The Bodyguard: Protecting Plain Jane. Debra Cowan

didn’t laugh. “Let me stay. Trust me, Charlotte. Please.”

      “Why does it have to be your personal mission to protect me if Dad isn’t paying you?”

      Guilty conscience? A very real fear that no one else fully perceived the danger she was in? Those big gray eyes that haunted his waking thoughts and dreams? “Let’s just say, you’d be doing me a favor.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      “I’m not sure I do, either. But I don’t think I could stand it if you got hurt and I could have done something to stop it.”

      “I said you didn’t have to prove anything—”

      Screw patience. Trip caught her face between his hands and pulled her up onto her toes, covering her mouth with his—silencing the excuses she used to push him away, silencing the frustrated need simmering inside him, silencing his own fears that he was growing way too attached to a woman he was completely wrong for.

      He pressed his thumb to the swell of her bottom lip, coaxing her to part her lips for him, taking advantage of her warmth and sweetness when she did. Charlotte’s fingers crept up around his wrists, holding on as he plunged his tongue inside her mouth to introduce himself to hers. She answered back, her tongue chasing his as he learned each taste and curve. A husky moan, deep in her throat, quickened his pulse as surely as the graze of her curious lips across the jut of his chin. His blood hammered in his veins and pooled in all sorts of achy places when her fingers moved up higher, settling against his jaw and guiding his mouth back to hers as she sampled one lip, then two, then pushed them apart to touch her tongue to the softer skin inside.

      Trip wound his arms around her, temptation taking his fingers down to the delicious curve of her bottom and lifting her into the full tutelage of his kiss. She opened for him, welcomed him, taught him a thing or two about the benefits of curiosity and enthusiasm when it came to assuaging and fueling needs like this. He slid a supporting arm around her waist and dropped one hand lower, cupping a buttock that perfectly fit the size of his hand.

      It was only when he felt two pert nipples brushing against his chest and the need to take her down to the floor right here in the john surged through him that Trip remembered that business and safety had to come before pleasure. Scaring her off with his baser needs was one risk he could avoid, so with a reluctantly determined gasp for saner air, he summoned the strength to pull her fingers from his neck and lift his mouth from her full, pinkened lips. “Whoa. Whoa, honey. We need to slow down.”

      Her eyes were dark and hooded and sexy with an innocent desire as she peeked over the top of her glasses at him. He pushed her glasses back into place, making sure to keep his eyes glued to hers and not to the tempting rise and fall of breasts as she crossed her arms beneath them and retreated. “Why do you keep doing that?”

      Trip’s next several breaths came as deeply and erratically as hers. “Seriously? I didn’t think our second makeout session in your father’s home with everything else going on around us was the best time or place to go all the way.”

      “All the way?” Her cheeks blanched a shocked shade of pale. “I meant, why do you keep kissing me?”

      Ah, hell. Another encounter with Charlotte Mayweather had just taken a sharp turn into crazy land, and suddenly he was the bad guy again. “I don’t know. Why do you kiss me back?”

      “Because you’re an overwhelming presence and apparently it’s hard to get rid of you when you put your mind to something.”

      He scrubbed his hand over his mouth and jaw, and squared off against what sounded a lot like an accusation. “Like wanting to kiss you? Like feeling something and acting on it? I’m a healthy male and a human being, and you are gettin’ into my head in ways that make me want to …” Pull out my hair? Protect you? Bed you? Maybe he was the one riding on the crazy train. “What do you want me to say? How do I get you to believe in me?”

      “Trip, you can probably guess that I don’t have a lot of experience with men. The truth is, I have no experience. At all. I don’t know how to kiss.”

      “Then you’re a natural talent.”

      That made her blush.

      “I’ve never had sex. I don’t know how to make a relationship work. I don’t know if I even can.” She shook her head, scattering toffee curls around her face as she retreated another step. “I’m not used to feeling or kissing or needing or whatever it is you want from me.”

      Frustration gave way to something infinitely more tender, and Trip found his patience again. “I want all those things from you. But only if you’re willing to give them.”

      “I am feeling something for you, Trip. But do you have any idea how much that scares me?” She tucked a curl behind her ear, but it sprang back out to fall on her cheek. “I need to feel safe. In all things.”

      “I said I’ve got your back.” He caught the independent curl with the tip of his finger and smoothed it back into place, then leaned down to press a kiss to her temple. “In this, too. Just give me a chance to show you I’m not the bad guy here. If I say or do anything you don’t like, you tell me.”

      His body could scream away in protest if denying any physical or emotional need for this woman is what it took to see trust shining in her eyes.

      Maybe it was time to go back to proving that. He pulled his hand away and turned into the sitting room. “You don’t have to worry about any us right now. Finish drying the dog and get his collar and leash. You said you wanted to go to the cemetery? Let me call the rest of my team. We’ll get you away from this house for a little while.

      “You’re under KCPD’s watch now.”

       Chapter Eight

      Charlotte knelt down to lay the bouquet of roses on the turned-up mound of earth beside the flowers that had once been draped over Richard’s coffin. Max came over to sniff her handiwork and she scratched his head before shooing him on his way to follow the path of some squirrel or rabbit that’d come through earlier. She kissed her fingers and touched them to the plastic marker that held Richard’s name and dates until a permanent stone monument could be fixed into place, knowing it was as close to trading a hug with him as she could ever get again.

      “Thank you, my friend. For everything. I’m sorry. So sorry.” Tears burned in her sinuses and squeezed out through the rapid blink of her lashes to warm her cheeks in the cooling air.

      In the middle of the spring afternoon it felt like twilight. A storm was brewing overhead again, filling the sky with fast-moving clouds. Tall oaks and pine trees dotted each side of the road that twisted up through the hills of Mt. Washington Cemetery, their thick trunks and budding branches casting long shadows over her. But no shadow seemed as tall and foreboding as the sturdy bulk of Trip Jones standing beside her, with a handgun strapped to his thigh, a military-looking rifle draped in the crook of his elbow and a stone-cold expression of wary alertness stamped onto his rugged features.

      “You okay?” Trip’s voice rumbled down on the breeze that was picking up.

      Charlotte huddled inside her trench coat and the body armor Trip had insisted she wear, and slowly stood. “He should have been retired, enjoying his grandchildren. He shouldn’t have died because some freak wanted to get to me.”

      She saw Trip’s black-gloved hand leave his rifle and reach for her. But just before he touched the small of her back, he curled his fingers into his palm and tapped at the headset hooked to his ear instead. “How are we doing?”

      A chorus of “clears” and one “nothing here” answered loudly enough for Charlotte to hear.

      Captain Cutler buzzed in as well. “Easy, people. Keep your eyes open. We’re not in any rush here.”

      But Trip apparently was. He moved a couple of steps along the trail Max had taken, then circled around to stand beside her again. His hazel eyes