Susan Mallery - The Bodyguard & Ms Jones

He didn’t know what to say, so he blurted out the first thing that came to him. “Why did you marry someone named Nelson?”

She laughed. “It’s a question I’ve asked myself again and again.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “He wasn’t much of a husband. Good riddance.”

He tried to remember the last time he talked with a woman. Just talked. Not as a prelude to sex, or because they were working together. Except for his phone calls with Grace, he didn’t know that he ever had.

“What about you?” she asked. “Ever married?”

“What makes you think I’m not now?”

“Because you would have gone home to her instead of coming to Grace’s.”

“Good point. No, I’ve never been married.” It wasn’t his style. He didn’t believe in getting that close.

“And you’ve always lived in the city?”

He nodded. “I had a place in New York for a while, then I got a lot of work in Los Angeles. I kept an apartment there until it was damaged by the earthquake a couple years back. Since then I’ve been working steadily and haven’t found anywhere I liked.”

She stood up. He couldn’t help watching the graceful way she unfolded her legs. He’d dated a couple of models while he was in New York, but he didn’t like their bony torsos and straight legs. Cindy’s calves and thighs curved as if trying to lead a man astray while tempting him to paradise. He grimaced. He was thinking some strange thoughts. Maybe he’d fallen on his head harder than he’d realized.

“You live a very odd life, Mike Blackburne. You’re about to get a crash course on how the other half lives,” she said. “Welcome to the world of children and Middle America.”

A car honked. She walked to the door and yelled, “Allison, Jonathan, your ride is here.”

The two children ran down the stairs and over to her. She bent down and kissed them both. “Be good.”

They called back that they would, raced across the floor, then slammed the door shut behind them. Cindy drew in a breath. “Ah, blissful silence. You hungry?”

At her question, his stomach rumbled. “I guess so,” he said.

“I’ll make you some soup.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Think you can manage to get to the rest room on your own?”

He eyed the door. “Yeah.”

“I have chicken soup with round noodles, noodles shaped like dinosaurs and alphabet noodles.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Obviously you’ve never had to feed children.”

“I guess not. You don’t have any plain flat noodles?”

“Sorry. They’re not exciting enough.”

She was right. He had entered a strange and different world. “Surprise me.”

* * *

Cindy set the soup bowl on the tray, shifted the water glass over and stared at the crackers. Dry toast might be better. She hesitated for a moment, then figured the man was unlikely to finish what she’d brought him, as it was. She picked up the tray and headed for the bedroom.

Mike was back in bed but sitting up this time with the sheets and blanket bunched around his waist. His hair had been brushed, although he still needed a shave.

“You look pale,” she said.

“I just about had to crawl on the return trip but it was worth it.” He pointed to the bowl. “What did you decide?”

“Dinosaurs. I thought they would make you big and strong.”

The look he shot her told her he wasn’t sure if he believed her or not. She bit back a grin. Better for her if she kept him a little off-balance. Having Mike Blackburne in her house wasn’t doing much for her equilibrium.

She settled the tray over his lap. The wooden legs held it up off his thighs. “Would you rather have juice than water? I didn’t think coffee would be a good idea. You need sleep more than anything, and I don’t have any decaf.”

“I don’t drink decaf,” he said, picking up a spoon. “The taste of coffee is bad enough, but at least it has caffeine. If it doesn’t keep you up, why bother? Water is fine.”

He dipped his spoon into the bowl, then stared at the miniature pasta dinosaurs floating in the chicken broth. After a shrug, as if to say “What the hell,” he downed a mouthful.

“Tastes the same,” he admitted.

“What did you expect?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe little crunchy bones?”

She smiled. “Tomorrow, when you’re stronger.”

While he ate, she moved around the room, opening the drapes, then smoothing the folded comforter at the foot of the bed. Anything to keep from staring at Mike. It had been easy to take care of him while he was only semiconscious. She’d awakened him enough to get him to swallow his pills and make him drink water, but they hadn’t actually spoken before. Sleeping, he’d been good-looking. Awake, he was sinfully handsome and dangerously intriguing.

In an odd way, he reminded her of Nelson. The statistics were the same. Both men had brown hair and brown eyes, and were six feet two inches tall. However, that’s where the similarity ended. Nelson’s face was ordinary. Glasses hid his eyes, which were his best feature. Her ex-husband was pale, slightly flabby, at least he had been the last time she’d seen him naked, and had the beginnings of a bald spot on the top of his head. His chest was furry to the point of making her wonder if his family tree held the evolutionary missing link.

Mike was broad and strong, tanned with rippling muscles that made her wish he never had to put a shirt on again. His smooth skin made her fingers tingle and her palms itch. He had a strong nose and a square chin. He could have used a couple more inches of hair—she wasn’t fond of the military cropped cut—but what was there was thick enough to make him the star of a shampoo commercial. Altogether, he was an impressive male specimen and she didn’t know what on earth she was going to do with him. Fortunately, except for helping him get well, nothing was required.

“I unpacked a few of your things,” she said, pulling open the top drawer of her dresser and taking out shorts and a T-shirt. “I thought you might like to get dressed.”

“That would be great. Maybe later.”

When she turned around to look at him, he’d already set the spoon down and was leaning against the pillows. He’d finished all the soup and two of the crackers.

“Do you want some more?” she asked.

“No. I’m weaker than I thought.”

“You’ve been through a lot. What with being shot and all.”

He rubbed his chin and grimaced. “You got this funny look on your face when you said that.”

“Said what?”

“Shot.”

“Not many people around here have much experience with that. We don’t get a lot of terrorist activity in the suburbs.”

“It’s not a lot of fun.”

“You’ve got painkillers,” she said, walking toward one of the duffel bags. “Do you want one? And please, don’t try to be macho and impress me. I’ve got children, I’m immune.”

“Yeah, okay.”

She dug around for the pills, then shook one out onto her palm. “You know, I find it fascinating that you travel with so little luggage. Do you have things in storage somewhere?”

He took the pill from her and downed it with a single gulp of water. After wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he shook his head. “No furniture or anything. I have my work clothes. Suits, shirts, that sort of thing. I dropped them off at a cleaners in L.A. and he keeps them until my next job. But I don’t need a whole lot.”

“You’re just like my dad. He traveled light, too. If something was too much of a bother, he didn’t want it around. It was one of the reasons we never had a dog.” She leaned against the footboard post and folded her arms over her chest. She knew men like Mike traveled light emotionally as well as physically. “One day his family got to be too much bother, so he left us behind, too.”