep breath. Before long, she’d be telling poor Cruz about every bedtime story her dad had ever told her. How he’d wiped her tears when her mother died of leukemia, and how he’d quietly shed his own before picking up the pieces and managing to keep them going through all that.
“These were my mom’s,” she whispered, showing him her bracelets. Each was a flat, quarter-inch titanium bangle etched with a geometric design — a family heirloom her father’s aunt Tilda had given to her mom on her wedding day. “She had six, and we each got two. I never take them off.”
Cruz sat motionless, looking at her.
She cleared her throat. “Anyway, my sisters and I grew up working in the shop.”
“Sister or sisters?”
“Sisters. I have an older sister and a younger sister — my mom and dad had her two years after they got married. My older sister still works in the shop.”
So what’s the problem? Cruz didn’t quite ask, though it was written all over his face.
“My older sister and her husband have been trying to have kids for years, and they’re running out of options. Mike is a welder, but he just started out, and the treatment they’re trying is expensive. So my dad mortgaged the shop to loan them money. Not that he told us about the mortgage part, of course.” She’d tried to be annoyed at her father for that, but she’d never really succeeded. “Like I said, my dad loves us too much. He’s put his business on the line for both of us. Now, the property tax on the shop is going up, and he’s left himself without any leeway to meet the difference. So I figured I would accept this one contract just this one time and take care of it all.”
“Why you?”
She stared at him. “Why not me? All my life, my dad has made sacrifices for us. It’s about time I make a sacrifice for him and help my sister at the same time. Maybe you see that as selling out, but I don’t.”
A truck rushed by on the road, buffeting the sports car with its drag, but Cruz didn’t blink. He just watched her like a new species he’d never encountered before.
“That’s not selling out,” he whispered.
Jody exhaled. Funny, how good it felt to have someone else say that. She tipped her head back to the perfect blue sky. A java finch fluttered past in a blue and gray blur, and she smiled.
“Beautiful,” she murmured. “Look — that bird is beautiful. Maui is beautiful. Life can be beautiful if you just concentrate on the right things.” Her parents had taught her that.
Cruz, though, was looking in the side mirror, watching clouds gather over the jagged mountain peaks. “Sometimes life is beautiful. Sometimes it sucks.”
She was tempted to smack his arm for ruining the moment, but his eyes were focused somewhere far, far away, and the corners of his mouth turned down. Then all she wanted was to cup his cheek and ask him what he had done or seen — or lost — to feel that way.
“Sometimes it sucks,” she agreed. “But mostly, it’s beautiful. I picture my sister holding a baby, and I know how precious it would be to her. And even better — I picture her handing her baby to my dad, and how over the moon he would be. And that is beautiful.”
Cruz looked over, his eyes shining with pinpoints of — hope? Denial?
“Seriously?” he asked. “Bringing a baby into a world as messed up as this is beautiful?
She nodded firmly. “Beautiful. Now repeat after me, Mr. Cruz Khala. Life is beautiful. Love is beautiful. You just have to believe.”
One side of his mouth went up while the other went down. “Believe, huh?”
The word sounded foreign, as if he was just learning it. Or trying to, anyway.
“Yep. You ever try that before?” She meant it as a tease, but the longer she looked into his eyes, the more serious the moment felt. The more time slowed down. And the more she wondered if this was how her mother had felt the day she’d met Ross Monroe on that bridge.
Cruz shook his head slowly. “No. Not for a while, at least.”
“Maybe you should,” she whispered so as not to jar herself out of the magical, mystical feeling of the moment.
Cruz’s chest rose and fell with each deep breath, and his voice was a low rumble. “Maybe I should.”