Her Bodyguard. Peggy Nicholson

palace, maybe it had been the smartest deal a girl of fifteen had ever made. But why—

      “Wait here and I’ll tell her you’ve come.” Gillian’s guide opened a paneled door, waved her inside and closed it firmly behind her.

      “Whew!” Gillian leaned back against the door and pressed one hand to her thundering heart.

      “Damn it all!” A golf ball rolled across the carpet before her. It bypassed a crystal vase laid on its side and disappeared under a sofa. “So much for my birdie!”

      A man stood in front of the fireplace, glaring after his errant putt. He lowered his golf club and leaned on it, then turned his attention to her. “And who the devil are you to mess up a man’s game?”

      “I’m G-Gillian. Gillian Mahler.” And who are you? Not Lara Corday’s husband, the famous TV writer and producer. Richard Corday had died in his sleep two years ago. And Corday had been in his late sixties, not mid-thirties like this man.

      So friend of the family then, or even a relative—Lara’s relative and therefore hers? It was conceivable. Gillian was tall for a woman, yet he was taller. Six-one or -two easily. Hair darker than her own light brown. His eyes were too deepset to see the color from where she stood. Still, she felt an odd shock of... something. Recognition on some instinctive level?

      Or maybe it was just the mood of him as he glared at her from under his black level eyebrows that made the impact, and her sense of kinship was entirely false. Everyone was a potential relative once you learned you were adopted. You found yourself staring at faces as you walked down the street.

      He crossed one running shoe over the other and slouched more comfortably against his putting iron. “You sky-dive, Gillian Mahler? Or maybe you made your approach by sea.” He tipped his head toward the six pairs of French doors that formed the entire south wall.

      Beyond them stretched the lawn, then the back side of the estate’s unbreachable granite wall, and then the cliffs, with Newport’s famous Cliff Walk meandering high above the blue waters. Gillian had strolled that path often enough these past four months, staring up at this mansion. And now she stood inside it, about to meet her mother. At last.

      “You scuba?” the golfer prodded mildly. “Left your wet suit and fins out on the terrace?”

      Why was everyone so intent on learning how she’d gotten in? “Helicopter, actually.” She edged away from him toward the windows. I don’t want to talk to you, whoever you are. I came to meet my mother.

      “Funny, I didn’t hear it. Didn’t even hear the buzzer for the front gates.” He straightened and ambled across the room to the sofa, then stooped with ease to peer beneath it. “You climbed over?” he hazarded idly, and swept his well-muscled arm under it for his ball. “Grappling hooks and all that?”

      The ball he sought had rolled out in front of the sofa. Gillian picked it up and toyed with the notion of stuffing it into his mouth. Would you please, please shut up? Her whole life was about to change. Knowingly and unknowingly, she’d been coming to this encounter for almost twenty-eight years, and now, just when she needed to savor the moment, prepare for it, rehearse the role she meant to play and the first cautious words of her script, this big babbling...jock wouldn’t leave her in peace. “I walked in the gates when a couple drove out, all right? They saw me. It isn’t as if I snuck in.”

      They’d barely seen her. They’d been too busy laughing at some private joke to spare her more than a glance, their smiles fading for a moment, their cool eyes passing through her. The boy had flipped her a careless wave, then turned onto the avenue and roared away. Those two hadn’t been concerned about any intruders.

      “Toby and Joya,” the man murmured, his trim rump in the air as he groped beneath the sofa.

      “We didn’t introduce ourselves.” Gillian knelt and thrust the ball under the sofa, toward his sweeping fingertips. “Here.”

      “Where?” His hand closed instead on her wrist—and tightened when she tried to withdraw.

      She was suddenly angry out of all proportion to the act, whether he was teasing or only hopelessly dim. Their hands connecting in the dark, touch their only link—her skin shivered with the unexpected, unwelcome intimacy. “In my hand. Where do you think?”

      He slid warm, surprisingly hard fingers down her wrist to trace the ball she clutched. “Oh.” Then he lifted it delicately from her palm. “Thanks.”

      She sat upright, started to wipe her hand on her skirt, then chose a throw cushion, instead. Its silky chintz fabric didn’t wipe his touch away but seemed to drive it into her bones. She bounced to her feet and retreated to the wall of French doors, scowling through the glass at the lawn beyond. Such a velvety expanse of green, a symbol of wealth more potent than a Rolls or diamonds. Why didn’t he take his toys and go golf out there?

      “I suppose you’re here about the job,” he said behind her. “We’ve been up to our chins in would-be companions all week. Short ones, tall ones, nice ones, crabby ones.”

      If he’d been the welcoming committee, she didn’t doubt the crabbiness! Gillian swallowed and gripped her elbows. For some reason she hadn’t thought there’d be many applicants for the job. Somehow she’d seen it as...fated. Earmarked for her and her alone. But if there’d been that many applicants... And her qualifications—she was really reaching to think they’d do, but somehow she’d thought...

      Wished. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, her aunt Susan—her adoptive aunt, Gillian corrected herself—had always said. She’d been foolishly wishing...

      “Funny,” the pest said behind her. “You don’t seem very companionable.”

      Could he possibly be coming onto her? “Companion to a woman was the job description, I believe,” she said coldly, without turning.

      “Companion/personal assistant to a businesswoman” was the actual wording of the ad in the Newport Daily News. Responses to be directed to Mrs. Lara Corday, Woodwind, Bellevue Avenue, Newport. There had been no mention of the celebrity who lived at that address, who presumably required the assistant. That Mrs. Lara Corday was actually Lara Leigh, star of the long-running soap opera Searching for Sarah, was one of Newport’s best kept secrets. The locals might know it, but they were used to bumping into movie stars at morning coffee, presidents on the harbor launch, princes at the post office. To stare or to show yourself impressed was to mark yourself an out-of-town yokel, a tourist. And the locals didn’t tell secrets to tourists.

      “Getting a bit stuffy in here, isn’t it?” A big hand slipped past Gillian’s ribs, reaching for the door’s brass handle. His tanned forearm rubbed along her waist. She gasped and shied to her right. And stumbled over her heels.

      “Hey, easy!” His other arm hooked around her waist to steady her, then draw her upright again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you like that. You could have jumped right through the glass.” His arm tightened around her for an unbelievable, outrageous moment, pulling her backward. Her hips bumped his crotch.

      “I’m fine!” she snapped, jamming one elbow into his ribs. “Perfectly—He let her go instantly and she whirled around. ”F-fine.”

      Or not. He hadn’t withdrawn one inch. Standing toe to toe with him, she was trapped by the door at her back. A pair of broad male shoulders filled her entire horizon. He wore his white golf shirt unbuttoned, showing her a curl of dark hair at the V. She tipped back her head and found him smiling.

      “Sorry,” he said again, too softly. “I didn’t mean to...”

      Right. She sidestepped along the wall, careful to give him no excuse to “help” her again. He opened the first pair of doors, then the next, heading her way. She shied off to the center of the room and scowled at his back. Could that have been an accident?

      “You don’t need to be so nervous,” he said, swinging open a third pair. The whisper of distant surf filled the room. “It’s just a job like any other.”

      “I’m