Scotland for Christmas
Cathryn Parry
These secrets won't stay hidden Jacob Ross needs Isabel Sage. She's a beautiful, brilliant heiress to Scotland's wealthiest family fortune–but Jacob isn't interested in her looks or money. Isabel holds the key to questions about his past. And when he gets a weekend assignment as her bodyguard, Jacob finally has a shot at getting the truth.But Jacob never expected Isabel to be anything other than a spoiled rich girl. Never expected to feel such a connection. And when Isabel realizes why he's really there, she'll be furious at being used. Jacob will have to convince her that she's become so much more than an assignment…
These secrets won’t stay hidden
Jacob Ross needs Isabel Sage. She’s a beautiful, brilliant heiress to Scotland’s wealthiest family fortune—but Jacob isn’t interested in her looks or money. Isabel holds the key to questions about his past. And when he gets a weekend assignment as her bodyguard, Jacob finally has a shot at getting the truth.
But Jacob never expected Isabel to be anything other than a spoiled rich girl. Never expected to feel such a connection. And when Isabel realizes why he’s really there, she’ll be furious at being used. Jacob will have to convince her that she’s become so much more than an assignment…
Isabel didn’t know what she was feeling.
All she knew was that Jacob seemed furious on her behalf. It was…shocking to her.
And a wee bit flattering.
She bit her lip and stared at the red traffic light—yet another one. Jacob seemed to be attracting each and every stop along their route. She tried not to sneak looks at him.
“How long were you two a couple?” His voice was so low she had to strain to hear him. “Were you engaged to him? Did you expect to be married to him?”
Should she answer? He seemed like he was on her side. He seemed…to intrinsically believe in her.
“Sort of,” she whispered. “I mean…” She glanced at him. His eyes were warm and understanding. She really felt as if she could trust him.
But this was madness. She’d only met him a few hours ago, and she was Isabel Sage—she couldn’t trust outsiders.
Dear Reader (#ulink_839c638e-5ce8-5650-92d0-7320c902e290),
Thanks for picking up Scotland for Christmas! I loved writing about the Sage family of Edinburgh, Scotland, so much for my last Mills & Boon Superromance book, The Sweetest Hours (December 2013), that I decided to set two more stories in their romantic world.
This story is primarily a bodyguard tale. Jacob Ross is an emotionally cut-off US Secret Service agent who needs to find out how his police officer father was killed in action years ago while rescuing the kidnapped niece and nephew of John Sage, billionaire CEO of the Sage family empire. Isabel Sage is John’s lonely other niece. Though she is smart, hardworking and—above all—loyal to her family, she is drawn to the gruff protector who initially hasn’t been honest about his agenda with her. As a potential successor to the CEO job, it’s not in her best interests to help Jacob. And Jacob certainly can’t afford to fall for this gentle woman from a completely different world from his.
But the healing power of love shines through, and as they return to Scotland for Christmas, Jacob is reconciled to his family’s painful past while Isabel finds the one love who truly makes her feel at home.
I hope you enjoy Isabel and Jacob’s story.
All the best,
Cathryn Parry
Scotland for Christmas
Cathryn Parry
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CATHRYN PARRY loves to travel—especially to Scotland!—at any time of year that she can manage. At all other times she lives in New England with her husband and her neighbor’s cat, Otis. Cathryn is an active member of Romance Writers of America and enjoys presenting inspirational workshops to writers. Her Mills & Boon Superromance books have received such honors as a Booksellers’ Best Award, HOLT Medallion Awards of Merit and several readers’ contest nominations. Please see her website at cathrynparry.com (http://www.cathrynparry.com).
This story is dedicated to my grandmother, Ruth McLeod, who loved Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with the family.
I miss you, Nana.
Contents
Cover (#u23dc4101-10ad-5b7b-b0c9-9876558d1035)
Back Cover Text (#u19dcbbc3-3fb7-55b4-8a83-5a3ed9dbcae4)
Introduction (#uf3f43cd0-edae-53d5-b21d-83a1a344de9e)
Dear Reader (#ulink_ce80fe93-99c6-5fb6-a7fb-afdcb893f6d1)
Title Page (#u70fb7afa-ffbe-5fb9-8d0a-bb097c84e579)
About the Author (#ufd86aa5b-bc52-5e8f-9355-d23157a43ba8)
Dedication (#uaa01231d-5dea-5ea4-ab83-ffe602c7b2f2)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_ec2db5bf-0513-5142-b3ce-3701be925958)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d88eee16-18d5-5199-afe7-c30fd3ac241c)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_454ea58b-ed22-5ccd-bfb5-d16f7c152494)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ae344120-d991-5e4a-ad68-ab066b3be786)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b12ad7b4-0904-5494-a9e1-7b4f5c05fdfc)
U.S. SPECIAL AGENT Jacob Ross was sitting in an intimate Italian restaurant in midtown Manhattan, next to a woman he wasn’t interested in being with, when the text message that he’d been waiting for came in.
Jacob reached for his jacket and stood.
“Where are you going?” Eddie asked from across the table.
Jacob glanced at his oldest friend and ex-partner, the guy who’d ridden with him nearly every day for seven years, back when they’d still been on the New York Police Department together. Clinging to Eddie, practically in his lap, was his wife, Donna, and though she leaned forward, desperately trying to catch Jacob’s eye, he was purposely avoiding the two women and their blatant interrogation.
“A job,” he said to Eddie. “Sorry, but I have to go.”
Eddie put down his wineglass and raised his eyebrow. He probably figured Jacob was bluffing about the text message, but would never say so in front of Donna.
“Right,” said his ex-partner. “The Cifelli bust?”
The Cifelli bust was their personal code. It was nonsense—meant absolutely nothing. Jacob and Eddie had made all kinds of fake codes and shorthand between them over the years. Since they’d been special agents in the U.S. Secret Service together, though, they’d been working under stricter protocol, as part of bigger teams with more complex oversight.
Jacob paused. He still had his phone out, in the process of texting back, but in terms of operational backup, it probably was best to involve Eddie. They’d both gone through the brutal Secret Service background check at the same time—from polygraphs to psychological testing, and in Jacob’s case, to the dark cloud that still hung over him: the threat of further, future investigation. There wasn’t much his old partner didn’t know about him.
“Actually,” he said to Eddie in a low voice, “it’s about Sage.”
“Sage?” His former partner made a soft whistle. Then he reached for his jacket. “I’m coming with you.”
“Eddie, not you, too!” his wife said. “We just ordered.”
“Give me five minutes, hon,” Eddie said as he kissed her, and then he motioned Jacob toward the exit. Jacob led the way, weaving through a crowd of waiting diners as he pushed through the heavy glass doors.
Outside, the street was brightly lit, loud with students and tourists. The Friday after-work rush was in play, too; businesspeople hurried past, intent on getting to their subway and bus stops. The sky was spitting rain; a miserable, late-October night.
They took refuge under an awning near the sign for West Fifty-third Street. Not wasting any more time, Jacob pulled up the text message.
Eddie angled toward the screen, squinting at it. “Why are you getting a text about John Sage after all this time? What’s happening, Jake?”
What was happening was that Jacob’s application to the most elite and sought-after of Secret Service jobs—the Presidential Protective Division—had been put on hold. The new department psychologist had flagged Jacob’s file, and not in a good way. “I got called into headquarters today with a list of questions I need to answer,” Jacob said.
“You’re kidding. Questions about your father?”
Jacob nodded. Eddie knew he didn’t like to talk about him. He shuffled his feet from side to side, not saying anything more.
Then again, special agents were superstitious. Nobody liked to talk about police officers killed in the line of duty.
“Can your mom help with the questions?” Eddie finally asked.
“No.” His mom never discussed it—she’d already remarried by the time Jacob’s biological father had died, and Jacob didn’t want to upset her by reopening old wounds.
Exhaling, he tried to relax. “I thought I’d covered this stuff in the original interviews, but there’s a new psychologist on staff. She’s not giving me a choice. I have to deal with it if I want to advance.”
“Well, if you want help investigating anything, you know I’m in.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” Jacob just had a bad feeling in his gut about the whole thing. It wasn’t as if he’d ever even met his biological father, so he didn’t see how the fact that he wasn’t clear on the details of his father’s death was even relevant. After the new department psychologist had buttonholed him, he’d pushed aside the old anger and confusion and had tried to look at the situation objectively, like an investigator would—the way he’d been trained.
Unfortunately, very little was available online about the botched kidnapping-rescue, twenty years earlier, of the young niece and nephew of the Scottish industrialist John Sage. In Jacob’s experience, it wasn’t normal for information to be scrubbed like that.
“I phoned authorities over in Scotland, but they don’t have dossiers anymore. They don’t want to talk to me, and I think it’s because they don’t know what to say. My instinct tells me the case has been covered up, and I don’t have jurisdiction to force the subject.”
“I didn’t know that,” Eddie said quietly.
Jacob shrugged. There was nothing he could do to change history.
Eddie gestured to Jacob’s phone. “How is Lee helping you with this?”
Lee Palmontari was ex–Secret Service, and Jacob and Eddie’s boss until he’d retired. Now he owned a high-end bodyguard/driver business, mostly staffed by other retired federal agents working on contract.
“Lee is me thinking outside the box,” Jacob said. “Every billionaire industrialist in the world needs to travel to New York City sooner or later, right? Who else would John Sage call for local security services during his stay?”
Eddie nodded. “Lee.”
“Exactly. I left Lee a message explaining what I wanted. He just texted back saying he could help.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“So call him and find out.”
“I will,” Jacob said drily, “when you go back inside. Your five minutes are up.”
“Nope. You’re not getting rid of me.” Eddie shook his head and grinned. “Look, Jake, I know you’re angry about the setup tonight, but don’t blame Donna. My wife means well—she wants you to be happy.”
What did happy have to do with anything? Jacob just wanted to do his job and get to D.C. He would be part of the Presidential Protective Division. Filling the holes in his personnel file was the first step in getting there.
“You know I’m not family material. Not like you.” Jacob gave his friend a look as he punched up Lee’s contact number. Eddie just rolled his eyes.
“Hey, Jake.” Lee himself picked up the call. “I do have a side job available you might be interested in. I can’t promise anything, but...yeah, the opportunity is there.”
Jacob’s heart beat faster. Talking to Sage face-to-face was the answer to everything he needed. “Great. But you know I can’t take payment for it, right?” With his already shaky work status, he couldn’t make it official—no money changing hands, nothing he could potentially get in trouble for.
Eddie slid his hands into his pockets. He knew the risks, too.
“This would just be a favor to you, off the books?” Jacob clarified.
“Sure,” Lee said. “That’s not a problem. It’s just a short driving gig, mainly.”
There was something about the way Lee said mainly that stood out to Jacob. But the promise of a “driving gig” had already snagged him: alone, in a car with the man who held the answers Jacob needed.
“Okay. When and where do I pick up Mr. Sage?”
“Ah...not quite, Jake,” Lee said. “The job is to drive his niece.”
“His niece? Why would I want to do that?”
Beside him, Eddie shook his head. A quick thumbs-down movement as he scratched his chin. Ratchet it down, that meant. Ratchet down the intensity.
One thing Jake had learned in his life was that intensity was not appreciated. People weren’t supposed to care too much, and if they did, they were supposed to hide it.
Take it easy. Relax. Go with the flow. Withdraw. Nothing is all that important.
That’s what people said to him. Sorry, but it just wasn’t who he was. Everything to him had meaning. It was his weakness and his strength. That fact that Jacob cared, intensely, helped him as an investigator and a bodyguard, even though in real life, it often seemed to alienate him from everybody else.
Or maybe Jacob was just better off alone.
“Look, Jake,” Lee was saying, “you’re right, never mind about the job, why don’t we just forget I called and we’ll—”
“No,” Jacob interrupted. With the phone still at his ear, he stepped away from Eddie, out from under the awning and into the street, where the rain was coming down a little harder. More of a drizzle than a spit. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right. Tell me more about the...niece.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Lee asked in the same tone of concern the psychologist had used earlier in the day.
Jacob scrubbed his hand over his face. He was screwing up here, and for a stupid reason. Maybe he was just sensitive from having been fixed up with Donna’s friend. It was ridiculous to even think that way—it wasn’t as if Lee had suggested that he date the niece.
He thought back to the restaurant, and the redhead with the heavy eyeliner who’d looked at him with such expectation.
He really needed to get out of New York.
“Tell me about the job,” he said quietly. “What does it involve, specifically?”
“Nothing you and I haven’t done dozens of times before. Just three days of bodyguard security and easy driving. You’re required to pick up the niece and escort her from Manhattan to the small-town inn in Vermont where she’ll be staying.”
“And then?” Jacob asked, his voice sounding tighter than he wanted it to be.
“And then...you drop her at the inn. It’s a Friday night, and you’ll stick around through Saturday. Sunday morning, you drive her back to Manhattan. Job over.”
Jacob glanced to Eddie, beside him yet again, even in the rain. His eagle ears would be picking up every word.
Eddie smirked at him. “Sounds romantic.”
Jacob ignored the comment. “I assume Sage will be at the inn already?” he asked Lee.
“Affirmative. That’s the point of this exercise. He’s flying directly from Scotland, for the family wedding.”
“A family...” Jacob closed his eyes. Eddie made a noise beside him. A cross between a snort and a laugh.
“Yes, a wedding,” Lee repeated. “Will that be a problem?”
Jacob hadn’t even gone to Eddie’s wedding two years ago. The fact that it had been in Maryland and Jacob had been out of town on a special assignment had been a great excuse to miss it. Nobody had pushed him to go because they knew the nature of his job. Now, however...
“Nope, no problem,” Jacob said. “It’s all good.” Just peachy.
“Okay. I’m told the whole Sage clan will be there. Most of them are flying over from Scotland directly. It’s the, ah, nephew’s wedding. He’s heir apparent to Sage’s empire, so, yes, you had better believe that John Sage will be present.”
Jacob shifted his feet on the slick sidewalk. He saw how the stage would be set. Lee was right. This wedding would be his best opportunity to talk with John Sage alone.
But still...Jacob wasn’t getting a good feeling. “What’s the deal with the niece?”
There was a pause. “Are you sure this won’t be too hard for you?”
“Why would it be hard?” Jacob demanded.
There was another, longer silence on the other end. “I know the Sage family is personal to you, Jake....”
And like a flash, Jacob understood. How could he have missed this? “The nephew getting married...he’s the boy who was kidnapped as a child, isn’t he?” The kid that Jacob’s policeman father had died while protecting. “And this niece I’m driving...she’s the sister? The little girl who was with my father, too?”
“No, she’s not his sister,” Lee said quickly. “Isabel Sage is a different niece. Jake, I wouldn’t have called you without checking that first. Okay? You won’t need to interact with them unless you decide you want to.”
The pulse in Jacob’s neck felt as if it was on overdrive. Extra hits of adrenaline.
He shouldn’t be reacting this way to having to meet them. He shouldn’t be letting it bug him at all. If anything, he was playing right into the agenda of the department psychologist when she’d given him that miserable set of questions.
So you never met your real father? He was Scottish, right? And you were born there, too? Why haven’t you been back? And let’s talk about his death—exactly what happened, and how did you process it, step by step? How does it make you feel?
She’d made it seem as though Jacob was defective when he’d told her that he didn’t feel anything, because he wasn’t familiar with every little detail. That even at the time, he’d felt it only slightly. He’d tried to explain that it was an early divorce and his mother had remarried and his biological father had never been part of his life. Still...blood was blood, the psychologist had implied, and the death must have affected him somehow. And Jacob, to his shame, knew she was right.
He would like to know the details and circumstances surrounding his father’s death. If he was honest with himself, he’d wanted to know for his whole life. He’d been almost twelve when it had happened—just a kid—and nobody had talked much about it to him.
Until now, he’d been discouraged from asking questions. He just wished that his future didn’t rest on his ability to dig up answers from a reclusive Scotsman.
Beside him, Eddie cleared his throat. Jacob had forgotten he’d been listening in. Had forgotten he was standing there with a phone in his hand while he stared into space, lost in the past, furious and not knowing what to do about it.
But he owed Lee an answer.
“Jake,” Lee said quietly into his ear, “if you want the job, it’s yours. But only if you feel you can give Isabel Sage the professional security she deserves. Sage works with my firm because he trusts me. He knows I hire only the best. You’ve got to promise me you can handle the assignment—to guard and protect her—with the professionalism you were trained to do. I’m exposing myself here, big-time, but I don’t need to tell you that. You know where I’m coming from. You know what I owe you.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. He did know. He got what a favor this was to him, but Lee also knew he could trust Jacob with his business. Hell, he’d trusted him with his life.
“Discretion,” Lee repeated. “Confidentiality. Professionalism. Remember those things and you’ll be fine.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I live discretion and professionalism.”
It was all Jacob knew how to do. He never said a word about the people on his jobs. Ever.
And if he wanted to continue on the path of doing what he was meant to do, to the ultimate prize of being allowed to guard the most important and most defensively vulnerable people in the country, then he needed to have a conversation with John Sage.
Just one hour would be enough. Whatever reservations Jacob felt about the man or his family members—he needed to put it aside in favor of his future.
The past is over, as his mother had so often said when he’d asked questions. It’s what’s in front of you that counts.
Well, that was what he was concentrating on now—what was in front of him. That was what this upcoming weekend would be about, despite the lousy choice that it was. But the choice to bail on the opportunity was even worse.
“I’ll do it,” he said to Lee. “I’ll guard Isabel Sage. Thanks for setting this up. I mean it.”
As he hung up, he felt Eddie’s gaze on him. Jacob sighed. “Do you want to go with me?”
“I wish I could. But Donna wouldn’t be happy if I left her and Alden for another work weekend.”
Jacob nodded, thinking of Eddie’s four-month-old son. “You’re right.”
“So you’ll be alone this time,” Eddie remarked, hunching deeper into his jacket. “There’ll be no team behind you to back you up. That’ll be different.”
Jacob considered that. Secret Service protective details were huge and complex. Whenever they did bodyguard assignments for a visiting head of state or a foreign dignitary, they worked in large, interconnected teams, with command posts, operation centers, motorcade service. One-on-one coverage was unheard of. “Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that.”
“Are you gonna be all right with this?” Eddie asked.
Jacob shoved his phone into his pocket. “Two days ago, we were responsible for escorting a murdering dictator—sorry, a member head of state—safely from the U.N. to his five-star hotel and back, and I did it without so much as looking cross-eyed at him. It’s a job, Eddie.”
“Yeah, but it’s also personal this time, Jake.”
A gust of wind sent some dead oak leaves skittering across the sidewalk. That, and the now-driving rain, soaking his bare head, seemed to slam into him personally.
“Why don’t you come in and finish dinner with us,” Eddie said. “We’ll talk about it. Sherry’s not bad. She’s just—”
“No,” Jacob interrupted. “Thanks. But I need to prepare for this job.”
He didn’t stick around to discuss it with Eddie any longer. But while Jacob jogged the few short blocks uptown to his apartment building, folded newspaper over his head, service weapon and badge at his hip, he couldn’t help deliberating on Eddie’s question.
Are you gonna be all right with this?
Of course. He had to be.
Even if Isabel Sage was as privileged and entitled as he assumed she was—the niece of a billionaire industrialist—he would never react to anything she said or did. Guarding people was his business, and he was damn good at it. He couldn’t let it matter that she was related to the family that had been involved with his father’s death.
Besides, his job didn’t affect him emotionally. Just as his father’s death didn’t.
As soon as he had the operational details for the psychologist, she would see that, and all would be well. He would soon be on his way to D.C.
* * *
JUST ONE MORE year and then you’ll be happy.
Those were the words Isabel Sage had written on the corner of a notebook. Old graffiti, scribbled last winter during a study session while a sad song played on her internet radio.
Outside Isabel’s window, three stories above the pavement, the city’s shop windows displayed the beginnings of winter decorations. In six more weeks came the Christmas break and the end of her term.
She’d been privileged to be here—a Scottish woman from the Highlands, living in the biggest city in America and studying international finance with the savviest people on Wall Street—though, to be honest, she’d been shocked by how lonely she’d felt.
Sighing, Isabel watched a queue of yellow taxicabs snake down Broadway, toward the route she knew led to the airport. Really, she was most looking forward to that day when she could fly home.
Isabel pulled off her earphones and turned away from the window to her case still open on her bed, and tossed inside a bra, some pants—underpants here, she reminded herself—and then added the dress she would wear to her cousin’s wedding reception.
Somehow, not even the promise of a weekend respite was raising her spirits, because at the end of the day, there was no escaping the fact that she would be attending a wedding without Alex, her longtime boyfriend. Which didn’t exactly ease her loneliness.
Another part of the problem, she reflected as she tossed in her cosmetics bag, was that the groom at the wedding was her cousin, Malcolm, her competitor for the job at home—the reason she was here, studying in New York. Malcolm—her uncle’s favorite—had a leg up on her. Now he was even getting married at a pretty inn—or so they said, though she hadn’t the heart to look it up online—in Vermont.
Like Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, she supposed. Her late father had enjoyed that old romantic film very much. But her father had died long ago. Her boyfriend was thousands of miles away in Scotland, on assignment as part of his lawyer duties, and he wouldn’t be available to accompany her, either.
Feeling gloomy, Isabel added her flatiron and comb to the case. Tossed a pair of shoes on top. She had better cover her disappointment soon, though she supposed it was the “attending solo” part that was truly bothering her.
All she knew was that she would give anything to have someone to go with. Just someone who knew her as she really was—someone she didn’t have to pretend with.
She heard a commotion outside in the corridor, near the lifts. Isabel straightened. Before she could investigate, her mobile phone rang. For a moment her heart skipped. Alex? But no, he was too busy to contact her on weekdays. And he was five time zones away, besides.
She checked the caller ID. It was the driver service her uncle used in New York. Her spirits sank lower, but she stuffed the disappointment down. Smile. If she put a smile on her face, then a smile would sound in her voice. A pleasant voice covered all manner of sins.
“Yes,” she said lightly into the phone. “This is Isabel.”
“Ms. Sage?” the dispatcher said. “I’m calling to confirm your one o’clock pickup.”
She forced herself to smile so hard, her lips hurt. “I was told it was a two o’clock pickup.”
“That explains it, then. Your assigned security agent buzzed you on the intercom but received no response.”
Isabel groaned. She’d been wearing a headset. Obviously, she’d been playing her music so loudly, she hadn’t heard the bell. “I’ll go down to the lobby and escort him upstairs myself. Is this the same driver who met me at the airport last September?”
“No. It’s not.” There was a pause. “You’ve been assigned to Jake Ross.”
A good Scots name. A Highland Scots name. That lifted her mood. Even if the man himself wasn’t Scottish, the name was a nice reminder of home. “Brilliant. I’ll go straight down and look for Mr. Ross.”
She piled everything still on her bed into her case and then zipped it up quickly. Made one last check of her face in the mirror: fine. She looked presentable.
As she opened her door, she bumped into Rajesh, his fist lifted to knock. He blinked at her. Rajesh was her suite mate, an engineering PhD candidate, with a dark moustache and snow-white turban.
“Braveheart,” he said. “There’s a man looking for you in the hallway.”
She didn’t react when he said Braveheart, though she felt a bit like cringing. So hard she’d worked to stay low-key amongst the members of her residence hall. For security purposes, she’d been taught since childhood never to let people know she was a member of the wealthy Sage family from Scotland.
Still, she smiled at him. “Thank you, Rajesh. I appreciate it.”
“Did you know he’s a Secret Service agent?” Rajesh asked. “Why would a Secret Service agent be looking for you?” He peered at her. “Did you do something wrong?”
“What? No. Of course not.” Isabel never so much as dropped a wrapper on the street. Shaking her head, she marched past him, into the living area of their four-person suite.
“Freedom,” Rajesh whispered as she brushed past, and he made that signal with his fist from the movie Braveheart.
Usually, she smiled congenially when he did that, but today she just couldn’t. He walked off, back to his group of engineer friends. She couldn’t see what they were doing in his room, but she could smell the pizza and hear the adverts on his television set.
Sighing, she headed off to staunch the much bigger problem before it escalated, like the good future CEO she hoped she’d be.
She skipped out to the hallway that ran the length of the residence hall, hearing her neighbors before she saw them. They were four older graduate students who lived in the nearby suites, thirty-somethings, most of them midcareer, and they rented their miniapartments directly from the university. Usually the building was quiet, save for the occasional homeless person who set up camp in their lobby before being chased out by the superintendent.
She found her driver trapped beside the lift doors, being quizzed by Courtney and Philip, the two most vocal of the group who also happened to be journalists. Isabel groaned. Her driver—Jake—did indeed dress like an active U.S. Secret Service agent. She understood their confusion.
He had close-cropped hair. Dark sunglasses that screamed policeman! He wore a dark suit with a white collared shirt. At his waist, he definitely carried a gun.
For a split second, Isabel froze. She’d been around security agents for most of her life, but they were never her security agents. They usually belonged to someone else—her famous uncle John, or her cousin Malcolm, who was lately becoming equally famous for his new startup venture in Vermont, at least in business circles and the financial press.
But her? She’d never been assigned her own bodyguard before. Until now, apparently. And for the sake of the job she hoped for in the future, she had better show that she could handle it.
“Isabel,” Courtney asked her outright, “why is a Secret Service agent asking for you? Are you threatening the president?”
“Are you counterfeiting money in your room?” Philip asked, winking slyly.
It took Isabel a moment to realize that they were mostly joking. Secret Service agents did in fact investigate both presidential threats and counterfeit money schemes, though this man her uncle had hired was no doubt a former agent, not current.
She felt like shaking her head—why on earth would this Jake Ross telegraph who he was?—but she ran a hand through her hair and smiled at Mr. Ross as best she could.
“I only counterfeit on the weekends,” she said lightly to Philip. But he was still staring suspiciously at Mr. Ross, so she tried another tactic. She didn’t want her suite mates to know she needed a bodyguard, or security of any sort. “Actually, Jake and I are old friends.”
“Oh,” Philip said. “I see.” Courtney nodded as if she understood perfectly, too.
Exhaling, Isabel glanced to Jake and found him staring so hard at her that there were two pinched lines between his eyes.
She swallowed. “Jake,” she managed to say calmly. And then, because it needed to be done—she’d uttered her white lie and now it needed to be followed up—she hooked her arm around his. “Sorry I didn’t hear you—I had my headphones on. Come into my room. I’ve been waiting for you all day.”
Deeper lines appeared on his forehead, and he glanced at her hand—clutched around the thin, fine wool of his dark suit jacket—as if she’d shocked him.
Well, she’d shocked herself, too. She was definitely not in the habit of groping strange men. And really, it was his fault as well as hers. He shouldn’t be so obvious—he was a terrible actor.
She would have to explain to him that if he wanted to drive her and be her security agent, then he could not go around looking and acting like a paid bodyguard, no matter how true it might be.
She smiled harder and gently dug her fingers into his arm to spur him into movement.
His biceps tensed beneath her fingertips. She heard a slight intake of breath.
But luckily, her neighbors were looking at her reaction—silly and grinning—and not his.
“Isabel, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” a familiar voice said loudly behind her.
Isabel gritted her teeth, but smiled broadly at Charles, unfortunately the team lead on her group economics project. Charles was wearing his favorite Che Guevara T-shirt and a beard styled like his icon.
Jake glared at Charles and his shirt. If two people were ever polar opposites, it had to be these two.
“Let’s go, Jake.” Isabel tugged on his arm as she escorted him down the corridor and through the doors to her suite. Touching him so familiarly seemed strange, much too intimate and close. But her heart was beating so quickly, she didn’t pause to think. She just wanted him out of the way, out of the line of scrutiny.
This time, she managed to get him into her bedroom and safely behind a closed door.
Alone with him, she stepped back, catching her breath. Yes, Jake had probably been a real Secret Service agent at one point—that was all her uncle tended to hire—but there was something else about him, something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a low voice.
She swallowed, trying to calm her racing pulse. His expression was stone-faced. The dark sunglasses still covered his eyes, not giving her any hint as to his thoughts, but she had the impression of anger.
This just made her determined to change his mind. “I should ask the same of you,” she said lightly. “What I’m doing is behaving in a low-key manner. It’s what people in my family are required to do. Didn’t my uncle explain this?”
“Your uncle is John Sage?” he asked in a gruff voice. It was a wholly appealing voice. Strong. That was the first word she thought of. His arms were crossed over his chest. His lips were set. Kind of full, actually. He had a crease in his chin and lines on his forehead. His hair was cut so short as to be practically shaved off. It gave him a sexy, naked look. And she, with all her long hair—well, he was such a contrast to her.
“Yes, I’m Isabel Sage.” She snapped out of her distraction and gave him her winsome smile. People usually responded favorably to it.
He, however, did not. He just scowled harder at her. “We need to get going. Friday traffic is brutal.”
Brutal? Were people going to jump out at them with knives and swords drawn?
She laughed at the image, and then exhaled, letting her smile relax into a normal expression. It felt good, for a change.
“May I check your credentials, please, Mr. Ross?” she asked calmly. “If I’m to get in a car with you, then I need to be sure I’m safe.”
His expression stilled. Well, she didn’t move, either, because her request was perfectly valid. He reached into a front coat pocket and pulled out a badge for her.
It appeared he really did currently work for the U.S. Secret Service. She stared at the star on his badge, amazed.
“May I see your driver’s license as well, please?” she asked.
He seemed to stare her down. She felt a catch in her throat, but no, she had a stony business face she could give him, as well. She was a master at pretending—the more so since her stay in America.
“I always check credentials,” she murmured.
With a slight exhale, he reached for his wallet, removing a card, which he handed to her.
She took it. The plastic was still warm from being in his back pocket, close to his, well... She willed herself not to blush. He was a good-looking man, beneath all his gruffness. And anger, too—there was definitely an undercurrent of anger in there.
She glanced up at him from beneath her eyelashes, but he was looking away from her. Checking in all directions, like a working bodyguard.
She studied his identification card, which was a New York State driver’s license. Jacob Ross. New York City. A West Side address. A November birthday. He was two years older than her—early thirties—and he was five feet eleven inches tall.
“Everything copacetic?” he said in a somewhat testy voice.
“Lovely, Jacob.” She smiled tersely and passed him back his identification card. She was used to “testy” men—the trait seemed to run in her family. He didn’t scare her one bit. “Please don’t take it personally. I’m trained to be careful.”
“Any other questions?” he asked. It was...interesting how everything he was feeling showed in his face, his voice, his posture. He hid nothing from her. He had a smoldering intensity that was completely unnerving, like she had never seen before.
And right now, it was very clear that he didn’t approve of her. She felt a twinge just realizing it.
Ah, well, she would work to change his opinion. But first, the most important thing was to help him understand that she needed him to accompany her to the street discreetly, as if he was a friend here to visit her, rather than a paid bodyguard.
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer that when we go out there again, you take care not to appear to be my driver,” she said as pleasantly as she could. “And I’d prefer to sit up front in your car, in case anyone is watching us out the window.”
“That isn’t protocol,” he snapped.
“It’s my protocol.” She smiled at him. “I’m sure you won’t mind.”
“I do mind, actually.”
She didn’t know what to say. His response was just rude.
They were silent for a moment, sizing each other up. He had the advantage with his dark sunglasses. But she was no lightweight either—she could handle anything.
“Look,” he said finally, “it’s not personal. I’m trained not to talk to or be familiar with my protectees. But I’ve got to say something.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Yes, I’m listening.”
He glanced around her room. “Why are they letting you live here? This place is a security nightmare. I would never let my protectees stay here. See that window?” He pointed. “It’s sniper bait. And this building only has one way in and one way out. With your money and your profile, you should be living in the Ritz-Carlton. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“That would go over well in my study groups, Mr. Ross,” she said calmly. “I’m surprised you don’t see the danger in your suggestion.”
Jacob’s mouth opened and then closed.
She stood patiently. Waiting. From this position, she could see the corners of his eyes behind those dark glasses. He was gazing at her warily. His expressive eyes were a clear blue, as intense as he was. As if he had a hidden banked fire, burning within.
He expelled a breath. “Like I said, it’s my training.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and gingerly moved her away from the open window. “It’s what I do.”
Then he walked over and lowered the blinds. “I get people door to door safely. That’s what you can expect from me this weekend. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
This was an interesting situation for her. Maybe she should consider it another of her tests, the steps she’d been taking in working toward becoming the leader of her family’s personal-care products business.
At least she didn’t have to pretend with him.
“Can you do so and still act low-key?” she asked, rubbing her arms. “You know, not broadcast that the person you’re with—me—finds it necessary to hire a bodyguard just to drive a few hours, the way most people do every day as a matter of course?”
“You’re not most people, Ms. Sage,” he said between his teeth. “You know this, don’t you?”
He could be a big problem to her. Rajesh was right—Jacob, in his intensity, stuck out. He also didn’t care that he stuck out.
She cleared her throat. “What I do is stay low-key, Mr. Ross. You’ve heard the phrase ‘fly beneath the radar’?”
His frown intensified.
“That’s what we need to do today.”
He didn’t seem convinced. “You don’t know all the bad things that can happen to a person,” he said in a low voice.
She didn’t like to hear this kind of talk. “Do you feel uncomfortable with this job the way I’m describing it?” she asked bluntly.
He nodded. “Yes, I have to admit that I do. Your safety is my highest concern. We can’t just waltz out there and—”
“Would you feel better if we canceled altogether?”
His brows flew up. “No, not at all.”
Still looking flustered, he removed his sunglasses. Held them out to her, and then placed them on her dresser. “Okay, fine. Against my better judgment, we’ll do it your way. Here, look...”
He took off his suit jacket, shook it out and folded it. “I’m not a Secret Service agent anymore. I’m just your friendly limo driver. Satisfied?”
But that only accentuated the gun and the handcuffs at his waist. He looked so flustered at the realization that she had to smile.
She placed her hand to her mouth to cover it, but it didn’t stop her feeling from coming out.
He gazed helplessly at her. Without the glasses on, his eyes were so blue...a naked blue, with naked, desperate emotion shining within.
“It isn’t funny,” he said.
“No, I suppose it isn’t. I was just wondering what you’re like when you’re not on the job. Though I suppose you’re never not on the job, are you?”
Wordlessly, he shook his head. Beneath his gruff surface, he seemed...barren and bleak and out of his element.
Maybe she had completely misread him.
“This is what we’ll do,” she decided. “I’ll walk downstairs with you to the car. I won’t touch your arm—your gun hand will be free. It’s all right, you can put your jacket on if you’d like. But I really would be more comfortable without the sunglasses. Can you live with that?”
“Sounds reasonable.” Sheepishly, he shrugged his arms into the jacket. “You’re lucky. Usually we carry a radio, too. Sometimes an earpiece.”
“Then I’m glad I’m a CEO-in-the-making, and not a head of state under your protection.”
He smiled the barest hint of a smile, and then glanced at her again. He seemed to be seeing her through a new perspective.
It pleased her. She wanted him to know that she had big dreams she was acting on. It was the reason she put herself through this loneliness in New York. To her, her goals were important, even if she sometimes needed to play down who she was in order to succeed with the people she lived and worked amongst.
“I behave discreetly,” she explained, “because I need to make a good impression on my classmates. I need this degree in order to be successful in my uncle’s—in my family’s—company and this is the simplest way to achieve it. If I walked about telling people who I am, open about the fact of who we are, it could be a problem. People react to my family in strange ways, Mr. Ross. Some are angry or envious. Some think about the favors they might gain if they befriend us. It’s akin to winning the lottery, you see. You can only really trust the people you knew before you hit it big, and even then, money changes people.”
It was the most she’d ever spoken on the topic, the most honest she’d been since she’d arrived in New York.
She bit her lip, surprised at herself. Jacob was outwardly staring, saying nothing.
“Are you sure you want to make this trip with me?” she asked. “It might be a long three days.”
“Let’s get you there,” he said quickly, as if he was afraid she’d change her mind. “Let me get you there.”
She felt a surprising tug of warmth. “All right.” She gestured to her bed. “Let me just get my case.”
“Your case?” he asked, even though he was plainly looking at her case lying shut on the coverlet.
She sighed. She was forever making mistakes—it was the small things that tripped her up most, betraying what she tried to keep hidden. She just couldn’t let people know who she was, not really.
Then again, Jacob had a pretty good idea already, just by virtue of the job he was assigned. She wouldn’t have to be on guard quite so much with him. It was a relief, actually.
She picked up the case. “Sorry, I meant to say suitcase.” She put it down on the floor, extending the handle. “Are you ready for our weekend adventure, Mr. Ross?”
He looked at her as if he wasn’t quite sure.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_19f55f2b-c1c7-50da-9345-bb87edcf9bf3)
SHE HAD SURPRISED HIM.
Isabel Sage wasn’t anything like Jacob had expected. Oh, on the surface she looked just like the photo Lee had sent him. Poised and put together. With her long blond hair, her list of accomplishments and that smiling expression, she appeared the consummate Golden Girl. Until he’d actually met her, he would have thought her a spokesmodel. Or a newscaster. Maybe a television personality.
Even a fresh-faced, though privileged, girl next door.
But beneath the surface, she was something else. An heiress to an industrialist’s fortune? Nope, he never would have guessed that. He interacted with people from that background every day, and Ms. Sage was unique because she didn’t display an entitled attitude.
Instead, she was accommodating. Pleasing. Appealing.
He couldn’t let her too close to him—though he understood why she was asking him to treat her the way she was. He was starting to respect that she had a legitimate strategy, flying under the radar as she was. Maybe he could handle her sitting up front with him, at least until they left Manhattan.
“We’ll switch out the seating arrangement once we’re out of the city,” he said to her, taking the handle of her suitcase. “When no one can see us, you can go back to sitting behind the partition.”
Ms. Sage said nothing. Her expression was set in that accommodating smile again, that really said very little.
He just couldn’t stop staring at her. He knew he should move faster, but he was stuck, one hand resting on the doorknob, the other gripping her suitcase.
And then a call came in to her cell phone.
She looked blankly at him.
He shook his head slightly. Don’t. Don’t pick up, he willed her. We need to get going.
But she was already glancing at the screen. Not much passed her face in terms of emotion. This woman would make a great poker player.
“Excuse me.” She turned her back to Jacob. Spoke in low tones into the cell phone. No longer the American accent she probably used to blend in but a sweet lilt to her words that he clearly recognized as Scottish.
Her voice struck a chord in him, deep inside. Made him feel centered in a way he hadn’t expected to feel in her presence.
Mentally shaking himself, he focused on what she was saying. Obviously, she knew the caller. Her voice had risen in surprise.
“Where are you?” she asked the caller. “Don’t worry, I know it’s confusing. Please stay put, I’ll come to you instead.”
Oh, no. Walkabout, he automatically thought. His Secret Service team’s expression for dignitaries who suddenly went off script, necessitating a massive operational response to accommodate the protectee’s whims.
As Jacob went rigid, his hand automatically moving to a radio at his belt that wasn’t there because this was an unofficial operation, she was fumbling at her desk for a pen, holding the cheap plastic cap between her teeth as she scribbled.
“No, it’s not a problem about being lost,” she said. “Yes, I can find you.” Laughter seemed to flutter from her lips. “Actually, I’m just thankful that you’re here. You have no idea. God, how I’ve missed you.”
What the hell?
She turned to look at Jacob, but he just gripped her suitcase handle tighter.
“Change of plans,” she said lightly to him as she pocketed her cell phone. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Jacob, but...er, we won’t be needing your services after all.”
We? Who’d been on the phone? A boyfriend?
“Ma’am,” Jacob said by rote, and then stopped, remembering. This wasn’t a regular assignment. All his training was out the window as far as Ms. Sage was concerned.
He sighed, swiping his hand over his forehead. She was going through the clothes in her closet, shuffling through hangers.
“Ah, Isabel, why don’t you tell me what’s going on so that I can help, too.”
“That was my boyfriend.” Her cheeks were flushed and rosy. “I’m sorry, Jacob. I know this is unexpected and I’m as surprised as you are, but we really don’t need you to drive us to Vermont.”
“What? What are you talking about? What’s changed?”
“Alex dislikes security. He...especially dislikes guns....” She glanced at Jacob’s midriff, letting the sentence fade away.
Instinctively he covered his service weapon. There was no way he could lose this assignment. “Where is this Alex?” he barked. Jacob disliked the guy already.
At the tone of his voice, Ms. Sage froze, kneeling, a dress in her hand, in the midst of unzipping the upright suitcase he still held so she could stuff it inside.
“I’m sorry,” he said, unhanding her suitcase and stepping back. Watch the intensity. He couldn’t just order this woman around. He had no authority over her. She could fire him at any time, and it appeared she just had.
And oh, cripes, he needed this assignment. The simple truth was he needed her more than she needed him. She had little use for him, in fact.
He eyed the clothing she was adding to her luggage. “Are you still going to Vermont?” he asked in a calmer voice.
“Yes,” she said, zipping the suitcase again. “I realized I forgot an outfit. In any event, Alex and I will handle the logistics of getting there, thank you.”
“At least let me drive you to him,” he said. Wherever this Alex was, they could all discuss it there. Jacob would prevail. He had to.
One advantage was that Alex apparently didn’t know enough to get himself a cab. And it appeared he was calling Isabel on a borrowed cell phone.
He looked at Isabel, but she was shaking her head. “No, really, I’ll call a taxi and—”
A knock sounded on her door. Inwardly, Jacob groaned again—nothing about this day was going right—but he did his job and opened the door before she could.
The short young man—mid to late twenties—with horn-rimmed glasses and spiked hair stood in her doorway. The one with the Che Guevara T-shirt.
Really?Really? Jacob thought.
“I didn’t get to say hello to your boyfriend,” Che Guevara said to Isabel. He peered at Jacob and stuck out his hand.
“And you are?” Jacob said, squeezing Che’s hand hard, playing this for all it was worth. If he got Ms. Sage tangled up in her own lies, then she couldn’t dismiss him so easily.
“I’m Charles. I’m Isabel’s economics partner.” He winced and shook out his hand.
Isabel hastened to intervene. This time she just looked confused about her backfired plans. “Charles, thanks for stopping by. I, ah, sent the document to your email already.”
Jacob noted that her voice once again held no trace of a Scottish accent.
“I got it,” Charles said. “Have a good weekend.” He left them.
“How is it that he’s a business student and yet is wearing a Che Guevara shirt?” Jacob asked her. “Doesn’t he know Che was a Communist?”
A terrorist, too, if you asked him, but he wouldn’t scare Isabel by using that word.
Isabel closed the door and smiled tightly at him. “Charles is a genius at economics. His father is an investment banker, and Charles will probably work with his firm, too, someday. Think of it as him trying to express his rebel side while he still can.”
Everybody was fooling somebody, it seemed. Without asking, Jacob picked up her suitcase. The good thing about Charles’s visit was that Isabel had dropped all talk about not needing him to drive her across the city to pick up her boyfriend.
As he held the door for her, Isabel smiled tremulously. He gave her a halfhearted smile of his own. Already he’d ratcheted down his intensity.
His intensity. He didn’t know why he’d thought of that.
Just...damn. What was happening to him?
* * *
OH, WHAT A tangled web we weave....
Isabel’s head was reeling. Never in a million years had she expected Alex to show up for the wedding. This changed everything. Now, she looked forward to the weekend—she’d added a dress because maybe they could go out to a romantic dinner alone.
His presence also solved her immediate problem of needing to make a good impression on her uncle. Malcolm had the advantage this weekend because it was his wedding, but Isabel couldn’t sit back, either.
Unfortunately, Jacob needed to leave.
She glanced at him. His brows were knit as he searched the storefronts for the Starbucks where Alex waited. Poor Alex. He’d asked the taxi driver at Kennedy airport to take him to her university, but the driver had dropped him at the wrong one. There were so many in Manhattan.
Jacob pulled the black SUV alongside the storefront with its familiar green logo. He didn’t seem too concerned, however. She unbuckled her seat belt as he turned to her.
“I’ll wait here for you.” He gave her an earnest look she hadn’t seen in his expression before.
“No, please, we’re fine. Thank you for the ride.”
“I’m not leaving you, Isabel.”
He had that steadfast look to his gaze, the one she was starting to recognize. It was refreshing, actually. Nice to think there was someone in this big, foreign city that she could count on.
However, she had Alex to pick up the slack from here. And Alex was waiting inside the coffee shop.
She opened the door and stepped onto the city street. Huddling beneath her jacket collar, she wrapped her scarf around her neck and went to the boot of his car. With her knuckles, she rapped on it.
Jacob rolled down his window.
“My suitcase, please,” she said.
There was only the slightest hesitation, but Jacob got out of the SUV and walked round to the back, too. With a click of his key ring the back hatch popped open. He retrieved her small case, extended the handle and placed it on the pavement.
She reached for it but his low voice stopped her. “I’ll wait here for you until I know that you’re safe.”
She made the mistake of looking up into his eyes. So intense, they seemed to burn, but not in a frightening way—in a way that she’d always yearned for.
Her breath sucked in, and for that split second, her fingers shook on the handle. But it wasn’t real, it was silly, and she broke eye contact.
Inside the coffee shop was Alex. Her true boyfriend.
Her heart gave a small leap. Alex had been with her from the beginning. He’d known her before the craziness with her family had happened. He’d been her wee mate, the boy next door. He’d been her first kiss. Her first love. Her only lover. This separation—her time in New York and Alex’s time in Scotland—was only short-term. They’d made an agreement—a logical pact—no matter how temporarily lonely and painful it had been for her. But he’d been showing her respect by yielding to her desires and letting her know that she was important, too. It wasn’t only his goals that mattered—hers did, too.
And so they’d had their months physically apart. Four consecutive terms—semesters, the Americans called them—for her, and for Alex, his intense training assignment. Their separation was almost over.... Next month was Christmas and then she would be home.
He’d surprised her with his phone call. Though, if anyone knew how important, how fraught with emotion Malcolm’s wedding was to her, it was Alex.
She stopped in the doorway of the coffee shop, searching him out. When she saw his familiar face across the room, she felt tears spring to her eyes. She hurried to him, the suitcase trolley wheels bouncing across the tiled floor.
Alex seemed gaunt. Thinner than usual. Three months since she’d physically seen him, and he looked...
When he saw her his mouth twisted in a frown.
She paused, confused. “Alex, I...”
He stood awkwardly, scraping the floor with his chair. It sounded like claws on a blackboard.
And then he looked at her suitcase, and then at her. He was genuinely bewildered. “Why do you have a case with you?”
Her heart sank, which should have told her something, but she didn’t want to listen to it. “It’s Malcolm’s wedding. You’re coming with me to Malcolm’s wedding this weekend. That’s why you surprised me...?”
His face had fallen.
Her voice wavered. “Isn’t it?”
After a long moment of him standing, staring at his shoes, and her trying to breathe through the lump of emotion that had lodged in her chest, he finally said, “Sit down, Bell. We need to talk.”
* * *
JACOB MANAGED THE miracle of finding a place to park the black SUV on the street. He slammed the door and headed for the coffee shop Isabel had entered.
Somehow, he had to convince these two to let him drive them both to Vermont. If Jacob didn’t have a legitimate reason to get to Vermont, then he wouldn’t have an opportunity to meet John Sage. That was unacceptable.
Inside, the familiar aroma of coffee hit him. Expensive coffee, five-bucks-a-cup coffee, the kind he couldn’t really afford but still found himself wanting anyway.
About a dozen patrons sat alone at tables, staring into screens. Two attendants were behind the counter—one at the register and one loudly frothing milk at an espresso machine. Jacob noted that the bathrooms were in the rear of the shop. There was just one exit that he could see. And Isabel was...
His heart softened. She stood with her side to him, one of the ends of her long wool scarf brushing the floor. She seemed to be...drooping.
He knew her enough by now to know that something was wrong.
Oh, hell. He didn’t want to feel sorry for her. She was just a means to an end.
Moving silently, he slid into a seat at the table near her, close enough to see and hear her conversation. He took out his smartphone, put on a headset and pretended to be inside the cocoon of his own digital world, like most people. But he wasn’t. He was listening to Isabel and her boyfriend.
Jacob had already pegged the guy. Slouching. Nervous. Didn’t meet her eye. Maybe Jacob would check into him later. For now, Jacob was just watching them. Doing what he was trained to do.
He sat with his back to the wall, keeping track of the situation. Who came into the shop, who went out. Checking for anyone obviously carrying weapons. Yes, it was New York, and certain things were illegal here, but that didn’t stop tragedies from happening.
“I haven’t talked with someone from home in so long, you’ve no idea how brilliant it is to see you,” Isabel Sage was saying to the boyfriend. Alex. She had that faint, alert smile on her face, her protective mask.
Jacob was beginning to understand this about her. Whatever thoughts or emotions she felt, she rarely showed them. What he’d first mistaken for privilege—and he should know better than to underestimate anyone—may just have been a damn good survival mechanism.
“Bell, I’ve come all this way to see you...because, er, it’s better to say certain things in person,” Alex was stuttering.
Jacob watched without moving his head so as not to alert them. “Of course it’s been a difficult separation for us,” Isabel said. Her mask was on tight.
“Please sit. You’re making me nervous.” Alex leaned back in his chair. The guy hadn’t gotten her a coffee. Hadn’t even pulled the chair out for her. Jacob had to keep from snorting his disgust.
Jacob wasn’t sure what Isabel was thinking, but he could imagine. She seated herself in a graceful motion and quietly folded her hands.
Alex coughed. “You’ve been quite busy in New York these months.”
“Yes, and when I return to Scotland for Christmas, we’ll have more time for each other,” she said brightly.
“I’ve been quite busy in Edinburgh, as well...” Alex’s cheeks flushed. He let his voice trail off.
Isabel licked her lips and smiled even harder. “I’m pleased to see you, Alex. I’m glad you’re here, really. You have no idea how much I’ve missed—”
“I’ve come because I’m breaking up with you, Bell,” Alex said abruptly.
Jacob’s heart slowed. Damn. He’d been dreading this even though the conversation had been taking this direction and he wasn’t surprised at the outcome. He glanced at Isabel.
Still with her composed mask. Wow, she was disciplined. “Pardon me?” she asked Alex. Her voice quivered slightly.
“I can’t live in this state of affairs any longer,” Alex muttered.
A small line appeared in Isabel’s forehead. “I see. Well, my schooling here is temporary. I’ll be home soon.”
“Yes, I know. And then you’ll be running your uncle’s company. You won’t need me anymore.”
“It’s...not guaranteed yet,” Isabel said. “He required that I come here—that’s why I’m in New York studying finance, why I have to be away from home.” She lowered her voice. “You know this. You alone know the stress and the pressure I’m under. Like no other person on earth, you know me.”
Jacob saw the tiny fissure in her mask. The signs of tension breaking through. He leaned closer. He’d given up the pretense of paying attention to the phone in his hand.
“Bell,” Alex said, “the point is there are brighter pastures for you out there. This...friendship between us...isn’t meant to be any longer.”
“Of course it is! And don’t you believe we have more than a friendship?”
Alex sat back. “I want out,” he said flatly.
Her face pale, Isabel pressed forward. “What if we...gave ourselves a break for now? After I’m home, we’ll start fresh with a conversation then.”
“I want to be friends with you,” Alex said. “Just friends. That’s all that I want.”
She took a deep breath. Jacob wasn’t sure she was getting what the guy was telling her. “I understand you’re angry with me,” she said to Alex.
“I’m not angry, Bell.”
“You...want more of my attention.”
“No. I’m ending it with you.”
“But that’s...daft,” she said, her voice getting even softer. “We’ve been together since we were children.”
“We were never together. Not truly. I don’t expect you to understand. I didn’t understand myself until recently. But...oh, bollocks. I didn’t want to tell you this way, but...I’ll just say it. I’ve met somebody, all right?”
“You...met somebody?” she repeated. Jacob waited for light to dawn. Or maybe she was just controlling her emotions as best she could.
“I’m seeing this woman,” Alex said. He spoke softly, his head down, staring at the table. Jacob felt himself heating inside. “I tried, Bell. I tried to make this work with us. But you’re meant for other things.”
“Alex, let’s go back to my flat. I’ll introduce you to my mates. You’ll...be part of my life here.”
“See. Look at you. Any other woman who’d just been told that her man was seeing someone else would be furious. Or perhaps hurt. But you don’t feel like other women, Bell. It’s not natural.”
Isabel crossed her arms. “I assure you, I feel. Very much. And right now I feel...I feel that we can fix this temporary rift.” She smiled bravely. “If we both want to.”
Alex glanced at his watch. “I have to go. I flew all the way here just so I could tell you in person. I’m not a bad bloke. I’m not breaking up by text message.”
“Alex—”
“Do I have to say it, Bell? Fine, you’ve made me say it.” Alex stared hard at the table. “I’m in love with her.”
Isabel’s mask split then. Wide open. Her look of anguish hit Jacob with a jolt.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did,” Alex said. “I asked her to marry me and she said yes. We’re planning a small wedding in June, at home.”
The pain on Isabel’s face touched Jacob. Her lips quivered. Her eyes watered. She seemed to be struggling to breathe.
But Jacob gave her credit. Because with a grit of her teeth and a fierce blink of her eyes, she controlled herself again. He could see the effort it took her to swallow the hurt, but she did. Bravely, she found her mask and put it on again.
By the time Alex—now Alex the ex—glanced up from his escape into checking his phone messages, Isabel was composed again. Her slip had been brief, and Jacob was sure he was the only person who’d seen it. Alex the ex certainly hadn’t.
“You’re handling this well.” Alex gave her a relieved smile. Unlike Isabel, he showed all his emotions on his face, in his vocal inflection, in his posture. “I knew you would, Bell. You handle everything like a champ.”
Alex coughed and stood. “Well, that’s sorted then. The meter’s running on my taxi. I have to go. But you’ll do well, I know you.” He had the temerity to smile at her in relief. “Look at you. Not a tear. Never a worry with you. That’s why I’m sure you’ll run your uncle’s company someday. Isabel Sage, CEO of Sage Family Products. No doubt you’ll be the one chosen.”
And then Alex leaned in and gave Isabel a bloke’s awkward fake-hug. Alex wasn’t even looking at her, not really. She kept her composure, and Jacob gave her credit for that. In her shoes, Jacob would have wound up and slugged the guy.
No, he wouldn’t have.
When it had happened to him, Jacob hadn’t slugged anybody. He’d stood stoically by while his ex had given him much the same kind of speech as Alex.
You know what your problem is, Jacob? You’re too intense. No one could live with that level of intensity every day.
Jacob got up from the table and shoved his phone into his pocket. He hadn’t thought about this stuff in years and years. And he wasn’t going to think about it again.
Isabel. Now that Alex was out the door and on the sidewalk, about to be whisked away by his cab with the running meter, Isabel was left alone. Thinking that no one was watching, she put her hand to her mouth. Jacob knew that no one—not one human on earth—could fake their feelings for too long, and Isabel Sage was definitely human. Her mask had crumpled, her face was turning green and she looked as if she was going to lose it.
Thinking fast, Jacob grabbed a pile of napkins from the counter and followed her.
She was running—stumbling, really—for the ladies’ room. This being New York City, no one seemed to notice. She could have stripped naked and belted out a breakup song at the top of her lungs with a full orchestra supporting her, and no one would have given her a second look.
He really needed to get the hell out of New York someday. God, he was trying. If not for that damn psychologist, he’d be in Washington, D.C., already, doing what he was meant to do.
But for now, it just made him angry, seeing people hurt unnecessarily—especially a kind person like Isabel.
She vomited all over the floor. With a mortified cry, she covered her mouth and ran into the bathroom. Jacob watched the door swing shut behind her.
The place was buzzing now. A typical midtown Manhattan coffee shop—short on space, long on people. But nobody was looking at him, or at Isabel. Most people had bent heads, staring at screens. Big screens, small screens, it didn’t matter. They walked while staring at screens, the thumb that held the phone swiping away. It was amazing what most people missed in their daily lives.
Jacob didn’t miss anything. Life came at him, smacking him square in the face. Emotions were his gut instincts, the way he made his decisions in the world. And what he felt for her was empathy.
The bathroom was tucked in a back corner. A yellow plastic bucket filled with water and a ragged mop was leaning against the wall nearby. Jacob quietly took the mop and cleaned up the floor. He also saw a yellow plastic tent, used by the cleaners, to block off foot traffic over wet floors, so he took that closed sign and unobtrusively placed it in front of the ladies’ room where Isabel had disappeared.
He stood back and waited. Minutes passed. A woman came around the corner to use the facilities. She walked right past his closed sign. She addressed Jacob, still blocking the door, as if he worked there. “Is someone in there?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Jacob said. “My girlfriend is sick inside.” He gestured to the men’s room. “No one is using that one. I’ll watch the door for you if you want.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks.” She went inside.
He crossed his arms and stood sentinel for Isabel. He would stand there all day if he had to.
It was a long time before she came out of that bathroom. From where he stood, she seemed miserable and stunned, not altogether aware of her surroundings. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying her heart out, and she had nothing left but limp muscles to carry her home. As she walked past a table, she bumped it.
She’d forgotten her suitcase, so he backtracked to retrieve it. Then he hurried ahead and clasped her by the elbow, steering her safely outside.
Once on the sidewalk, she tripped along, into the stiff wind that was whipping down Fifth Avenue. Her arms were folded over her chest, her too-high heels making her falter.
Jacob felt for her, he really did. Whereas before she’d seemed strong and confident, now she showed her inner fragility. Alex was long gone, back to his carefree life without her, no doubt.
Jacob pressed his hands into fists. Still, he did his job—head swiveling, aware of every person who moved into their zone—front, back, left, right, up on the building roofs, down below the subway grates, a cab that rolled past too slowly.
This woman he guarded was a Sage, a niece of the richest man in Scotland—one of the richest men in the world—so what was she doing, alone in a foreign city like this? Especially given her family history with a kidnapping, had she never considered her vulnerability?
Isabel stopped at the street corner, her bag dropping from her shoulder. Jacob stayed within arm’s length of her elbow, one eye on her and one eye on a man who was nosing too close to her. With a shake of his head, Jacob put his hand on his gun and shifted his jacket aside to display it. The man saw the service revolver and took a step sideways, then kept on walking.
Jacob glanced to Isabel, saw the pain on her face. Maybe since nobody was watching her, to her mind, she could let her feelings out. He alone saw this.
He sucked in his breath. What the hell was happening to him? A crush, on a protectee? For the past half hour, he’d entirely forgotten his true mission.
The most important thing he needed to do was to get Isabel Sage to that Vermont inn. Feeling anything for her—even empathy—wasn’t on the agenda.
Time to toughen up. Time to switch up his tactics.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ade9a9e3-d806-5150-afbd-daea7aad931d)
ALL ISABEL WANTED was to lie curled up on her bed and sob. She hadn’t seen this breakup coming.
Alex and she had always had an understanding between them. Perhaps she didn’t express her feelings the way other people did, as he had just accused her of, but Alex had always been like that, too.
Like her. For their entire lives, he’d not only understood her when she’d perhaps put their relationship on the back burner because she’d needed to work on her career goals, but he’d shared these rules of living, too.
Above all, you never want to give away your power. Show the world your strength, never your weakness. If people cannot see your true emotions, then they cannot see how you really feel, and thus they cannot hurt you.
Her dad had taught her that, when she was still a wee girl. And Alex—such a frequent visitor to her house that, to her dad, he was like one of Isabel’s brothers—had grown up believing it, as well.
So what had just happened?
She didn’t understand. Maybe she never would. All she knew was that Alex’s betrayal had hurt.
She wiped her wet eyes with the heel of her hand. She’d cleaned herself up as best she could in that WC—had washed her face and had reapplied all her makeup—but despite her best efforts, the tears kept leaking.
She reached for a tissue in her handbag, sitting in the foot well of the vehicle. Somehow, in the fog of her shock and confusion, Jacob had managed to lead her back across busy city streets to where he’d parked the ridiculously big, black SUV.
Even now, the motor was running. His dark shades once again covered his eyes and his face was expressionless.
Good. That told her he hadn’t heard what Alex had just said. Jacob was simply doing his job as her bodyguard, and quite capably minding his own business.
For once, she was grateful he had come.
Determined to behave in as composed a manner as he did, she returned the tissue to her handbag, unused. She would not conduct herself like her cousin Rhiannon. Poor, weak, gentle, delicate Rhiannon. Everybody in their family tiptoed around her. She was the opposite of Isabel.
Her uncle, her mother, her brothers and her cousins, they all expected Isabel to be perfectly capable—cheery, pleasant, put together, in charge, competent. She was reasonable, the one whom people looked to for direction. At the wedding, they would expect her to organize the disparate factions of the family into harmony. It was what she did.
It was what her father had loved and admired so much about her. The main reason he’d praised her and depended upon her the way he had.
Her tears started leaking again. She blinked them away. The pain was just too fresh. Too soon to get over and stuff inside her, the way she always did. She couldn’t lie to everyone else about how she truly felt, not just yet.
She turned to Jacob. “Please take me back to my room.”
Jacob sat, unmoving. The SUV remained in place.
“Please,” Isabel said more forcefully than she’d intended.
Jacob’s hand rested on the gearshift beside her. A large hand. Masculine. The opposite of Alex’s lawyer hands, manicured and soft. Jacob’s skin was rough, the nails bitten low. She sensed that he fought with these hands. He held weapons with these hands.
“Isabel, be reasonable,” he said in a low voice. “You need to go to Vermont. You’re expected there.”
She held herself tighter around her midsection. He was right, but for some reason his words made her angry. The rough corduroy barn coat she’d worn for her adventure to New England was suddenly too much—she felt hot and suffocated. She couldn’t fake a good mood or be reasonable right now.
“Take me to my room,” she said, her voice rising.
“Isabel...” Jacob’s voice turned gentler, the gruffness softened. It didn’t match those rough hands.
She wiped a tear that had escaped. “Drive, I said!”
He obeyed. No words or excuses, he just checked the side window and then carefully pulled into the street.
Of course, a traffic light changed to red and they had to wait. A long, painful, silent wait. She stared at her hands clutched in her lap. Her mind was racing, and she couldn’t stop it.
What if she did go to the wedding and she couldn’t control her emotions? What if she cried or raged in front of everybody? Her uncle? Malcolm? Her cousins? What if they blamed her for him leaving? What if she’d made a mistake in coming forward to ask her uncle to be named CEO after him, instead of her cousin Malcolm, who, until now, had always been thought of as the heir apparent?
Scenarios flashed of her uncle shaking his head at her, while everyone else was happy and paired up, celebrating committed love, except her. Her mind was running ahead, wanting to think through everything all at once, needing to process the best way to salvage this situation. She just didn’t see one.
Stay in New York for the weekend and compose herself, or go to Vermont and risk exposing herself? They were both potentially bad decisions for her, each with their downsides and risks. And if Jacob showed pity for her over this predicament she found herself in—that she’d made for herself—then she didn’t know what she would do.
She might have to jump out of the SUV and walk back to her room on her own.
* * *
JACOB COULD NOT let Isabel go back to her room. No matter how bad he felt about making her attend that wedding, he needed to remain hard and professional. He needed Isabel to stay in the SUV so that he could drive her to Vermont and meet John Sage.
He glanced at her, pale and trembling in the seat beside him. This was killing him. She was upset, and she’d proven herself to be a woman who didn’t normally get upset. She was mortified about losing her composure in front of him. He didn’t like it, either. But in two minutes, they would be in front of her residence hall, and if he didn’t do something fast, she would be out the door and gone before he had the chance to help himself.
He looked at her, one hand on the door. She was getting ready to bolt. He needed to convince her to stay. But he wasn’t used to talking with those he protected. He was trained for the opposite, in fact.
He’d gently put her in the front seat with him rather than the rear seat, and that was bad enough.
His hand tightened on the wheel. He felt for her, he really did. He’d been in her shoes once. But he wasn’t going to breathe a word of that.
At the next light, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Now what? What could make her want to go to that wedding? If he could just get her to trust him to take her there. To trust that the best thing for her would be to stand tall. Screw the boyfriend.
“You’re better off,” he said abruptly.
She looked startled. “What?”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. “Nothing.”
“You listened to us back there?”
Damn again. Jacob scrubbed his hand over his head. “I had to be sure you were safe.”
She looked even more upset with that explanation, so he changed course, even taking off his sunglasses in hopes of making the situation better. “I’ll never say a word to anyone about what you say or do in my presence. Not even to the people who hired me.”
He glanced at her. She was listening. She was open to him.
“Do you promise?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes. Absolutely.” He nodded. Here was a key to Isabel Sage—she didn’t want anybody to know her private business. He got that.
He ran a hand across his mouth. What was it that Alex had said to her? You’ll run your uncle’s company someday. No doubt you’ll be the one chosen. If Jacob had to bet, Isabel was in competition with her cousin. Malcolm, the groom. Her goal to be chosen as leader obviously meant a great deal to her.
“Here’s what my instructions are,” Jacob said. “The only thing I have to report to my dispatcher is if our plans change. In that case, I’ll need to call in the updated itinerary.” He stared steadily at her. “So if you decide not to go north, then I’ll have to call and tell them you’re not coming. From there, that information will immediately be reported to the employer—your uncle.”
“Can you please not do that?” she whispered.
The plea seemed to pierce him directly in the breastbone.
“I’d just...rather make the phone calls myself,” she said. Tears were leaking again.
This was horrible. He hated to see her cry.
“He’s not worth it,” Jacob snapped.
She blinked. His words had come out harsher than he’d intended. She turned in her seat, her expression telling him she was obviously going to stick up for the bastard ex-boyfriend.
“You don’t understand!” she said with more passion than he’d given her credit for.
“I think I do understand. Your boyfriend showed up unannounced as if he were doing you a favor. He got you all happy to see him, and then he dumped you, right before you’re scheduled to go and do something that’s clearly important to your future, so now he’s affected your ability to perform the way you need to. But he trots off anyway, feeling not only satisfied with himself, but as if he’s a hero, when in reality he’s the exact damn opposite.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What planet do you come from? How can you assume all that?”
“I can assume it because it’s true. Isn’t it?”
“It’s not all his fault.”
“You feel guilty?” he demanded. “You?” Jacob’s voice shook with anger he hadn’t expected.
He was going to make this worse if he didn’t calm down.
* * *
ISABEL DIDN’T KNOW what she was feeling. All she knew was that Jacob seemed furious on her behalf. It was...shocking.
And a wee bit flattering.
She bit her lip and stared at the red light—yet another one, Jacob seemed to be attracting each and every stop along their route—and tried not to look at him.
“How long were you two a couple?” His voice was so low she had to strain to hear him. “Were you engaged?”
Should she answer? He seemed as if he was on her side. He seemed...to intrinsically believe in her.
“Sort of,” she whispered. “I mean...” She glanced at him. His eyes were warm and understanding. She really felt as though she could trust him.
But this was madness. She’d only just met him and she was a Sage—she couldn’t trust outsiders. This fact had been hammered into her head growing up.
“Please take me home, Jacob.”
His jaw tightened. He stared harder at her.
“Take. Me. Home,” she repeated.
He reached over and picked up his mobile phone from the console. “Right after I make the call to my dispatcher,” he said, opening his contact list and scrolling through numbers.
No, he couldn’t! She covered his phone with her hand. “Please!”
If he made that call to his boss, then his boss would call her uncle’s people. She wouldn’t be able to control how the problem was presented, or what the solution might be. She couldn’t have that.
Jacob closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t seem to be enjoying this standoff between them, either.
She had to convince him to be her ally. God knew, she was tired of fighting all on her own. She needed someone to understand her and what she was going through. But she needed to proceed in a way that didn’t tell him too much about herself. She had to be careful what she shared.
“I have a hard time because...I really can’t trust anyone, Jacob. I’m not allowed to have confidants. New York is not my home. I have to watch myself...all the time.”
“Most of the people that I work with and protect feel the same way,” he said gently. “Isabel, I drove a guy last month... Let’s just say he’s from a nation hostile to this country. But he’s in town speaking to the United Nations, so my job was to protect him while he was visiting here. He doesn’t trust anyone he meets, but he trusts us.”
She chewed her lip. She wanted to believe him.
“You know why he trusts us?” Jacob asked. “Because we—people like me—we’re discreet. We don’t even tell agents from our other government bureaus if they ask. We can’t, and we don’t. Because if we did, we’d never be trusted by other protectees. I won’t betray you, Isabel. I won’t tell anyone what I heard or saw today. No matter who was to torture me, I would die with your secret.”
It was so tempting to trust him. Oh, how she wanted to believe!
He waited, looking at her.
“I need to call my uncle first.” She reached for her phone. “Then you may call your office.”
Jacob closed his eyes. A horn sounded behind them—the light had changed, and they’d both been too occupied to notice. Jacob roared the SUV forward and pulled into an open spot before the curb, right in front of a fire hydrant. He set the gear into Park.
“May I,” he started to ask, turning in his seat to face her, his voice shaking. “May I tell you what I think? About...him?” With an intense look, he leaned toward her. “My professional opinion of your ex-boyfriend?”
She was immensely curious about the intense feeling he had. The anger over what Alex had done.
It was so tempting. She dared to look into his eyes and nod.
“People don’t just fall in love out of the blue,” Jacob said. “They put themselves into situations. Over there, in Scotland, he put himself into a mind-set where he was open to another woman.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way.
Jacob gazed into her eyes. It was like the heat of the sun, warming and comforting to her. “It isn’t your fault, Isabel. It wasn’t your fault that he strayed.”
Jacob thought all that?
“But...that’s not how it will look to other people,” she said.
“Other people don’t know the truth.”
“Well...how does it look to you?”
“I see that you’re incredibly strong.” Jacob nodded to the university buildings beside them. “Look where you live, far from your home, in this big city, in a foreign country.”
“It’s not like I have a choice. Of course I have to be strong. I’m expected to be strong, and I am what I’m supposed to be. It’s what I need to do.”
He was silent, listening to her, so she continued explaining, sorting it out in her head as she talked. “I cannot fail here, Jacob. When we heard my uncle was getting ready to name a successor, I went to him and asked him to consider me. Even though I’ve worked in positions of responsibility throughout our different divisions, he replied that I wasn’t qualified because I didn’t have an advanced business degree or experience in international finance, like my cousin Malcolm.
“So I found the best, most prestigious program that I could, and I applied. They accepted me, and now I’m here, working as hard as I can with my end goal in mind. I have to be successful. If not, I’ll never be chosen to run my family’s company if I seem to fail in anything I do. And that includes managing my relationships. That’s the way he looks at it. Cold and clinical. But I don’t want to be that way, and—”
Wait a minute. She put her hand over her mouth. Was this even true?
And worse, why was she saying it aloud to him? She hadn’t meant to tell Jacob anything private about her or her family. If Uncle John found out, he would be quite displeased.
* * *
JACOB HADN’T WANTED to like her or feel sympathy for her. This was the opposite of what he’d intended. He hadn’t really wanted to get her talking and to understand her.
He knew her world was shattered. In his mind, she could never be a failure. Or cold, or clinical. But he could imagine how she felt now, after her breakup...unanchored, mortified, upset. He understood why she wanted to go home and lick her wounds, but he couldn’t let her. He needed to get her to go to Vermont with him. The only way he knew how to convince her was to continue to talk to her, which felt strange to him.
Secret Service agents were taught never to confide with their protectees. His training was working against him.
He rubbed his face with his hands, cold with sweat. He was so close to John Sage. Maybe if he’d had his backup team with him, including some female agents, it wouldn’t be so difficult. Jacob wasn’t used to working alone, especially with an attractive woman.
She was just so beautiful. That blond hair, those big blue eyes that brimmed with tears. So expressive, but only here with him. She hadn’t cried in front of the boyfriend, and Jacob took some satisfaction from that.
Jacob flexed his hands on the wheel. He had no template to work with in this situation, so he was winging it. So far, nothing had worked in getting her to really trust him, and he knew why, because he remembered this feeling. Slammed upside the head by a lover’s betrayal. Crushed in the heart, and in the most public of places.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, darting a glance at him nervously.
It had started to rain, so he’d turned on the wipers. They thump-thump-thumped against the window at regular intervals. He glanced in the mirror and saw his own expression. No poker face here. That’s what she was reacting to—what he felt about her situation, not what she felt.
He got the impression that she was usually more in tune with what other people thought of her than with what she thought. To some extent, she was a people pleaser.
Maybe Rachel had been that way, too.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I was in your shoes once,” he remarked. “I was just thinking about that.”
He felt a change in her energy. The leather seat made a squeaking noise as she sat up straighter. Her eyes were boring into him; he could sense that, too.
“You were dumped?” she asked in a low voice. Anticipating. Wanting to hear more about it.
He inhaled deeply. Danger zone. He’d never even discussed this with Eddie. Not really. “That’s not the point.”
“Oh-ho!” She sat up straighter. “So it’s okay for me to be crushed and for you to know every detail about it, but it’s not okay for you?”
“Hey, I’m just your driver.”
“Really? I don’t see you driving me home the last few blocks like I asked.”
He opened his eyes. “Is that what you want? To give up? A successful woman like you? You don’t think it will make it seem like you’re hiding because you failed?”
She winced, defeated, as if he’d just kicked her to the curb. Honestly—he didn’t know how to deal with her. She was actually pretty brave. From what he could see, she had big plans and was making a courageous, bold and disciplined journey to reach them, much like he was.
“Look,” he said, “your main concern is that I not pass on what just happened to your uncle, right? Because you don’t want him to think less of you for it. Am I close to the truth?”
“You’re avoiding my question,” she said softly.
“What question?”
“I want to know how you were dumped.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything. It’s a power issue, Jacob.”
“A...what?”
“If you know my deep dark secrets and I don’t know yours, then we’re not on equal footing. I never should have spoken so loudly inside that coffee shop.”
“So...you’re more concerned about being vulnerable than about losing the so-called love of your life? Interesting.”
Her lip quivered.
Damn. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Cripes, he was handling this all wrong.
He laid his head back and looked at the skylight. Watched the rain come down. The truth was, he just couldn’t give anyone any more of himself. What was private with him, he kept locked away. He had to solve this standoff with Isabel some other way.
Abruptly, she opened the door and stepped out into the rain.
“Isabel?” he called. “Where are you going?”
“My luggage, please,” she said, leaning into the open door. “I’m going to phone for another driver. You and I obviously can’t work together any longer.”
He threw open his door and got out of the SUV, then jogged around the front until he was beside her on the wet sidewalk. The rain was cold on his head and face. “You want me to talk? You want to know how I’ve been in your shoes?”
She nodded, gazing into his eyes. “I do.”
They were both getting wet. Fat raindrops were spilling onto her cheeks. He wanted to brush them away.
“I...was supposed to get married,” he said. “Instead, on our wedding day...she arrived late and made this little speech to everyone as if she were doing me a favor to have shown up to the altar at all.”
“You were left at the altar?” she asked.
He focused on the raindrops running down her cheeks. One on her nose. Her top lip.
“Were people there?” she asked gently. Her tone was the musical Scottish voice he’d heard in the coffee shop. Her true accent. The voice she’d shown for Alex, and he hadn’t cared about it.
“Jacob?”
“All of my friends were sitting in the church. My colleagues from the NYPD, their wives and girlfriends. My mother. My stepfather. My half siblings. My stepgrandmother and stepaunts.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “How did you ever face them all afterward?”
He let out a breath, remembering. “For a long time, I didn’t. I focused on getting into the Secret Service. I worked long hours so I could stay away.”
Which probably wasn’t helping him much now, but he didn’t want to go into that.
“Bottom line, Isabel, don’t let the bastards get you down. Don’t give Alex the satisfaction of having the power to damage you. Because you’re not damaged. You’re strong and you’re independent and you’re doing the right thing with your life. Things don’t happen by accident—he put himself into that situation where he was open, just as Rach—just as my ex did. And then blamed it on fate. On me. On whomever. On everybody but her...”
He caught himself. Whoa. Where was this coming from?
But Isabel’s eyes were bright. And now her hand was on his arm. Just lightly. Not the way she’d hooked him back in her residence hall, but as though she were giving him comfort.
What was happening?
“I’m fine,” he said. It seemed he was saying that so much lately, what with the psychologist at work and the—
“When did she leave you?” Isabel asked.
Because she was sincere, quiet and respectful, he let out a breath and answered her. “Five years ago.”
“Have you been alone since then?”
Fix-ups didn’t count, not really. He nodded. “I have goals. You have your goals, well, so do I.”
She nodded, too, her eyes even brighter. “The thing that hurts most is that Alex knew what my goals were. We’d made an agreement. He was going to wait for me to come home.” She fell silent.
“How long were you and Alex together?”
“He...was the boy next door,” she said simply. “He knew me since...before everything. Before our family business took off, I mean. Before my father died...”
“It hit you out of left field, didn’t it?”
“If that means it flummoxed me, then yes—yes, it did.” She blinked rapidly.
“You don’t have to put on a brave face for me,” he said. “If you want to scream, go ahead.”
“I never scream.” She smiled brightly. “I don’t believe in drama.”
He did. Sometimes it was necessary.
“What did you do at that church with everyone looking at you?” she asked.
“Another story for another time.”
“Did you vomit all over the floor in public?” Her lips twitched. She was going to laugh, and that was a good sign.
He smiled, too, sort of. “Let’s just say that like you, I was in no good shape.”
“What did you do to get in good shape?”
What she really was asking was, how could she get in good shape?
For purposes of getting her on the road to Vermont, he told her a partial truth. “I stopped by a liquor store, got a whole bunch of empty boxes and then drove back to our—to my apartment, and packed up everything she had. Clothes, makeup, cooking stuff—whatever, and I left it out in the hall. Then I had the locks changed.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you ever hear from her again?”
In Jacob’s experience, when people left him, they really left him. He felt cold for a moment, but shook it off. “Nope.”
“She didn’t come back to you? Tell you she’d made a mistake?”
“No.” He looked at her. “Is that what you’re hoping for?”
“Me?” She shook her head fiercely. “I have very few real friends, Jacob. Few people I can trust.” She sighed. “You were right. He showed me his true colors.”
She folded into herself. But Jacob knew that her heart was broken.
Jacob’s heart had been broken, too. Worse than the embarrassment. Worse than the jealousy or the anger or the betrayal—it was the secret inner sadness, the empty pit of abandonment that nobody ever talked about. It was the stark reality at the end of the day, when you came back to your apartment and you were alone. Because the only people you’d trusted had taken your heart and tossed it away.
“Don’t feel sad for me,” Isabel said. “I’ve just decided I am going to this wedding. I’m going to show Malcolm that he still has a competitor for this job. He’s not the shoe-in that everybody thinks he is.”
She leaned over and kissed Jacob on the cheek. “Let’s get back in the car and drive to Vermont, please.” She smiled. “But I’m not sitting in the back. There’s no need for that anymore.”
As she turned and climbed inside, Jacob stood there in the rain, touching his cheek where she’d kissed him.
He should be happy. He’d gotten what he wanted from her—they were going north—but at the same time he’d lost something in the process, too. Some level of protection that she’d just stripped from him.
He wondered if he could get it back before it was too late.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_97eb3232-12d3-5f76-8848-e0af3ee3f69d)
FLIPPING HER SEAT warmer to the highest setting, Isabel enjoyed the warmth that seeped into her bum. She sighed, wriggling her thighs and stretching her toes.
Thirty minutes outside New York City, past the congestion and stops, the drive was more freeing to her than she’d expected.
She felt mostly awe as the SUV hugged the curves of one of the massive motorways she’d read about. They passed the hugest lorries she’d ever seen, most of them left in their dust. Jacob roared at a steady clip in the left lane, usually the slow lane for her—but everything was flipped backward for her, with the driver on the left-hand side of the car.
This was a five-hour drive away from the rut, the loneliness, the stalled disappointment that her life had become.
She gazed through the sparkling clean glass. Welcome, success. From now on, everything would be new again, including her.
They threaded through some pretty parkways that would connect to another major route, Route 91 in Connecticut, and then all the way north to Vermont. For too long, Isabel had been cooped up in the city, bound to her work. She had barely left her campus or residence hall, unless as part of her studies.
Two years ago, during student orientation, she’d been part of a group that had toured the stock market and watched the famous ringing of the bell, and another week, had walked through Central Park. She’d even toured the museums one rare Sunday.
But since classes had started, she’d never veered from the work it took to earn her degree. This was a fresh way to start over with a renewed attitude.
“How is it that you know your way around the countryside so easily?” she asked Jacob.
“This is Connecticut.” He shrugged. “I have family here.”
“You grew up here?”
He gave a tight nod. “I did.”
Such a different world. A different life. They shared a common language, but the States seemed so much more complicated and larger than what she was used to.
Louder, faster, more crowded. Their course through Jacob’s home territory changed to a gently rolling two-lane motorway with no lorries, only cars, and then again to a larger motorway. Jacob stayed in the left lane most of the drive north. He used a GPS, as she liked, though he kept the radio off. He drove carefully, not recklessly, but he didn’t fear speed traps.
They saw several pulled-over motorists with police officers in cars, issuing tickets.
“Yeah, that’s Connecticut,” Jacob mentioned with a smile.
“We tend to follow the rules in Scotland. Nobody likes to get fined.”
“That’s not a problem I have very often, being in law enforcement,” he replied.
She’d almost forgotten his profession. With each passing mile, rather than feeling anxious over going someplace new, someplace she was unsure how to act in, she felt calmer in his presence.
“There’s a rest stop up ahead,” he said. “I’m going to pull in. There are facilities and vending machines, but if you’d rather sit down to eat, there’s a better place about an hour up the road.”
“You know this route to Vermont well. Do you drive it often?”
He smiled slightly, as if to himself. “I haven’t been in Vermont since college, on a ski weekend.”
“We have skiing in Scotland, too,” she remarked.
He glanced at her. Those two frown lines were between his eyes again. “Do you live in Edinburgh?”
Was he asking if she was a city girl? She did live in the city, but during this drive through Connecticut, seeing all the trees again and the rolling hills, she was getting a bit homesick for the country.
“I have a flat in Edinburgh. I work in the corporate headquarters for my family’s company. But I grew up in the Highlands.”
Near Inverness. She felt a stab of nostalgia for the deep blue lochs, the glens, the relative ease with which one could drive past castles from east to west, North Sea to Irish Sea.
Jacob was staring at her.
“How much longer until Vermont?” she asked politely.
He laughed. “We’re not even in Massachusetts yet. We have two more state lines to cross.”
She took it to mean they had a lot more time to spend together in their cocooned, rolling world. That made her smile. And she didn’t have to fake it.
* * *
JACOB HAD PLANNED out the route already, days ago. He knew where each stop was that they would make. Nothing would be left to chance. This was how he worked, how he was trained.
And yet, he’d never had a protectee like Isabel.
She’d thrown him off balance yet again.
For one thing, she sat up front with him. For the past hour, she’d been toying with the satellite radio. She was putting on music that messed with his head. ʼ70s on 7, the station was called.
All kinds of old pop music that had played in their apartment back when he was a kid—just him and his mom, together in New York City. Sometimes even years later, alone in the new house in Connecticut with Daniel—Jacob’s stepdad—she would cry silently over those old songs when Daniel wasn’t around. She never told Jacob why, but he didn’t need to ask.
There were some things he wasn’t ever supposed to ask. They only caused sadness and silence. Daniel was a calm, levelheaded guy. He hated conflict in the home, and Jacob’s mom shared that aversion.
Jacob ran his hand through his hair. He was thinking all these things just because they were driving through the state where he’d lived in his teens. He’d learned every inch of this place like the back of his hand, but especially the tristate area: southern Connecticut, New York City metro and northern New Jersey.
They were traveling away from what he knew and toward the unknown—Isabel’s family wedding.
There was still so much he didn’t know about the Sage family. Normally, he would take the opportunity to quiz Isabel about her uncle, her cousins, the kidnapping—everything he needed to know for his job. Somehow, though, she had a tendency to answer him in such a way that he ended up being the one in emotional danger.
Just when he thought he had her figured out, she shocked him into realizing he was in completely new territory.
He glanced over at her. The woman was...well, she was obviously beautiful, but it was her vulnerability that he found most interesting—the real Isabel, not the one who was so poised on the surface. He didn’t know much about how most women thought—he’d only lived with Rachel for those few weeks—but watching Isabel in action, he’d been reminded of that bathroom drawer of makeup that he’d emptied once Rachel had decided to take up with her investment banker.
Isabel had fixed her smeared mascara back at their first rest stop. Brought in that huge bag of hers and had reemerged, poised again as if nothing had happened.
There was a lot she kept hidden behind the polite smile she showed the world. The crazy part was that he really did want to protect her. He wanted to keep her safe from ever crying again, especially over that idiot who’d flown in from Scotland just to dump her.
But at the same time, it would be reckless to forget she was the enemy of sorts.
She was part of the family he meant to discover more about, and without their knowing he was doing it or why. That would bring complications. He had to be careful. The only reason Isabel hadn’t ditched him so far was that he’d been on his best behavior.
He scowled to himself. He wasn’t usually so friendly and open to people, not by a long shot. He did his job with a minimum of words. Silent protection. And he did it well; nobody got hurt or killed on his watch. He didn’t accomplish that by being buddies with the VIPs.
But Isabel wanted Jacob to be pleasant, right along with her.
“Will we be seeing some of that famous New England foliage?” she asked him as they passed north into Massachusetts.
“No. I think we’re too late for that.”
“A pity. I regret that I never made time to see it. It’s supposed to be brilliant.”
“Ah...” Jacob rarely made time, either. “The leaves turn red and yellow in the city, as well, but you’re right, there’s nothing like the vividness of the mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire.”
“Then I’ll have to make plans for another year, maybe.” She smiled sleepily at him. “I’ll have to come back and do it right the next time I’m here.”
He doubted she’d ever be back.
He let out a breath. She had a scent that filled his SUV. Shampoo, or soap, or some kind of shower gel that just...smelled good.
Made him want to move closer to her, though he would never actually do it.
She had long limbs, too, long legs that filled the bucket seat, crossed at the ankle of her tall leather boots. She had slender fingers, the nails clipped short, unpainted. He liked that.
As he glanced over at her, she toyed with a pendant on a thin chain that hung over her turtleneck, her eyes drifting closed. Long lashes lay against her cheek. She’d tied back her hair in a ponytail, and it rested against her shoulder, making her look relaxed and untroubled.
“Jacob?”
“Yeah?” He snapped back to reality. The road was lulling him. She was lulling him. Building a rapport with Isabel Sage wasn’t on the agenda any longer, and it was time he shook that off.
All he needed was to get her safely to the inn and pass her to the bosom of her family. Then he could start phase two of his operation: arrange his meeting with John Sage.
“We’re almost there,” he mumbled.
“Could we please stop and eat dinner together first?” she asked. “I’m getting rather hungry.”
He sighed. A reasonable request. “Yeah, sure, there’s a good place just ahead.”
A few minutes later, an hour away from their destination, he pulled the SUV into the dirt parking lot of a roadside restaurant.
Once inside, he ordered from the counter and brought back hamburgers, French fries, a root beer for him and bottled water for her—all to their booth in the back.
He was starving; the tantalizing smell of prime Angus beef and salty, deep-fried potatoes made his mouth water. He settled himself into the seat across from her and then bent his head and concentrated on the meal.
“Thanks for taking care of me today,” she said softly, that gentle hint of Scotland back in her voice.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said between bites.
“I’ve been thinking.” She ran a finger around the edge of her French-fry carton, not meeting his gaze.
Please don’t think.
“Are you being nice to me just because you’re being paid to?” she asked.
Oh, hell. He put down his burger and wiped his mouth. “I’m not actually being paid, so...no, I don’t think so.”
She tilted her head at him. “Why aren’t you being paid?”
He couldn’t spook her. Had to maintain his cover. “Ah, because I’m doing a favor for my friend. Lee. He, ah, owns the security company.”
“And how do you know this Lee?”
Great. He’d just opened Pandora’s box.
Jacob crossed his arms and stared behind Isabel at the paneled wall and the old Orange Crush soda clock. “Lee was the team lead for my first few jobs in the Secret Service.”
“And...?” she prodded. She could really be a sharp cookie when she wanted to be. “What do you owe him?”
“Nothing. We’re friends—isn’t that enough?” Jacob concentrated on pounding the bottom of the glass ketchup bottle. “If I like somebody, I’ll do them a favor. No big deal.”
“Do you find that you ever get hurt that way?”
“You know, I’m trying not to take this whole line of questioning personally because I know you just got burned pretty badly,” he pointed out.
“Don’t show me any favors. Do something because you want to, or don’t do it at all. That’s my new philosophy.”
Where was this going? He raised an eyebrow at her. Maybe the breakup had affected her more than he realized. “Sure,” Jacob said. “Will do.”
“And I’ll do the same. With you, I mean. Nothing phony or pretend between us.”
He darted a gaze at her, but she was already staring at him. They both looked away. Then back again.
“Was Lee at your wedding?” she asked finally.
Whoa. He went very still.
But she didn’t move, either. She just waited patiently. Jacob carefully ran a French fry through the pool of ketchup he’d managed to coax onto his plate. Her question surprised him, but he didn’t feel so bad about answering. “I’m pretty sure Lee is the one who stayed and told everybody in the church to go home afterward.”
“That’s a good friend,” she said admiringly.
“Yeah. He is.” The details were kind of hazy at this point, though. “He did come back to my apartment later. I, ah, needed help with the bandages.”
“The bandages?”
“I’d punched a few walls. One of them turned out to be brick.”
She put her hand over her mouth. Her chest was moving up and down.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked.
“Sorry.” She giggled once, and it made her seem young. She giggled again and it was...well, it was the most interesting sound he’d heard in a while. He even felt his face splitting into a grin.
“This is so inappropriate, I know,” she said between chortles. “But suddenly, I don’t feel as bad about losing my breakfast in a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan.”
“Are you going to eat that hamburger?” he asked, pointing at her plate. “Because if you don’t, I will.”
She broke into another fit of giggles, and then suddenly he was laughing, too.
Just...damn.
Back in the SUV, facing the road again, Jacob sobered. He couldn’t forget that he was walking a fine line, so many fine lines.
Maybe that part about Lee had slipped out because of where they were headed. He and Isabel each had damn good reasons not to be keen on wedding celebrations.
He just felt gentle with her. In a sense, she was a kindred spirit, phase two of his operation or not.
“Thank you for telling me that story,” she said softly as she buckled her seat belt. “And thank you for being kind today.”
“You think I’m kind?”
“You are kind,” she said. And then she went back to fiddling with the radio.
Jacob was more often accused of being insensitive. Or aloof. Intense was Eddie’s word. Jacob was pretty sure he got that from Rachel, who, now that he thought of it, had coined the term first. Eddie’s wife, Donna, was the one who’d really latched on to it of late, though.
She hadn’t been at Jacob’s wedding—almost wedding—but Jacob was pretty sure that Eddie had told her the lurid details. Hence her obsession with fixing Jacob up.
Isabel had seemed to respond to his intensity. Maybe she had some natural intensity of her own deep inside her, dying to come out. Maybe it had taken the shock of Alex dumping her for it to escape through that protective surface of hers.
And Rachel... Until today, he hadn’t thought of her in years. At this point, she was nothing to him. The thought of her stirred no feelings, one way or another. She’d been a drama queen—open and direct, the opposite of his mom. He’d mistaken that for intensity, and at the time, he’d craved it because it had been such a novelty to him—someone who wanted to pick everything apart and react expressively to it. After being brought up in a mostly silent home, where people tended to withdraw above all, it had been intensely appealing to find someone who thrived on emotion.
Jacob squinted to find the turnoff he needed. They were almost there.
Isabel stirred next to him. Stretched like a cat, totally not conscious of him. Comfortable in his presence.
And something about that just grabbed him and held on.
Don’t, he told himself. Let her be just a job.
He reminded himself of that over and over during the rest of the drive.
* * *
THERE WAS SOMETHING wonderfully freeing about sitting next to a man whom she didn’t need to give one fig about impressing. Isabel could put her head back on the seat. Let her hair down. Not worry that it was dark outside and the SUV’s engine was lulling her to sleep.
She’d forgotten how freeing it was to be on the road for a long drive. In her fantasies she could get in a car and drive all day, just get away from her life.
It felt like being in a fairy tale with him, nothing close to her everyday reality.
“Knowing Me, Knowing You” by Abba was playing on the radio. She found herself singing along about breaking up never being easy. She put her hand over her mouth and broke into laughter again. That had sounded terrible.
“I don’t care,” she said aloud. She felt tired of needing to put on a good front. Tired of living for tomorrow. She just wanted to laugh and sing and feel better now. “Do you mind if I turn up the volume?” she asked Jacob.
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