Trusting the Bodyguard. Kimberly Meter Van

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СКАЧАТЬ to slip on instead but she’d lost the right to rummage through his things with such familiarity, and so after putting a clean diaper on the baby and grabbing her bottle, she and Jenna went downstairs to face a man who was their only hope for survival.

      ARCHER’S THOUGHTS WERE in a twisted mess. Thank God for training to fall back on when faced with a crisis. He could thank the Corps for the foundation and the Bureau for the fine-tuning. Marissa was in his house. With a baby, no less.

      At first, his gut plummeted when he thought the kid might be hers. There was no sense in lying, he’d been relieved when she admitted the baby was her older sister’s. But the relief that followed filled him with misgivings.

      He shouldn’t care who or what Marissa had been up to since the day she cracked his heart in two and handed it to him impaled on a steak knife. As far as he was concerned she could get run down by a runaway taxicab and he wouldn’t shed a tear.

      So if that was the case, why did seeing her so visibly scared and physically roughed up fill him with such rage that he wanted to shoot something? Because it wouldn’t be right to walk away when she was clearly desperate. So they’ve got history. So what? That part of him was dead and long past capable of resurrection.

      She came down the stairs and, even though he tried hard not to notice, he couldn’t help but remember each gentle curve of her body and the lush breasts that seemed to fill his palm as perfectly as if they were made just for him. He deliberately cut away his stare, affecting a casual pose as he cracked open his beer and took a deep slug of the microbrew.

      She took a seat on the sofa, hugging the baby to her chest. The child yawned loudly and settled against Marissa. He wondered what kind of life the kid had been living with Mercedes for a mother. From what he remembered, Mercedes Vasquez had been the exotic type, with tastes that ran to the extreme, which explained the hookup with a known gangster.

      But that didn’t explain why Marissa was the one sitting in front of him looking as though she’d taken a nasty crack across the face, holding a baby that didn’t belong to her.

      “The cabin is just as I remembered it,” Marissa started, glancing away, as if she couldn’t stand to look him in the eye. “Except the yard. I don’t remember the weeds last time I was here.”

      “I’m not much of a gardener.” He placed his beer on the granite-topped coffee table with deliberate slowness, and then met her gaze. “What’s going on, Marissa? Why are you in trouble?”

      She swallowed. “Ruben killed my sister.”

      “Did you witness the crime?”

      “No, but I know he did it.”

      “How so?”

      Her mouth tightened but her eyes watered. “Because he swore he would kill her if she tried to keep Jenna from him. She’d just gotten a restraining order against him the day before I found her with a bullet in the back of her head.”

      “You found your sister’s body?”

      Her bottom lip trembled. “Yes. In her apartment.”

      Sympathy softened his voice. “I’m sorry. That’s rough. What happened next?”

      She drew a deep breath. “I called 911. They came and took Mercedes away and I called Ruben.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I needed him to think that I didn’t suspect him so I could get to Jenna. I knew he had her. There was no sign of Jenna in the apartment and her diaper bag was gone.”

      “So you went to Ruben’s house?”

      “More like a compound than a house,” she nearly spat, contempt pinching her supple mouth into a hard line. “Ruben lives like a king in the Oakland Hills. He may run East Side but he sure as hell doesn’t live there. I went to get Jenna. Even if he hadn’t killed Mercedes, he isn’t fit to raise a child.”

      “Wouldn’t that be for the courts to decide?” he asked, his mind quickly putting together the scenario and not liking the way it ended. She glared and tightened her arms around the baby protectively. He shrugged. “If he’s as bad as you say…”

      “He is and worse.”

      He let that slide for the moment. “Something tells me he didn’t just hand you his daughter.”

      “No.”

      “Is that how you got the busted lip?”

      She glanced away, self-conscious. “Not exactly.”

      “How exactly?”

      “One of Ruben’s cousins caught me as I was sneaking out of the nursery. He got in a lucky punch.”

      “How’d you manage to get away?” His frown deepened. “If this guy is as dangerous as you say he is, it’s likely his guards are armed. Am I right?”

      She drew a shuddering breath and nodded but she didn’t elaborate.

      “Marissa…”

      A red stain crept up her neck, spilling onto her cheeks and she refused to look at him. Something went down at that compound that she doesn’t want to share, he mused silently, concern and his innate need to know warring with the instinct to give her some money and send her on her way. He didn’t know this Ruben character but he was familiar with the Oaktown Boyz gang—a vicious street gang with ties to the Colombian drug trade, not a bunch of posers trying to look cool. They were the real deal and very dangerous.

      “Archer…I’m exhausted,” she said simply and looked to him to answer her unspoken plea. She must’ve known he wouldn’t refuse her shelter, if not his protection, and she was right. He wasn’t about to kick a defenseless woman and child out on the streets when they had nowhere to go, but she had to know also that he would do things his way, not hers.

      “You can take the spare bedroom,” he said, “but tomorrow I want the whole story, Marissa, not the Reader’s Digest version or else I place a phone call and the choice is taken out of your hands.”

      She hesitated, clearly displeased with the terms of his hospitality but sheer fatigue won out over her stubborn nature and for that he was secretly relieved. Marissa had never been one to capitulate easily, her pride being nearly as strong as her backbone. It’d been one of the things he’d loved about her—but also what had torn them apart. She gathered the baby close and headed for the stairs. As she reached the landing, she offered a stiff, yet grateful “Thank you” and then made her way up to her bedroom.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MARISSA ROSE EARLY just as she always did before her life took a catastrophic turn for the worse. While the baby still slept, Marissa went into the adjoining bathroom and quickly scrubbed her face and ran her finger over her teeth to freshen up as best as she could.

      Her hair, wavy and loose, looked untamed and messy but there was little she could do about that seeing as she’d busted out of Ruben’s place with nothing more than the baby’s diaper bag and a healthy dose of insanity and rage to keep her going. She’d been too afraid to pack anything for fear of Ruben getting suspicious. And she certainly couldn’t go back to her СКАЧАТЬ