Virginia Kantra - Born To Protect

“Can we stop a minute?” Eric huffed in his ear.

Jack unclenched his jaw. “Sure, kid. Let me get to that log up there…” Fifteen steps, he thought. He could do another fifteen steps. No problem. “…and we’ll take a break.”

It was twenty-two steps, and when Jack lowered the big eighth grader onto the fallen tree, pain knifed from his shoulder to his hand. “Referred pain,” the therapist called it. Jack had another word, but he couldn’t use it in front of the kid.

He glanced down at the boy. Eric’s face was really red. His mouth worked as he struggled not to cry.

Reluctant sympathy moved in Jack. “Breathe in through your nose,” he instructed.

The kid, near tears and embarrassed, kept his head down, focusing on his wet, bare ankle.

“Come on,” Jack urged. “In through your nose for a count of four, hold it for seven, breathe out for eight.” He demonstrated. “Helps with the pain,” he explained.

“How would you know?” the boy muttered. His eyes were wet.

“It worked when I was shot.”

Eric looked up, diverted from his sulks and his swollen ankle. “Really?”

“Yeah. Try it. In, two, three, four. Hold…and out slow, six, seven, eight. Good. Again.”

They matched breaths a couple more times, until the kid’s shoulders relaxed and his unhealthy color faded.

“That’s it,” Jack encouraged. “Never let ’em see you sweat.”

The boy swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re sweating.”

“Yeah, well, that’ll be our secret, okay?”

Eric gave him a shaky smile. “Okay.”

“Is everything all right?”

Princess Cupcake had backtracked along the straggling line of students. Intent on the boy, Jack had not heard her approach. God, he really was slipping.

Concern warmed her big blue eyes. Jack stiffened. He didn’t want her pity.

And he wasn’t sacrificing the kid to her compassion, either. He remembered too well what it was to be thirteen and afraid that your voice or behavior would let you down, to have a man-size ego and feet, and a child’s need to please.

“I needed a breather,” he said. “So we stopped.”

She studied them both, still with that gooey look in her eyes. How much had she heard?

“Is he too heavy for you?” she asked.

Jack would not be offended. She was being responsible, and he was—well, okay, he was a little offended. No SEAL had ever left behind a dead or wounded comrade. “What, are you going to carry him? He outweighs you by twenty pounds.” He shook his head. “We’re doing fine.”

“We could make a chair of our arms and carry him that way.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. She probably could have gotten Eric out like that, changing bearers, if Jack hadn’t happened along. But they were almost at the bus now. And a forearm carry would put a hell of a lot more stress on his shoulder than the fireman’s hold.

“I told you, we’re fine. I don’t need your help.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Very well. I certainly wouldn’t want to interfere with you flexing your very impressive set of muscles. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

She swept up his jacket and stalked down the trail, leaving him behind to admire her classy comeback and her heart-shaped rear end.

The man was impossible.

And nearly impossible to get rid of.

Christina marched into the office she shared with three other postgraduate fellows and snatched her mail from her cubbyhole.

Jack Dalton strolled through the door behind her, exuding pheromones and disapproval. “You should lock your door.”

She would not let him see how he rattled her. “Would it do any good?” she asked sweetly.

He grinned, that sharp, attractive grin that hooked her insides. “Trying to get rid of me, princess?”

She barricaded herself behind her battered metal desk. “Not very effectively, obviously. I haven’t had this much difficulty shaking my bodyguard since I was thirteen years old and had to climb the garden wall.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, taking a slow survey of the shabby room. “What were you running away from that time?”

What harm could it do to tell him? “A British film crew. They were making a documentary about my mother.”

“Did you get caught?”

She lifted her chin. “Not until they finished filming for the day.”

He eyed her appraisingly. “That must have gone over big with your parents.”

“My mother was very understanding. Besides, the crew got what they came for. My parents were gracious, my brother was dashing, Anna looked adorable and Julia impressed the interviewer with her grasp of public affairs.”

“The perfect family.”

“The perfect royal family. Yes.”

“And where do you fit in?”

She almost said, “I don’t.” She shrugged instead. “Is it necessary to fit in?”

“For most kids, yeah. Julia… That’s your older sister, right?”

“Two years older and wiser and prettier.”

“Jealous?”

“No. Not really. When I was thirteen, perhaps. Julia had so much more poise. And breasts,” she added, surprising both of them with her honesty. “Julia had breasts.”

He laughed, sharp and quick, and heat surged to her face. What had she been thinking, to blurt that out?

“You’ve got breasts,” he drawled.

She looked down at the mail on her lap. “I didn’t then. What I had was baby fat.”

“I bet you were cute.”

She shook her head. “Thirteen-year-old girls do not want to be cute.”

“What do they want?”

She didn’t want to remember. She was beyond that now. She was a respected member of the academic community, with a purpose and identity that reached far beyond the confining walls of the palace. The awkward, pudgy princess had morphed into cool, assured Dr. Sebastiani. And she did not discuss old dreams, old hurts and her breasts with her father’s hired keeper.

“This is an inappropriate discussion,” she said stiffly.

“Why? What did you want, princess, when you were thirteen?”

She straightened her shoulders and told him part of the truth. “To be left alone.”

He hooked a chair from behind an empty desk and straddled it, his blue gaze steady on her face. “So, some things don’t change.”

“No,” she agreed, and ignored the pang at her heart. “Some things never change.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“We don’t.” She began to sort her mail, stacking the first-class envelopes on her desk, setting aside the department memos to be dealt with later. “There is no ‘we.’ I expect you to report back to my father that you found me well and safe and happy, and that your services are not required.”

“I don’t report to your father. I report to mine. And until I hear from him, I don’t know what’s required.”

Christina fidgeted with the neat stack of envelopes. There was one from the Harborside Hotel in San Diego, which she hoped held her conference confirmation, and a plain white envelope with no return address. Responding to either seemed preferable to dealing with Jack Dalton right now.

She tore open the white envelope and unfolded the single sheet inside. A newspaper clipping fell into her lap. She scanned the headline, her heart thumping unpleasantly.

And all her brave assertions turned bitter in her mouth.

Something was wrong.

Jack felt it in his gut.

And yet Christina hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word. She breathed slowly, in and out, and her spine and her eyes were straight. But there was tension in her shoulders, and her gaze did not focus on the paper she held. The edges trembled in her tightened grip.

Inside him, something lurched in acknowledgment, both of her distress and her determination to hide it. But Christina had already made it clear she didn’t want his sympathy. Or his admiration. Or anything to do with him.