His Bodyguard. Muriel Jensen
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toy show next weekend, and he won’t even know he’s being guarded.” To Boradino, he added in an aside, “My brother lived in Casper and he and I bought an old house together on Bluebell Lake in the Bighorns for fishing vacations.”
Meg considered her father’s plan and experienced very real trepidation. “Dad, what man would want to take off for a week to a cabin in the woods with a woman he’s never seen before? One who’s bought him at an auction!”
Paul laughed lightly. “Almost any man I can think of.”
“Dad...”
He put a hand over hers on the table. “Meggie, use your imagination. You can tell him you want fishing lessons, or a hiking companion, or you want to write a book about him. You can do this.”
That’s what he thought. She hadn’t shown him Daniel’s fax. What would a woman who was purported not to have a romantic bone in her body do with a successful young executive in a mountain cabin for a week?
Okay. There were a hundred creative answers to that question. But, those aside, what else could she do without making him suspicious?
“If you can’t help,” Boradino said, shamelessly placing the responsibility on Meg’s shoulders, “then I’m out of ideas. I don’t know where to turn. You’re the only chance we have of keeping him safe.”
Meg put a hand to her forehead, where a throbbing pain had beaten since she’d made the call from the courthouse to Daniel’s law office two days ago. Another drumming had begun in counterpoint. “What kind of scenario could I possibly make believable? I can’t pass myself off as an heiress. I just don’t have the...” She didn’t know what it was. She just knew she didn’t have it.
“He doesn’t like heiresses,” Boradino said, leaning toward her as though they were alone at a pajama party and indulging in a woman’s favorite topic. “He likes women who are real because he’s very real himself. Unfortunately, many of the women in his social circle are more interested in what he can do for them, rather than what they can do together.” She studied Meg closely, then added after a moment, “I think he’d find an honest, unpretentious woman refreshing. And once you’ve bought and paid for him—” she smiled wickedly “—he sets his own limits on what he’ll do for you. But I know him to be reckless and daring. He steps aside for no one. He’ll go with you to wherever this cabin is you were talking about.”
“And when he finds out it was all a setup?”
“The plan is mine. I’m the one who’ll have to answer for it.”
The whole idea was crazy. Meg had gained a reputation as the methodical one in her family because her life seemed to have been drafted on the principles of Murphy’s Law. Everything that could go wrong did—and frequently.
She could keep Amos Pike safe. She was sure of that. But she was worried about her ability to attract him in the first place, to convince him to take off with her for a week in the wilderness.
And even if he did go with her out of a sense of duty, she knew her own limitations. Her mother died when she was ten and she’d grown up in a family of men. While she wasn’t entirely unattractive, she didn’t know how to make the most of her attributes, partly because she never thought about them.
She worked for her father, and she spent her spare time teaching martial arts and other classes in the Women in Transition program at the community college. She lived her life in sweats, watching for trouble. Not the best way to meet men.
“Of course,” her father prodded as he swirled the contents of his glass, “if you think you’ll need backup, I could get Ben or Brian to...”
“No. Thanks.” That was dirty. He’d done it deliberately to force her hand. Meg’s brothers were the kindest, dearest men on the face of the earth, and the bane of her professional life. They were incapable of believing she could handle an assignment without one of them looking in on her. She hated that. And her father knew it.
“And I’m supposed to outbid wealthy women,” she asked him, “on what you pay me?”
Boradino straightened hopefully in her chair and Paul smiled. “Ms. Boradino’s taking care of that with the help of the rest of the administrative staff and other...undesignated company funds.”
Meg could imagine how much Pike must mean to this woman if she was willing to risk his wrath by tricking him with a bodyguard and using “undesignated” company funds with which to do it.
Somehow, Meg couldn’t find it in her to fail this woman. She picked up her wineglass. “To Ms. Boradino’s plan.”
“Bless you!” Boradino said, touching her glass to Meg’s, then to Paul’s.
Meg’s father smiled fondly at his daughter. “You’re going to have a good time with this, Meggie.”
“Mmm,” she replied. “I can hardly wait.”
CHAPTER TWO
“RED OR BLACK?” Becky Winston, director of the Women in Transition program at Wild Hills Community College, opened her wardrobe closet and pulled out two cocktail dresses. The red one was slinky and sequined, the black layered in chiffon and hanging from spaghetti straps.
Meg sat on the foot of her bed and shook her head. “They’re beautiful, but it’s not a formal occasion. It takes place in the afternoon and outdoors in an arena at the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys.”
Becky, a half inch shorter than Meg’s five-seven, and just as slender in build, had offered Meg the pick of her wardrobe when she’d complained of having nothing to wear to the auction.
She put the dresses away and pulled out beige twill trousers and a brown silk shirt, then a denim jumper that would fall just above the knee. “This looks really cute with a T-shirt. Want to try it on? You’ll wow him with your legs.”
Meg was about to deny that she wanted to wow Amos Pike, then remembered that she did. She had to make him want to go away with her for a week or the whole Boradino plan fell apart.
She pulled her slacks and sweater off. Becky dug in the drawer of her dresser and handed Meg a crisp white T-shirt.
The shirt and jumper on, Meg studied her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors.
Becky combed her fingers through Meg’s curly red hair. “What kind of impression do you want to make? Sexy? Powerful? Vampish?”
Meg remembered what Boradino had said. “I don’t want to strike any poses. I just want to be me.”
Becky winced. “No, you don’t. Let’s face it, Loria. What you are right now is Chuck Norris in a skirt. What we want him to see is the woman inside the security specialist, the part of you that would have blossomed if you’d had a mom as a teenager. You have it all—the sweetness, the nurturing qualities, the tenderness. But you’re always thinking like a bodyguard.”
“I am a bodyguard.”
“But the body you’re guarding is yours. And we want this guy to find it.”
“No, we don’t. We just want him to find me appealing enough to come away with me for a week.”
Becky rolled her eyes. “And you don’t think your body will have anything to do with that?”
“I just don’t want him to think I bought him for a week of sex, you know? Or I’ll have more trouble than I’ll know what to do with.”
“He’ll want to think that’s why you bought him, whatever your reasons are. Now, come on. Where’s your hair clip? I swear, I’ve never known a woman who carries one around so faithfully and never wears it.”
“I want my hair to look neat,” she said, watching Becky rout through the jeans Meg had tossed onto the bed. “But the clip always bothers me after a while, so I take it out.” She caught her hair at the back of her head and held it there