Scotland for Christmas. Cathryn Parry

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СКАЧАТЬ for his whole life. He’d been almost twelve when it had happened—just a kid—and nobody had talked much about it to him.

      Until now, he’d been discouraged from asking questions. He just wished that his future didn’t rest on his ability to dig up answers from a reclusive Scotsman.

      Beside him, Eddie cleared his throat. Jacob had forgotten he’d been listening in. Had forgotten he was standing there with a phone in his hand while he stared into space, lost in the past, furious and not knowing what to do about it.

      But he owed Lee an answer.

      “Jake,” Lee said quietly into his ear, “if you want the job, it’s yours. But only if you feel you can give Isabel Sage the professional security she deserves. Sage works with my firm because he trusts me. He knows I hire only the best. You’ve got to promise me you can handle the assignment—to guard and protect her—with the professionalism you were trained to do. I’m exposing myself here, big-time, but I don’t need to tell you that. You know where I’m coming from. You know what I owe you.”

      “Yeah,” Jacob said. He did know. He got what a favor this was to him, but Lee also knew he could trust Jacob with his business. Hell, he’d trusted him with his life.

      “Discretion,” Lee repeated. “Confidentiality. Professionalism. Remember those things and you’ll be fine.”

      “You don’t have to tell me. I live discretion and professionalism.”

      It was all Jacob knew how to do. He never said a word about the people on his jobs. Ever.

      And if he wanted to continue on the path of doing what he was meant to do, to the ultimate prize of being allowed to guard the most important and most defensively vulnerable people in the country, then he needed to have a conversation with John Sage.

      Just one hour would be enough. Whatever reservations Jacob felt about the man or his family members—he needed to put it aside in favor of his future.

      The past is over, as his mother had so often said when he’d asked questions. It’s what’s in front of you that counts.

      Well, that was what he was concentrating on now—what was in front of him. That was what this upcoming weekend would be about, despite the lousy choice that it was. But the choice to bail on the opportunity was even worse.

      “I’ll do it,” he said to Lee. “I’ll guard Isabel Sage. Thanks for setting this up. I mean it.”

      As he hung up, he felt Eddie’s gaze on him. Jacob sighed. “Do you want to go with me?”

      “I wish I could. But Donna wouldn’t be happy if I left her and Alden for another work weekend.”

      Jacob nodded, thinking of Eddie’s four-month-old son. “You’re right.”

      “So you’ll be alone this time,” Eddie remarked, hunching deeper into his jacket. “There’ll be no team behind you to back you up. That’ll be different.”

      Jacob considered that. Secret Service protective details were huge and complex. Whenever they did bodyguard assignments for a visiting head of state or a foreign dignitary, they worked in large, interconnected teams, with command posts, operation centers, motorcade service. One-on-one coverage was unheard of. “Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that.”

      “Are you gonna be all right with this?” Eddie asked.

      Jacob shoved his phone into his pocket. “Two days ago, we were responsible for escorting a murdering dictator—sorry, a member head of state—safely from the U.N. to his five-star hotel and back, and I did it without so much as looking cross-eyed at him. It’s a job, Eddie.”

      “Yeah, but it’s also personal this time, Jake.”

      A gust of wind sent some dead oak leaves skittering across the sidewalk. That, and the now-driving rain, soaking his bare head, seemed to slam into him personally.

      “Why don’t you come in and finish dinner with us,” Eddie said. “We’ll talk about it. Sherry’s not bad. She’s just—”

      “No,” Jacob interrupted. “Thanks. But I need to prepare for this job.”

      He didn’t stick around to discuss it with Eddie any longer. But while Jacob jogged the few short blocks uptown to his apartment building, folded newspaper over his head, service weapon and badge at his hip, he couldn’t help deliberating on Eddie’s question.

       Are you gonna be all right with this?

      Of course. He had to be.

      Even if Isabel Sage was as privileged and entitled as he assumed she was—the niece of a billionaire industrialist—he would never react to anything she said or did. Guarding people was his business, and he was damn good at it. He couldn’t let it matter that she was related to the family that had been involved with his father’s death.

      Besides, his job didn’t affect him emotionally. Just as his father’s death didn’t.

      As soon as he had the operational details for the psychologist, she would see that, and all would be well. He would soon be on his way to D.C.

      * * *

      JUST ONE MORE year and then you’ll be happy.

      Those were the words Isabel Sage had written on the corner of a notebook. Old graffiti, scribbled last winter during a study session while a sad song played on her internet radio.

      Outside Isabel’s window, three stories above the pavement, the city’s shop windows displayed the beginnings of winter decorations. In six more weeks came the Christmas break and the end of her term.

      She’d been privileged to be here—a Scottish woman from the Highlands, living in the biggest city in America and studying international finance with the savviest people on Wall Street—though, to be honest, she’d been shocked by how lonely she’d felt.

      Sighing, Isabel watched a queue of yellow taxicabs snake down Broadway, toward the route she knew led to the airport. Really, she was most looking forward to that day when she could fly home.

      Isabel pulled off her earphones and turned away from the window to her case still open on her bed, and tossed inside a bra, some pants—underpants here, she reminded herself—and then added the dress she would wear to her cousin’s wedding reception.

      Somehow, not even the promise of a weekend respite was raising her spirits, because at the end of the day, there was no escaping the fact that she would be attending a wedding without Alex, her longtime boyfriend. Which didn’t exactly ease her loneliness.

      Another part of the problem, she reflected as she tossed in her cosmetics bag, was that the groom at the wedding was her cousin, Malcolm, her competitor for the job at home—the reason she was here, studying in New York. Malcolm—her uncle’s favorite—had a leg up on her. Now he was even getting married at a pretty inn—or so they said, though she hadn’t the heart to look it up online—in Vermont.

      Like Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, she supposed. Her late father had enjoyed that old romantic film very much. But her father had died long ago. Her boyfriend was thousands of miles away in Scotland, on assignment СКАЧАТЬ