“John!” Tansy slid from the horse and landed on her knees beside him. “John! Are you all right? Talk to me!”

That was hard to do when he couldn’t get his lungs to cooperate in drawing a breath. She was pretty, though, leaning over him, with all that fluffy, blond hair hanging down. He lifted a hand to touch a curl.

She sat back. “Oh, good. You’re alive.”

No thanks to the damn horse. He drew in a breath and—thankfully—his voice worked. “I thought you said she was placid.”

“Usually she is.” Tansy looked around, worriedly. The mare was nowhere to be seen. “Can you sit up?”

She reached for him.

“Of course.” JB pushed himself to a sitting position. The shoulder she’d broken last year complained, and he couldn’t hold back a wince.

“Oh, no,” Tansy said. “You’re hurt.”

“Don’t worry about it.” All it was, was bruising from the hard landing. He’d had enough broken bones to recognize the symptoms.

“What happened?” Tansy wanted to know.

JB moved his hand, slowly and carefully, to his pocket to dig for his phone. “Someone fired a shot. It spooked the horse.”

“A shot?” She was looking him over, checking for blood. “Were you hit?”

JB shook his head. “I don’t think the horse was, either. I think she ran because of the noise.”

“She would have made some noise of her own if she’d been shot,” Tansy said, pushing her hair back. “I’m glad you’re all right. I was worried when you didn’t get up.”

“You’re not supposed to worry about me. It’s my job to worry about you.”

“I don’t think worry is something you can designate like that,” Tansy said. And added, “What are you doing?”

“Looking for my phone so I can call Max. We have to get somebody out here to guard this entrance to the property. And I need a couple of people to look for that bullet. If we can find it, we can figure out where the shooter was standing when he fired, and then we might get lucky and find someone who saw him.”

“I think that kind of thing only happens in the movies,” Tansy said and got to her feet. “Do you need a hand?”

“No. I need my phone.” Which wasn’t in his pocket.

And now it came back to him. It had been in his hand when the horse took off. It must have gone flying when he grabbed for the reigns to stay on her back. “I think I dropped it back there.”

He flipped over on his knees, and from there, managed to get to his feet. Tansy watched him worriedly from a few feet away. “Are you all right?”

Every bone in his body hurt, but he didn’t think any of them were broken. “Yeah. I just need the phone.” And he needed for her to stay down and stay safe. “Lie down, OK? You’re harder to hit if you’re close to the ground.”

“This is a Roksanda Rosler silk dress,” Tansy protested. “It’ll get dirty.”

It was beautiful. And probably cost more than he got paid in a month. However— “Blood’s harder to get out. And a bullet hole tends to be permanent.”

She grumbled, but she crouched close to the ground. “How about this?”

“Better. Stay there.”

He turned to head up the path to search for his phone, but before he could, she spoke. “You told me that once before.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I remember. You said something. I didn’t ask you what it was, because I had other things to do.”

Like shoot the three terrorists who had kept her locked in that stateroom.

“I said ‘I’m not a damn dog,’” Tansy said. “You can’t just tell me to stay and expect me to sit here until you come back.”

“I’m just going to look for my phone. I need to call Max and get some people out here.”

“I have a phone.” She brandished it. “And Mick’s on speed dial. Why don’t you just sit down while I call him, since you’re the one who got hurt, and I’ll tell him what happened, and then he can bring Max out here, and anyone else you want, and then we go look for your phone?”

“How about you just do that while I go look for my phone?”

“How about you just stay here and protect me until we know I’m safe?”

She was already punching numbers on the phone. “Mick? Hi, it’s Tansy. We’ve had an incident.”

JB listened while she told Mick Callahan what had happened and where they were. She had a much better idea of that part than he did. “John lost his phone when the horse spooked. That’s why I’m calling instead of him. He wants people to look for the bullet, to figure out where the shooter was standing, and then go there. And he also wants someone out here all the time, to make sure someone doesn’t walk down the bridle path and up to the house.”

JB could hear Mick’s voice on the other end of the line. “No,” Tansy said with a glance at him, “I don’t think he’s hurt. He says he’s not.”

Mick said something else, and Tansy grinned. She was so pretty JB felt a little dizzy, although that might have been from hitting his head. “I’ll ask.” She lowered the phone. “He says you guys are used to stitching up your own bullet wounds and set your own broken bones. Are you sure you’re all right?”

JB nodded. “Fine. I took a hard landing, but nothing’s broken. And the bullet didn’t hit me.” If he had a concussion, it was a slight one. No need to mention it.

“He says he’s fine,” Tansy relayed to Mick. “He’ll need a ride back, though. Nellie took off.”

Mick responded, and then she disconnected the call. “They’re on their way. It’ll probably be about ten minutes.”

“Did we come that far?”

They hadn’t. “But they’re inside the house. It’ll take them a few minutes to get out and over to the garage and into a golf cart.”

“You have a golf course on the property?” She hadn’t shown him that. Did other people have access to it? That could be a problem.

She shook her head. “There’s a lot of land, but not enough for eighteen holes. The golf carts just make it easy to get around.”

JB nodded. He had subsided onto the ground again, since what she’d said made sense. He shouldn’t leave her alone. Better to wait for the golf cart with Mick and Max, and then go looking for his phone.

“Any idea what happened?” Tansy asked.

“Beyond the obvious? No. Someone fired a rifle. It was loud. The horse took off. I fell.”

“I’m sure you would have been able to stay on if Nellie had been a camel,” Tansy said loyally. After a second she added, “They didn’t fire again.”

JB shook his head. “I’m not even sure they were firing at us. It could have been a coincidence. But it isn’t hunting season, so I don’t know why anyone would be out here with a rifle.”

Especially in this neighborhood. Where he’d grown up, that would have been a different story. Lots of guns up in the Appalachian Mountains. Lots of opossum stew, too. There was no season on opossum.

He didn’t mention that to Tansy. “Can you think of anyone who’d have a legitimate reason to be running around out here with a gun?”

“Other than you guys, and Mick’s crew?” She shook her head. “This is public property. But it’s pretty private, even so. There are very few ways into it if not through one of the estates. And there’s a riding school a few miles away that backs up to it, so they use the bridle paths.”

“But no gun range.”

“I think the neighbors have an archery range,” Tansy offered. “They had an Olympian in the family back in the nineteen-sixties or –seventies. But those are bows and arrows. Not guns.”

This hadn’t been a bow and arrow. JB recognized a rifle shot when he heard one.

He rolled his shoulders to try to ease away some of the stiffness, and Tansy said, “I’m sorry I hit you.” He looked at her, and she added, “Back then. On the boat.”

Oh. “No big deal. It healed.”

She winced. “What did I do?”

“Broke my collarbone. It’s no problem. Good as new.” He rolled his shoulder again to show her, and ignored the pain the best he could.

She looked wretched. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ve had worse. And you were protecting yourself. I understand.”

“I didn’t know who you were,” Tansy said.

“I know. You thought it was one of the hijackers. You thought he might want to hurt you. So you hurt him first. It was pretty damn impressive, to tell you the truth.”

She looked a little less wretched when he said that, so he continued. “Most women in your position would have been curled up in a fetal position on the bed. You made a plan and waited to carry it out. In a bikini. In the middle of the night. Not everyone would have kept their head the way you did. It wasn’t your fault that you got the wrong guy.”

She looked wretched again. “I could have killed you.”

“If it had been one of the hijackers, you probably would have.” Since they wouldn’t have moved away at the last second, the way he did, and she would have gotten them in the back of the head instead of the shoulder. “You did good. More than good. If we hadn’t been there, and it had been one of the hijackers, you wouldn’t have needed us. You would have saved yourself.”

“We were a long way from shore,” Tansy said. “And I didn’t know which direction to swim. I would have drowned.”

“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t have to.”

She didn’t say anything, and he added, “It’s fine. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve broken bones. You’d be surprised how many guys develop stress fractures during Hell Week.”

She looked intrigued. “What’s Hell Week?”

“The worst part of BUD/S training.”

She opened her mouth, and he continued before she could ask. “Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. Six months at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, California. Near San Diego. After I finished my two tours on the sub and applied for the SEALs, I was sent there. To BUD/S training. Hell Week comes just a few weeks in, to weed out anyone who isn’t going to make it sooner rather than later.”

“Tough?”

JB crooked a smile. “You can say that. Five-and-a-half days of cold, and wet, and brutally difficult training on less than four hours of sleep. With people yelling at you. Stress fractures are common.”

“And you got one?”

“Ankle bone. Max and Rusty had to carry me through part of it.”

Her eyebrows rose. “And you made it into the SEALs anyway?”

“It’s not about being the strongest,” JB said. “Or the fastest, or even the toughest. It’s about teamwork. And not giving up.”

He could tell she didn’t understand, so he continued. “When I couldn’t pull my weight, the others pulled it for me. I could have rung out—there’s a bell you ring to signal that you want to give up—but that would have meant letting Max and Rusty down. If I quit, they might have quit. So we all did what we had to do to get everybody through.”

“With a broken ankle.”

JB shrugged. “I’d had broken bones before.”

“Did you do sports in school?”

She looked so sweet sitting there, and so interested in hearing what he had to say, that he hated to burst her happy little bubble. But at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to lie. “My dad used to knock me around.”

He got to his feet at the sound of an approaching vehicle, and pulled his gun. “Hopefully this is them.”

But if it wasn’t, he was ready to take out anyone who threatened Tansy.

---

The golf cart with Mick and Max in it came to a stop a few feet away, and Mick got out. So did Max. His first concerned look was for his teammate, while Mick turned to Tansy. “Everything all right here?”

She nodded, and took the hand he offered to get to her feet. “It was just one shot. I don’t think it came anywhere near us. Nobody was hit. But John was thrown off the horse.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Mick said, but not without a look in John’s direction. The two SEALs had their heads together and were talking softly. Tansy couldn’t hear what they were saying.

John had said they’d started out together, in SEAL training. But now Max was a lieutenant and John was a Petty Officer. How had that happened?

“Max is a mustang,” Mick told her, and Tansy realized she’d wondered out loud.

“Mustang?” The only image that came to mind was a wild horse. It must be another Navy term, and one she hadn’t come across yet.

“An enlisted man who goes to officer school. Suddenly you have to call your old buddy ‘sir.’” Mick grinned.

It didn’t look like anyone was calling anyone else ‘sir’ at the moment. Max looked worried, and not like he was playing boss and employee at all. John kept nodding, though, and eventually Max relaxed. They both turned back to her. And to Mick.

“With your permission,” Max said to Mick, “I’m gonna call in a few more of our guys. Get some boots on the ground out here. See if we can figure out where that bullet went, and where it came from.”

Mick nodded.

“And I’d like to put someone on the back gate. It can be one of your boys or one of ours.”

Tansy tried to imagine Conrad standing out here in the woods, guarding the back gate. Her mind boggled.

“The more of your boys are around,” Mick said, “the safer I think we’ll be.”

Max nodded. “I’ll get a couple of guys out. Most of them are just sitting around the hotel anyway.” He gestured to the golf cart. “Let’s get back to the house.”

“I rode Stella out here,” Tansy began, pointing to the mare grazing at the side of the path.

“Sure,” John said. “That’s just what we need. All of us in the golf cart, and you on horseback, like a freaking target, for someone to take a potshot at.”

“I’ll ride the horse,” Mick said.

Max shook his head. “Tie her to the cart. We’ll go slow. I’m not putting anybody up there for target practice.” He glanced at Tansy. “And no more horseback riding until this is over. You’re too exposed on top of a horse.”

She grimaced. “Fine. Make sure Stella can keep up.”

“I’m just going to go look for my phone,” John said, and headed up the path. Tansy watched him even as she managed to keep an eye on Mick as he hitched Stella to the back of the golf cart.

He stepped back. “We’re ready. Climb in the back, Ms. Leighton.”

Tansy climbed into the back of the golf cart and made sure Stella was securely tied to the rear. Not that she really had to worry. The horses had a pretty good idea where they were and how to get home from here. Nellie was probably back at the stables already.

“Did you see Nellie?” she asked Mick as he fitted his stocky frame behind the wheel.

Her dad’s chief of security glanced at her over his shoulder. “We saw her grazing in one of the back pastures. We didn’t take the time to stop and check on her. But she looked all right.”

He moved the cart forward, toward where John was wandering with his hands in his pockets and his head bent, looking for his phone.

Tansy poked Max’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “Is he all right?”

He gave her a surprised look over his shoulder. Surprised that she’d talk to him, or that she’d care enough to ask? Or maybe surprise that she’d even consider the possibility that he wasn’t? “Sure. He’s fine. We’ve all taken harder knocks than that.”

Good to know. “I don’t want him to get hurt again. I hit him with a Chinese paperweight last time we met.”

Max nodded. “Just keep him off horses from now on. He doesn’t have much experience with them.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Tansy wanted to know.

“Because you wanted to ride,” Max answered. “Here’s the thing, Ms. Leighton. It’s JB’s job to make sure nothing happens to you. That means, where you go, he goes. If you want to ride a horse, he’ll ride with you. If you decide to walk down Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, he’ll be right next to you. And if someone shoots at you, he’ll be in front of you. And he’ll take the bullet for you. Because that’s the job he’s here to do.”

The job she had asked him to do. Because he’d made her feel safe last year. And because she’d wanted an excuse to see him again.

If something happened to him, it would be her fault.

“I’m not feeling so good about this,” Tansy said.

Max gave her a buck-up sort of pat on the shoulder. “Just be careful where you go and what you do. And keep him away from the horses.”

Tansy nodded, and watched as John bent over—the khakis stretched nicely across his butt—and picked up his phone. With it in hand, he came toward the golf cart, and Tansy moved over to make room for him on the seat next to her.