The Bodyguard: Protecting Plain Jane. Debra Cowan

      For all my friends on the www.eHarlequin.com

      boards and Intrigue Authors Group blog.

      2010 was an especially tough year for me, but

       I truly appreciated all your kind messages and

       cyber hugs and prayers. Pretty cool. Classy, too.

       Thank you.

       Prologue

       The laughter rang in Charlotte’s ears and cut through her innocent soul. The muffled music echoing through the school that had filled her with anticipation only moments ago now pounded through her head like a death knell.

       “Right. Like I’d go out with some nearsighted brainiac like you when I could have this.” Landon, the Prince Charming who’d saved her from coming to the prom with her quiz bowl partner, Donny, leaned over and kissed the raven-haired beauty from the school he’d transferred from earlier in the year. Tears of shock and anger were already blurring Charlotte’s vision, but Landon’s victorious taunt came through crystal clear. He waved his copy of the prom photo they’d taken a few minutes earlier as proof of their date. “Goal and game for me, sweetheart. I just passed my varsity initiation and earned a hundred bucks, to boot.”

       Charlotte was shaking beneath the fancy updo of hair that had been straightened and lacquered within an inch of its life and was supposed to make her look pretty. “Asking me out was a bet?”

       He stuffed the photo into his pocket. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do to fit in around here.”

      And making Charlotte Mayweather, the dateless wonder, think someone special had seen through her plain Jane facade was his way of fitting in? She should have been smarter. None of the other boys she’d had a crush on ever saw her as more than a kid sister or one of the gang. Being smart was the one thing she was really good at. Why hadn’t she seen the sham of this boy asking her out? Why couldn’t she read people the way she could read a book?

       Landon blew her a kiss and grabbed his real date’s bottom through her clingy satin dress, letting Charlotte know that while he’d picked her up and brought her to the Sterling Academy’s big spring blowout, he had no intention of walking her through those doors into the auditorium and sharing even one dance with her. “All the new guys on the soccer team had a task to complete. You were mine.”

       Charlotte sniffled and wiped away some of the mascara that was streaking her glasses. “Aren’t you the only new guy?”

       He shifted back and forth in his black tuxedo, possibly feeling one teeny, tiny iota of remorse. “Hey, look, Char—nothing’s stopping you from going to the dance.”

       “By myself?”

       “Isn’t that how you spend all your nights?”

       She took that one like a sucker punch to the gut. She was Charlotte Mayweather, damn it. She had friends. She had scholarships. She had a stellar future traveling the globe in search of historic artifacts and running her father’s museum as soon as she finished Yale and earned her doctorate.

       But all she felt was hurt. All she could think of was the betrayal. “You’re slime, Landon.”

       “Yeah, but I just earned my place in your high-falutin’ school, I’m starting goalie and I’m gettin’ some tonight.” He held out his arm for his real date and pushed open the double doors leading to the auditorium. “Let’s go, babe.”

      Charlotte jerked at the instant assault of loud music on her eardrums and got a heartbreaking mental snapshot of the couples and colorful decor inside as the doors drifted shut behind him. She spotted her friend Gretchen floating through the crowd in her tiara, celebrating her win as prom queen. Her best friend Audrey was dancing with Harper Pierce, the tall blond boy she’d had a useless crush on since they’d been lab partners in chem class. Her homeroom gossip buddy, Valeska Gordeeva, had one guy cutting in on another as they danced.

       But when the doors closed and the music muted, Charlotte didn’t open them again. As much as she treasured those friendships, she was not going to be a third wheel on anyone’s night or humiliate herself any further.

      Charlotte tossed in bed, moaning a warning in her sleep as she watched her teenaged self turn and walk toward the school’s front door. “Don’t go,” she murmured, feeling the terror creeping into her nightmare. “Don’t.”

      But after ten years of reliving the same inevitable horror, she still couldn’t make it stop.

       Charlotte ripped the corsage off her wrist and took one last look at the beautiful red rose and silver ribbons before flinging it to the asphalt and stomping it beneath her foot. “Take that, Landon Turner.”

       The petty satisfaction of destroying his gift lasted long enough for Charlotte to come up with an even better idea.

      “No.” She knocked her pillow to the floor, helplessly reaching out in her sleep. “Stay in the moment. Stop.”

      Pausing long enough to get her bearings in the rows of parked cars, Charlotte pulled off her glasses and furiously wiped away the tears on her cheeks. Ignoring the streaks of makeup left behind, she put them back on and brought her vision and her impromptu scheme into focus. She changed course from her aimless escape and cut through the cars, heading for the opposite end of the parking lot.

       The limousine drivers hired for the night—who wanted a family employee ratting to parents about what went on in the back of the car?—were all parked on the far side of the lot, beyond the student cars. She’d find the driver Landon had paid for and have him take her home. Then she’d ask her father to double whatever Landon had paid, maybe send the driver to Vegas for a weekend on the Mayweathers, and Landon and Miss Boobalicious back there could find their own way home.

       Charlotte saw the car a couple of rows away, hiked up her gown and hurried her pace. That’d piss him off. Using her first official date with a handsome guy as a joke? He’d be out more than the hundred dollars he’d just—