Seducing the Bodyguard (8 page)

“So this is how it ends,” he said smoothly. For the first time ever she had tears in her eyes because of a kill. She had killed without conscious before, but she couldn’t do it then.

“It doesn’t have to,” she had said.

“You’re too honest to let me go on like this.”

She told him of her plan, of what she wanted to arrange for him if he would just go along with it, and he laughed in her face. He challenged her, telling her that he was the better assassin, the better fighter, and that before he gave up a lucrative profession he would kill her. She loved him, was willing to sacrifice everything for him and he would kill her. He had to know that if it got out that she didn’t carry out a hit then she would probably be the next person on the list, but instead…instead of realizing just how much she loved him he decided to try to kill her. What he didn’t realize, what he didn’t know, was that she was, and would always be, better than him when it came to executing a kill—when it came to fighting. He hadn’t seen all her skills. They were together for five years as partners and nearly as long as lovers, but she had always held something back from him. She had always kept a part of her skills hidden. Part of that was because she knew it was dangerous for anybody to know her weakness, and to know all of her strengths. The other part, and she realized it now even if she didn’t then, was that she just didn’t trust him enough with her secrets. In the recesses of her mind she always knew that one day it would come down to betrayal. After she killed him, her status went from an assassin to be moderately feared to one that was dreaded. Even the men who hired the Angel of Death knew not to cross the assassin behind the code name, but very few of them knew she was a woman. Only three people knew of her real identity, three people outside of her family that is. Those three people included herself, the middle man Ray Capshaw, and her partner, her lover, the man she thought she would spend forever with—Darryl Pekensy. Darryl was now dead and Ray, who was like a surrogate father to her, had bowed to her request and he let her out—on one condition, if ever there came a time when he needed her skills to stop a massive catastrophe she would make herself available. She agreed. She continued her intensive training with her father, and she stayed abreast of any changes in the game so that she would be ready if that time ever came.

“I’m sorry,” Harrison leaned forward and took her hand in his. This was the first time when they weren’t in public where she allowed him to continue to touch her.

She sighed. “That was my life. I dealt with it.”

“Did you?” He spoke softly. “Because right now I think it’s still haunting you. You refuse to let yourself get close to anybody outside of your family. You refuse to let love in. You refuse it because you’re afraid that what happened with Darryl will happen again. Trust me when I tell you, Valencia, I would never betray your trust, or your love.” He stroked his thumb over the delicate skin on her wrist. “If I had your love, Valencia, I would give my last breath to keep it. I would walk through hell for you.”

She pulled her hand from his grasp. “We can’t,” she whispered before pulling her thoughts out of what could be and forcing them back on what should be.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s my job to protect you. I have to stay focused on that. You have to let me stay focused on that.”

And now it was his turn to be upfront and honest with her. “I can’t,” he said, and that was the only truth he would admit, or so she thought. “I won’t,” he confirmed. “I know you’re skilled enough, and talented enough, to split your attention between the love we could have for each other, and the life you’re trying to protect. I’ll wait,” he brushed a finger over her cheek, “as patiently as I can, for you to realize that. But, and I stress this clearly, I won’t wait forever before showing you why you should be my woman and I should be your man.” He recaptured her wrist in his hand.

“I just admitted to you that I killed people for a living. Doesn’t that bother you at all? Aren’t you afraid to be with somebody who can kill without conscious?”

He shook his head. “First of all what you did in the past is not who you are now. Secondly,” he looked deep into her eyes as if trying desperately to pierce her armor. “You clearly had a conscious or you wouldn’t have changed your profession. You wouldn’t have tried to save the man you loved. You wouldn’t be trying to save me now. You’re a good person, with a good heart, and I don’t need your resume to prove that.”

She pulled her wrist free of his hand. “I have to focus,” she restated. “And you have to let me focus.” And on those words she left him sitting on the couch, lost with his own thoughts as she tried to come to terms with the words he had uttered to her, to the feelings he had reignited in her.

“No I don’t,” Harrison whispered as he sat back on the couch. He didn’t have to let her do anything. His life wasn’t in any danger and he wasn’t about to miss a perfectly good opportunity to have in his life one the most amazing woman he had ever met. He wanted her to be more than just a bed buddy. That thought alone should have scared him because he knew so little about her still. But what he did know he liked. He wanted to know more. If he had his way he would know more. No, not
if
. He
would
have his way. He was Harrison Sinclair and he was going to do whatever it would take to have this woman in his life past the few months she planned to protect him.

Harrison was so sure of himself, so sure of his ability to seduce this woman that he assumed the quest would take less time. He knew what he wanted. He went after it. And any other time, when he went after what he wanted he got what he wanted. But this woman was resisting his charms with a vigor that had him gasping for air. Days turned to weeks and he still hadn’t claimed her. She had accompanied him to the opening. She had pretended to be his woman, but at the end of the night, when they were back behind the walls of the hotel room, she was about business only. Hell, even the outside life was business for her. They were pretending to be lovers; it was just an act, another facet of her job that she vowed to do well.

The more he tried to seduce her, the more he learned about her, the more he wanted her. She was amazing. She was the polar opposite of women he had dated before. It wasn’t that the women before Valencia hadn’t been smart, or successful, but this woman was smart, successful, lethal and more than capable of knocking him on his behind without breaking a sweat. Something about that had him intrigued, captivated, hooked on her.

What he needed was help. He had never needed help getting a woman before, but he needed help with this woman. He had thought that she couldn’t resist him forever, but now he was starting to wonder about that. The more he tried, the more she fortified that stone wall guarding her heart.

Tonight was a night with the guys. He always had at least one night in each location to just sit back and have game night with four of the trusted men working with his show, putting everything they physically could into keeping it going strong so that they had a long and successful run. Usually they went out on the town or ordered in pizza and had drinks in one of their rooms. It was his turn to pick a venue and given the fact that if he chose an outing at a club, bar or restaurant he knew Valencia wouldn’t be more than two feet away from him, he decided on his room. They picked up pizza on the way back to the hotel, and Les was on beer duty so he didn’t have to worry about that. Valencia had agreed to stay hidden in her room after the men arrived so long as there were no unexpected guests. She had already checked out his crew and the cast and while she wasn’t completely unsuspicious of any of them, she seemed to relax, even if only a little, when it came to Les, Jeremiah, Chester and Drew. Actually, he wouldn’t jump right to saying she relaxed, so much as he would say she allowed him some breathing room around them. Of course he could always tell she was vigilant to her surroundings, waiting and ready for any attack that may come.

He had told her several times that nothing was going to happen. He was safe. The letters weren’t still arriving. He had even put her mind at ease over his former assistant. The woman was crazy, but she wasn’t that crazy. Lani Davison had taken his trust and stolen from him in a way that he couldn’t forgive. He didn’t want to believe Jeremiah when he told him that he had seen Lani with Deveroe Johnson, one of his opera nemeses, but he also didn’t think the man had any reason to lie to him. Jeremiah was a standup guy, straightforward and honest, so he took his word as truth. He set up one of those nanny cameras in a vase in his office and he waited. A week later he caught her going into his private drawer, not just going into it, but picking the lock to get in. Fortunately he hadn’t had his newest opera in the drawer so she didn’t get his newest work and sell it to Deveroe, but she could have and would have had Jeremiah not warned him. After that he vowed he would never trust a female assistant again. She seemed sweet and honest in her, “I just love opera and want to work in the business any possible way that I can,” speech. She had even laughed at her inability to sing. “So this is the only way,” she had said. “And I love all of your work, so if you’ll have me…please have me,” she had crossed her legs on those words and his mind had gone elsewhere. He had hired her because she looked good on paper, but he couldn’t deny that he had also hired her because she looked good off paper too.

He hadn’t slept with Lani. He hadn’t even tried. Although she was definitely the type of woman, physically, that he would have gone for. She had long black hair, nice voluptuous breast, striking blue eyes and legs that went on for days. She was five-nine, which he liked because he was tall himself. Her skin was smooth, but pale. She didn’t tan well, but that porcelain look fit her well. The only thing that kept him from trying for more with her was the fact that he had hired her on with the company. He didn’t date anybody in the company. While he had thought of breaking his own rule once or twice, he never allowed himself to do that. Now he was glad he hadn’t. The moment he fired her, Lani said she was go to the press and say he was sexually harassing her. He told her to have at it because he had a tape that showed her breaking into his locked desk, stealing a binder with his work inside, granted old work, but still his work none the less, and that he was sure the police would be more than happy to arrest her for it. Instead, she went away quietly and he left out the cops. The last thing he needed was that type of press with all the other things that were going on with his life and his show.

He had told Valencia about the fiasco and she had given him a look before shaking her head as if she was going to say something, but opted not to. “What?” He asked her. “Tell me?”

“I was just thinking that maybe your mother put her up to it. This was around the time that you were working on this opera, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but…”

“She knew you were going to hire Geneva and she didn’t want you to. Maybe she thought if she got rid of your work that you wouldn’t hire Geneva. When things didn’t work out—”

“She implemented plan B. She tried to kill my sister.”

Valencia shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong. I probably am.”

But he could tell she knew she was right, and he was starting to see the situation in the same light. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he had said. “My mother is in prison and Lani is far, far away.” He didn’t know where she was, but he knew she was gone and he knew she wasn’t the woman behind the letters. He had found out she had no interest in black men at all—in fact, she couldn’t stand them. He was mixed, but he knew most people looked at him and saw a black man, as had she. There was no way a woman with that much disgust in black men would ever write him letters like that.

Whoever his stalker was, she had probably moved on to somebody else already. He had assured Valencia of that fact, trying to get her to stop being so serious. She had assured him that the second biggest mistake anybody could make was presuming safety, presuming that all was clear. “Always,” she had said. “Always be ready for any attack.” And on those words she sweep kicked him off his feet before he could blink. He used some of the techniques she had taught him in order to free himself from her hold, but in the end he still ended up pinned beneath her beautiful body. He was rather starting to like the position. He wouldn’t mind being in the same position under different circumstances.

He needed some serious advice on how to get what he wanted right now, but he couldn’t exactly ask the guys about seducing Valencia when they had already led everybody to believe they were already hitting the mattress together each night. He resisted the urge to slap hand to forehead again. The last thing he needed was for the guys to sense something was wrong. They were like bloodhounds. The moment they realized there was trouble they would for sure piece together just what the trouble was.

Les and Chester had been with all of his shows from the very beginning they were like surrogate brothers to him. He would say he was closer to them than he was some of his family, maybe because they worked hard and never expected a handout. They were good men with good values. He couldn’t say that about all of his family. His father had just recently, within the last couple years, become a better man; and it had taken a health scare to knock that sense of morality into him.

Les was his in charge guy for all things set design while Chester was the head honcho stage manager. Jeremiah had come on board in his last opera, midway through actually, but it felt as if he had been there with them from the beginning. He was a friend from high school. When he fell on hard times, Harrison didn’t think twice about employing the man to handle lighting setups. He was a genius on so many levels and he learned the tricks of the trade quickly. Drew, he was the youngest of the group in age only. Drew had joined his team when his father passed. In some way, Drew had always been on the team because he had often worked side by side with his dad on the books, but he wasn’t out of college, hadn’t had his CPA certifications and really had never asked for a permanent spot. Even after he finished college and did all the CPA exams, he still worked more pro bono, as if all he wanted to do was be by his father’s side, learning the trade from the master. Maybe he had known that his father’s time on this earth was limited and he wanted to be with him every step of the way. Drew had traveled with them whenever his father traveled and he was, in every way except on paper, a member of the team. When Drew’s father died Harrison hired him on full time. Of course he had told Harrison he wasn’t sure why he had hired him when he spent more time watching the books than Drew did himself. Harrison had simply laughed off Drew’s words. Harrison’s father, Mr. Remington Sinclair himself, had long ago told him to keep the books closer to him than anything or anybody else. He trusted Drew, but old habits weren’t going to die when it came to making sure his money was where it should be. Even when Drew’s father was his accountant he handled the books the same way. It was as if the books literally had two keepers, the accountant and himself, and it would always be that way.