FIVE
At first Miranda’s pace was rushed, the irritation she felt at his presence obvious, particularly when he walked beside her instead of taking up the more usual position on point or a few steps behind. When she slowed and started to take everything in Tyler studied her reaction as she breathed deep and a small smile formed on her lips.
Either she’d never walked the grounds before or she was up to something. He assumed it was the latter.
Without warning she changed direction and headed for the river, stopping to look from side to side when she got to the railing. After a couple of minutes of the same thing he inevitably asked, ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Mmm?’ she hummed absent-mindedly.
‘You’re obviously looking for something.’ If it was a place to jump in the river and swim to freedom she could forget it.
‘Baby seals.’
‘What?’
‘Baby seals,’ she repeated. ‘Fuzzy bundles of joy that mummy and daddy seal made together as a token of their love for one another.’ When she shot a sparkle-eyed glance at him from beneath the peak of her baseball cap he got the impression she thought she’d won some kind of victory. ‘Didn’t they teach you about reproduction in high school?’
Like most teenage boys it hadn’t been the reproduction of seals he’d been interested in but Tyler didn’t say so out loud. Instead he checked the grounds and the river, the water still busy with tugboats and barges. There was no immediate danger but he couldn’t relax. Every muscle in his body was wound tight, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Without a means of release the tension grew, making him hyper-aware of the smallest details.
The name of the tugboat closest to them—the man standing on the prow of a barge—the water lapping against algae-covered rocks—the way a breeze from the river brushed a loose tendril of flame-red hair against the sensitive skin on her neck. He frowned as it swayed back and forth in a whispered touch that made his fingertips itch.
The ability to store large quantities of miscellaneous information in the back of his head until he needed to call on it was something Tyler had always taken for granted. It allowed him to focus his mind and manage the most immediate tasks. In many ways his brain acted like a computer with several open programs, a dozen others working in the background and plenty of spare memory. If that was the case she was messing with his operating system. Every time his eyes opened an image of her the screen froze.
‘They’re supposed to be around here somewhere,’ she continued. ‘There was a picture on Twitter.’
‘Right,’ he said dryly. He’d never been a Twitter fan but he knew she was popular there. It was the one area he hadn’t been allowed to suggest changes.
From a protection standpoint he thought regularly reporting her location to all and sundry was an unnecessary risk. From the perspective of the mayor’s press office her online presence was a valuable publicity tool. That they wouldn’t budge on the subject still bugged him.
But not as much as all the standing around he’d been doing since he reported for duty.
‘I don’t think they constitute a breach in security if that’s what you’re worried about.’ She glanced up at him again. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be dolphins they train to carry explosives?’ When he didn’t say anything, she leaned an elbow on the railing and turned toward him. ‘You don’t have a sense of humour, do you?’
‘Would it save time if I told you I wasn’t here to make friends?’
‘I’m shocked,’ she replied without batting an eye.
Tyler fought his nature. Normally he gave as good as he got; with a woman who looked the way she did it would probably involve a heavy dose of flirting. He could lay on the charm when he set his mind to it. But even if he hadn’t been assigned to the position of babysitter his skills were a little rusty. Hadn’t had much call to use them when he was buried in work was the easiest explanation. Hadn’t met anyone he wanted to use them on was another.
But there was a reason for that.
When the thought conjured an image of long dark hair and soulful brown eyes it didn’t improve his mood.
‘That’s how you got some of the others to turn a blind eye, isn’t it?’
She raised an elegantly arched brow. ‘What are we talking about now?’
‘Your little adventures...’
‘What adventures?’
Tyler cut to the chase. ‘I do my homework. There isn’t anything I don’t know about you.’
There was a melodic burst of dismissive laughter. ‘I very much doubt that.’
He summoned the necessary information without missing a beat. ‘Miranda Eleanor Kravitz, twenty-four, born in Manhattan, raised in Vermont, moved back to New York prior to your father becoming mayor when you were seventeen.’
‘Sixteen,’ she corrected. ‘Elections are in November.’
‘He didn’t take up office until January. Your birthday is December fourteenth. You were seventeen.’ He picked up where he’d left off before she interrupted. ‘You were a straight “A” student in high school, made the honour roll and in the final year took one of the leads in a stage production of
Twelfth Night.
’ It was probably where she’d picked up her acting skills. ‘Fluent in Spanish and French, studied English literature at NYU. By the time you left you’d danced on a table in a reality TV show and made headlines twice—once when you were caught drunk partying with the same infamous party girl who—’
‘Has my bra size made it to Wikipedia yet?’
When the old Tyler made a rare appearance his gaze automatically lowered to the scooped neck of her T-shirt. ‘No, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say you’re a—’
‘Eyes north, Detective,’ she warned in a lower voice.
Irritated he’d stepped over the line again, Tyler snapped his gaze back up. ‘The investigation I did before I got here involved more than Googling your name. I talked to every bodyguard assigned to you and know exactly how you roll. There isn’t an escape route I haven’t plugged or a former cohort who hasn’t been reassigned. The guy on the gate tonight is new, too, so you wouldn’t have got far. You don’t have any friends in the security team any more. What you have is people focused on doing their jobs who’ll end up back in uniform if they don’t.’
The gold in her eyes flared. ‘What is your problem?’
‘Until you accept you’re not going anywhere without me or one of the other guys on your new detail, it’s you.’
‘You’re not my keeper.’
Tyler stepped around her. ‘Well, obviously they figured you needed one or I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Who are
“they”?
’ she asked as she followed him.
‘Who do you think they are?’
She muttered something incoherent below her breath but judging by her tone it wasn’t a word she’d picked up from a study of English literature.
When he stopped and turned around she took a step back and frowned at the centre of his chest.
‘This close to the election you’re a liability,’ he told her flatly. ‘Three weeks back you were photographed sitting on a bar while some random guy licked salt off your neck before taking a shot of tequila.’
She lifted her chin. ‘Jealous?’
‘Personally I couldn’t give a damn what you do.’ Even if his reaction to seeing the photographs after he kissed her might have suggested otherwise. ‘The only thing that concerns me is making sure it doesn’t happen again. Some major favours were called in to keep those pictures out of the public eye.’
Any surprise she felt was hidden behind a mask of ice. ‘It’s just as well there wasn’t anyone with a camera in a darkened hall on Friday night, then, isn’t it?’
When she turned on her heel and headed back to the mansion Tyler let her get a few steps ahead. He needed to take a beat. Her parting shot had been bang on target but that wasn’t what grated him. What did was the indifference in her voice. He wasn’t the only one who got carried away in that hall. The implication he could have been just another guy lining up to lick salt off her neck bothered him a great deal more than it should.
At a very basic level he wanted to march on over there and demonstrate she was wrong. A Brannigan never backed down from a challenge. Trouble was they were also carved with deep streaks of honour and duty and while he knew how close he was to breaking one code, he had to hang on tight to the other. If he didn’t there would be nothing left of the man he was before everything got so messed up.
‘Go home, Detective,’ she demanded when they were back in the kitchen.
‘No can do,’ he informed her retreating back.
When she turned he got a brief glimpse of how angry she was from the flash of fire in her eyes. Then the ice returned. ‘I’ll make a deal with you.’
‘What kind of deal?’
‘I’ll give you my word I’ll stay in tonight and that way you won’t have to camp outside my door.’ She ran an impassive gaze down the length of his body and back up. ‘A good night’s sleep might help with all the tension you’re carrying around...’
Tyler treated her to his patented interrogation face: the one that said nothing short of a nuclear blast would change his position. ‘What’s the catch?’
She shook her head. ‘No catch.’
‘What do you get out of it?’
‘Apart from a break from you?’
The thought he got to her went a long way towards evening the playing field, but there was more to it than that. ‘You want something.’
‘World peace, an end to poverty, freedom and justice for all... I want a great many things,
Detective.
But for now I’ll settle for your name.’
What was the big deal with his name? He ran through every possible scam she could be running and came up short. But with his Spidey-senses on alert he knew whatever she was doing was part of something bigger. That was okay, he could play the long game, and if giving her a name was what it took to give him a few hours he could put to better use than standing twiddling his thumbs or sleeping...
‘Tyler.’
‘Tyler,’
she repeated in a lower voice as if savouring how it felt on her tongue.
Hearing her say it had a mesmerizing effect he’d never experienced before. Time stretched inexorably while she stared at him, her chin angled in contemplation. As he tried to figure out why his blood had thickened to the same consistency as magma when she hadn’t done anything overtly seductive, she blinked and turned away.
‘I’ll see you in the morning, Tyler.’
‘You leave this house, I’ll know inside five seconds.’
She raised an arm and waggled her fingers in the air. ‘Nighty-night.’
Tyler stood in the same spot after she left, trying to decide whether he trusted her any further than he could throw her. His word meant something—or at least it used to; he wasn’t convinced hers did. Then his cell phone vibrated.
‘Brannigan.’
‘So what’s it like with the city’s version of the Secret Service?’
The sound of his partner’s voice got him moving again. ‘Don’t ask,’ he said as he left the kitchen and headed for the control room. ‘Got anything new for me?’
‘There weren’t any DNA hits in the database.’
‘It took them a month to tell us that?’
‘Backed up in the lab...’
‘What about the known associates we’ve been chasing?’
‘There I might have better news.’
Tyler nodded brusquely. ‘Save it for when I see you. I’ll be at O’Malley’s by nine.’
‘If I end up divorced I’m blaming you.’
‘Because all your kids look like me?’
The response made the corner of Tyler’s mouth lift. It was the closest he got to a smile any more. Pretending nothing was wrong when he was around the people who knew him was wearing him down. From that point of view his day with the mayor’s daughter had been a welcome respite.
He just had to get a handle on his reaction to her while he was still volatile.
There’d been a time when not getting involved had never been a problem for him the way it had for other members of his family. He’d kept his distance and remained detached, gaining a rep for being emotionally unavailable to women along the way. Once he’d made the mistake of thinking he could handle a little attachment he’d fallen flat on his face. To top it off he’d overcompensated and it had cost someone their life.
Sometimes he thought he saw her face in a crowd: dull, lifeless eyes staring at him in silent accusation. She was a ghost who followed him everywhere.
He shouldn’t have left her alone.
The thought gave him a moment’s pause outside the room that housed the security monitors. From inside he could hear the voices of the men whose presence meant he wasn’t leaving the mayor’s daughter unprotected even if there was an immediate threat.
There was no reason for him to feel torn.
A small army of people surrounded Miranda Kravitz and, though they might not have kept her out of trouble, they had plenty of practice cushioning her from the world beyond the walls of the mansion. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a voice, either. Half her problem with him was he didn’t let her get her own way when she was plainly accustomed to getting whatever she wanted.
Tyler stood up for the people who didn’t have a voice, who didn’t have the opportunities she’d been given or the ability to escape their lives when they felt like it. If she broke her word, she would pay for it. He’d see to that.
She might think he’d been tough on her the first day, but she had no idea how ruthless he could be.
SIX
The small victories gained when she got him to start a conversation and give her the name she so badly wanted to know were enough to allow Miranda to cut him some slack. She wouldn’t break her word. What helped him
more
was that he’d given her somewhere else to focus her ire. After a night of enforced captivity she was determined to fight for her rights.
‘Good morning, Miranda.’
‘Good morning, Grace.’ She saw the surprise in the older woman’s eyes when she appeared outside her father’s office. ‘Is the mayor in?’
‘He’s having breakfast with the chief of police.’
‘Where is my mother?’
‘I believe she’s still in the morning room.’
When she turned on her heel Grace grabbed her file, rounded her desk and rushed down the hall after her. ‘You have a nine a.m. appointment in Brooklyn at—’
‘Not now, Grace.’ It was rude and she was sorry for that but they both knew the morning briefing was more habit than necessity. Miranda knew where she was going days in advance—weeks for the functions that required more forwards planning. If she didn’t how was she supposed to know what to wear or find time to research things she knew nothing about so she could hold a conversation?
Two sets of eyes looked across the morning room as she entered without knocking. ‘Could you give us a moment, please, Roger?’ Once the door shut behind him Miranda took a deep breath. ‘I won’t be held prisoner in this house.’
‘Sit down, darling.’
‘I don’t want to sit down,’ she said without moving. ‘What I want is to be treated like an adult.’
‘Start behaving like one and you will,’ her mother replied with the infinite patience that drove her daughter insane when she was upset about something. ‘Now take a seat and tell me what’s wrong.’
‘You knew, didn’t you?’
‘Knew what?’
‘About the changes to my security detail.’
‘It’s hardly the first change of personnel since we took up residence.’ Her mother raised a brow. ‘Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?’
‘When they were brought in specifically to keep me out of trouble in case I prove an embarrassment to you during the campaign?’
‘Well, obviously we would prefer to avoid any negative publicity this close to—’
‘I’m more than aware of the responsibilities forced on me since my teens, Mother. I don’t need a reminder.’
‘Yet your father and I are being given increasingly regular reports of your acts of rebellion.’ She gracefully folded her hands together on her lap. ‘We were elected to set an example. People expect more of this family. That’s the life we live.’
‘
We
weren’t elected,’ Miranda reminded her. ‘
Dad was.
I didn’t choose to run for office and I wasn’t elected to the position of your daughter. Doesn’t the fact I’ve lived someone else’s life for half of mine count for anything?’
‘Like it or not, you’re still the mayor’s daughter. This is his last term in office and—’
‘
If
he’s elected or are we taking that for granted? Throwing pots of money at the campaign isn’t an automatic guarantee of success.’
‘We’re a family, Miranda. We stick together through everything. Once the election is over—’
A small burst of sarcastic laughter left her lips. ‘I’m supposed to do what—wait until he decides whether he wants to confirm the rumours and run for Governor? Why stop there—what about the White House?’
‘That’s your father’s decision.’
‘And how I choose to live my life is mine. If you want me to act like a grown-up you have to allow me to be one. How am I supposed to learn from my mistakes if I’m not permitted to make any?’
‘Your argument might carry more weight if there was any evidence to support it,’ her mother replied. ‘We gave you more freedom at NYU and you repaid our trust by having your picture splashed across several tabloids.’
Miranda’s frustration grew. ‘I love dancing and got drunk when I turned twenty-one—how does that make me worse than any other college student in America? I could have been running around in a wet T-shirt during spring break or got arrested at student protests. I could have experimented with drugs or slept with guys who were happy to make a buck selling all the gory details to the press. I didn’t but none of those things matter any more than the long hours I work. Did it occur to either one of you that turning this place into the equivalent of Alcatraz would make the need for escape more necessary? Why do you think Richie chose to attend a college on the other side of the country?’
‘There’s no need to raise your voice. If you would learn how to state your case calmly and sensibly the way your brother does—’
Miranda shook her head. No matter how often she tried to communicate with her mother every conversation left her feeling like a petulant teenager. The truth was her parents didn’t know their son any better than their daughter. While they had disappeared off to countless business meetings, charity benefits and met with people who were keen for her father to launch his political career their daughter had become a surrogate mother.
She’d read her baby brother bedtime stories and made sure he did his homework. She’d put Band-Aids on cuts, watched cartoons when he was sick and held his hand when they’d had to face a world filled with curious eyes.
No one had done those things for her.
‘I’m done,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ll stick around for the election but once the votes are counted, I’m out. No more public appearances, no more smiling for photographers and no bodyguards following me everywhere I go. I never wanted one to begin with and I don’t see why the taxpayer should suffer because my overprotective parents want to control my every move.’
It meant breaking the pact she’d made with her brother but it couldn’t be helped. Not when another eight months felt like a life sentence.
There was a heavy sigh as she turned away. ‘Miranda—’
‘I’m going to be late for my first appointment.’ When she yanked the door open and stepped into the hall her gaze lifted and crashed into cobalt-blue eyes.
Her breath caught.
Tyler.
With her heart still beating hard as a result of a long-overdue parental confrontation she experienced the same difficulty she had the last time his name echoed in her mind. She couldn’t break eye contact, was frozen in place and her brain seemed to have turned into mush.
He broke the spell with the blink of dense lashes and held out a sheet of paper. ‘I told Grace I’d make sure you got this.’
‘Thank you.’ She took the schedule with one hand and closed the door behind her with the other.
‘You ready to go?’
‘I need a couple of minutes.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll be outside.’
Miranda turned the sheet of paper in her hands as they walked down the hall. When she stole an upward glance at his profile she saw the corner of his mouth lift.
‘Bye, Grace,’ his voice rumbled.
‘Bye, Tyler.’
Her gaze shifted in time to catch a glimpse of what looked like a hint of warmth on the older woman’s cheeks. In all the years she’d known her, she’d never seen Grace blush. Or be flustered enough to feel the need to shuffle the papers on her desk. Had he just winked at her?
The thought was surreal.
When she stole another glance as they approached the top of the stairs he caught her doing it. Adopting the same impassive expression he was wearing, she simply blinked and looked away. If there was one thing she’d learnt about him it was when he had something to say he didn’t have any difficulty opening his mouth. Keeping it shut on the subject of anything he might have heard through the door would be her advice.
When he remained silent she lifted the sheet of paper and glanced over her day.
‘You need any help with the big words, let me know.’
The comment made her glare at him in warning before they parted ways but as she continued down the hall to her bedroom something unexpected happened: she smiled.
Unwittingly he’d given her exactly what she needed to face the day. Combined with the knowledge that her release date was closer, it placed a spring in her step that hadn’t been there before.