The Protectors. Beverly Barton

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      Damn him! Damn him for having the same dizzying effect on her he’d always had. Eleven years hadn’t changed the way she wanted him. If she thought she would be immune to Ashe’s charms, then she’d been a total fool. If she wasn’t careful, she’d wind up falling in love with him all over again.

      She couldn’t let that happen. And she couldn’t allow Ashe to find out that Allen was his son.

      Deborah walked down the hall, stopping in the doorway to Allen’s bedroom. Ashe and Allen sat on the bed, Huckleberry curled up beside them, his head resting on a pillow. A lump formed in Deborah’s throat.

      Please, dear Lord. Don’t let anyone else notice what I see so plainly—the similarities in boy and man.

      “How long were you a Green Beret?” Allen asked.

      “Ten years.”

      “Wow, I’ll bet that’s one exciting job, huh? Did you ever kill anybody?”

      Deborah almost cried out, not wanting Ashe to discuss his life in the special forces with their ten-year-old son. She bit her lip and remained silent, waiting for Ashe’s reply.

      “Yes, Allen, I’ve killed. But it isn’t something I like to talk about. It was my job to get rid of the bad guys, but killing is never easy.”

      “That’s what you’re here in Sheffield to do, isn’t it?” Allen asked. “You’re here to protect Deborah against the bad guys, and if you have to, you’ll kill them, won’t you?”

      “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Ashe said. “But, yes, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Deborah safe.”

      “How long have you been a bodyguard?”

      “I started working for Sam Dundee last year, right after I left the army.”

      “Why’d you leave the Green Berets?”

      Deborah cleared her throat, stepped inside Allen’s room and gave him a censuring stare. “I think you’ve asked Ashe enough questions for one night. Save a few for later.”

      “Ah, Deborah, can’t he stay just a little while longer?” Allen whined in a typical childlike manner. “I was going to ask him about the two of you when you were kids.” Allen turned his attention to Ashe. “Did you ever kiss Deborah when you two were teenagers?”

      “Allen!” Deborah scolded, her voice harsher than she had intended.

      “Yes, I kissed Deborah.” Ashe watched her closely, noting that she wouldn’t look at him, that she had balled her hands into fists and held them rigidly at her hips.

      “I knew it! I knew it!” Allen bounced up and down on the bed. “You two were a thing, weren’t you?”

      “No, Allen.” Deborah trembled inside, and prayed the shivers racing through her body didn’t materialize externally. “Stop jumping up and down on the bed.”

      “You sure are being a grouch.” Settling back down on the side of the bed, Allen glanced back and forth from Deborah to Ashe. “What’s the big secret about you two being an item when you were teenagers? Is it a big deal that Ashe was your boyfriend?”

      “We’ve told you that Ashe wasn’t my boyfriend,” Deborah said. No, he’d never been her boyfriend, just her lover for one night. One night that had changed her life forever. “We were friends.”

      “Then why did he kiss you?” Allen asked.

      Deborah looked to Ashe, her gaze pleading with him, then she glanced away quickly. “Sometimes an occasion arises when a friend might kiss another friend,” Deborah said.

      The look on Allen’s face plainly said he didn’t believe a word of it.

      “Deborah and I were friends all our lives,” Ashe explained. “Then not long before I left Sheffield, we thought we could be more than friends. That’s when I kissed her. But it didn’t work out. So you see, Allen, your sister was never actually my girlfriend.”

      “Do you have a girlfriend now?”

      “Allen!” Rolling her eyes heavenward, Deborah shook her head in defeat. “Enough questions for one night.”

      Ashe laughed. “I remember being the same way when I was his age. I used to drive Mama Mattie nuts asking her so many questions. I guess it’s the age. The whole world is a mystery when you’re ten.”

      “I guess it’s a guy thing, huh, Ashe?”

      Allen looked at Ashe McLaughlin with such adoration in his eyes that Deborah almost cried. There had been a time when she, too, had adored Ashe. It was so easy to fall under his spell, to succumb to his charm. Maybe her son had inherited her weakness.

      “Curiosity isn’t a guy thing,” Ashe said. “I remember a time when your sister’s curiosity got the minister in big trouble.”

      “What?” Allen grinned, stole a quick glance at Deborah and burst into laughter. “Deborah did something she wasn’t supposed to do? I can’t believe it. She always does the right thing.”

      “Well, she made the mistake of walking in on Reverend Bently and the new choir director, a very attractive lady,” Ashe said.

      “I asked Mother, right in the middle of her study club meeting, why Reverend Bently would kiss Miss Denise.” Deborah smiled, remembering the utter horror on her mother’s face and the loud rumble of ladies’ voices rising in outrage as they sat in Carol Vaughn’s garden, dropping their finger sandwiches and spilling their tea.

      “How’d you know, Ashe? Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

      “Allen, that’s enough questions,” Deborah said. “You’ve got school tomorrow and I have work. Besides, Ashe hasn’t even settled in yet. Save the rest of your million and one questions for another day.”

      “Ah…ahh…All right.”

      “Deborah told me all about it when I stopped by to pick up Mama Mattie that evening after I got off from work. Your sister was only twelve then, and at that age she used to tell me everything.”

      Not everything, Deborah thought. Not then, not later, and certainly not now. She never told him how much she loved him. Not until that night by the river. But he’d known she had a crush on him, just as he was aware, now, that she was afraid of him, afraid of how he made her feel.

      “Deborah’s right, pal. It’s getting late.” Ashe ruffled the boy’s thick blond hair, hair the exact shade Deborah’s had been as a child. “I’ll be around for several weeks. You’ll have a chance to ask me a lot more questions.”

      Deborah waited in the hallway until Ashe walked past her and toward his own room. He hesitated in the doorway.

      “You were always special to me,” he said. “I trusted you in a way I didn’t trust another soul.”

      She stood in the hall, staring at his back as he entered his room and closed the door. She shivered. What had he meant by that last statement? Was he accusing her of something? He had СКАЧАТЬ