Bodyguard Under the Mistletoe. Cassie Miles

      To Rick. I thought about you a lot when I was writing this book.

       Chapter One

      He wasn’t dead yet.

      The darkness behind his eyelids thinned. Sensation prickled the hairs on his arm. Inside his head, he heard the beat of his heart—as loud and steady as the Ghost Dance drum. That sacred rhythm called him back to life.

      His ears picked up other sounds. The beep-beep-beep of a monitor. The shuffle of quiet footsteps. The creaking of a chair. A cough. Someone else was in the room with him.

      The drumming accelerated.

      His eyelids opened—just a slit. Sunlight through the window blinds reflected off the white sheet that covered his prone body. Hospital equipment surrounded the bed. Oxygen. An IV drip on a metal pole. A heart monitor that beeped. Faster. Faster. Faster.

      “Jesse?” A deep voice called to him. “Jesse, are you awake?”

      Jesse Longbridge tried to move, tried to respond. Pain radiated from his left shoulder. He remembered being shot, falling from his saddle to the cold earth and lying there, helpless. He remembered a gush of blood. He remembered…

      “Come on, Jesse. Open your eyes.”

      He recognized the voice of Bill Wentworth. A friend. A coworker. Good old Wentworth. He’d been a paramedic in Iraq, but that wasn’t the main reason Jesse had hired him. This lean, mean former marine—like Jesse himself—always got the job done.

      They had a mission, he and Wentworth. No time to waste. They needed to get into the field, needed to protect…

      Jesse bolted upright on the bed and gripped Wentworth’s arm. “Is she safe?”

      “You’re awake.” Wentworth grinned without showing his teeth. “It’s about time.”

      One of the monitor wires detached, and the beeping became a high-pitched whine. “Is Nicole safe?”

      “She’s all right. Arrests have been made.”

      Wentworth was one of Jesse’s best employees—a credit to Longbridge Security, an outstanding bodyguard. But he wasn’t much of a liar.

      The pain in his shoulder spiked again, threatening to drag Jesse back into peaceful unconsciousness. He licked his lips. His mouth was parched. He needed water. More than that, he needed the truth. He knew that Nicole had been kidnapped. He’d seen it happen. He’d been shot trying to protect her.

      He tightened his grip on Wentworth’s arm. “Has Nicole Carlisle been safely returned to her husband?”

      “No.”

      Dylan Carlisle had hired Longbridge Security to protect his family and to keep his cattle ranch safe. If his wife was missing, they’d failed. Jesse had failed.

      He released Wentworth. Using his right hand, he detached the nasal cannula that had been feeding oxygen to his lungs. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he felt the bump where it had been broken a long time ago in a school-yard fight. He hadn’t given up then. Wouldn’t give up now. “I’m out of here.”

      Two nurses rushed into the room. While one of them turned off the screeching monitor, the other shoved Wentworth aside and stood by the bed. “You’re wide-awake. That’s wonderful.”

      “Ready to leave,” Jesse said.

      “Oh, I don’t think so. You’ve been pretty much unconscious for three days and—”

      “What’s the date?”

      “It’s Tuesday morning. December ninth,” she said.

      Nicole had been kidnapped on the prior Friday, near dusk. “Was I in a coma?”

      “After surgery, your brain activity stabilized. You’ve been consistently responsive to external stimuli.”

      “I’ll say,” Wentworth muttered. “When a lab tech tried to draw blood, you woke up long enough to grab him by the throat and shove him down on his butt.”

      “I didn’t hurt him, did I?”

      “He’s fine,” the nurse said, “but you’re not his favorite patient.”

      He didn’t belong in a hospital. Three days was long enough for recuperation. “I want my clothes.”

      The nurse scowled. “I know you’re in pain.”

      Nothing he couldn’t handle. “Are you going to take these needles out of my arms or should I pull them myself?”

      She