Her Bodyguard. Peggy Nicholson

      “Oh,” said Lara, as she sank onto the office chair.

      

      LARA’S “GIFT” WAS THE FOOT of some small animal. Rabbit’s foot, Gillian thought with revulsion. But not a commercial, sanitized rabbit’s foot you could buy on a key chain. Horrible as she thought those were, this was much worse. A homemade job, it looked like, with dark stains on the soft fur.

      She became aware that Trace still held her wrist. Warm and oddly comforting, his fingers curled around her. She could feel her own pulse, slamming against the base of his thumb. And his slower, heavier beat, like an answer you could depend on.

      “You’re not going to faint on me, are you?” he asked absently, looking up from the rabbit’s foot into her eyes.

      “Of course not,” she said, though she did feel—detached. Floating a few inches off the floor. As if she could tip forward and fall into his deep hazel eyes—pools of slate green spangled with gold and gray. Aware, also, that even if her knees did buckle, he was strong enough to hold her upright.

      “Of course you’re not,” he murmured on an odd note, something almost with an edge to it. “And what have you got there?” He reached and caught her other wrist and lifted it, scowled at the bloodstained card she still clutched. “Drop it.”

      The wrapper fell to the desk and he released her at last. She stood, rubbing her wrists. Trace used the eraser ends of two pencils off the desk to push open the curled card and pin it flat to the blotter. Lara wheeled her chair up beside her to watch. Joya also crowded closer.

      On the inner surface of the bloody card were printed the words:

      Lara-mommy! I saw this and thought of YOU. You could use some luck—maybe more than you know? See you SOOOOOOON. Your loving SARAH XXX.

      “Gross!” Joya repeated. She sounded more excited than repelled.

      “I’m sorry,” Gillian said, glancing at Lara’s troubled face.

      “Why?” Trace snapped.

      “What?” Swinging to face him, she found his eyes had gone darker, the pupils expanding like those of a cat when it sees a bird.

      “Why are you sorry?” he demanded softly.

      Bewildered by his intensity, she shrugged. “Of all the letters I had to choose...”

      A two-heartbeat pause, then Trace looked down again. “Most unfortunate,” he agreed smoothly.

      “I’ll say!” Joya sniggered. “First day on the job and the girl hits a home run! Way to go, Gillie.”

      “It’s hardly Gillian’s fault,” Lara protested. “Not her fault at all! If anyone ought to apologize, Gillian, it’s me. I should have warned you. Once in a blue moon you’ll get a fan who’s a little...”

      “Or a lot,” Trace observed wryly. He was using his two pencils now to maneuver the manila envelope across the desk to his side.

      “Oh, pick it up, for Pete’s sake!” Joya reached for it. “Ow!” she yelped as he rapped her knuckles with the eraser end of a pencil. “Did you see that?” she demanded of Lara. “I’m supposed to put up with this crap?”

      “Fingerprints, darling,” Trace murmured, bending to study the envelope. When he straightened again, there was a stillness about him that hadn’t been there before. “This envelope came from which box, Gillian?”

      

      “Th-the one on the end.” Whatever Joya might think, this man was nobody’s lapdog. Gillian had met rottweilers with kinder eyes. “Why?”

      “This is today’s mail. Postmarked Saturday in Boston. So today, Monday, is the first day it could have been delivered. So who brought it up to the house?” His eyes swung to Joya.

      She squirmed, shrugged, looked up at him with an odd defiance. “Okay, so I did, so what? When Toby and I came in from breakfast, it was there in the mailbox, so I brought it up—brought it here to the office. So what?”

      “I believe we had an understanding, Joya. I bring up the mail.”

      “You think that’s all it takes to earn your keep around here?” she jeered, backing away from him toward the door.

      “Joya!” Lara protested.

      “Oh, spare me. I don’t want to hear it, okay? I’m late for lunch. Gillie, call me a cab and tell it to meet me at the front gates.” Joya stalked out of the room without a backward glance.

      CHAPTER SIX

      AT SEVEN-THIRTY IN THE evening, a rosy light still lingered in the western sky. Standing at his office window, Trace could see, beyond a hedge of lilacs, a shadowed stretch of the service driveway. “Come on, Gillian.” She’d told Lara that she taught an eight o’clock class at the Y Monday nights. Women’s weights, she’d said. “Get a move on.” She’d have to leave the carriage house any minute now to make it on time. And he couldn’t move till she did.

      Just one more roadblock in a day filled with frustrations.

      After that ugliness in the office, Lara had gone straight to bed. She’d claimed a raging headache and Trace didn’t doubt it. Since her fall she was subject to those, and stress looked to be a trigger. But it wasn’t just pain troubling her, he’d thought, when he brought her her lunch on a tray.

      The lady was blue, it struck him, in spite of her brave front. Not frightened, which seemed the more reasonable response to such a blatant threat, but deeply depressed. And not willing to talk about it—at least not with him. Not till he’d apologized for thwarting Joya.

      But Trace had no intention of apologizing to the silly brat. He’d explained to Lara that he didn’t want her car out on the street unsupervised, where it might be sabotaged. But he couldn’t say that to Joya, since she and Toby lived in a state of blissful ignorance, unaware that Lara was being stalked. Or that their stepmother’s “accident” on Cliff Walk was no accident. Only the chief of Newport police and his top detective, Jeremy Benton, were privy to that secret. Lara had wanted to avoid publicity. And Trace felt he had a better chance of nailing her assailant if no hue and cry was raised.

      Since the last few minutes, even hours, before a traumatic head injury were often wiped from the victim’s memory, whoever had pushed Lara off the cliff had good reason to hope she’d forgotten the assault. Let him or her think so, Trace had urged. The better to catch you, you freak!

      For the same reason, he lived at Woodwind under cover, with no one but Lara and his police contacts knowing his true role in the household. Because he didn’t want to deter a threat—postpone Lara’s troubles till he’d gone. He wanted to lull the stalker, lure him or her into his reach. Look, here’s poor little Lara, protected by no one but her bumbling gigolo. Come and get her!

      Or be gotten.

      

      TRACE STRAIGHTENED as headlights blossomed beyond the lilac leaves, then wheeled downhill toward the gates. Gillian’s little Toyota. He breathed a sigh of relief. Action at last.

      He left the mansion by the kitchen door, checking that it locked behind him. Barbara Heath, Lara’s longtime cook and housekeeper, and Maureen, the upstairs maid, had both retired to their third-floor apartments. As had Harriet, Woodwind’s perpetual houseguest. The resident layabouts, Toby and Joya, were out for the evening. If they followed their usual pattern, they wouldn’t return till the bars closed at one o’clock. Or later, if they found an after-hours party.

      And his client was locked in her impregnable suite with his locket buzzer around her neck. He didn’t like to leave her, but it was Lara’s choice to hire only one bodyguard. There was only so much he could do.

      Nail Sarah XXX and he could stop worrying.

      Trace circled the noisy gravel of the courtyard, then approached