The Bodyguard's Promise

Certainly, Gracie’s talent seemed to be paying off bigtime. He frowned as he thought of the little girl’s schedule. Work, school, voice and dance lessons, drama coaches and trainers, every minute of every day was filled, with no time for her to just be a kid. It seemed like a heavy load for an eight-year-old to carry just so the adults in her life could live in the lap of luxury.

Before entering his bedroom, he stepped quietly into Gracie’s room. While she’d been with her mother preparing for bedtime, Clay had acquainted himself with the house security and had double-checked the windows in the little girl’s room to make certain they were locked.

The grounds were surrounded by a high concrete wall and the home security system was one of the best he’d ever seen. He felt fairly confident that while Gracie was inside the house she’d be safe.

He’d also learned from one of the maids that the only staff who stayed overnight in the house was Helen, the cook, who had a small suite of rooms just off the kitchen. The rest of the staff either had their own homes or stayed in staff quarters located in a building at the back of the property. So, he wasn’t too concerned with a threat to Gracie coming from within the house itself. Unless Helen hid some maniac tendencies that weren’t immediately apparent. He grinned at the very thought. She might be cantankerous, but he doubted she was murderous.

He left Gracie’s room, his glance shooting down the hallway toward Libby’s bedroom door, which was closed. For just a moment his body remembered the heat of hers as she’d leaned into him and the sweet curve of her lips as she’d feigned affection for him.

Ms. Libby Byrant was some piece of work. He had a feeling she was not just cold, but capable of manipulation and subterfuge to gain a means to an end. But, damn, she was pretty.

He dismissed thoughts of Libby as he went into his bedroom. It took him only minutes to strip down to his boxers and get into bed.

Exhaustion tugged on every muscle. He’d been on a whirlwind of work for the past six months. Before Las Vegas had been Dallas and before Dallas had been a job in Miami. Job after job, city after city blurred together in his mind.

When this particular job was over he was looking forward to some downtime at home in Cotter Creek. Hell, he hadn’t even met his brother Tanner’s new wife yet and they’d been married for two months. In a couple of weeks his brother Zack was getting married to Katie Sampson, the young woman from a neighboring ranch.

Maybe he’d be home by then and able to attend the wedding. As his thoughts turned to home and family, he found himself thinking of his mother, Elizabeth.

From what Clay’s father had told him about his mother, Hollywood had been her town. She’d been a fast-rising star before she’d fallen in love with Clay’s father, Red. The two had met when Red had been working as a stuntman on one of Elizabeth’s movies.

Elizabeth had left Hollywood and her career behind to move with Red to Cotter Creek, Oklahoma, where the two had made a home and begun their family. Clay’s oldest brother, Tanner, had been ten when Elizabeth had been killed and Joshua, the youngest sibling, had only been a baby.

She’d gone to town for groceries one evening and when she hadn’t returned by the time Red thought she should have, he’d gone looking for her. He’d found her body next to her car on the country road between Cotter Creek proper and the West ranch. She’d been raped and strangled.

Her purse was still in the car, money tucked into the wallet, negating the thought that it might have been a robbery. The murder had never been solved.

Clay had always wondered if somehow her past had come back to haunt her, if some deranged, obsessed fan had found her eleven years after she’d left Hollywood and had killed her. Certainly it had happened before. There were lots of stories of stalking, maiming and murdering of stars by fans.

His last conscious thought before sleep claimed him was that it was his job to make certain that little Gracie Bryant didn’t become one of those tragic Hollywood stories that filled the tabloid papers.

He awakened before dawn, as was his custom. By the time he showered and dressed for the day, splashes of the sunrise filled the eastern skies.

According to the schedule Libby had given him, a car would be arriving at seven to take them to the studio where Gracie was filming her latest movie. That gave Clay a little more than an hour to drink some coffee and study the list of names Libby had provided him.

As he left his bedroom, there was no noise to indicate that anyone else in the house was awake. It wasn’t until he hit the bottom step on the staircase and smelled the faint scent of fresh-brewed coffee that he realized there was somebody else up and about.

Helen stood at one of the counters in the huge kitchen, slicing up fresh fruit. She frowned as he came into the room. “If you’ll have a seat in the dining room, coffee will be served in just a minute,” she said.

“You don’t have to serve me,” he replied. “Just point me to the cupboard with the cups and I’ll pour my own coffee.”

She hesitated a moment, then pointed to a nearby cabinet. Clay set his papers down on the countertop, got a cup and poured himself some coffee. As he seated himself on one of the stools at the counter, Helen’s frown deepened.

“Guests always sit in the dining room,” she said.

“The kitchen is fine with me,” he replied. He had a feeling Helen and Smokey, the cook at the West ranch, probably had a lot in common, especially the fact that they were both territorial about their kitchens.

He took a sip of the coffee, eyeing the older woman with curiosity. “Have you been working here long?”

“I’ve been working for Ms. Libby and Gracie for almost six months,” she said.

“It must be interesting, working for a strong woman like Ms. Libby,” he observed.

Helen put down the sharp knife she’d been using and glared at him. “If you think you’re going to sit here in my kitchen and try to pull information out of me about Ms. Libby, you’d better think again.” She picked up the knife, looking as if she’d rather use it on him than on the fuzzy brown kiwi in front of her.

Clay sighed and focused his attention on the papers in front of him. He was still there thirty minutes later when Libby came into the kitchen. Instantly a tension filled the air.

“Good morning,” she said to Clay, then directed her gaze to Helen. “Gracie should be down in about ten minutes for breakfast.” Helen nodded and Libby once again looked at Clay. “Are you going to join us for breakfast in the dining room?”

“Of course.” He got up from the stool and followed her into the dining room, trying not to notice the subtle sway of her hips or the slender curve of her calves beneath the short black skirt she wore.

They had just gotten seated at the table when Gracie whirled into the room. Clad in a pair of yellow shorts and a matching T-shirt, she looked like a little ball of sunshine. The bright smile she offered Clay did nothing to spoil the image.

“Are you going with us to the studio today, Mr. Clay?” she asked as she settled into the chair at the table.

“I am. If that’s all right with you?” he replied.

“Oh, yes, it’s fine with me. You can meet all my friends and you can see me work. Want to see how I can cry?”

Clay looked at Libby helplessly, unsure how to respond. “Might as well indulge her,” Libby said with a wry smile. “She loves to show off.”

Gracie stared at Clay with wide blue eyes, eyes that quickly filled with tears. Those tears splashed down her cheeks and her lower lip quivered as if her little heart was breaking.

She laughed then, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “That was pretend tears,” she explained.

At that moment Helen came into the room to begin serving breakfast, and Clay found himself wondering how in the hell with these two females anyone ever knew what was truth and what was pretend.

Maxim Studios, where Gracie’s current film, Revenge of the Kids, was being filmed was just off Sunset Boulevard. As always, when they passed through the security gates of the movie studio, Libby felt a small thrill tremble through her. She had spent most of her childhood dreaming of the day when a security guard at a movie studio would greet her by name and flag her car through with a welcoming smile.

As they parked and got out of the car to enter the building where Gracie would work for the day, Libby tried to keep her attention focused on Gracie and not on the man who accompanied them. But it was difficult.

He wasn’t wearing jeans today, but instead wore a pair of black dress slacks with a silver-and-black pinstriped dress shirt. He’d looked raw and male in his jeans. He looked hot and utterly male in dress clothes.

Why hadn’t Charlie hired somebody who was fifty pounds overweight and balding? Why couldn’t he have hired somebody about fifty years old instead of this thirty-year-old man with evocative green eyes and taut six-pack stomach muscles?

“What happens now?” he asked Libby as they entered the building where there seemed to be people and activity everywhere.

“She goes directly to makeup.”

“There’s so many people around,” he said, obviously tense.

“It’s a movie set, Clay. It takes a lot of people to make a movie.” She still clung to the hope that the threats in the letters would turn out to be nothing, that Clay’s presence in their lives was nothing more than an unnecessary precaution.

Besides, surely the person responsible for the horrid letters couldn’t be somebody they knew, couldn’t be somebody who really knew Gracie. Everyone who knew Gracie loved her. Not only was she incredibly talented, but she had a heart filled with love and a sweet nature that brought smiles to everyone around her.

They followed Gracie into the room where her makeup would be applied. As she sat in the chair and the makeup artist got to work, Clay leaned toward Libby.

“Are all these people’s names on the list you made for me?” he whispered so nobody else would be able to hear.