Loe raamatut: «Out of Town Bride»

Chapter One

Two weeks later John-Michael McPhee watched Sonya silently for a few moments. She sat at her mother’s bedside, holding Muffy’s limp hand, head bowed. Her artfully highlighted blond hair, which she usually kept pinned up in some elaborate arrangement, had long ago fallen from its confines and now hung in shimmering waves to her shoulders, reminding him of when she was a teenager.

At first, it had seemed that Muffy would recover quickly from her heart attack. She’d been doing so well, in fact, that Sonya had felt it was okay to leave town for a couple of days to help her mysterious new friend, Brenna, out of a jam up in Dallas. But as soon as Sonya had returned, Muffy had undergone bypass surgery, and her recovery hadn’t gone well. She’d contracted a persistent infection that had kept her in Intensive Care.

John-Michael hadn’t seen Sonya so devastated since her father’s death when she was ten. Back then, the transformation of that bright, sunny chatterbox to the thin, solemn, pale little wraith floating about the estate had nearly broken his teenage heart, and he’d tried everything in his power to make her happy again.

Now, however, there wasn’t much he could do; she wasn’t a child to be distracted—especially not by him. He was one of her least favorite people these days.

He cleared his throat. Sonya looked over at him, for once open and vulnerable. She hadn’t expressed that much feeling in years—not around him, anyway.

“You really should go home and get some sleep,” John-Michael said. Sonya had been sitting by Muffy’s bedside for almost twenty-four hours.

“But she woke up and spoke to me a few minutes ago. She said she was…sorry for getting sick so close to my wedding.” Sonya’s eyes filled with tears. “That was the first thing she wanted to say to me.”

John-Michael felt the urge to put his arms around Sonya and comfort her. He knew she felt guilty for being gone when her mother was suddenly struck ill, and for not returning his urgent calls. And there was no one else she could turn to for comfort. Muffy and Sonya had no other family. They had no siblings in either generation.

But Sonya would not welcome comfort from him.

Her fiancé should be with her now, John-Michael thought with a surge of anger. But Marvin, the insensitive lout, was halfway around the globe and apparently couldn’t be bothered.

“Your mother wouldn’t want you to wear yourself to a frazzle,” John-Michael said.

“I’m staying,” she said stubbornly. “If you’re tired, go on home. I’ll be fine.”

John-Michael gritted his teeth. For ten years he’d hovered over Sonya, knowing her whereabouts at all times. He’d followed her at a discreet distance whenever she dated; he’d slept in his car outside strange houses when she’d elected to spend the night away from home. He’d sat in doctors’ waiting rooms and outside college classrooms, watching as she lived her life, wondering if he would ever get to live his.

Sonya hadn’t needed a bodyguard. She’d never been threatened or stalked, and she was in no more danger than any other wealthy young woman. But Muffy couldn’t bear to take chances with her only daughter, not after her husband had been kidnapped and killed, targeted due to his wealth. The murderers were safely in prison, but Muffy worried it could happen again.

It wasn’t likely John-Michael would abandon Sonya now, when Muffy was lying in Intensive Care.

Instead, he resumed his vigil on a padded bench in the ICU waiting area, a bench he’d been warming on and off since the day he brought Sonya here from New Orleans.

Thirty minutes later, Sonya emerged from the ICU. “The nurses kicked me out. I guess I’ve been trying their patience, abusing their visitors’ rules.”

“They probably just want you to get some sleep.”

She eyed the lumpy bench he was parked on. “I could sleep there.”

“Sonya…”

“Oh, all right. I guess it wouldn’t hurt for me to catch a couple of hours’ sleep at home. The nurses have my cell number. They promised to call if there’s any change.” She gave him a rare, sympathetic look. “You look bushed. You don’t really have to stay here with me all the time.”

“Marvin’s the one who should be with you.”

She glanced away, a sure sign she was about to tell a lie. “I told you, he’s somewhere in China right now. I can’t get hold of him.”

“Can’t you call his company?” John-Michael said as they walked toward the elevator. “Surely they know how to reach him. And there are satellite phones, you know.”

“He’s working on an important deal, and I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily. He calls me every few days. I’ll let him know the situation next time he calls.”

John-Michael sure wished he knew what was going on with her. He’d never known Sonya to be so secretive—or to tell so many lies. He and Sonya had had their differences, sure, but she’d always been able to trust him. He’d never told Muffy about those frat parties she used to attend that were little more than drunken orgies. Or about the time he’d had to rush Sonya’s best friend, Cissy Trask, to the hospital when she’d had a miscarriage. No one but he and Sonya had known she was pregnant, and no one ever would.

Why now had Sonya decided he couldn’t be trusted?

Once they reached the Patterson estate, Sonya disappeared without a word up the curved staircase, her delicate heels noiseless on the Chinese silk carpeting.

John-Michael retreated to his own quarters, a small apartment above the five-car garage. But he was too keyed up to sleep. Instead, he pulled on a pair of gym shorts.

The Patterson estate had its own mini health club, with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, an indoor lap pool, wet and dry saunas and whirlpool.

Foregoing the fancier equipment, John-Michael went a few rounds with a punching bag.

As he moved through a series of jabs and kicks, he thought about the easy friendship he and Sonya had enjoyed when they were kids. Though he was only the gardener’s son and Sonya was five years his junior, she’d been his sidekick, his little pest, always trailing after him, wanting to hang out with him and his friends. And sometimes he’d let her slum with him. He’d shown her how to work on his motorcycle and, at Muffy’s insistence, how to handle the gun Sonya now kept in her nightstand.

When Muffy decided Sonya needed a bodyguard. John-Michael was the logical choice. He’d just graduated from the police academy, planning a career in law enforcement. Muffy offered him a higher salary than any of the local police departments paid, and she’d promised to send him to an elite bodyguard-training school. He’d cheerfully accepted, never realizing he was putting a noose around his own neck.

Muffy had a secondary motive for hiring John-Michael. She’d needed him close at hand to handle any “difficulties” that came up with Jock, her gardener—who happened to be John-Michael’s father.

The job had gone okay until one night when Sonya attended her first sorority party. John-Michael had gone with her, lurking in the shadows like always, watching as she tried to assert her independence by getting drunk on margaritas. He’d pulled her away from the party before things had gone too far.

She’d been spitting angry with him at first, spouting off about how she was an adult, it was a free world, she would have her mother fire him. Then, when they’d reached the car, she’d surprised the hell out of him by throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her lush body up against his. “I really am a bad girl, aren’t I?” Before he could answer, before he’d been able to think, she’d clamped her sweet little mouth over his.

His body had sprung to life, and for the first time he’d realized that his charge was no longer a child. She had a woman’s body, a woman’s moves….

After thirty seconds of hot kisses and body rubbing, he’d pulled himself together and gently pushed her away.

“What?” she’d objected, loudly enough to wake the whole neighborhood. “Don’t tell me you don’t want me. You do. I could feel it.”

Dear God. At that moment he’d seen the utter folly of what he’d done, what he’d been about to do. Having sex with his charge, the girl he was supposed to be protecting, would be the grossest sort of irresponsibility he could imagine, not to mention a very short path to losing his job.

The only way to deal with this situation, he’d decided, was to end it in a way that was harsh and final, so it would never happen again. So he would never be tempted again.

He gave his punching bag a series of savage jabs as he remembered how difficult it had been to be cruel to her.

He’d forced himself to laugh at her. “You don’t actually imagine I would be interested in a spoiled little brat like you,” he’d said, deliberately filling his voice with derision.

The insult had cut, as it was meant to do. Her eyes filled with tears. “You kissed me back,” she accused.

“I’m a man,” he said harshly. “I have hormones. But I also have a brain, thank God, and I’m not stupid enough to get it on with Muffy Patterson’s daughter.”

“She would never know,” Sonya said in a last-ditch effort to salvage the situation. And it almost worked. Seeing her standing there, more sober now than drunk, her blond hair mussed, her lips full from kissing, he’d almost grabbed her and kissed her again. And he wouldn’t have stopped with kissing.

Savagely he turned his back on her and opened the passenger door of her BMW—her high school graduation present from Muffy. “Get in the car. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, sounding devastated at the thought.

“That’s none of your business.” He hoped she would think that meant yes.

“I’ve never seen you with a girl.”

“No girlfriend of mine is going to watch while a child orders me around.”

He hadn’t had a girlfriend. When would he have had time to find one? He’d spent every hour either watching over Sonya or dealing with the disasters his father created. But his ploy had worked. Sonya didn’t say another word. And she never again tested her feminine wiles on him.

Back in the present, he took one final swing at the bag. He was out of breath and dripping with sweat, more so than the easy workout should have caused. Time hadn’t lessened the intensity of his memories one bit.

Unfortunately, his formerly easygoing friendship with Sonya had been a casualty of that ill-begotten evening. She’d never forgotten, or forgiven, his rejection. For almost ten years, he’d had to endure her coldness and hide the desire he felt for her, a desire that had only grown fiercer as she’d matured into an intriguing woman.

He’d tried to resign, and Sonya had tried to fire him—numerous times. But gradually, John-Michael had come to understand the complex dynamics of his job. If he wasn’t employed in a position that kept him constantly on hand to handle Jock, then Jock would have to go.

And to send Jock away from the Patterson estate, the only home he’d ever known, would kill him.

SONYA HADN’T REALIZED how tired she was. When next she woke, it was dark outside. She checked her clock and was horrified to discover it was after two in the morning.

Her first thought was that they’d been protecting her from bad news—“they” being John-Michael; Tim, the chauffeur; June, the secretary; and possibly Matilda, the housekeeper. Muffy’s staff had always sheltered Sonya from all unpleasantries.

She sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and switched on a lamp. Her cell phone was right there next to her, with no messages. Grateful that she’d had the foresight to put the ICU’s phone number into her cell’s memory, she dialed.

“Your mother is actually doing much better,” the night nurse told her. “The new antibiotic therapy is working. She’s been drifting in and out of sleep, but she did wake up long enough to drink some water. She asked about you.”

Sonya was already on her feet. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“No, you don’t have to do that,” the nurse said firmly. “I asked your mother if she wanted me to call you, and she said no, absolutely not, that you needed your sleep.”

That sounded like Muffy, Sonya thought with a frown. The benevolent dictator, issuing orders from her sick bed.

“She’s fine, really,” the nurse insisted. “In fact, they’ll probably move her out of ICU tomorrow.”

That news brought a flood of relief. Sonya hesitated, then decided it probably would serve no good to rush to the hospital in the middle of the night if Muffy was sleeping and in no immediate danger. “If she wakes again, tell her I’ll be there first thing in the morning,” she said. “Unless she needs me sooner.”

After the call, Sonya felt better, but there was no way she was going back to sleep. She was, in fact, hungry. She’d hardly eaten a bite since Muff’s surgery several days ago. She threw on a robe and wandered downstairs to the enormous, restaurant-grade kitchen, certain there would be several tasty dishes in the fridge. That was something she could always count on.

As she entered the huge white-tile-and-chrome room, she flipped on a light so bright it hurt her eyes. The stainless steel appliances gleamed with a recent polish, and the room smelled faintly of fresh-baked bread. As top dog among Houston society mavens, Muffy often gave elaborate dinner parties, for which she had Eric, a Cordon-Bleu-trained chef, prepare gourmet delights that were sure to be written up on the society page and in the food section. And for every day, they had Eric’s mother, Matilda, a traditional Southern cook down to her bones.

The glass-fronted refrigerator was crammed with dozens of ceramic storage dishes, neatly stacked and labeled with the contents and the throwaway date. Sonya perused the labels, wrinkling her nose. She was not in the mood for Eric’s dill-crusted sea bass with Parmesan cream sauce, or marmalade-glazed pork medallions and shiitake mushrooms. Then she spotted something that appealed to her—Matilda’s macaroni and cheese. Pure comfort food and a guilty indulgence she and her mother sometimes ate when they were dining alone.

She pulled it out and stuck it in the microwave.

Slowly she realized she was no longer alone in the room. John-Michael stood in the doorway, looking adorably rumpled in gym shorts and an old T-shirt bearing the logo of Close Protection, Inc., where he’d gotten his bodyguard training.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He had this uncanny ability to know whenever she stirred at night. He always noticed when lights went on or if anyone made the slightest noise. She wondered if he ever slept or if he sat up all night, ever vigilant.

“I got hungry,” she answered. “I don’t think that’s any reason to call out the National Guard.” She immediately felt guilty for sniping at him, though. “Sorry. It’s been a rough few days. You want some macaroni and cheese?”

“Sure.” He went to the fridge and poured himself some milk. Without asking, he pulled out a bottle of her favorite cherry-flavored mineral water, uncapped it and set it out for her.

He knew her so well, probably better than her own mother did. And it irked her. She’d actually been looking forward to escaping his knowing eyes once she was married. Now that wasn’t going to happen. She saw herself in twenty years, thirty years, fifty, still single, still living in Muffy’s house, McPhee still watching over her with his eagle eyes. Still waiting for those few moments when he could escape her and go to whatever girlfriend he would undoubtedly have. He’d probably still be shadowing her every move when they were both in the nursing home. Gawd, what a depressing thought.

“I called the hospital,” she said. “Mother’s doing better. She drank some water and told the nurses not to call me.”

“Already back to her bossy self, huh?” But McPhee’s smile was of pure relief. She didn’t blame him. Muffy was a kind employer, if a tad inflexible. She paid her staff far more than the going rate to inspire their loyalty, and it worked.

But McPhee was genuinely fond of Muffy, too. As hard as Sonya was on McPhee, she knew he wasn’t completely self-serving.

When the microwave dinged, Sonya took out the dish and scooped generous portions onto white, bone-china plates with gold rims, the only kind Muffy would have in her house. She had a thing against plastic and thought stoneware was almost as bad. Sonya and McPhee sat at the kitchen table and ate with monogrammed sterling forks.

“Mmm, I love this stuff,” McPhee said.

“We better enjoy it while we can. I imagine we’ll see some changes around here when Muffy gets home. Matilda and Eric will have to prepare heart-healthy meals.”

“Matilda will screech like a banshee over that,” McPhee said.

“She’ll have to get used to it. I’ve been telling Mother for years that her diet is impossibly unhealthy. She’ll have to listen to me now.”

“Muffy never listens to anyone.”

Sonya sighed. “I know. She has her ideas about the way things should be, and nothing’s going to change them.” Certainly not Sonya, whose opinions Muffy had always considered superfluous. Muffy knew what was best, and that was that.

“Maybe if we join forces?” McPhee suggested. “Two against one.”

Sonya laughed harshly. “That would be a first. We haven’t agreed on anything since…well, since we were children.”

Since that night at the sorority party, she’d almost said. Sonya’s skin prickled at the memory, still vivid after all these years.

“I think if we present a united front,” McPhee said, “Muffy will have to pay attention.”

“Since when do you call her Muffy, anyway?”

He shrugged. “I don’t, not to her face. Just to you.”

“To irritate me.”

He didn’t deny it, just flashed that inscrutable half smile of his that drove her crazy. “Don’t worry, you’ll be rid of me soon. You haven’t officially postponed the wedding, have you?”

“No.” Another wave of guilt washed over her. But she could hardly announce she was going to call off the wedding when Muffy was still so ill. “Mother said to wait and see how she did after the surgery. Are you counting the days?”

“Only forty-nine days to go.”

She tried to hide her surprise. She’d only been kidding about counting the days. Was he that unhappy? He often aggravated her, but she wasn’t miserable with their arrangement. “Just what are you planning to do with your newfound freedom? I assume Muffy has another job for you.”

McPhee shook his head. “I’ve already applied and been accepted at the Harris County Sheriff’s Department.”

This was news to Sonya, and it shook her to the core. She had a hard time visualizing this house, this estate, without John-Michael as a constant fixture. “What about your dad?”

“Dad’s on the wagon.”

“Yes, but for how long?”

McPhee pushed his plate away without finishing, alerting Sonya to the fact that she’d ticked him off. He always cleaned his plate. “I’ve spent ten years as a virtual prisoner,” he said, “to my father, to Muffy and to you. That’s long enough. If my father does something crazy and gets himself fired, I’ll deal with it. But I’m not going to let the fear of that stop me from living. Not anymore.”

Sonya hadn’t heard much past the word “prisoner.” “If conditions are so wretched here, why didn’t you quit?” she challenged him.

“You don’t think I’ve tried? But your mother made it pretty clear. If I left, Jock had to go, too. I couldn’t do that to him. He has nowhere else to go.”

“How are things different now?”

“Your mother is being a bit more flexible, now that your future is secured and my dad’s behaving himself. I think he finally understands the consequences if he messes up again. Maybe he won’t this time.”

Sonya wanted to believe that Jock McPhee’s drinking days were over, but she found it difficult. She recalled all too well the sort of mayhem that ensued when Jock went on a bender. Once he’d driven the riding lawnmower right through the living room window and into the middle of one of Muffy’s tea parties. Another time he’d gotten a chainsaw and lopped off half of an ancient oak tree because he was tired of fishing its leaves out of the pool; he’d nearly chopped off one of his arms, as well.

Muffy should have fired Jock long ago, but she had such a soft heart she couldn’t do it. Besides, when Jock was sober, he was the best gardener in all of Houston and a very nice person. Sonya, as well, had always had a soft spot for Jock. He’d been especially kind to her when she was grieving over her father’s death.

So had McPhee. The teenage boy who’d had no use for a ten-year-old girl had suddenly stopped tormenting her. He’d started showing her small kindnesses, offering to drive her to visit friends if Tim was busy, playing volleyball with her in the pool.