The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (4 page)

But it certainly didn’t stop the
fact that someone
was
after me.

“What about you, Dad?” I asked
then, a little of the fight gone from my voice.
 
“Don’t you need a bodyguard, too?”

“I already have one,” he replied
mildly, not letting his gaze waver from mine.
 

“Really?”
 
I’d not seen any new employees around, and shouldn’t bodyguards
be with the person they were guarding pretty darn often?
 
But that was neither here nor there.
 
My father had a bodyguard, and he hadn’t
even been
attacked
yet.

At least, not that I knew of.

I glanced sidelong at Layne.
  

“I’m looking forward to working
with you.”
 
She said it in a droll,
almost sly manner, and her lips, twitching at the corners, were now completely
incapable of masking her insolent expression.
 
She leaned back again, her head to the side, one brow up as she chuckled
a little.
 
“I think we’ll make a great
team,” is what she said, but the words had a bit of a sarcastic bite to them.

I opened and shut my mouth.
 
I thought about the man who’d rammed me from
behind, his leather gloves, the lack of any human emotion on his perfectly
blank face, like he felt nothing as he tried to
kill
me.

I thought about how he was still
out there.
 
How, at any time, he could
appear when I least expected it…

“For how long?” I asked, trying to
make my voice hard.
 
“For how long would
we have to…to require Ms. O’Connell’s services?”

The joy—and triumph—that passed
over my father’s face was unmistakable.

“For as long as it takes us to
figure out who was behind it, and bring them to justice,” said my father, then,
masking his face back to its carefully neutral expression.
 
Layne, beside me, made a little snort in the
back of her throat, and I glanced at her sidelong, but her expression was
carefully neutral, too.

Bring them to justice?
 
I shivered a little.
 
There had been such an edge to those words.

All right, then.
 
Yes, I valued my autonomy more than anything
in the world.
 
But I also wanted to keep
living the life I’d built for myself.

I wasn’t ready to die just yet.

“Well,” I said with a very long
sigh.
 
“It doesn’t seem like I have much
choice in the matter.”

“Wonderful—just wonderful!” my
father practically sang, clapping his hands together slowly with a triumphant
smile.
 
“Ms. O’Connell, I am delighted
to have secured your services.
 
I can
finally sleep at night again.”
 
He
leaned back in his chair and breathed out slowly with a wide grin.

I glanced at the magnetic woman
sitting next to me, then.

Layne straightened, her head to the
side a little as she offered me a hand.

My eyes widened a little as I
glanced down in surprise.
 
She had long
fingers; a broad palm; short, carefully trimmed nails.
 
I took her hand.
 
I guess I was expecting a strong grasp, and I think that if she’d
shaken hands with my father, it would have been strong, the clasp of palm and
fingers.
 
But it was gentle, now, as her
fingers encircled mine, sliding around my wrist like she was holding something
fragile, that could break.
 

Her fingertips were so warm, they
were almost hot as they pressed against my skin.

She bent her head, then.
 
I watched in shock as Layne O’Connell leaned
forward at the waist with that utterly magnetic grace, bent her head, and
brushed her warm, soft lips against the back of my hand.

“I look forward to working with
you,” she said, her voice low, almost a rumbling growl in the back of her
throat as she gazed up at me through long, dark lashes, her hazel eyes never
leaving mine, seeming to shimmer between blue and green and brown and back
again.

“I have coffee!” said Al, just
then, bumping the door with her hip as she pushed an antique teacart into the
room, laden with still-warm blueberry turnovers (which happen to be my
favorite) and a carafe of coffee.
 
She
had a big grin on her comforting face as she glanced quickly from Layne to me,
back to Layne again.
 

My father stood, still smiling
hugely.

And Layne dropped my hand only
after a very long moment, almost too long of a moment for any sort of normal
greeting.
 
Her fingers had been so warm
against mine.

The softness of her lips against my
skin was an imprint that made my blood burn.

Yeah.

Despite my initial reservations, I
guess I was looking forward to working with her, too.

Chapter 3:
 
A Better Violin

“You
must
take it easy,
Elizabeth—doctor’s orders!” my father called from his front porch as I hobbled
down the steps, Layne beside me, toward what would be my new car for the
foreseeable future—a big black Cadillac something-or-other that sprawled almost
as wide as a tank in the driveway, making me miss my sweet little SMART car
fiercely.

“I will, Dad,” I said for possibly
the hundredth time as I smiled tensely back at him, my hand on my side.
 
I had about a thousand errands to run, and
time was against me—taking it “easy” wasn’t something I could exactly get
behind.

It was Thursday.
 
That meant tomorrow was the night of the
major Mendelssohn concert, and a pretty famous violin soloist (actually, let’s
just be honest:
 
the
most famous
violin soloist on this whole wide earth)—Mikagi Tasuki—was flying into town for
rehearsal to play with us this evening.
 
The rehearsal was, of course, in preparation for her joining us in
concert tomorrow evening, and that left me very,
very
little time this
afternoon before rehearsal to pick up a new violin.
 

Which meant we had to leave right
away.

If you know anything about string
instruments, you know I was practically certifiable to want a new instrument
for a concert
tomorrow
.
 
Just
like when you’re getting to know a person, it takes awhile to learn the ins and
outs of every new violin’s sound.
 
But
I’d been in talks with Verity Olsen, the owner of Verity’s Violin Shop, for
months now because it had put me on edge that I only had one concert-worthy
violin to my name, and I’d been hoping to get another instrument for back up
purposes.

And finally, Verity had found a
violin that she thought would work for me.

I suppose that if I was held at
gunpoint to perform, I had a nice antique violin that if Amelia, our orchestra
director, didn’t stare at
too
closely would be worthy of being heard
with the rest of the string section.
 
But the sound didn’t do it for me.
 

And if Amelia singled me out, it
wouldn’t do it for her, either.

The violin is the closest
instrument to the human voice (though cellists will tell you that it’s the
cello, don’t believe them for a
second
).
 
Even if you’re not a very musical person, you can hear the
difference between the sound of different musical instruments.
 
Just like people, they have different
“voices” when played.
 
And comparing my
beloved concert violin, the one who had gotten crushed and crunched in the back
of my SMART car (may she rest in pieces) to the antique violin that
might
possibly
work in concert, was like comparing a blueblood Thoroughbred to a
petting zoo pony.
 
If you’re small enough,
each horse will get you where you want to go.
 
But there’s a distinctive difference between them.

As I approached the Cadillac, Layne
stepped forward smoothly, the passenger car door in her hand as she held it
open it for me.

“Uh-uh,” I said, folding my arms in
what was probably a very petulant reaction.
 
I shoved my purse strap farther up my shoulder as I shook my head,
narrowing my eyes.
 
“
I’m
driving.”

She raised a single eyebrow, cocking that narrow,
gorgeous hip toward me as she leaned all her weight onto her left leg and
placed a long-fingered hand on her hip.
 
My eyes were drawn to that elegant motion like she had magnets glued to
her.

“I’m very sorry, miss,” said Layne,
then, shaking her head.
 
“But
Doctor’s—and your father’s—orders state that
I’m
to drive, at least
until you’re a hundred percent again.”

Hot anger swept through me, and I
tried to take a few calming, cleansing breaths.
 
But the anger still remained, lodged in my heart and twisting
it.
 

Here was the beginning of the end
of my freedom.
 
This is what it looked
like when autonomy was taken from you—it started with little things, like
driving
.
 
I balled my hands into fists.
 
But how could I protest?
 
Yes, I’d finally just taken my pain pills,
but the doctor was probably right.
 
I
felt utterly rotten.
 
And I still had to
get to rehearsal, and hopefully play very, very,
very
well, accident or
no.

“Right,” I muttered, and Layne
opened up the door, her head inclined to me, and her lips twitching as she
tried to suppress a smile.

I folded and sat down in the
passenger seat, holding my purse in my lap.

I felt like an eighty-year-old
woman.

Layne sprinted around the side of
the car, and then she folded herself easily into the driver’s seat, attaching
her seatbelt and taking a pair of slim sunglasses out of her leather jacket’s
breast pocket.
 
She unfolded them and
slid them on as she started the car.
 

“So how long have you been a
bodyguard?” I asked her as she pulled smoothly down the driveway.
 
My father, Al and Ben waved to us from the
porch, and I waved my hand out the window before rolling it up with the press
of a button.
 

“You’re my official first guarded,”
said Layne with a little chuckle as she glanced at me out of the corner of her
eye behind the shades.

“Oh, really?”
 
The disappointment was evident in my
voices.
 
For some reason, she seemed
like she’d been doing this all her life—maybe it was the confidence she
exuded.
 
Knowing that I was the first
person she’d ever, well, guarded, actually took the wind out of my sails a bit.

And it made me feel less safe.

“Don’t worry,” she said smoothly as
the gates to my father’s estate began to open in front of us.
 
The elegant iron gates clicked back slowly
on their mechanized runner, and she nursed the brake, slowing as we waited for
them.
 
“I’m well qualified to keep you
safe.
 
Your father, I assure you, hires
only the best.”

“And you’re the best,” I said
flatly, one brow raised.
 
I
had
just
been through a major accident, which would, of course, add to my
testiness.
 
But there was also something
too smug about this woman.
 
Like she had
everything figured out.
 
No one
has
everything figured out.

“Yes,” she said lightly, with a
slight edge to her tone that brooked no argument.

“Huh,” I said with a mild tone,
staring out the window, pursing my lips to a flat line.

“You’re a concert violinist,
right?” asked Layne, then.
 
There was
something a little too funny about her tone, and I glanced at her.
 
She was smiling at me, but there was a hardness
to her eyes.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Well, you think you’re good,
right?”

“The Boston Philharmonic thinks
so,” I said, crossing my legs beneath the dashboard.
 
It was kind of a conceited thing to say, but it wasn’t conceit or
luck or nepotism that had gotten me entrance to the Philharmonic.
 
It was the spectacular way I’d played the
violin, the talent that I’d worked thousands of hours to achieve, had—in
fact—worked my ass off to acquire.
 
Nothing had been handed to me, I’d had to work every step of the way to
achieve that position.

“What makes you qualified to play in
the Boston Philharmonic?”

I sat there, stunned at her
question out of left field.
 
It took me
a full minute to respond.
 
“I…I’m
qualified because I won the audition years ago,” I told her, spluttering.
 
I mean, really, what kind of question
was
that?
 

“Had you ever been in an orchestra before?”

“No, but—”

“Then why did they let you in?”

I stared at her.
 
The anger was starting to cloud my vision,
and I was a little worried about smoke coming out of my ears again.
 
“They let me in because I was the best candidate
for the job, the best violinist in the long line of auditions they’d
heard.
 
They chose me because I was the
best.
 
I’m
good
at what I do,” I
told her fiercely.