The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (23 page)

“What the hell is that supposed to
mean?” was my incredibly articulate response to that, though the hurt was
apparent in my words.
 
“Is it because
you’re my bodyguard?”

Layne shook her head and kept
shaking it, rubbing at her arms as if she was cold.
 
Again she leaned back on her heels, curling away from me.
 
“Please believe me,” she said then, her
words a soft growl.
 
“You wouldn’t want
me if you knew everything about me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said
instantly.
 
I already knew—there wasn’t
anything that Layne could tell me that would make our connection any less.
 
I wanted her, felt bound to her, and there
was something deep and instinctual inside both of us that made me feel that
way.
 
“Give this a chance,” I told her
softly, gently.
 
She looked like a wild
animal about to run, and I used my most soothing tone, holding out my hands to
her.
 
“You feel something between us
too, don’t you?” I asked, trying to placate her, even as she took another step
backward.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and her eyes
held me as if I was pinned into place.
 
“But I can’t do this.”

Raw pain began to flow through me,
and I took a deep breath.
 
I’d learned
long ago that I couldn’t get so upset right in front of a concert.
 
It would mean the loss of my focus, and then
I’d mess up during a piece, not be able to find my place—it’d become my
veritable worst nightmare on stage, me missing entire measures of the music,
the swelling violin cut short because I’d lost my place.
 
I couldn’t do that.
 
I was a professional, and the concert was
mere hours away.

But we needed to figure this out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about, that there’s stuff keeping us apart.”
 
I squared my jaw.
 
“But we’re
going to discuss all of this in detail later.
 
And we’re also going to discuss,” I said, taking another deep breath as
Layne’s nostrils flared, as her frown deepened and her eyes narrowed, “about
what exactly happened yesterday with that repairwoman and your arriving in the
nick of time to save me from certain doom.”

“No,” said Layne, one brow up,
“we’re not going to discuss it.
 
It’s
not open for discussion.”

It took me a full moment to process
what she’d said because it was so uncalled for.
 
My hands were clenched into fists now, and I folded my arms in
front of me, lifting my chin.
 
There
were daggers in my voice.
 
“Is that so?”

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” she said,
and for a moment, her confidant demeanor faded, and I saw the pain in her
face.
 
But then her expression shifted
back to arrogance.
 
“There’s nothing
more to talk about.
 
We both have jobs
to do, and we’re going to do them well.
 
I have my orders.
 
And you have
yours.”

“And what are mine exactly?” I asked,
my voice sharp.

She glanced away from me, strode
back to her room with her long legs like she was a predator, stalking her
prey.
 
She didn’t even look at me as she
growled back to me, over her shoulder two simple words:
 
“stay alive.”

Chapter 12:
 
An Invitation

“Why won’t Layne sit with us?”
asked Tracy, glancing behind me at Layne, seated several booths back, staring
down at something on her phone with an angry, brooding look on her face.
 
Layne sat hunched in the booth as if, at any
moment, she was going to crumble her phone in her hands.
 
“We don’t bite,” said Tracy a little
wistfully.

“Yeah, well,” I muttered, poking my
straw up and down in my frozen coffee as I gritted my teeth, “I guess you’d say
we’re having a kind of…off day.”

The atmosphere in the relatively
empty “Thanks a Latte” coffee shop was a sleepy one.
 
There was one kid off in the corner, typing furiously on a laptop
with big headphones lost in his super curly brown hair.
 
Other than him, Layne, Tracy and me…the shop
was deserted.
 
Not unusual on a sleepy
Sunday afternoon, but I sort of wished there was a general hubbub going on to
distract me from the fact that Layne and I hadn’t spoken until that intense
moment in my kitchen that morning.
 
She’d driven me to the coffee shop in stony silence, had situated
herself in that booth and hadn’t moved a muscle since.
 
She was situated far enough away that she
couldn’t hear our conversation, but close enough that if something bad broke
out in the sleepy little shop (highly,
highly
unlikely), she could
spring to action.
 
In other words, she
was doing her job to the letter, and absolutely not a bit more.

“Honey, people who
date
have
off days,” Tracy told me with a sniff and a shake of her head.
 
“I’d like to point out you guys aren’t
dating.”
 
But then her gray eyes got
wide, and she leaned forward with a huge grin, planting her palms open on the
tabletop as she slapped it.
 
“Oh, my
God, or
are
you?
 
Did something
happen—”
 
Her voice in the empty coffee
shop practically echoed, bouncing off the coffee-brown walls, and I grimaced,
waving my hand.
 
But Layne didn’t raise
her head when I stole a surreptitious glance over my shoulder.
 
If anything, she stared with an even fiercer
frown down at her phone.

“No, no, nothing like that,” I said
with a frown of my own and a shake of my head.
 
I pressed a palm against my forehead, wishing I’d thought to remember to
take a pain pill.
 
I’d run out of the
course of pain pills for my leg, sadly.
 
“Can we talk about it later?
 
Maybe go out for drinks or something?” I asked hopefully.

“On a Sunday afternoon?
 
Oh, honey, if you want to go out drinking on
a Sunday afternoon, I think you have it bad,” said Tracy, leaning forward and
searching my face.
 
“But seriously, are
you okay?
 
You’ve been pretty
quiet.
 
What’s wrong?”

“Nothing a night with my best
friend and a whole heck of a lot of booze can’t cure,” I promised with a smile.

“I want to go out with you, I
really do,” said Tracy, her head to the side and her eyes narrowed as she
sighed.
 
“But I…think I have a date.”

I stared at her in surprise,
momentarily distracted from my own problems.
 
“Wow, really?
 
That’s
wonderful!
 
Who with?”

“Yeah,” she said with a wrinkle of
her nose.
 
“But don’t get so
excited—trust me, I really don’t think it’s going to be that great.
 
I’d ditch him and the whole thing to go out
drinking with you, but I was set up on the date by Phyllis, and, well…you know
Phyllis,” she muttered, intoning the name of our primary harpist.
 
Yes, I did, in fact, know Phyllis—and she’d
never forgive Tracy if she ditched a date that Phyllis had set her up
with.
 
“So can I take a rain check?”
asked Tracy, checking her watch and standing, grabbing her to-go cup.
 
“Come on, we don’t want to be late.”

“All right,” I said, both to the
offer of the rain check and getting out of the coffee shop.
 
I took up my cup, too, and when I stood,
grabbing the crutches from the booth beside me, Layne, those few booths down,
stood as well, rolling smoothly up and stretching overhead, her leather jacket
and shirt lifting to reveal a line of ridiculously sculpted abs.

I hated that I glanced at them, and
I hated that that simple glance awoke that same want and need that I’d been
busily trying to squash for the past few hours.
 
Seriously?
 
A mere inch of
skin and I was ready to throw myself at her?

I didn’t want to be that
desperate.
 
Connection or not, I wasn’t
going to beg Layne O’Connell to be anything more than what she already
was:
 
my bodyguard.
 
But still, as Layne finished her stretch
with a yawn, as she raked her fingers through her hair unthinkingly…it was a
difficult promise to myself to keep.

What I wanted, what I wanted so
fiercely, was something that Layne was refusing to allow to happen.
 
So what was I supposed to do?
 
Fight for her against herself?

Layne stopped me as we walked
past.
 
Well, Tracy walked past—I
continued to hobble.
 
I’d been promised
that I’d only need the crutches for another day or two, but I was already very
sick of them and wouldn’t really miss them when they were gone.

I waited a long moment for Layne to
say something.
 
Her jaw was working, and
she was refusing to look at me, instead planting her gaze somewhere over my
left shoulder so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye.
 
“I’ll be in the audience,” Layne finally
told me stiffly.

That rankled me.
 
If there’s one thing I didn’t want, it was
Layne watching a performance as if it was an obligation.
 
“You don’t have to,” I pointed out, gazing
up at her with a frown.
 
“Why don’t you
go…I don’t know.
 
Catch a movie or
something.”

Layne’s eyes narrowed.
 
“But—”

“Look,” I sighed, “I’m with
everyone in the orchestra the entire time.
 
I don’t go out for a smoke like Bob.
 
He was alone when he was attacked, and trust me—in the orchestra, I’m
never alone.
 
I’m surrounded by
people.
 
I’m safe,” I told her.
 
What I didn’t put into words, but what was
slightly obvious from my tone was that we probably needed a little more time
apart.
 
That it would probably do both
of us a world of good.

It was ridiculous was what it
was.
 
But it couldn’t be helped.
 
We weren’t even
dating
, but we needed
time apart?
 

But Layne didn’t want to discuss
anything with me.
 
I needed answers and
they weren’t forthcoming.
 

I was frustrated and crabby and
heartbroken and shaky, now, because I’d downed two frozen coffees on an empty
stomach.
 
What a terrible combination
for a performance.
 
What a terrible
combination to be staring down someone you had deep feelings with.

“Maybe,” was what Layne said then,
sliding her hands deep into her leather jacket’s pockets.
 

I didn’t look at her, leaning a
narrow, gorgeous hip against the table, gaze smoldering and burning into me,
finally, as she turned her attention on me.
 
She gazed down at me for a long moment, but now it was me who couldn’t
meet her gaze, because I was too frustrated, and I was afraid I would say
something angry that I’d regret.
 
So I
turned away, and I continued after Tracy, out of the coffee shop, leaving Layne
leaning against the table, alone.

But I could feel her gaze, burning
into my back.
 
I could feel her gaze on
me as strongly as if her warm fingertips were brushing over my skin.

I was so angry at her for not
discussing what kept us apart.

But I was angrier at myself for
wanting someone so much.
 
Wanting
someone I couldn’t have.

On the way to the concert hall
Tracy fell into step alongside me, shifting her cup to the other hand as she
pulled her cell phone out of her purse.
 
“These Sunday matinee concerts are really so damn stupid,” she huffed,
half to herself, half to me.
 
“Hardly
anyone shows up to fill those seats unless we have a big name playing with us,
because everyone’s recovering from church or at dinner.
 
We really need to talk to Amelia about
shifting the concert’s start time to later in the afternoon.
 
Maybe four-ish.”

She held the back door of the
concert hall open for me, and I gingerly shuffled over the concrete steps that
no longer were stained with Bob’s blood.
 
But I couldn’t help seeing the blood in my mind’s eye when I looked at
them.

Tracy continued to talk, half to me
and half to herself about concert times as I glanced back at the steps with a
long sigh.
 
Bob had really loved the
Sunday matinees.
 
His kids usually came
to them, and it made him really happy.

The investigation was still well
underway on Bob’s murder.
 
There were,
unfortunately, very few leads to go on.
 
No one had seen Bob outside of the concert hall when he was supposedly
killed, there were no security cameras in the vicinity, no evidence left at the
scene of the crime, not even a fingerprint or a tissue sample, oddly enough…it
was all a mystery.
 

As far as motive, Bob was beloved
by pretty much everyone who knew him.
 
There was no reason that anyone would have murdered him.
 
It could have been a random murder, but it
was such a gruesome one…none of it made sense if you put the pieces together,
and with so little to go on, the police were becoming frustrated at the dead
ends.