Scotland for Christmas. Cathryn Parry
Читать онлайн книгу.
Thinking fast, Jacob grabbed a pile of napkins from the counter and followed her.
She was running—stumbling, really—for the ladies’ room. This being New York City, no one seemed to notice. She could have stripped naked and belted out a breakup song at the top of her lungs with a full orchestra supporting her, and no one would have given her a second look.
He really needed to get the hell out of New York someday. God, he was trying. If not for that damn psychologist, he’d be in Washington, D.C., already, doing what he was meant to do.
But for now, it just made him angry, seeing people hurt unnecessarily—especially a kind person like Isabel.
She vomited all over the floor. With a mortified cry, she covered her mouth and ran into the bathroom. Jacob watched the door swing shut behind her.
The place was buzzing now. A typical midtown Manhattan coffee shop—short on space, long on people. But nobody was looking at him, or at Isabel. Most people had bent heads, staring at screens. Big screens, small screens, it didn’t matter. They walked while staring at screens, the thumb that held the phone swiping away. It was amazing what most people missed in their daily lives.
Jacob didn’t miss anything. Life came at him, smacking him square in the face. Emotions were his gut instincts, the way he made his decisions in the world. And what he felt for her was empathy.
The bathroom was tucked in a back corner. A yellow plastic bucket filled with water and a ragged mop was leaning against the wall nearby. Jacob quietly took the mop and cleaned up the floor. He also saw a yellow plastic tent, used by the cleaners, to block off foot traffic over wet floors, so he took that closed sign and unobtrusively placed it in front of the ladies’ room where Isabel had disappeared.
He stood back and waited. Minutes passed. A woman came around the corner to use the facilities. She walked right past his closed sign. She addressed Jacob, still blocking the door, as if he worked there. “Is someone in there?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Jacob said. “My girlfriend is sick inside.” He gestured to the men’s room. “No one is using that one. I’ll watch the door for you if you want.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks.” She went inside.
He crossed his arms and stood sentinel for Isabel. He would stand there all day if he had to.
It was a long time before she came out of that bathroom. From where he stood, she seemed miserable and stunned, not altogether aware of her surroundings. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying her heart out, and she had nothing left but limp muscles to carry her home. As she walked past a table, she bumped it.
She’d forgotten her suitcase, so he backtracked to retrieve it. Then he hurried ahead and clasped her by the elbow, steering her safely outside.
Once on the sidewalk, she tripped along, into the stiff wind that was whipping down Fifth Avenue. Her arms were folded over her chest, her too-high heels making her falter.
Jacob felt for her, he really did. Whereas before she’d seemed strong and confident, now she showed her inner fragility. Alex was long gone, back to his carefree life without her, no doubt.
Jacob pressed his hands into fists. Still, he did his job—head swiveling, aware of every person who moved into their zone—front, back, left, right, up on the building roofs, down below the subway grates, a cab that rolled past too slowly.
This woman he guarded was a Sage, a niece of the richest man in Scotland—one of the richest men in the world—so what was she doing, alone in a foreign city like this? Especially given her family history with a kidnapping, had she never considered her vulnerability?
Isabel stopped at the street corner, her bag dropping from her shoulder. Jacob stayed within arm’s length of her elbow, one eye on her and one eye on a man who was nosing too close to her. With a shake of his head, Jacob put his hand on his gun and shifted his jacket aside to display it. The man saw the service revolver and took a step sideways, then kept on walking.
Jacob glanced to Isabel, saw the pain on her face. Maybe since nobody was watching her, to her mind, she could let her feelings out. He alone saw this.
He sucked in his breath. What the hell was happening to him? A crush, on a protectee? For the past half hour, he’d entirely forgotten his true mission.
The most important thing he needed to do was to get Isabel Sage to that Vermont inn. Feeling anything for her—even empathy—wasn’t on the agenda.
Time to toughen up. Time to switch up his tactics.
ALL ISABEL WANTED was to lie curled up on her bed and sob. She hadn’t seen this breakup coming.
Alex and she had always had an understanding between them. Perhaps she didn’t express her feelings the way other people did, as he had just accused her of, but Alex had always been like that, too.
Like her. For their entire lives, he’d not only understood her when she’d perhaps put their relationship on the back burner because she’d needed to work on her career goals, but he’d shared these rules of living, too.
Above all, you never want to give away your power. Show the world your strength, never your weakness. If people cannot see your true emotions, then they cannot see how you really feel, and thus they cannot hurt you.
Her dad had taught her that, when she was still a wee girl. And Alex—such a frequent visitor to her house that, to her dad, he was like one of Isabel’s brothers—had grown up believing it, as well.
So what had just happened?
She didn’t understand. Maybe she never would. All she knew was that Alex’s betrayal had hurt.
She wiped her wet eyes with the heel of her hand. She’d cleaned herself up as best she could in that WC—had washed her face and had reapplied all her makeup—but despite her best efforts, the tears kept leaking.
She reached for a tissue in her handbag, sitting in the foot well of the vehicle. Somehow, in the fog of her shock and confusion, Jacob had managed to lead her back across busy city streets to where he’d parked the ridiculously big, black SUV.
Even now, the motor was running. His dark shades once again covered his eyes and his face was expressionless.
Good. That told her he hadn’t heard what Alex had just said. Jacob was simply doing his job as her bodyguard, and quite capably minding his own business.
For once, she was grateful he had come.
Determined to behave in as composed a manner as he did, she returned the tissue to her handbag, unused. She would not conduct herself like her cousin Rhiannon. Poor, weak, gentle, delicate Rhiannon. Everybody in their family tiptoed around her. She was the opposite of Isabel.
Her uncle, her mother, her brothers and her cousins, they all expected Isabel to be perfectly capable—cheery, pleasant, put together, in charge, competent. She was reasonable, the one whom people looked to for direction. At the wedding, they would expect her to organize the disparate factions of the family into harmony. It was what she did.
It was what her father had loved and admired so much about her. The main reason he’d praised her and depended upon her the way he had.
Her tears started leaking again. She blinked them away. The pain was just too fresh. Too soon to get over and stuff inside her, the way she always did. She couldn’t lie to everyone else about how she truly felt, not just yet.
She turned to Jacob. “Please take me back to my room.”
Jacob sat, unmoving. The SUV remained in place.
“Please,” Isabel said more forcefully than she’d intended.
Jacob’s hand rested on the gearshift beside her. A large hand. Masculine. The opposite