The Protectors: Defending His Own / Guarding Jeannie

“Ashe works for a private security firm out of Atlanta.” Carol readjusted her hips on the sofa, placing her hand down on the cushion beside her. “I’ve hired him to act as your bodyguard until the trial is over and you’re no longer in any danger.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Deborah scowled at Ashe. “You’ve brought this man back into our lives. Good God, Mother, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, Deborah Luellen Vaughn! I’ve done what I think is best for everyone concerned.”

“And you?” Deborah looked directly at Ashe. “Why would you come back to Sheffield after all these years? How on earth did my mother persuade you to return?” Deborah’s rosy cheeks turned pale, her lips quivered. “What—what did she tell you?”

“I told him that your life had been threatened. I explained the basic facts.” Carol turned to Ashe. “This is what he does for a living, and I’m paying him his usual fee, isn’t that right, Ashe?”

“This is strictly a business arrangement for me,” Ashe replied. “My services are for hire to anyone with enough money to afford me.”

Where was the sweet girl he’d once known? The laughing, smiling girl who’d been his friend long before she’d become his lover one hot summer night down by the river. He had never regretted anything as much as he had regretted taking Deborah’s virginity. He’d been filled with rage and half drunk. Deborah had been with him that night, trying to comfort him, and he had taken advantage of her loving nature. But she’d paid him back.

“I don’t want you here. Keep a week’s salary for your trouble.” Deborah nodded toward the door. “Now, please leave.”

“No!” Reaching out, Carol grabbed Ashe by the arm. “Please, don’t leave. Go in the kitchen and have some cookies with Allen.”

“Mother! Think what you’re saying.”

“Please, Ashe. Go out into the kitchen for a few minutes while I speak with Deborah.”

Ashe patted Carol on the hand, then pulled away from her. “I won’t leave, Miss Carol. It would take an act of congress to get me out of Sheffield.”

He smiled at Deborah when he walked past her, halting briefly to inspect her from head to toe, then proceeding down the hallway and through the door leading to the kitchen.

Heat and cold zigzagged through Deborah like red-hot and freezing blue shafts of pain. Ashe McLaughlin. Here in Sheffield. Here in her home. And he’d seen Allen!

“He can’t stay.”

“Come over here, dear.” Carol patted the sofa seat. “You’ve needed him for such a long time, Deborah, but now more than ever. You know I disagreed with your father’s assessment of Ashe, but I loved your father and never would have gone against his wishes. But once Wallace died, I begged you to let me contact Ashe. He’s kept in touch with Mattie all these years. We could have asked him to come home at any time.”

“He kept in touch with his grandmother, not with us. He left this town and didn’t look back. He never once called me or wrote me or…” Deborah crossed the room, slumped down on the sofa beside her mother and folded her hands in her lap. “I need to phone the office and let them know I won’t be back in this afternoon. I had planned to just drop Allen off, but I saw the car in the drive and wondered who…I don’t want Ashe McLaughlin here.”

“But I do.” Carol’s blue eyes met her daughter’s blue eyes, stubborn, determined and equally strong. “We both know that I’m only in remission. The cancer could worsen at any time and I’ll have to go in for more surgery. I could die without ever seeing you happy.”

“You honestly think Ashe McLaughlin can make me happy? Get real, Mother.” Deborah lowered her voice to a snarling whisper. “The man seduced me when I was seventeen, dropped me like a hot potato and left town two months later, never bothering to find out whether or not he’d gotten me pregnant.”

“I think you should know that—”

“If you’re convinced I need a bodyguard then have the private security agency send someone else. Tell them we want someone older or younger or…Hell! Tell them anything, but get rid of Ashe.”

“I believe he still cares about you.” Carol smiled, deepening the faint lines in her face.

“Mother!”

“It’s been eleven years, Deborah, and you haven’t had one serious relationship in all that time. Doesn’t that tell you anything about your own feelings?”

“Yes. It tells me that I’m a smart girl. I learn from my mistakes.”

“It tells me that you’ve never gotten over Ashe McLaughlin, that somewhere deep down, in your heart of hearts, you’re still in love with him.”

Deborah couldn’t bear it. Her mother’s words pierced the protective wall she had built around her heart. She didn’t love Ashe McLaughlin. She hated him. But she knew only too well how fine a line there was between love and hate.

“I’ve hardly had time to date, let alone find the man of my dreams. Have you forgotten that I was in my senior year of college when Daddy died and I had to complete my courses for my degree and step in at Vaughn & Posey?” Deborah paused, waiting for her mother to comment. Carol said nothing.

“Then I had to earn my Realtors’ license and work damn hard to fill Daddy’s shoes at the firm,” Deborah said. “Over the last few years while other firms have floundered, I’ve kept Vaughn & Posey in the black, making substantial gains each year. Over the last five years, we’ve been involved in two different subdivision developments.”

Carol held up her hand, signaling acquiescence. “I know what a busy young woman you’ve been. But other people lead busy lives and still find time for romance.”

“I don’t need any romance in my life. Have you also forgotten how my foolishly romantic illusions about love nearly destroyed my life eleven years ago?”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. But there’s more at stake than my desire to see you and Ashe settle things between you. Your life is in danger—real danger. Charlie Blaylock can only do so much. You need twenty-four-hour-a-day protection, and Ashe is highly qualified to do the job I’ve hired him to do.”

“What makes him so highly qualified?”

“He was a Green Beret for ten years and joined, what I am told, is the best private security agency in the South. If you won’t agree to his staying here for any other reason, do it for me. For my peace of mind.”

“Mother, really. You’re asking a great deal of me, aren’t you? And you’re putting Allen at risk. What if Ashe were to suspect the truth? Do we dare take that kind of chance? How do you think Allen would react if he found out that everything we’ve told him is a lie?”

Tears gathered in the corners of Deborah’s eyes. She blinked them away. No tears. Not now. She cried only when she was alone, where no one could see her. Where no one would know that the strong, dependable, always reliable Deborah Luellen Vaughn succumbed to the weakness of tears. Since her father died, she had learned to be strong—for her mother, for Allen, for those depending upon Vaughn & Posey for their livelihoods.

“Even if Ashe learns the truth, he would never tell Allen.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Intuition.”

Deborah groaned. Sometimes her mother could be incredibly naive for a fifty-five-year-old woman. “I don’t want Ashe McLaughlin to become a part of our lives.”

“He’s always been a part of our lives.” Carol glanced up at the oil painting of Allen at the age of three, hung over the fireplace beside the portrait of a three-year-old Deborah. “All I ask is that you allow him to stay on as your bodyguard until after Lon Sparks’s trial. If you feel nothing for Ashe except hatred, then his being here should do nothing more than annoy you. Surely you can put up with a little annoyance to make your dying mother happy.”

“You aren’t dying!”

“Please, dear, just talk to Ashe.”

Sighing deeply, Deborah closed her eyes and shook her head. How could she say no to her mother? How could she explain what the very sight of Ashe McLaughlin had done to her? Wasn’t she already going through enough, having to deal with testifying against a murderer, having to endure constant threats on her life, without having to put up with Ashe McLaughlin, too?

“Oh, all right, Mother. I’ll talk to Ashe. But I’m not promising anything.”

“Fine. That’s all I ask.” Gripping the arm of the sofa for support, Carol stood. “I’ll go in the kitchen and see how Ashe and Allen are getting along, then I’ll send Ashe out to you.”

Standing, Deborah paced the floor. Waiting. Waiting to face the man who haunted her dreams to this very day. The only man she had ever loved. The only man she had ever hated. Stopping in front of the fireplace, she glanced up at Allen’s portrait. He looked so much like her. Their strong resemblance had made it easy to pass him off as her brother. But where others might not see any of Ashe in Allen’s features, she could. His coloring was hers, but his nose was long and straight like Ashe’s, not short and rounded like hers. His jaw tapered into a square chin unlike her gently rounded face.

Now that Allen was ten, it was apparent from his size that he would eventually become a large man, perhaps as big as Ashe, who stood six foot three.

But would Ashe see any resemblance? Would he look at Allen and wonder? Over the years had he, even once, asked himself whether he might have fathered a child the night he had taken her virginity?

“Deborah?”