Single Mum's Bodyguard. Lisa Childs
she hadn’t wanted to interrupt Nikki and Lars on the night they had just gotten engaged.
But why Dane?
She had the numbers of all Lars’s friends. He’d given her Cooper Payne’s before he’d left for his last deployment. Cooper hadn’t re-enlisted like the rest of his unit. He’d been home and able to help her.
If only she’d gone to Cooper instead of that sleazy lawyer.
She couldn’t change the past, though. And Lars had made certain she had more than one man to call for help now. He’d given her the numbers of all his friends.
So why had she called only one man? Why had she trusted Dane, a man his own best friend had admitted he didn’t really know?
Sure, he’d claimed he was on his way. But where was he coming from? How far away was he?
And why hadn’t she just called 911?
Because she hadn’t wanted it on record if there was no intruder—if that creak had only been in her head—like the crying.
What if she was losing her mind?
Why would she trust Dane Sutton to keep her secret? She couldn’t even trust that he was really coming. There hadn’t been just that one creak. After she’d heard the door open, she’d heard other noises—footsteps on the stairs, heading up to the second floor, to her bedroom and Blue’s.
Was someone after her son?
She fumbled around in the darkness of the attic space, trying to find the cell phone she’d dropped. She hadn’t imagined all that, the creak of the door and on the steps. She needed to call the police. She couldn’t wait for Dane any longer.
But then she noticed the silence. It was eerily quiet. There were no sounds, not from the house or anything outside. Usually one of the branches of the trees hanging over the house brushed across the roof. But not now. Not even a cricket chirped.
Had she imagined it all? Was there no one inside? Of course that didn’t mean that no one had been inside, just that he’d left. Maybe he hadn’t been looking for Blue or her at all. Maybe he’d only been searching for her phone to make more of the late-night calls.
She expelled a shaky breath of relief. She and her son were alone. She could bring him downstairs and settle him back in his bed. But then a door creaked—the attic door. As it opened, a light flashed, the beam shining straight into her eyes.
Nearly blinded, she squinted and tried to peer around the beam. A hulking shadow loomed behind the light. But that wasn’t what frightened her the most; it was the fact that the flashlight from which that beam came wasn’t held in a hand. It was mounted to the barrel of a gun that was pointed directly at her.
A scream tore from her throat.
“Hey, hey!” a deep voice shouted. And the beam shifted, shining on the chiseled features of the man who held the gun. “It’s me,” he said. “Dane.”
Instead of slowing, her heart raced faster. She could feel Blue’s heart beating fast, too, as he cried. Her scream had startled him. He wasn’t easily soothed. It was hard to comfort her son when she was still so scared.
Her hand trembled as she ran it up and down his back. “It’s okay...” But she wasn’t sure about that.
Something snapped, then light from an overhead bulb illuminated the rafters and wood of the unfinished attic space. “Are you really okay?” Dane asked as he holstered his weapon. “You’re shaking.”
As if afraid that she might drop her son, he reached out and took the crying child from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Lars had remarked more than once that Dane Sutton couldn’t stand kids. Why was he cradling hers so gently in those huge hands of his?
“You called me, remember?” Dane asked. “You said someone had broken into your house...” His voice trailed off and he stared at her oddly.
“What?” she asked. “Didn’t you see anyone?”
He shook his head. “No. And the door jamb wasn’t broken.”
“No. They didn’t break in,” she murmured. “I just heard the door open.”
He kept staring at her. She’d known his eyes were brown but she saw now, with the light glinting in them, that they were more golden than dark. “You didn’t lock it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. No. Of course it was locked. I made sure that it was.”
Hadn’t she?
She reached out for her son, but her hands were still shaking. Not with fear now but with nerves.
His intense stare unnerved her.
“You can give him back to me,” she said.
Blue had stopped crying, practically the moment Dane had taken him away from her. And he stared, too, up at the man holding him. His pale eyes were wide with awe. He should have been used to big men with his uncle being nearly the size of a giant. But maybe it wasn’t Dane’s size that awed him. It was his aura.
She felt it, too. She’d felt it the very first time she’d met him. He was a man of power and control. A man who let little get to him or get in his way.
“I have him,” he said, as if he didn’t trust her with her own son. He turned and headed toward the stairs. “These steps are steep and narrow,” he said.
“I know.” She’d climbed them in such haste and fear that she’d nearly tripped up every one of them. She’d been carrying her sleeping son, so she’d been careful with him. “I brought Blue up here and never woke him,” she said.
Dane ignored her and easily descended the narrow stairs. For such a big man, he moved silently, almost gracefully. He wasn’t the one she’d heard walking around the house earlier. Heck, she’d thought she was alone when the door had opened, and he’d shone his light and his gun in her face.
“Which room is his?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her answer before carrying her son right into the nursery.
She started to regret calling him. For one, he still didn’t hand her son back to her. He cradled the baby in his palms. But maybe he forgot he held him since he wasn’t looking at the child.
He kept looking at her. And that was the other reason she thought she shouldn’t have called him. He kept staring at her so oddly, his caramel eyes darkening with his intensity.
She shivered and said, “Stop looking at me like that...”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like I’m losing my mind.” Because if he kept looking at her like that, she might start believing that she was. “And I’m not,” she insisted, but her voice cracked on a note that sounded curiously close to hysteria.
Blue tensed and his little face screwed up as if he were about to cry again. But Dane rocked him a little and murmured, “Shhh, little guy, it’s all right.”
Emilia shook her head and said, “It’s not all right. Nothing’s all right.”
Dane’s eyes darkened even more with anger. And finally he put down her son, laying him in his crib. Then he turned toward her and, despite the anger in his eyes, gently brushed his knuckles over the bruise on her shoulder.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Who’s hurting you?”
She shivered even though his touch heated her skin and her blood. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who’s hurting you?” he asked skeptically, like he thought she was lying to protect someone. And she realized his anger was for that someone. “You don’t know who did this to you?” He skimmed his fingertips gently over her shoulder again.
“No,