Lisa Childs - In The Bodyguard's Arms

Not only couldn’t she see but she also could barely stand. She tried to regain her footing, but her legs folded beneath her. She dropped to the ground again. Before she could get back up, a hand closed around her arm.

She’d dropped the damn canister after she’d released the pepper spray. There probably hadn’t been any left anyway. But she needed something to protect her. This hand was big and strong, bigger and stronger than the one that had gripped her hair and jerked her to the ground.

This man could easily hurt her if he wanted to, and after she sprayed him, he probably wanted to hurt her badly. She was still tempted to fight him the way she’d fought the other man. But this guy had that gun, which was why she’d played dead until he’d gotten close enough for her to use the spray. She knew, just like she hadn’t outrun the other man, that she wouldn’t have been able to outrun a bullet.

Instead of hurting her, this man helped her up. “Get in the cabin,” he urged her. “Lock yourself inside. I checked it already. It’s clear. He wouldn’t have been able to get around us to get in there.”

He sounded like he really wanted to help her—when he should have been furious with her. And yet she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just manipulating her. Could she trust him?

She did need to get to the cabin—to her Jeep keys. Maybe by the time she got there, her vision would be clearer. But as she started forward, she stumbled, her legs still too weak to hold her. She’d already been physically exhausted when she’d been forced to run for her life. It was no wonder her muscles were protesting now.

The man caught her again, lifting her easily from the ground. He swung her up in his arms, but he stumbled, too, as he climbed the steps of the small porch to the back door.

Judging from the mammoth size of his arms and shoulders and chest, he wasn’t struggling with her weight. Like her, he had to be struggling to see. He made it up the steps and through the open back door. His shoulder struck the jamb, but that might have been just because of how wide his shoulders were.

She’d slung her arm around his shoulders just to steady herself. It wasn’t as if she had to hang on. He wasn’t about to drop her.

He had one arm under her legs, the other around her back. His arms were hard—like his shoulders and his chest—all sculpted muscles. She would have thought he was carved from rock—if not for his warmth. He wasn’t a statue; he was a man.

She needed to wriggle down to break free of his grasp. In the hand of the arm beneath her legs, he still held his gun, the barrel pointed down. The flashlight beam shone like a spotlight on the hardwood floor. What if he pointed the gun at her again?

She didn’t have the pepper spray to defend herself. But she was beginning to believe she hadn’t needed to use it.

“Who are you?” she asked as she stared up at his face.

Even with his spray-reddened eyes and skin, he was handsome. His complexion was tan, but that might have been more from nature than the sun. His hair was black, and his eyes were dark, too, but for the red rimming the deep brown irises. He was probably the same age she was: thirty. If they’d ever met before, she would have remembered meeting him.

“Jordan Mannes,” he said. “I’m the bodyguard from the Payne Protection Agency.”

She gasped in shock and regret. She had maced the man sent to protect her.

“And you’re Teddie Plummer?” He asked it like he was wishing she wasn’t but afraid she was.

She could understand his not recognizing her if he were familiar with her photographs. She didn’t look anything like her pictures right now with her baggy clothes and her hair all dirty and tangled around her face.

She nodded. “Yes, I’m Teddie.”

He emitted a short sigh. Of disappointment?

Although she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to protect someone who had hurt him.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not hurt?”

She nodded again.

Then he released her and turned back for the door. “And make damn sure you lock it this time,” he admonished her. “I found it unlocked when I first got here.”

Her breath caught, and she shook her head. He had to be wrong. This had happened at her mama’s house. They had been certain they’d locked the door when they’d left for dinner. But when they’d returned, the door had been unlocked.

“It was locked,” she insisted. She remembered checking it twice after she’d closed it behind herself. “I always lock the doors.”

He shook his head now. “It wasn’t when I showed up earlier. So make sure you lock it behind me when I leave.”

“You’re leaving?” Not that she could blame him after what she’d done to him.

“Somebody’s out there, right?” he asked as he looked over his shoulder at her. “That’s why you screamed?”

She shuddered as she remembered that hand in her hair, jerking her head back. “Yes. Someone was chasing me through the woods.” Her voice cracked with a resurgence of the fear she’d felt when she’d been running, trying to escape him. “And then he caught me.”

“Did you recognize him?”

She shook her head. “It all happened so fast,” she explained. “He caught me from behind, but when he jerked me around, I couldn’t see his face. He had a ski mask on...” So the pepper spray probably wouldn’t have affected him—had she had time to shoot the contents of the canister in his face.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Jordan asked.

“N-no,” she stammered. She wasn’t physically harmed. But she might have been in shock. No. If she were in shock, she would have been numb. And she was feeling too much now: too much achy pain from overexerting herself and too much fascination with her bodyguard. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” he said, “because now I’m going to try to catch him. He couldn’t have gotten very far yet.”

“No,” she agreed. “I kicked him—hard.” She was surprised he’d been able to move at all, let alone run, when Jordan had rushed out of the cabin.

The bodyguard’s mouth curved into a slight grin that Teddie couldn’t help but find sexy. He had sensual-looking lips. “Good,” he said again, his deep voice even deeper with satisfaction. “Then he probably didn’t get far at all.”

“But how will you find him?” she asked. “You can’t see.” She couldn’t, and not as much of the spray had gotten in her eyes and face as in his. How was he even standing?

When the volunteer in her self-defense class had been sprayed, the young man had writhed around on the floor in agony until they’d taken him to the ER.

Jordan Mannes stood strong and steady now, unlike her. Her legs still trembled with exhaustion and...

She wasn’t sure what she was feeling anymore. Fear. Excitement. The adrenaline rush had yet to leave her, her pulse raced and her skin was flushed. But maybe that was just from the spray—or from how easily Jordan Mannes had carried her.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. Too many sleepless nights and too much fear had taken its toll on her senses. She was losing them.

“You need to let me take you to the clinic,” she said. “Or at least try to wash out your eyes.”

“No,” he said. “There’s no time. I have to find the guy who grabbed you.” He touched his red face and grimaced. “Did you think I was him—coming back—when you sprayed me?”

“I didn’t know who you were,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting the bodyguard to arrive for a couple of days yet.”

“I flew here.”

Her skin chilled as a wave of doubt crashed over her. “There’s no airport for over a hundred miles and that doesn’t take commercial flights.”