Safe by His Side. Linda Conrad

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      Ethan worked into the night, setting up the intercom system between Ashley’s bedroom and the guest room located two doors away. With the over-the-phone assistance of the security-alarm firm, he’d reset the alarms on all four zones. Tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. the company was sending a team to rekey the doors and adding an additional security man to guard the front gate.

      Ethan’s job description called for him to stick with Ashley. But he was smart enough to know that even children needed a little space. He remembered from his presidential duty that having ever-present security hovering over your shoulder could be just as stressful as a stalker. So he had come up with the idea of moving the previously unused baby-intercom system from Melissa’s master suite bedroom into the guest room where he would be spending nights.

      When he plugged in the last of the wires, the first thing Ethan heard over the line was Blythe tucking Ashley into bed. He couldn’t make out the girl’s words, but Blythe spoke in soft, soothing tones. It surprised him when her husky, low whispers seemed to wrap around his body like a lover’s thighs. His skin buzzed with physical awareness and he caught the brunt of shocked awakening straight in his groin. Hell. Where did that come from?

      Leaning back in the guest room’s overstuffed chair, he fought his response by closing his eyes and keeping one ear out for any trouble. A few reminders of the job he hadn’t been all that happy to take in the first place ought to do the trick and bring his body back under control.

      Blythe was reassuring Ashley. “We’re safe and your mother is getting the best care,” she told the child. “You have two more days left until shooting ends for the season. You know what your mother expects. Nothing’s happened tonight that should change that.”

      “But, Blythe—”

      “Nuh-uh, honey. It’s not time to goof off yet. We’ll get a few days free while we’re on tour this summer, I promise.”

      “But I want to spend tomorrow with Mama before we have to leave town.”

      Blythe tried to convince the little girl that her mother would rather Ashley do her job and live up to her obligations. But the quiet words bothered Ethan. Obligations at seven years old?

      At Ashley’s continued objections, Blythe’s tone began changing from soothing and sexy to stern. It made Ethan think back to times when his own mother had tried convincing him to keep on working at whatever summer job or afterschool chore his father had forced on him at the time. But it was his father’s words from those long-ago days that still rang over and over in his ears all these years later.

      “You’re a worthless bum,” Brody Ryan used to tell him. “You’ll never amount to a dime.”

      Thinking back on it now, Ethan had seemed determined to prove his old man right. Before his mother died, he would cut school, get drunk and drive his pickup wildly through the countryside shooting up road signs with a rifle. He’d even dabbled in black witchcraft and tried dope. Anything and everything his father might consider trouble.

      But after his mother died in that plane crash, all Ethan could remember being was angry. Mad at his mother for leaving and furious at his father for caring more about the ranch and money than he did for his children.

      The last thread to Ethan’s wild childhood had been cut about six months after his mother’s death when his father packed up their beloved grandmother, Abuela Lupe, and carted her off to his maternal family’s ancestral home in Mexico. Lupe’s mother, his great-grandmother—the black witch of Veracruz—had promptly cursed the entire family in her anger over the mistreatment of her daughter. And the curse had taken hold. Brody Ryan would have no grandchild. Ethan, his brother and sister would all be sterile from that day forward.

      Ethan hadn’t really paid much attention to the family curse. His whole life had felt as though it were cursed anyway. What did it matter to him if he couldn’t have children? Great. One less worry to slow him down on his way to the freedom of adult life.

      When Blythe’s raised voice came irritably through the intercom, Ethan focused back on the present. “Enough now, Ash,” she said. “You are going to work in the morning as usual, and we will be leaving on schedule for the tour. Period. Now go to sleep.”

      Ethan shifted in the chair and kicked off his boots, listening as Blythe could be heard checking the child’s windows and shutting the hall door on her way out. The woman was simply too serious and demanding to be a child’s guardian. Her tone had ended up sounding more like a drill sergeant’s. The fact was, Ashley probably deserved a day off after tonight’s excitement. Give the poor little kid a break. Her mother was dying, after all.

      Annoyed with Blythe again, and with himself for having inappropriate physical reactions to someone he had to work with, he began wondering about Blythe’s background and how she’d ended up here. Ethan settled in to wait until the rest of the house went quiet for the night. Until he could recheck the perimeters and triple-check all the alarms. There wouldn’t be much sleep for him tonight, but he didn’t require much.

      As he waited, he decided to review the file on Blythe Cooper that Maggie had sent along with the files on Ashley and Melissa Davis. Ethan’s new sister-in-law, Clare, was a real geek when it came to ferreting out background info. She’d been a reporter before she and her son had gone on the run from her ex, and maybe that explained her excellent instincts when it came to digging up important intel. Ethan rather liked his brother’s wife and was glad to have Clare both in the family and at work in their new security business.

      He opened the report on Blythe and thumbed through the pages he’d only skimmed on the plane ride out here. Blythe Cooper, age twenty-seven, had been raised in a college town in South Carolina by her mother and father, both college professors. Her older brother was one of those child-prodigy geniuses who’d graduated from college at age seventeen and had gone on to do physics research and now drew exterior designs for NASA. Blythe’s younger sister also had a high IQ, but her main interest seemed to be winning beauty pageants. Currently, the sister was Miss South Carolina and headed for the Miss U.S.A. pageant.

      Quite the family tree for a plain Jane like Ms. Cooper.

      Blythe herself had graduated from college, but at a more sedate pace. She’d earned a master’s degree afterward in education, had taught elementary school and managed to win a Teacher of the Year award before quitting and coming to California to become Ashley’s tutor a couple of years СКАЧАТЬ