Peggy Nicholson - Her Bodyguard

His smile deepened at the corners, but he didn’t rush to fill the uncomfortable silence. So she did. “It’s just that I’ve been living crunched into a tiny apartment with too many roommates.” When she’d taken the place back in May, she’d signed on to share a two-bedroom apartment with its original tenant. Then Debbie had lost her job. To pay the rent, she’d taken in another two girls, college sophomores in Newport to party for the summer. “Dirty dishes in the sink, people coming and going at all hours or, worse, declaring parties at all hours. Laundry hanging all over the bathroom.” And Michele, who’d decided she preferred Gillian’s clothes to her own and who borrowed without asking. “It’s been too much togetherness by half. So it’ll be heaven doing for myself for a change.”

Trace cocked his head. “Let me guess. You’re an only child.”

One minute he doesn’t like me, the next he wants to know all about me. She was tempted to brush him off, but she didn’t need an enemy at Woodwind. Lara’s desire to hire her had overruled her lover’s opposition. Still, Gillian didn’t know by what margin. Better to play it safe. Try to win him over, too.

“Not quite,” she said lightly, leading him out of the bedroom and back toward the stairs. “I have a brother.” By adoption. “Chris. But he’s fourteen years older than I.” And when her adoptive parents had divorced back when Gillian was eight, Chris had gone with his father. She had stayed with Eleanor Scott—her adoptive mother—and had wondered for years why her father, Victor Scott, had dropped out of her life so completely.

Because I was never his in the first place! Because it was Mom who wanted to adopt a child, not him—he had Chris by a previous marriage and Chris was quite enough. So many mysteries of her childhood had come clear when she opened that safe-deposit box.

“And Chris lives back in Houston along with the rest of your family?” Trace prodded, coming down the stairs at her heels.

Houston. She hadn’t told him she came from there. He read my résumé, which listed Houston as her previous residence and the location of her last two jobs. “Oh, he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere,” she said with a smile over her shoulder. “He’s a delivery captain. Moves other people’s yachts around.”

There wasn’t much family beyond that to claim, in Houston or anywhere. Aunt Susan, Victor Scott’s sister out in San Diego. And Ed Mahler, the lovely loony man who had married her mother when Gillian was fifteen and had adopted her, never knowing she was adopted already. He had been as thunderstruck as she at Eleanor’s deception. Ed was an engineer in the merchant marine, and after her mother’s death, he’d signed on for a regular run on a tanker between Kuwait and New Jersey.

Reaching the car, Gillian found herself still smarting at Trace’s invasion of her privacy. It was silly to be so irritated. Perhaps he’d helped Lara cull all the applicants, deciding which were worth an interview. Still, his big hands on a paper that described her life...she didn’t like it. “So what about you?” she said recklessly as she opened the trunk. “Any siblings?” Two could play the prying game.

She looked up to find a distinct frown on his face. You’d rather question than be questioned? Good. She cocked her head at him inquiringly. I bet you’re the youngest brother, with two older sisters. You’re comfortable hanging around with older women. Pleasing them.

Trace accepted her challenge with a wry smile and said, “Three. A younger brother and two even younger sisters.”

So much for her betting instincts. “Then that makes you the responsible, conscientious one.” she observed. And it would account for his air of command. The eldest was always the kid left in charge. “And what is Trace, a nickname your family gave you?” Might as well keep him on the run once she had him there.

He pulled her portfolio and the big wooden box she used for a paint kit out of the trunk. “It’s short for Tracy,” he said amiably, and turned to face her. “And what does the S stand for—your middle name?”

Touché! she thought wryly. He wasn’t one to run far. S stood for two names in one. Sarah and Scott. But Sarah was the name Lara had given her at birth—Gillian knew that from the papers her adoptive mother had bequeathed her—and then apparently her adoptive parents had retained it. Simply because they liked the name Sarah? Or as some sort of salute to Lara’s wishes?

Scott was the surname of her adoptive parents at the time of Gillian’s adoption. The name she’d refused to give up in a fit of teenage defiance when her mother married Ed Mahler.

So Sarah Scott was how she’d signed her letter last year, when she first wrote to Lara asking if they might be related. And Gillian had no intention of risking exposure by giving it now. Probably she should have changed the S to something else on her job application, but all her ID showed her as Gillian S. Mahler.

She met Trace’s eyes and realized that her hesitation had stretched for a minute or more. That he stood motionless, his face as intent as a cat’s at a mouse hole.

“My middle name?” She smiled. “S stands for Seymour.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“Now, TAKE A DEEP BREATH,” Lara laughingly advised, as she paused, hand on a doorknob. Despite the nightmares Trace had mentioned, she seemed in fine spirits this morning. Trace and Gillian had collected her from her bedroom suite, where she had taken a late breakfast. She’d led them on a leisurely tour of the public areas of the house, the high point of which, to Gillian, had been an exercise room, complete with lap pool, in the basement that she might use whenever she pleased. The conclusion of the orientation was Gillian’s new office, located upstairs in the same wing as Lara’s suite, all the way at its western end. “And remember,” Lara continued as she opened the door, “it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

“It’s worse,” Trace lazily assured her. Apparently having nothing better to do, he’d tagged along on the tour and Gillian wasn’t sure if she was grateful or annoyed. On the one hand, his presence diluted the intensity of her first extended interaction with her mother, so that she wasn’t constantly “onstage,” having to pick and choose her words every minute. But on the other hand, his presence prevented her from connecting with Lara on a more intimate level.

“Hush,” Lara commanded as she opened the door.

“If this is bad,” Gillian murmured, following her into the office, “I don’t know if I could stand good. It just might kill me!” The large room ended in a gigantic, three-sided bay window, with tiny stained-glass diamond panes trimming its upper reaches; at eye level, half-moon expanses of plate glass framed the outrageously splendid view. A long cushioned seat was built in below each facet of the window; a coffee table was placed in the alcove thus created. Gillian could see the tops of the rosebushes that edged Cliff Walk peeking above the estate walls, then 180 degrees of ocean glittering in the noonday sun.

“It is gorgeous, isn’t it?” Lara agreed. “This used to be Richard‘s—my husband’s—office. I never did understand how he could write here. But then, he used to sit with his back to the view.” Her smile wavered for a moment. She swallowed, tipped her head in a movement that seemed to say, Oh, well, and continued. “It was Joya—my stepdaughter—who turned the desk to face the windows last year when she took over.”

Her stepdaughter! Somehow Gillian had thought, if she hadn’t been told by now, that Lara had no children.

“Up until last year, I’d had the same assistant for nine years. But when Beckie left to be married, Joya asked for the job...” Lara went on, glancing around the room with a faint frown.