Christine Flynn - The Reluctant Heiress

She’d done pretty well sleepwise lately. At least, she had before William had made his little announcement.

She dropped the blinds over the sink and was calling herself six kinds of idiot for having ever sought out William Kendrick when a hard knock on her back door almost sent her back into the little hall.

It was only the muffled voice that shouldn’t have sounded so welcome that stopped her.

“Jillian, it’s Ben.”

Relief that he’d arrived canceled any concern about how anxious she appeared to him when she ripped back the chain and yanked open the door.

He looked much as he had yesterday as he slipped inside, glancing over his shoulder as he did. Tall, confident and more attractive than a man had a right to be. He even wore the same beautifully cut navy suit that so perfectly fit his lean, broad-shouldered frame. The shirt and tie were different, though. Crisp white had given way to a light blue that picked up the flecks of silver in his deep-blue eyes.

He could have been built like a tire and had eyes like a rabbit for all she cared. Now that he was there, she just wanted him to tell her how to get her privacy back.

A faint tension radiated from his body as he slipped the chain back in place and glanced at her. That tension seemed to snake toward her, through her. Disconcerted by the oddly intimate sensation, uneasy enough already, she moved farther from the door. And him.

“You didn’t go back to Washington.”

“It seemed more practical to stay in Hayden.” Dismissing the fact that he’d obviously known he would be back, he flicked an assessing glance over her uneasy features. “I was already on my way over here with your other bodyguard when you called.”

“Other bodyguard?” She had bodyguards?

“You have two. One of them is the man you saw following you in the gray SUV this morning. Steve Schroeder. Big guy. Blond. Blue ball cap. The other just got in.” The dark slashes of his eyebrows merged. “Didn’t you get my message?”

As rattled as she’d been when she’d arrived home, she’d totally ignored the blinking light on her answering machine. “I haven’t checked my messages yet.”

“I left you one at seven-thirty this morning.”

At seven-thirty she would have been getting ready for school. They were on late schedule this week. “I must have been in the shower.”

She had bodyguards. The thought seemed inconceivable to her.

“The police should be here soon,” he continued, taking in the impeccably neat space. His glance landed on the one object in the room that didn’t look almost painfully ordered; the refrigerator she used for a bulletin board. The front and what was exposed of the sides were covered with postcards, pictures of children and magnets holding up reminders to herself to do whatever it was she apparently knew she’d forget without a note.

“Mr. Garrett…”

“Ben.”

“Ben,” she conceded, as anxious to distract him from his perusal of what she thought important as she was to get his advice, “how do I get rid of them? You said yesterday that you were here to stop them from invading my life. That’s what they’re doing, so…please,” she said, stepping back to clear his path to the front door, “stop them.”

He remained right where he was, partway between her round white dining table with its vase of bright-yellow sunflowers and the back of the sofa that cut the open area in half.

“What I said is that my job is to help you with them. And I will,” he assured her over the voices of a television talk show. “We just need to talk first.”

“About what?”

“About what you want to say to them.”

“I don’t want to say anything to them. I want them to go away!”

His forehead pleated as he motioned to the entertainment center. “Can we turn that down?”

She turned on her heel. She had the distinct feeling that this would have all been easier if she’d let him help her yesterday. No doubt he’d had something preemptive in mind. But it was clearly too late to beat anyone to the punch. Just as clear, from the level way he regarded her after she’d hit Mute on the remote control and turned back to him, was that he would be a gentleman and not point that out.

Grudgingly grateful for that courtesy, she watched his focus shift from the V of the pale coral T-shirt she wore with brown linen capris to the closed drapes by the barrel chairs.

She supposed she should ask him if he wanted to sit. As agitated as she felt, she much preferred to stand herself.

“The best way to get rid of reporters is to give them what they want,” he advised, before she could make the offer. “What they want are answers to their questions. Or a statement. If you’d like, I can help you write one.”

“I don’t have anything to say. How I feel about William Kendrick is private. What happened between William and me is private. So is what happened between him and my mother.

“I don’t even know that much about what went on with them,” she admitted. “What little I do know I’m certainly not going to share with rest of the world. I don’t want my mom’s name dragged through the dirt. And it will be,” she insisted as the sense of urgency she felt identified itself. “My mother was the ‘other woman.” ’

She had no idea what to make of the way Ben’s eyes narrowed on her. In some ways he reminded her of a predator calculating his prey, biding his time until a weakness or lack of guard betrayed itself. She didn’t doubt for a moment that behind that sharp, intelligent gaze, he was processing everything she’d said and figuring out the perfect way to get around it, or use it to his advantage.

Turning from those unnerving prospects, she closed her eyes and snagged her hair back with both hands. She’d barely considered just how unmerciful the public might be when she felt the weight of his hands settle on her shoulders.

Without a word, he aimed her toward one of the slat-backed chairs at the table, pulled it out and turned her around.

He had felt her stiffen the moment he’d touched her. Dismissing the odd disappointment he felt at that, he nudged her down to the seat. More conscious than he should be of how fragile her bones felt beneath his fingers, of the softness of her hair brushing his hands, he deliberately drew away.

He’d caught her fresh, provocative scent the moment he’d come up behind her. He could have sworn he caught a whiff of coconut in there, too. In her hair, maybe. From her shampoo.

Uncomfortably aware of the effects she seemed to have on his body, he pulled out the chair next to her, swung it around to face her and sat down himself. Leaning forward, he clasped his hands between his knees.

“Jillian,” he said, practically leaking the patient control he prided himself on maintaining, “if it’s your mother you’re concerned about, you’ll have far more control over how the public views her if you speak about her first. The same goes for how you will be perceived yourself. Public perception is very much about first impressions. You can get by with a ‘no comment’ today, but you’ll be better off in the long run to come up with some tidbit for the press before they put their own slant on your silence. And they will. I promise you that.”

He’d promised yesterday that the press would find her.

She held the certainty in his eyes only long enough to feel her stomach knot. She needed time. Time to digest what he’d said. Time to decide what she could possibly say to defend her mom when she knew in her heart that the only defense her mother had for sleeping with a married man was that she’d loved him. And that was no defense at all.

The thought of talking to the press made her positively queasy.

“They’ll go away if I just say ‘no comment’?”