Linda Conrad - Slow Dancing With a Texan

“You’re welcome. Are you hungry? There’s a café a half mile down the road that we can take a chance on if you’d like.” He hadn’t given any consideration to her comfort since this whole thing began.

Some bodyguard he made. Her physical needs were every bit as important to her survival as was keeping her safe from outside threats. Starving both of them wouldn’t exactly get him a commendation from the captain.

Instead of answering him, Lainie covered her face with her hand. “I can’t think of food,” she moaned, and plopped down on the bed. “I can’t think of anything but Suzy. What have I done to my sister?”

He couldn’t bear to see such a strong, competent woman dissolve like this. Sitting down beside her, he slid an arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

“I told you before, you didn’t do any of this. You weren’t the one aiming bullets toward a lobby full of people. I doubt that you wanted any of this to happen. Did you?”

She glanced up at him with a wretched look of self-pity in her eyes. “No, of course not. But I should’ve paid more attention to the threats. I should’ve waited in my office for you to arrive. It’s my fault that she was standing next to me in front of those windows.”

The guilt he heard when she spoke nearly did him in. “Easy, there. Life can be chock-full of should’ves, you know. Blaming yourself is useless. It won’t bring you any peace or change the outcome one bit. And it only buys you more heartache.”

Lainie heard the pain in the quiet tone of Sloan’s voice. It made her wonder what had happened in his life that he would change if only he had a second chance.

She gazed into his eyes just in time to catch the sad look he quickly hid again. He’d never talk to her about his troubles, she knew. But that was what she did for a living. Listening and giving advice.

Deciding not to ask any personal questions until she knew him better, Lainie moved out of his embrace. “Can I see Suzy? Will you take me to the hospital?”

He slowly shook his head. “Sorry. The captain said for us to lay low tonight. Even if we knew where they’d taken your sister, it would be too risky. The hospital would be too open, too predictable.”

“You mean someone might try to kill me there? This…this person would be at the hospital waiting for us?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Who did this? Who wanted to hurt me this badly?”

“Both of those are great questions,” he told her as he stood and stretched. “Can we discuss them while we’re getting something to eat?”

She bit back sudden irritation. After all, he wasn’t a family member who cared what she thought. He was merely her bodyguard. She didn’t mean anything to him, so why should he help her figure out who the stalker might be?

“Okay,” she agreed finally. “I guess I could choke down a salad.”

He raised an eyebrow at her and let his gaze slowly wander from her soaking-wet hair all the way down to her bare feet.

“We’ll be on foot. We can’t take a chance of being spotted in the truck tonight. So you’d better put on your shoes, Ms. Gardner.” The grin broke out across his face again. “But don’t count on a salad in this part of town. You’re probably going to have to settle for a burger.”

A half hour later Lainie sat huddled with his raincoat pulled tightly around her. Her feet, stuffed into two-inch heels with no nylons, were neatly stashed under a plastic-covered booth in a dimly lit Mexican café.

She was trying to decide whether to order a taco salad or a plate of enchiladas. She’d already gulped down a tall glass of sweetened iced tea and was just about to polish off an entire basketful of tortilla chips.

“I thought you wanted a salad?” Sloan grumbled from his spot across the table. “We walked two extra blocks out of our way to find this place. Just order the salad and be done with it.”

He’d already placed his order with the waitress. Now, looking rather impatient, he waited for her to make a decision.

Lainie dipped the last chip into the tomato salsa and ordered the enchiladas. Since Captain Johnson returned their call to say that Suzy was still in the hospital but in good condition, Lainie’s appetite had returned with a vengeance.

Sloan relaxed back against the faded-brown bench and flipped his hat onto the seat next to him. The dim lighting in the restaurant didn’t afford much of a view, but she could manage to see that his hair was the same color as his eyes. A warm brown with golden highlights, it was neatly cut, but one stray strand hung down across his forehead.

He brushed back the wayward hair, and Lainie cautioned herself not to sigh aloud. She wondered whether it would feel as soft and silky as the mink coat it resembled. She managed to blink away the questions.

“We’ve got ourselves a problem here,” Sloan drawled.

Lainie wondered if he realized exactly how big a problem it was for her every time he smiled, and she found herself yearning to place a kiss on the dimple in his chin.

“You mean something other than dodging bullets from the sniper’s gun?” she asked, instead of saying what she thought.

“You’ve got a smart mouth, you know that?” He grinned and took a swig from the long-neck beer bottle that the waitress had just put in front of him.

“Well, excuse me, but I’m not exactly feeling too polite at the moment. I’m tired and irritable. My sister is in the hospital because of me. And I’m sitting here in a heavy raincoat that’s so big it’s falling off my shoulders, wondering whether this may be my last meal.” Her eyes glittered with sparkling green anger.

Sloan thought she was really something special. What other woman would react to being shot at by becoming mad and irritable? He knew most of them would’ve dissolved into a quivering mass of nervous hysterics by now.

But he wasn’t about to mention his admiration to Lainie. “Things could be worse,” he mumbled.

“Oh, really?”

He looked past her to the picture of a bullfighter on the wall. “At least you have people who are worried about you and who would care if you lived or died.”

She opened her mouth to make a remark, but the waitress brought the food just then. Before the plates could be arranged on the table in front of them, they both dug in without another word.

It wasn’t long until Sloan polished off the last flour tortilla and signaled the waitress to bring another beer. “You’re not going to be able to go back home for a while, you know.”

Her eyes widened and she swallowed her last bite of food with a cough. “What? Why not?”

“It won’t be possible to provide you with adequate protection if you just go blithely back to your old routine. After you give your statement to the police detectives, you and I will have to disappear.” He watched as she picked up her fork and squeezed her fingers in a death grip around the handle. “This might be a good time to consider a mini vacation. Someplace where no one will recognize your face.”

“I have to work. With my sister in the hospital, someone needs to do the columns. I have contracts to fulfill and people who are desperate for my advice.”

“Your sister writes the columns?”

“I give the advice, she makes sure it appears in the column the way I intended.”

“I heard somewhere that columnists usually have a couple of weeks worth of columns stashed away for emergencies. What if you were taken ill or had to take some time off for other personal reasons?”

She slid down on the booth’s bench. “I do have a few backup columns. But still, without Suzy I will have to make sure they get turned in and are set the way we expect them to be.”

“Could you give someone else instructions on where to find your files and then check to make sure it’s done properly by using a computer and the Internet?”