The Protectors: Defending His Own / Guarding Jeannie

“That’s what you’re here in Sheffield to do, isn’t it?” Allen asked. “You’re here to protect Deborah against the bad guys, and if you have to, you’ll kill them, won’t you?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Ashe said. “But, yes, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Deborah safe.”

“How long have you been a bodyguard?”

“I started working for Sam Dundee last year, right after I left the army.”

“Why’d you leave the Green Berets?”

Deborah cleared her throat, stepped inside Allen’s room and gave him a censuring stare. “I think you’ve asked Ashe enough questions for one night. Save a few for later.”

“Ah, Deborah, can’t he stay just a little while longer?” Allen whined in a typical childlike manner. “I was going to ask him about the two of you when you were kids.” Allen turned his attention to Ashe. “Did you ever kiss Deborah when you two were teenagers?”

“Allen!” Deborah scolded, her voice harsher than she had intended.

“Yes, I kissed Deborah.” Ashe watched her closely, noting that she wouldn’t look at him, that she had balled her hands into fists and held them rigidly at her hips.

“I knew it! I knew it!” Allen bounced up and down on the bed. “You two were a thing, weren’t you?”

“No, Allen.” Deborah trembled inside, and prayed the shivers racing through her body didn’t materialize externally. “Stop jumping up and down on the bed.”

“You sure are being a grouch.” Settling back down on the side of the bed, Allen glanced back and forth from Deborah to Ashe. “What’s the big secret about you two being an item when you were teenagers? Is it a big deal that Ashe was your boyfriend?”

“We’ve told you that Ashe wasn’t my boyfriend,” Deborah said. No, he’d never been her boyfriend, just her lover for one night. One night that had changed her life forever. “We were friends.”

“Then why did he kiss you?” Allen asked.

Deborah looked to Ashe, her gaze pleading with him, then she glanced away quickly. “Sometimes an occasion arises when a friend might kiss another friend,” Deborah said.

The look on Allen’s face plainly said he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Deborah and I were friends all our lives,” Ashe explained. “Then not long before I left Sheffield, we thought we could be more than friends. That’s when I kissed her. But it didn’t work out. So you see, Allen, your sister was never actually my girlfriend.”

“Do you have a girlfriend now?”

“Allen!” Rolling her eyes heavenward, Deborah shook her head in defeat. “Enough questions for one night.”

Ashe laughed. “I remember being the same way when I was his age. I used to drive Mama Mattie nuts asking her so many questions. I guess it’s the age. The whole world is a mystery when you’re ten.”

“I guess it’s a guy thing, huh, Ashe?”

Allen looked at Ashe McLaughlin with such adoration in his eyes that Deborah almost cried. There had been a time when she, too, had adored Ashe. It was so easy to fall under his spell, to succumb to his charm. Maybe her son had inherited her weakness.

“Curiosity isn’t a guy thing,” Ashe said. “I remember a time when your sister’s curiosity got the minister in big trouble.”

“What?” Allen grinned, stole a quick glance at Deborah and burst into laughter. “Deborah did something she wasn’t supposed to do? I can’t believe it. She always does the right thing.”

“Well, she made the mistake of walking in on Reverend Bently and the new choir director, a very attractive lady,” Ashe said.

“I asked Mother, right in the middle of her study club meeting, why Reverend Bently would kiss Miss Denise.” Deborah smiled, remembering the utter horror on her mother’s face and the loud rumble of ladies’ voices rising in outrage as they sat in Carol Vaughn’s garden, dropping their finger sandwiches and spilling their tea.

“How’d you know, Ashe? Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

“Allen, that’s enough questions,” Deborah said. “You’ve got school tomorrow and I have work. Besides, Ashe hasn’t even settled in yet. Save the rest of your million and one questions for another day.”

“Ah…ahh…All right.”

“Deborah told me all about it when I stopped by to pick up Mama Mattie that evening after I got off from work. Your sister was only twelve then, and at that age she used to tell me everything.”

Not everything, Deborah thought. Not then, not later, and certainly not now. She never told him how much she loved him. Not until that night by the river. But he’d known she had a crush on him, just as he was aware, now, that she was afraid of him, afraid of how he made her feel.

“Deborah’s right, pal. It’s getting late.” Ashe ruffled the boy’s thick blond hair, hair the exact shade Deborah’s had been as a child. “I’ll be around for several weeks. You’ll have a chance to ask me a lot more questions.”

Deborah waited in the hallway until Ashe walked past her and toward his own room. He hesitated in the doorway.

“You were always special to me,” he said. “I trusted you in a way I didn’t trust another soul.”

She stood in the hall, staring at his back as he entered his room and closed the door. She shivered. What had he meant by that last statement? Was he accusing her of something? He had trusted her. Well, she had trusted him, too. And he had betrayed her. He had taken her innocence, gotten her pregnant and left town.

Whatever had gone wrong between them hadn’t been her fault. It had been his. He hadn’t loved her. He’d used her. And afterward, when she’d poured out her heart to him, he’d said he was sorry, that he never should have touched her.

Ashe McLaughlin had regretted making love to her. She could never forget the pain that knowledge had caused her. Even if she could forgive him, she could never forget what he’d said to her eleven years ago…But I don’t love you, Deborah. Not that way. What we did tonight shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry. It was all my fault. Forgive me, honey. Please forgive me.

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She walked the few steps to her open bedroom door, crossed the threshold, closed the door quietly and, once alone, wiped away her tears.

“All of Ms. Vaughn’s calls are to be screened. That means the caller must identify him or herself and must be someone Ms. Vaughn knows. Otherwise the call will be directed to me. Is that understood?”

Ashe McLaughlin issued orders to the office staff of Vaughn & Posey, the men obviously intimidated, the women enthralled. Standing six-foot-three, broad-shouldered and commanding in his gray sport coat, navy slacks and white shirt, Ashe was the type of man to whom no one dared utter a word of protest.

Listening to Ashe give orders, Deborah waited in her office doorway, Neil Posey at her side. When the staff, one by one, turned their heads in her direction, she nodded her agreement with Ashe. He’d made it perfectly clear to her before they arrived at work that he would be in charge of her life, every small detail, until she was no longer in danger.

Ashe turned to Annie Laurie, who had worked as Neil’s secretary for the past five years, and was doing double duty as Deborah’s secretary while hers was out on maternity leave. “Carefully check all of Deborah’s mail. Anything suspicious, bring to me. And I’ll open all packages, no matter how innocent looking they are. Understand?”

“Of course, Ashe.” Despite her mousy brown hair and out-of-style glasses, plain little Annie Laurie had grown into a lovely young woman.

Deborah tried not to stare at Ashe, but she found herself again inspecting him from head to toe as she had done at breakfast this morning. No wonder all the females in the office were practically drooling. Although his clothes were tailored to fit his big body, on Ashe they acquired an unpretentious casualness. He wore no tie and left the first two buttons of his shirt undone, revealing a tuft of dark chest hair.

“Who does he think he is coming in here issuing orders right and left?” Neil Posey whispered, his tone an angry hiss. “When you introduced him as your bodyguard, I assumed you would be giving him orders, not the other way around.”

“Ashe can’t do the job Mother hired him to do unless I cooperate.” Deborah patted Neil on the shoulder. “Ashe is here to protect me. He’s a trained professional.”

“He hasn’t changed. He’s as damn sure of himself as he ever was.” Neil took Deborah’s hand in his. “I don’t like the idea of that man living in your house, sleeping across the hall from you.”

“He could hardly protect me if he stayed at a motel.”

“Why Ashe McLaughlin? Good grief, Deb, you were in love with the guy when we were in high school.” Neil’s eyes widened. He stared directly at Deborah. “You don’t still…the man doesn’t mean anything to you now, does he?”

“Lower your voice.” She had told Neil time and again that she couldn’t offer him more than friendship. She’d never led him on or made him any promises. Perhaps it was wrong of her to go out with him from time to time, but he was such a comfortable, nonthreatening date.