Guardian of Her Heart Read online

  But Dianna wondered…

  Of course these days she wondered about everyone’s motivations. Farley was most likely acting on his own, yet there was all the speculation about whether he’d had help getting away in the first place, and second, third and more. He’d eluded the finest law enforcement agencies in the country, over and over.

  But it was unlikely that this edgy former lawyer pleading poverty would have been much assistance.

  “Why don’t you compete with the carts?” Dianna said, hoping to placate the angry entrepreneur. “Or promote your full breakfasts. Or cut prices on the things you carry that are the same as what’s on the carts.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” He seemed to consider what she said, even as the customers at the counter tossed out suggestions of their own: karaoke to compete with the juggling. Drawings for a free lunch for people who deposited business cards in a box. Bill calmed considerably, and Dianna surreptitiously sighed in relief.

  To mollify him further, she said, “Know what? I’m hungry. I need breakfast. And coffee. Definitely coffee.” She ordered her food, accepted a full cup from him, then went to sit at a vacant table.

  She wasn’t alone long. Travis joined her. That day, he wore a blue denim shirt with sleeves rolled up to reveal his lean, hair-sprinkled forearms, and jeans a few shades darker. She’d noticed before in Wally’s office. She was noticing way too much what this man wore.

  Even as she couldn’t help speculating how he would look with no clothes on at all…

  She’d been a widow too long. Her carnal urges were running amok. When all this was over, she’d have to find a nice, simple, straightforward lover. One with no strings attached.

  No demands made, no orders given.

  As if that were something she could do…

  “I don’t know if you should sit there,” she said to Travis even as he sat down. “Bill might interpret it as my associating with his enemy.”

  “The way I see it, he considers everyone his enemy.” Travis set his half-empty cup on the table. Dianna noticed that he took his coffee black. “A good reason to keep tabs on him. If he makes good on any of his threats, we’ll catch him in the act.”

  Dianna realized she wasn’t the only one who suspected everyone of affiliating with Farley. That might result from her paranoia, but it was part of Travis’s job.

  “So,” he continued, “you still mad at me after this morning?” His grin seemed designed to pick a fight.

  He wouldn’t get his way. “No. I wasn’t mad then, either. I think going forward with the celebration is ill-advised, but I definitely don’t want Farley to think he’s won.”

  “Good girl.” There was frank admiration in his deep blue eyes, and she felt herself flush. “And as long as you listen to me, I’ll be sure you’re safe.”

  Dianna’s back stiffened as fast as if he’d pushed her hard against a wall. In a way, he had. “And you’re promising that if I obey your every command, Farley won’t get to me? Ever?”

  “Yeah.” But despite the fierceness that set his jaw, Dianna thought she saw just a hint of doubt pierce his hard expression. If so, it was so fleeting that she was sure she’d imagined it.

  In any event, she wasn’t about to simply buckle under to his insistence on obedience. “So that means you’re better than the Washington D.C. police, the FBI and the Secret Service, too. There’d been threats against my husband Brad, and none of them were able to keep Farley from killing him.” Or my baby… She took a deep breath and continued before Travis could respond. “They couldn’t find him, either, after he’d committed murder. Then there are the others who’ve not been able to keep him from destroying buildings in redevelopment areas. Not even here in Los Angeles. And sometimes people have died.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’m better than them all. And you will be fine, Ms. Englander, as long as you—” His words, uttered in a clipped monotone, were interrupted by Bill Hultman’s slinging a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of her.

  “Eat up,” Bill said. “This stuff tastes good, and it’s served right here, in these delightful surroundings.” He glared at Travis. “Most of all, it won’t kill you. ’Cause you can bet on the fact that if things don’t change around here fast, and for the better, someone’s going to pay.”

  OKAY, SO HE liked to play with fire. What else was new? Travis thought as he stood silently in the elevator with a steaming Dianna and a couple of lawyers talking about the weather. As if winter weather in L.A. was worth wasting any words on: cool, and not enough rain this year. As usual.

  He’d caught Dianna’s furious glare a couple of minutes earlier when he’d gotten right into the face of the threatening restaurant jockey and grinned, told the nasty SOB that he’d have a special on glazed doughnuts the next day on the little cart he took around inside the building. Did Hultman want one?

  What Hultman obviously wanted was to lay one right on Travis’s chin. But Travis made it clear he’d frown on such a thing. And Hultman had been the one to back down.

  And soon as Travis left the restaurant, trailing after the obviously riled Dianna, he’d called on his cell phone and had a background check started on the pig-iron chef of Englander Center. He hoped he’d find a record a mile long on the guy. That’d give Travis even more impetus to goad him.

  If there were any possible ties to Farley… Well, the guy would be lucky if he’d have any food to eat again outside prison, let alone any to sell to the trusting public.

  So far, though, his investigators were batting zero. The car license number Dianna had seen a couple days earlier yielded nothing useful. And the calls to her house had been placed from pay phones right here in Van Nuys.

  Dianna wasn’t talking to Travis now. He didn’t blame her, yet the silent treatment created an unfamiliar emptiness inside him. He was used to silence. Being alone.

  They reached the floor where her office was, and she stomped out of the elevator. He followed, ignoring the interested stares of the couple of suits who’d accompanied them. Get back to your discussion of the palm trees, guys.

  He followed Dianna down the hall, the sway of her hips beneath her blue skirt, as her irritation played out in her forceful pace, making him nearly giddy with a need to stroke them. Hold them. Hold her.

  But when she entered the reception area and tried to close the door on him, he returned to reality.

  It was time she did, too.

  His reality was that she was under his protection. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to her, whether she liked it or not.

  Never again would he fail to protect someone he was assigned to watch. And that also meant staying detached. She was a subject, not a sex object. Period.

  Remember that, he silently reminded his aching libido.

  “So, Ms. Englander,” he said aloud. “We need to talk about what you’re going to need for me to bring this afternoon for your meeting.”

  “What—?” Her blistering blue eyes blazed, but she caught herself, casting a quick sidelong glance behind her, where the pretty receptionist was taking in every word. “Oh, of course. Please come into my office.”

  He didn’t need to be asked twice. But though he’d intended to lay down the law as to how she’d cooperate with him, she was the one to round on him first, soon as she’d reached her side of her desk. “What was all that about?”

  “What was what about?”

  “The way you threatened Bill Hultman.”

  Travis narrowed his eyes but managed to keep his voice level. “Way I saw it, he threatened me. Not to mention you. That made me a touch cranky, so I figured I’d let him know, not keep my emotions to myself. Isn’t that what women like to say?”

  The glare she shot at him made it clear that she, at least, was one woman who didn’t keep her emotions to herself. But she sank slowly onto her desk chair.

  He didn’t much like the idea of being a nasty son of a bitch toward her, but he had to get his point across while he had her attention. “Look, Dianna. I’m sorry i
f you prefer subtlety, but that’s not the way I work. Someone’s in my face, I deal with it. Someone’s in the face of a person I’m keeping watch over, that’s even worse, and I don’t let it happen.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said wearily. “And I have to admit I’m sick of worrying.”

  “Let me take care of that.”

  The slow, tired smile that illuminated her lovely face tugged at something inside him in the vicinity of where his heart would be, if he had one. “Thanks.”

  Good. Now he had her attention, this was the time to make his point. “But you have to help. And that means cooperating with me.”

  “How?” Her smile transmogrified into wariness.

  “You need to keep me informed every time you move so I can make sure Farley’s not harassing you. Like this morning. You left your office without telling me. I need to know when you go so if I can’t keep an eye on you, I’ll put someone else on it.”

  “You found me fast enough.” She didn’t sound pleased.

  “Just luck. I happened to call a second after you left, and that nice young lady Beth wasn’t hard to convince that I had to find you to discuss a catering job, fast. She told me where you’d gone.”

  “A catering job from a vendor’s pushcart?”

  “You just backed me up a minute ago.”

  She nodded slowly. “I guess I did. But I really don’t like the idea of my whole life becoming a game of ‘Mother May I.’ Being accountable to anyone isn’t… Well, it’s not something I like. Or do well.”

  Had her dear, departed husband, the worthy U.S. Representative Brad Englander, accepted that? Maybe. But maybe her strong reaction to Travis was because she’d been given little choice during her marriage to the powerful politician.

  “I figured that,” Travis responded. “But for now, till I’ve got Farley in my sights, I’m asking you to do that one little thing for me. Okay?”

  Her prolonged hesitation made it clear how much she wanted to say no. But eventually, she nodded. “Okay. As long as it makes sense, I’ll let you know where I’m going.”

  “It always makes sense,” he said.

  “DIANNA, I THINK you’d better take this call.” Beth’s voice sounded frantic. “I’ve tried to find Jeremy, but he must have turned his cell phone off.”

  “Sure,” Dianna said. “But who—” She realized immediately that Beth had cut her off to go back to the caller. Leaning forward on her desk, Dianna held the receiver close to her ear, prepared to hear another complaint about something that had gone wrong in the building.

  Not another bomb scare, she prayed. Or another call from Bill Hultman, with something to add to his list of grumbles from an hour earlier.

  It turned out less scary than a bomb threat, but a whole lot worse than a continuation of Bill’s tirade. “Ms. Englander, this is Pearl Kinch, the principal of Beverly Vista Middle School. I understand you are Julie Alberts’ aunt.” Which was true by closeness to the family, if not by blood relationship. “She’s gotten into trouble here today, and we need someone to come take her home immediately.”

  THE ELEVATOR WAS filled when it reached the sixth floor on the way downstairs, but Dianna shoehorned her way onto it. She found herself sandwiched between two families with small children—five youngsters between them. Two were crying, and the parents were obviously at wits’ end trying to keep them under control.

  “I’m so sorry,” one harried mother said after the little girl in her arms stiffened and one leg brushed Dianna’s arm.

  “That’s all right. Were they with you in one of the offices upstairs?”

  “Yes, and the mediator kept us waiting because her last case ran over. I’d have gotten a sitter, but I can’t afford one every time we come here, and—”

  “I understand,” Dianna assured the woman. That was exactly why she intended to build her child-care center downstairs. Soon.

  The elevator reached the ground floor, and as everyone poured out, Dianna realized how grateful she’d been for the small distraction. That Mrs. Kinch refused to tell exactly what was wrong with Julie. She’d sounded angry, cold and spiteful.

  Poor Julie. Dianna had to go rescue her. Stick up for her, no matter what it was, for she needed someone in her corner.

  As she headed through the lobby for the separate elevator to the parking lot, she saw security chief Cal Flynn using a wand to check for metal carried by an obviously exasperated man in a dark suit, most likely an attorney.

  But had Farley sneaked in by pretending to belong here, wearing a suit…?

  Oh, lord. Farley. His wretched name reminded her of Travis, and her quasi-promise that morning to keep him closely informed of her whereabouts.

  To let him accompany her.

  The idea of having his protection did feel comforting, but surely there was no reason for him to leave whatever he was doing that day to scurry off with her to Julie’s school. Still, she’d said she’d let him know.

  She glanced outside. His pushcart was there, and so was the man who ran it, Manny.

  But Travis wasn’t.

  And Dianna hated the idea of leaving Julie in the formidable Mrs. Kinch’s bad graces any longer than necessary.

  She pulled Travis’s cell phone number from her purse and used her own to call him. Quickly, she explained the situation.

  “Wait there,” he demanded, “in the lobby. I’m at the Van Nuys police station but I’ll be there in five minutes to go with you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “We’ve discussed this, Dianna.” His tone was chilly and challenging. “Wait for me.”

  “Tell you what,” she said. Compromise was the key here. After all, her job was renting out facilities in which negotiations and compromises were the stuff of everyday life.

  “I’ll go get my car and pick you up in front of the building, on Van Nuys Boulevard.”

  “Dianna—” His voice grated from between clenched teeth. She didn’t have to see him to know that, by its sound.

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  She got onto the elevator and pushed the button for the second floor, where she’d parked that morning in her reserved spot.

  When the door opened, she quickly headed toward her sports car, her key out so she could unlock it remotely.

  As she reached for the door, someone grabbed her from behind. An arm went around her neck, choking her. Tighter.

  Tighter.

  Chapter Seven

  Frightened at the increasingly constricting pressure at her throat, Dianna flailed out.

  They were in a public garage. Where were all the people? Why was she alone?

  Better that she was alone. No one else would get hurt.

  Besides her.

  The pressure continued to tighten. A leg wrapped around one of hers, so that if she tried to run, she would trip.

  She couldn’t move.

  Could hardly breathe…

  “So you’re still here, Mrs. Englander? Dianna?” said a voice that haunted her nightmares. She’d heard it first on the night Farley had taken her prisoner to lure Brad to his death. “Not good at heeding warnings, are you?”

  “What do you wa—?” Her throat ached from the pressure, and she couldn’t finish.

  The laugh was a horrifying cackle. “What do I want? That’s rich. No one asked me before, when your dear departed husband ruined my business. Ruined me. But know what? I’m enjoying my little game now. Maybe I should thank Brad. In fact, I am thanking him by sending him a present, because very soon his beloved wife is going to join him.” His conversational tone turned to a menacing roar. “In hell!”

  She should have listened to Travis, Dianna thought fleetingly. In a moment, she would lose consciousness, and he’d have the pleasure of thinking, I told you so. Only he wouldn’t be able to direct it at her.

  She’d be dead.

  No! She wouldn’t give Farley the satisfaction. He’d taken from her all she’d held dear. Her husband. Her baby.

  No
more.

  Farley wasn’t a tall man, but he was larger than she. She was gripped tightly, her head fixed against his disgustingly damp chest. He smelled rank, as if his nerves made him sweat. Good.

  She would make him sweat even more.

  Gasping for air, she used the only two weapons she could think of: surprise, and the key she held in her hand. She shrieked, kicked backward with the leg that wasn’t fettered by him. The pressure at her neck tightened even further, but she used the leverage of her body to pull Farley off balance.

  At the same time, she twisted, gagging at the yank at her neck, but in a moment she faced him. Saw his startled, hateful face. A long face, pouchy and lined. He needed a shave. Gray hair bristled among darker brown that matched damp waves clinging to a high forehead.

  And then there were his eyes. Brown. Huge. Smug. Glittering with laughter.

  Insane.

  He still held her arm. His grip tightened. Dianna raised her hand and slammed the key against Farley’s fleshy cheek, just below his right eye, and shoved hard even as she sliced downward.

  He screamed and released her.

  “Dianna!” called a hollow voice in the distance, from the stairwell.

  Travis? Was he coming to help her?

  Just in case, she grabbed at Farley, trying to hang onto him as he’d held her.

  But she was weakened from their struggle, and he was stronger. He was a man.

  A man with strength born of madness.

  He wrested away. Blood poured from the deep gouge in his face, and the malevolent glare he trained on her made her cry out. “Travis!” she yelled, grabbing toward Farley again.

  Too late. He jumped into a car and the engine roared to life.

  The smell of exhaust surrounded Dianna as Farley drove maniacally down the ramp, screeching between the other cars, before he was out of sight.

  Gone.

  She was safe.