Because a Husband Is Forever (8 page)

The audience erupted into wild applause just as she'd suspected they would. Making eye contact with Ian, she saw that the man was completely unwilling to venture back on the stage he'd occupied only yesterday.

How do you like it?
she thought.

There was more than one way to skin a cat, Dakota
decided. Looking around, she caught the eye of the person she wanted. She signaled to one of the cameramen to train his camera at the wings.

Perforce, Ian, looking very solemn, was captured on one of the monitors. All attention was focused there, including Ian's.

Gotcha.

“And there he is, ladies,” she told her audience gleefully. “My six-foot shadow for the next two weeks.” They were just about to introduce the first guest, the holdover from yesterday's show, when hands throughout the audience suddenly shot up. They'd already dispensed with the question-and-answer segment of the program.

Dakota decided to make an exception. “We only have time for one question before we start,” she told them, looking around. “You, the lady in the yellow.”

A perky looking woman in her midtwenties bounced up to her feet. “Yesterday you told the audience that having someone around like that would drive you crazy. How are you liking it so far?”

Liking
was hardly the word she would have used. Dakota took a breath before answering. “I'm adjusting,” she finally said diplomatically.

“Yeah, I would, too,” some unknown woman called out. Her comment received hoots and laughter.

Dakota glanced back toward Ian. He was standing in the shadows; otherwise, she had a feeling he would be turning deep red right now.

 

She put in a full day, staying at the studio longer than usual. There were new promos to shoot for the upcoming week and lists of guests for the next month to approve. By the time she finally left the studio, dusk had come and gone and evening was wrapping itself firmly around the city that never slept.

It might not, but she was certainly ready to, she thought.

Ian walked beside her in the parking garage. Most of the people had already left. The sound of their footsteps echoed eerily back to her. She had to admit that just this one instance, it was nice having someone with her. She wasn't normally afraid, but she wasn't as reckless as he thought, either. The close-to-empty parking facility was making her a little uneasy.

Probably his power of suggestion, she thought defensively. Until he'd gotten started with his “look before you leap” philosophy, she wouldn't have given any thought to coming down here at this time of night.

Maybe you should. Maybe he's right.

And maybe she was just too tired to make any sense.

As if picking up on the word that was echoing in her brain, Ian commented, “You look tired.”

They came to her automobile, and she paused at the driver's side, hitting the automatic release. “I am, a little.”

He opened the door for her. “Want me to drive?”

About to say no, she changed her mind. She wasn't averse to being pampered. “Okay.”

As she got in on the passenger side, she had a feeling that, for once, Ian approved of her choice. She buckled up and closed her eyes.

As if she cared.

 

When they got out of the elevator, Ian preceded her down the hall. He used his own key to unlock the door.

“Afraid it might be booby-trapped?” she asked.

He pocketed the key, opening the door for her. “No, just being polite.”

She felt like an idiot. “Sorry.”

Maybe she was being too edgy. Once in her apartment, Dakota stepped out of her shoes and let the plush carpet caress the bottoms of her feet for a second. “Sure you don't want to go home for the night?” she asked.

He flipped on the switch beside the door. The chandelier flooded the foyer with light. Some of it seeped out into the living room. “My suitcase is already here.”

“It can go with you. I'm sure it wouldn't mind.”

He could feel her staring at the back of his head. Turning around to face her, he could almost touch the questions that were forming in her mind. “What?”

“Don't you have a life?” she asked. “Isn't there a Mrs. Bodyguard waiting for you?”

He thought of his ex. After they'd broken up, he'd had no desire to put himself back on the market again. Going out took investing yourself, and that just wasn't him. “No.”

He'd told her about his ex-wife, but he hadn't told her anything about his current status. “A potential Mrs. Bodyguard?”

“No.”

“So this is it for you?” She shook her head, unwilling to believe he was selling himself so short. After all, the man did have a great deal of potential. “You have no life, no dreams, no aspirations?”

He thought of unstrapping his service revolver. If this was home, he would have already taken it off. But he was on the job. Twenty-four/seven according to the agreement. That meant the gun remained part of his wardrobe.

“My dream, as you call it,” he told her, “is to have a world where people can go about their business without the risk of someone cutting them down.” He did slip off his jacket. “Until that day, I'll work on the problem one client at a time.”

She tried not to notice his handgun. Guns didn't make her nervous; they never had. But it just served to remind her about the role he was playing. And the one she was supposed to take on.

Sleepiness was beginning to be replaced by something else. She found herself standing beside him, looking up. Had she gotten into his space or he into hers? She wasn't sure. All she did know was that she felt an unsettling flutter in her stomach. Again.

“Want to play poker?”

“Not particularly.”

She decided to push just a little. “If I tell you to play poker…?”

He gave her a long, steady look before he apparently surrendered. “Where do you keep the cards?”

She held her hand to stop him. “That's okay, it was a test.” She was definitely too close, she thought. Time for distance again. “I think I'll just go to bed.”

“Good idea.”

The words followed her down the hall.

She wasn't so sure about it being a good idea. She went to bed, but getting to sleep was another matter entirely. After the day she'd put in, she should have been tired, but she wasn't. She was wired. Wired like a highly lethal explosive.

Spinning around on her bed like a top didn't help matters, either.

Forty-five minutes later, muttering under her breath, she finally abandoned her bed. Grabbing a robe, she pulled it on and walked out of her bedroom. Maybe eating something would make her sleepy.

She went into the kitchen and found Ian sitting there. He had a deck of cards on the table. It was as if he'd been waiting for her. She looked at him quizzically.

“I figured you'd be back.”

“How did you find the cards?”

“Looked in the most logical place.”

The cards had been in her desk drawer in the den. That didn't strike her as a particularly logical place to look, but he was the expert at recovery, not her. Appar
ently with good results. Sitting down opposite him, she instructed, “Deal.”

He did as she asked. Five cards went to each of them before he retired the deck to the table. He opened his hand very slowly, his eyes taking in each new symbol that was exposed. “I'd imagine you earn a pretty decent salary at what you do.”

“Yes.” She raised her eyes to his. Where was this going? Was he telling her to keep her bets low because she had more money than he did? Or was this some kind of fancy bluffing about to begin?

The question had been rhetorical. He knew exactly what she made, just as he'd known exactly what she ate for breakfast. He made it his business to know details, even if this wasn't a real assignment.

He continued looking at his hand. “So how is it you can't afford a nightgown?”

She looked down at the jersey that was peeking out from beneath her robe. It was the same one she'd worn the night before. “I tend to like this one. It has sentimental value.”

“First boyfriend?”

She laughed. He'd guessed first instead of last, or college. “Damn, you're good. How did you know?”

He'd read the words on it the first time she'd worn it. The name of some high school out west was sewn along one sleeve. “Like you said, I'm good.” And then he added, “It's my business to know. Jacks or higher to open.”

She looked at her hand. One lone queen sat amid
four numbered cards. She folded the hand. “That lets me out.”

He moved in a quarter. “But not me.”

He was good at cards, too.

S
he'd purposely retreated right after breakfast, saying something about going to her room to work on some new ideas for the show. When he told her he'd be in his room if she needed him, she thought she might have a chance to get away with it. She had an appointment for nine-thirty with her gynecologist, and she really didn't feel like having him tag along.

Getting dressed, she quietly slipped out of her room and tiptoed past his. Her eyes on his closed door, she held her breath until she got into the foyer.

Where her escape was foiled. Ian stepped out of the den that was just off the foyer, a knowing look on his face. “Going somewhere?”

She drew her shoulders up. “Yes.” From the jacket slung on his arm, she could see that he was ready to leave with her. “And you don't have to come along.”

The protest fell on deaf ears, just as she knew it would. “That's the nature of the arrangement. I go where you go.”

In desperation she exclaimed, “For pity's sake, it's a doctor visit.”

A glimmer of what she took to be concern crossed his brow as he peered down at her. “You sick?”

“No,” she snapped, and then added, “thanks for asking,” in a more regular voice. Was there a way to appeal to his better side? “It's just an annual checkup. Very routine,” she insisted. “You can stay here or go wherever it is that bodyguards go when they're not guarding.”

Her words were still not having any effect. He was still walking her to the door. As he reached for the doorknob, Dakota paused, frustration bubbling up inside of her. Her bodyguard had already jogged with her this morning, and she supposed, in a perverse sort of way, she enjoyed having him there because he gave her someone to compete against.

But a sense of competition wasn't at issue here. More like annoyance. “You're not going to listen, are you?”

The look he gave her answered her question. “I get paid to use my judgment about dangerous situations.”

Only self-control kept her from dropping her mouth open. “And you think my doctor is dangerous?”

He shook his head. The movement was infinitesimal
and all the more dramatic for it. “It's not your doctor, it's you.”

Now he
really
wasn't making any sense to her. “
I'm
a danger to me?”

“In a way.” He spoke evenly, deliberately, as if to a slow-witted child. It made her furious, and only training kept the emotion from exploding. “You're much too exposed, much too blasé about your safety.”

She exhaled. How did people live like this on a regular basis? If she were in that kind of position, to feel that she needed to avail herself of the services of someone like Ian Russell, she would have gone crazy. As it was, strands of claustrophobia threatened to tighten themselves around her.

“I wasn't raised to live in a box, Russell. I like going out, I like mingling. I don't particularly like going to the doctor, but I like sharing the experience even less.” She gave it one last try, although she could feel failure swiftly overtaking her. “Now, take a break for heaven's sake. You've been my bodyguard for over forty-eight hours, you've earned vacation time.”

Very gently Ian ushered her out the door and then locked it behind them. Pocketing the key, he looked at her. “It doesn't work like that.”

“It's not working at all,” she complained under her breath. This was carrying things too far. The man was becoming absolutely infuriating. She walked into the elevator ahead of him. “Damn it, this is just a routine trip—”

“If you had a stalker or a potential kidnapper,” Ian said
quietly, “he wouldn't just back away because this was a ‘routine' visit to your doctor. He'd use the opportunity to observe you or get close to you—” he looked down into her face, his gray eyes very somber “—or possibly even abduct you. It's my job to see that never happens.”

God, what a grim picture he painted. She rolled her eyes. “Is it your job to drive me crazy?”

The express elevator brought them to the underground garage. “That would come under ‘fringe benefits.'”

She stopped to look at him. “Your sense of humor picks the oddest times to surface.”

“It didn't,” he replied mildly.

She wasn't sure if he was being serious or not. Everything else he'd said so far had been. She strode over to where her car was parked. “How do you stand it?” she asked.

“Stand what?” There was just the faintest curve of his lips, or maybe she just imagined it. “You?”

“No. How do you stand living in such a negative world?” She shivered at the very idea of it. “In a world where you're constantly waiting for bad things to happen?”

He opened her door for her, then rounded the hood and got in on the passenger side. “I don't wait for bad things to happen,” he corrected. “With luck, I prevent them from happening.” He buckled up. “So far, I've been lucky.”

Her belt secure, she put the key in the ignition. Dakota sensed that crime prevention was more important
to this silent man than as a way of earning his pay. She sensed that ensuring no one was harmed on his watch was a point of honor with him.

After starting the car, she backed out of her space. Within a minute they were on the road. And stopped at a light.

“Okay, I get it and I understand it.” She looked at him before putting her foot back on the accelerator. “But could you be a little less, oh, I don't know, robotic about it? I feel like I'm being shadowed by the Terminator.”

“Being a bodyguard is serious business.”

She'd had it up to here with serious. “But we're just pretending, remember?”

He waited until they were stopped at the next light before answering. “I don't know how to pretend.”

That was becoming painfully obvious, Dakota thought as she made a right turn at the next corner.

The doctor she was seeing had his office within Lennox Hill Hospital. Traffic kept the drive from being reasonable. She didn't throw herself on Ian's mercy until after she found parking and was entering the hospital. “The doctor's office is on the sixth floor. His exam room only has one way out.”

The elevator car was crammed with visitors. He sidled over to one side, making sure that she was buffered between his body and the elevator wall. “Why are you telling me this?”

She struggled against the pink hue of embarrassment. Born and raised within the film community, she
was not nearly as blasé about things as she would have liked to be. “So that you understand you don't have to go in with me.”

The first stop was the sixth floor. Taking her arm to usher her out, Ian nodded as they made their way out of the elevator. “Understood.”

She could have sworn there was a hint of a smile along his lips, but she wasn't altogether certain.

Ian discovered there wasn't much for a man to read inside of a gynecologist's office. He kept his mind occupied by doing calculations in his head. Dakota wasn't taken in until fifteen minutes after her appointment and finally emerged another half hour later. He was on his feet the moment she stepped back into the waiting room.

After opening the door for her, he fell into step beside her. “Everything okay?”

She hadn't had to open a single door since he had come into her life. She supposed there were worse things to put up with. Her independence had never gone so far as to demand that she be allowed to push every door she came in contact with. “Other than the fact that I seemed to have developed an annoying growth on my side, yes.”

He pressed for the elevator, then shoved his hands into his pockets. “Don't worry. It'll be gone in less than two weeks.”

“One can only hope.”

She waited until they were wandering through the parking structure before she said anything further. “Look, Russell, it's nothing personal—”

“Being a bodyguard never is.” He vaguely moved his shoulders in a half shrug.

Intrigued with what he'd just said, she forgot about her intended apology. “You mean you never get involved with your clients?”

As they walked, Ian scanned the scene. For the most part, the area was deserted, with only a handful of cars parked on this level. “Other than to know their routines and be there to protect them, no.”

She didn't believe him. Dakota pushed the issue. “If you were my bodyguard, would you take a bullet for me?”

“Yes.”

He'd answered her without a second's hesitation. It took a special man to agree to such sacrifice. “That's pretty personal, wouldn't you say?”

“It's my job.”

As far as she was concerned, there was only one instance in which that was an acceptable part of a job description. And it didn't apply to her. “I'm not the president.”

“No, you're someone who's paying for protection,” he told her simply. Continuing to walk, they went down to the next level. “You deserve to get it.”

She kept to the right as a car passed them, going deep into the bowels of the structure. “What about that woman who keeps calling you?” She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Alexis, I think I heard you say.”

There was no “think” about it. From a very young age, she had always been able to absorb what was going
on around her like a dry sponge. The woman had called Ian three times in her presence. Dakota didn't doubt that there had been more calls from the needy woman.

“She has a few delusion problems.” Ian's response was guarded.

Was he like that with all his clients? she wondered. Dakota was curious to see if she could get him to open up, to register some kind of emotion. “Like thinking that her bodyguard is in love with her?”

He spotted her vehicle and approached it. “I never gave her any cause to think that.”

“How close did you get?” Testing the waters, or maybe herself, Dakota moved closer to him. She saw something flicker in his eyes and found herself enjoying it. She never pushed what her grandfather had once referred to as “womanly wiles,” but there was something about this tall, stoic centurion who'd temporarily been forced into her life that made her a little reckless. She wasn't unaware of the attraction that hummed between them. Taking a deep breath, leaving less than a teardrop's space between them, she asked, “This close?”

She was in his space. Having her less than a hair's breadth away was scrambling his insides and pinching his gut to the point that breathing was a challenge.

“No,” Ian said, placing his hands on her shoulders and deliberately moving her away. “More like this close.”

Her eyes held him fast. “What are you afraid of, Ian?”

His answer surprised her. She'd expected him to
gruffly declare, “Nothing.” Wasn't that what macho men did? Pretended to be fearless? Instead, he looked at her and said. “You.”

Dakota blinked, wondering if she'd heard wrong. “Me?”

He told himself to get into the car, to place the stick shift between them, but he remained where he was. “Yes. Women like you tend to mess with a man's mind, make him forget things.”

Cars beeped as they drove by. It was all noise to her, melding into the background. Dakota felt an undercurrent of something she couldn't quite describe going on between them. Drawing her to him. Making her wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to have this man kiss her.

“Maybe that's a good thing once in a while,” she said slowly, watching his lips. Wondering. “Might make a man realize there's more out there than just work.”

“There's a hell of a lot more things out there than just work.” For a second Ian could feel himself weakening. Could feel himself wanting to give in.

But life wasn't about giving in. It was about assuming positions and maintaining them. He had to maintain his. “But not for me.” He got into the car, then looked out at her. “Aren't you going to be late for the show?”

She didn't care about being late. She wanted this damn frustration thing to leave her. It was like some kind of strange itch and she didn't like it. Didn't like, too, being the only one who felt it.

“Right,” she mumbled as she got in on the driver's side. Buckling up, she started the car again and peeled out of the spot more than a tad too fast.

“Ease up, no point in breaking the sound barrier,” he told her.

Oh, but there was a point, she thought. She was trying to outrace the itch.

 

That night, when they returned from the studio, Ian fully expected the evening to be more or less a carbon copy of the other two nights that had transpired so far. So when he saw her emerge from her room dressed in a little black dress, whose slightly flared skirt swirled and flirted along the tops of her thighs, Ian dropped the book he'd been reading. His favorite author's new offering could wait. Business always came first.

Instinct had him on his feet, reaching for the jacket he'd slung over the back of the easy chair. He was right behind her as she made her way to the foyer. “Where are you going?”

Dakota checked the contents of her small purse, then snapped it shut. Taking the black, three-quarter-length coat off the coatrack, she began to slip it on. Her answer was a single word. “Out.”

Ingrained habit had him moving behind her in order to help her on with the coat. The exchange, he thought, sounded like one that took place inside of many homes, usually between a parent and a swiftly exiting teenager. Except that they were neither. “Where ‘out'?”

“Out,” she repeated. It had been years since she'd been subjected to inquisitions as she tried to make her getaway. Her mother had been lenient, but her father had been relentless. She turned to look at Ian. “If you must know, I'm going club hopping with MacKenzie.” She reached for the doorknob. “Don't wait up.”

But he was right there with her, throwing on his coat, shadowing her footsteps. “I won't have to.”