Cole: Black Bear Outlaws #3 (Mating Fever) (2 page)

Shit, shit, shit
. Of course any actress worth her salt would fill in for practically nothing. The script was a career changer; the kind that usually ended up with golden statue awards. And the amount of buzz already surrounding it because of the work I’d done to bring it to the mainstream almost guaranteed box office success. Fuck.

“I’m sorry,” Lindy said quietly.

“Who is it?”

“She’s good, but she’s not you,” Lindy said.

I was silent as I waited her out.

Finally she took a deep breath. “Breela Paulson.”

The name wasn’t a shock. She was the newest up-and-comer in Hollywood these days, and always one step right behind me. “Of course it’s Breela. I’ll be in touch this afternoon.” Then before Lindy could say another word, I ended the call and turned to Cole. “I need you to pack. We’re going to L.A.”

A
mberly’s expression was full of sheer determination. I stood in her kitchen with my hands stuffed in my front pockets and pressed my lips into a thin line.

“Cole!” Her fingers flew over the keys of her laptop as she glared at me. “I’m buying us tickets. If you don’t pack, you’re going to be stuck wearing those dirty jeans and...” Her gaze flickered over my bare chest. “It might be a little cold on the plane like that.”

I strolled over to the counter and stood behind her, reading the computer screen. She’d selected two first class airline tickets departing New Orleans for Los Angeles at ten p.m. “I think maybe we should discuss this before you spend two grand on airline tickets.”

Her head jerked up. “There’s nothing to discuss. This is my career we’re talking about.”

As she moved the curser over the purchase button, I placed my hand over hers, stopping her. “And I’m talking about your life. It’s what you hired me to do, right? Protect you?”

“That’s why you’re coming with me,” she snapped and jerked her arm away from my hold. Turning, she glared at me. “Who works for whom here?”

I took a step back and stuffed my hands in my pockets again. The superior look on her face hit a raw nerve, and I couldn’t decide if I’d rather walk the fuck right out of there, or kiss her senseless until she was pliable and ready to do anything I asked her to. I sucked in a hard breath. “It’s my job to protect your life. Don’t think I won’t do it, even if it means defying an order from you,
boss
.”

She stared at me for a long moment, her fingers poised over the keyboard. Then she narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, piercing me with her stare. “I don’t think I care for your tone.”

“I know I don’t care for yours. I guess that makes us even.” It had been four days since Amberly had walked into the Black Bear Outlaws offices, looking for personal security. Four days since I hadn’t let her out of my immediate vicinity. In that time, I’d come to know a confident, down-to-earth, kind woman. This was my first taste of the Hollywood diva so often portrayed in the gossip magazines. Ordering me around would get her nowhere. “By the way your mouth is hanging open, I’m guessing not many people challenge your orders.”

She promptly closed her mouth and stood up straight, her shoulders squared. “I’m not issuing an
order
, Mr. Doucet,” she said, her words clipped. “You can accompany me or not. That’s your choice. But one way or another, I’ll be on that plane this evening. I’m not letting some jackass ruin my career.”

The irritation coiled in my chest evaporated when I realize she was dead serious. There was a slight hint of desperation in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. This role, whatever it was, appeared to really mean something to her.

“Do you want me to buy you a seat or not?” she asked, lifting one defiant eyebrow.

Going to L.A. without knowing who had been threatening her was the last thing she should be doing. But as I stood there, arguing with her, I knew she’d go anyway and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it...except go with her. Because dammit, no matter how much I wanted to ignore it, I knew there was no way I’d let her get on that plane without me. “Buy the ticket.”

Her defiant look vanished, replaced by sudden shock. But in the next moment, her face smoothed out and went carefully blank. She clicked the mouse and nodded. “Done. You better pack.”

***

S
unlight spilled through the window, heating the room to almost unbearable levels. I held the phone to my ear and jiggled the old latch on the window. I was desperate for some fresh air, but when I cranked the metal fitting the entire mechanism came off in my hand.

“Shit,” I muttered. And there wasn’t time to fix it either.

“Excuse me?” the woman on the line asked.

I gritted my teeth, not having realized she was still there. I’d been waiting for her boss to pick up. “Sorry. Just some technical difficulty on this end. Will Brex be available soon? This is important.”

“Everyone thinks their call is important, Mr. Doucet,” the woman said, her tone cold and uncaring. “If you’d prefer, I can leave a message and have him call you back.”

“No, thank you,” I spit out, tightening my grip around the phone. “I’ll wait. Can you please let him know I’m on the line?”

“I have already informed him he has a call waiting,” she said, now sounding bored.

“Tell him it’s Cole Doucet,” I ordered. “If he brushes you off after that, I’ll leave a message and let you get on with annoying the rest of your boss’s colleagues.”

The receptionist didn’t hide her heavy sigh before she clicked a button, leaving me in silence.
Christ.
Had she hung up on me after all? A second later, music from the nineteen-fifties bubble-gum-pop era filled the line. I pulled the phone away from my ear, stared at it for a second, then hit speaker and set the offending object on the dresser. It was nice to know she hadn’t hung up on me, but to be subjected to that...no. I suppressed a small shudder and turned my attention to the window.

With one small push, the window creaked as it opened. A light breeze floated in, giving me the tiniest reprieve from the oppressive heat.

The music cut out abruptly, and a gruff voice came over the line. “Doucet? Where’s the fire?”

I grinned at the sound of Brex’s jolly tone as I took the phone off speaker and pressed it once again to my ear. “Hey, man. I thought it was going to take an act of Congress just to talk to you. That secretary is more like a fortress than a first line of defense when it comes to getting a message through.”

He chuckled. “She might need a raise. How long have you been holding?”

I let out a snort of mock irritation. “Not terribly long this time, but I have left you three fucking messages.”

“Three messages?” His tone had gone from jovial to dangerous. Brex Holt was a man of his word. Loyal to a fault. But he was also a man who didn’t tolerate inept employees or excuses. “Ros! Get in here.”

“What?” the receptionist said loud enough even I could hear her.

“Hold on,” Brex said. “I’m putting you on mute.”

Sure enough the line went dead and I resumed my packing while I waited for the L.A.-based private investigator to return to the line. Amberly had hired Brex to look into her case the day after her first attack, and he’d been the one to refer her to Black Bear Outlaws when he’d learned she was headed to Bayou Basin. The police were supposedly working on the case, but with her out of town, chances were high they’d put the investigation on ice. Without an active threat, they weren’t going to be motivated to do much.

“All right. I’m back,” Brex barked into the phone. “You shouldn’t be having any more issues getting through to me. Ros and I have come to an understanding. I swear to God, that woman drives me completely insane.”

“That woman?” I asked, suppressing a laugh. “Sounds like she’s more than just an administrative assistant.”

“Might be,” he said, the gruffness in his tone turning once again to humor. “But don’t tell her that. She already thinks she runs the place.”

At least that was one good thing about heading to the west coast—seeing Brex again. It’d been six years since he’d left Bayou Basin and the Doucet family business to start a new life. The business had nearly put him in jail more times than he could count. But he was clean now, and the most respected P.I. in southern California.

“Do you have anything for me?” I asked him.

“Nothing yet. But we have a few leads I’m running down. We have partial plate numbers from the security camera, an interview scheduled with the neighbor when she gets back in town later in the week, and I have an assistant running down background checks on everyone in Amberly’s immediate circle. That includes co-workers, friends, and relatives. There’s always a connection.”

Relatives. Amberly didn’t have any left. Her grandmother had been her sole family before she’d died three years ago. She was the same woman who’d left Amberly this house she hadn’t even wanted, but said she’d kept because it was the last connection to any sort of family. “No chance it’s some random fan?”

“Could be, but there’d be some sort of warning before the threats escalated this far. Those cases usually start with letters or emails and progress from there. This feels a lot more personal.”

“All right.” The rumble of a delivery truck drew my attention. I gazed out the window, watching as the driver ran a small package up to the porch, dropped it off, and jogged back to his truck. “Looks like I’ll be in town by tomorrow morning. I’d like to come by so we can put our heads together on a list of possible suspects.”

“Here? I thought our client was laying low?”

The front door opened, followed by Amberly grabbing the package and disappearing back into the house. “She was, but she needs to get back for work. Where she goes, I go.”

“I see.” The hesitation in his tone told me everything I needed to know. Going to L.A. was a bad idea.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said and clicked off before he could voice his concerns. He didn’t need to. We were on the same page.

I stuffed the last of my crap in my bag, and lugged it downstairs. Amberly already had her four suitcases lined up near the front door. The box she’d carried in was on a side table, unopened. I moved to inspect the address label. As expected, it was for Amberly. But the return address was a surprise. Why was someone sending her something from a small town about thirty miles north of Bayou Basin? She’d said other than the house, she didn’t have any ties to Louisiana.

A quick search on my phone indicated the address was an independent shipping store. Warning bells went off in my head, and I strode to the kitchen with the box tucked under my arm.

Amberly still had the phone pressed to her ear, but her eyes found me as soon as I crossed into the room.

I held the box up and whispered, “Do you know who this is from?”

She shook her head and spoke into the phone. “What if I hire an entire security team? Not just for me, but for the set, too?”

The scowl that followed didn’t indicate good news. Looked like her plans to get back to work weren’t shaking out.

Unwilling to open the box in her presence, I took it outside and set it on a small round table next to the porch railing. It wasn’t very heavy, maybe five pounds at the most. There was no telling what could be hiding on the inside, and I wanted to see it, whatever it was, before Amberly did. Using my pocket knife, I cut through the packing tape. Inside, the top was filled with white tissue paper. I sucked in a breath, and used the tip of my knife to lift the filler.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered to myself as I took a quick shot of it with my smart phone.

“What is it?” Amberly said from behind me.

I spun, not wanting her to see the contents, and accidentally nudged the box, sending it sailing right over the porch railing.

A loud boom sounded from below, followed by a surge of heat as flames shot up.

“Get down!” I yelled, tackling her. We flew through the back door and landed on the hard tile of her kitchen. Her small frame was trapped underneath my larger one, while her eyes were round with fear.

“Was that...” She swallowed and tried again, “That package, it was for me?”

I stared into her deep blue eyes, and nodded slowly.

“A bomb,” she said so softly I barely heard her.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I noted the flames had died down, but the smoke was still rising. Without another word, I stood and pulled her up with me.

Her body was shaking, but she was already moving toward the back door.

“Oh, no you don’t.” I wrapped my hand around her wrist, stopping her. “You are not to go out there until I check it out.”

She stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. “So it’s okay for you to get blown up, but not me?”

“That’s exactly right,” I growled. “My job is to protect you and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Then I scooped her up and carried her into the living room.

“I can walk you know,” she said without any heat.

“I’m certain you can. But this makes a point, don’t you think?” I gently lowered her to the couch and handed her my phone. “Call Cyrus. Let him know what happened. I’m going to go make sure your house doesn’t burn down.”

“I don’t think—”

“Amberly,” I said, too sharply, as I paused at the doorway. Adrenaline had taken over and my heart was racing at the thought of what could’ve happened to her. “Let me do what I’m here to do.”

“Your job doesn’t involve dealing with bombs!” Her voice rose a few octaves on the word bombs.

“No, love. It’s to keep you alive.”
Even if I have to die trying.

T
he echo of Cole’s strong arms that had been wrapped around me was the only thing still holding me together. Holy hell! Someone had sent a real, live bomb to my house. The house no one was supposed to know about. The one I hadn’t been to since I was seven years old.

How had they found me?

I hadn’t seen any paparazzi since I’d landed in New Orleans last week. One almost never did. It was one of the great things about the city; photographers didn’t follow the stars around on a regular basis. It was possible someone saw me at the airport, but I’d been on a private jet and hadn’t even gone through security.