Falling for the Heiress

He was her bodyguard from Bennington’s, the exclusive security service her family had used for years. The female she’d requested—the former Secret Service agent who’d shadowed her through college—was on an assignment for the next two weeks. The no-nonsense mountain of muscle with the shaved head and the shoulders of a linebacker had been recommended by her brother, Cord.

She had never met Jeffrey Parker, but she recognized him from the photograph that had been e-mailed to her so she’d know he was indeed the man she’d hired and not an imposter bent on grabbing headlines or a slice of her family’s fortune by holding her and her son for ransom. When she’d first seen his unsmiling image, he’d struck her as surprisingly handsome—in a formidably male, serious and decidedly ex-military sort of way. Now, other than to think him even more imposing than she’d anticipated, she was simply grateful for his presence. She and her siblings had been followed by paparazzi off and on all their lives. But she’d never been hounded as mercilessly by them as she had before she’d left last year. In that time, she had learned to truly appreciate a good bodyguard’s ability to evade and avoid.

Cord had assured her that the man he’d referred to as “Bull” was the best.

He moved behind her as she reached the car, blocking her from view as she slid inside and lowered Mikey into the child seat he’d had installed. It seemed he’d no sooner closed her door behind her than he opened the door opposite and reached in to assist with her son.

His big frame filled the space as she reached to secure Mikey’s shoulder straps. Her bodyguard had aimed for the same strap, too. With her hand suddenly trapped beneath his, her glance shot up.

His dark sunglasses had been pushed back so he could see inside the vehicle. The information sheet she’d been sent on him had indicated that his eyes were blue. There had been nothing in that dry recitation of facts, however, to describe the depth of that startling, clear color or to prepare her for their unnerving intensity as they easily held her own.

“We can do this,” she assured him.

“I’ll do it, ma’am.”

“Really, we’re fine….”

“We’re not going anywhere until I know myself that the child is secured. You said you wanted your arrival to be as unobtrusive as possible. The sooner you let me do my job, the quicker I can get you out of here.”

He hadn’t moved his hand. Since it appeared he had no intention of moving at all, at least not until she did, she slipped her fingers from beneath his and edged herself back.

She hadn’t been able to go anywhere before she’d left without a camera following her. That was why she had specifically requested that he make her arrival as efficient and discreet as possible. That he was only doing what she’d asked of him, however, did nothing to explain the wholly unexpected and unfamiliar jolt of heat she’d felt at the contact of his very capable-looking hands.

More than willing to blame that disconcerting reaction on her already jumpy nerves, she watched him smile at her wide-eyed son.

“How does that feel, buddy?” he asked. “Too tight?”

Eyeing him cautiously, Mikey shook his head.

The man looked capable of snapping body parts, but his smile just then seemed incredibly kind. The unexpected expression did interesting things to the aristocratic lines of his face, made them more arresting, more compelling. Though his hair was shaved so close it was impossible to tell its color, the heavy slashes of his eyebrows were dark, his lashes sooty and thick. The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled, taking the coolness from that intense blue and allowing her son to see something that somehow invited a hesitant smile back.

Mikey rarely warmed to strangers. Especially large strangers like the guards around the palace who had ignored him, anyway.

Clips clicked into place. A quick check of the restraints’ fit against Mikey’s shoulders and the man’s smile vanished. Within seconds, he’d backed out the door, shoved in the suitcases that wouldn’t fit in back and closed the door with a thud.

Getting her out of public view and her son secured clearly had been his first priority. Only after he’d settled his big frame behind the wheel did he bother with the preliminaries.

He glanced into the rearview mirror. “I’m Jeff Parker, Miss Kendrick. But ‘Parker’ works just fine. My instructions say you want to go directly to your family’s estate. Is that still your plan?”

Pure professionalism had replaced the unexpected bit of warmth she’d seen when he’d smiled at her son. Thinking that her brother was right, that the man could, indeed, appear pretty intimidating, she offered a determined smile of her own. “Do you know how to get there?”

Assuring her that he did, Parker turned his attention to the runway attendant waving them toward the gate. He not only had directions to the estate just outside the little town of Camelot, he had pulled as much information as he could find about Theresa Amelia Kendrick, once Theresa Amelia Kendrick Ashworth, off the Internet and from Bennington’s files. He always made it a point to know who he was protecting. Just as he made it a point to research his surroundings.

His client’s landing at the small regional airport near Camelot had caused none of the hassles that would have been created landing at Richmond International thirty miles away. Without masses of people watching runways from panoramic terminal windows, the arrival of a private jet went virtually unnoticed. Private jets and small craft were all that ever landed there. The royal-blue crest of Luzandria plastered on the jet’s tail didn’t do much for anonymity, however. Nearly everyone in America knew Luzandria was the country Katherine Kendrick would have someday ruled had she not given up her crown to marry then-Senator William Kendrick years ago. But the plane wouldn’t be there long enough to attract much attention. It was already being refueled and readied for its turnaround back to Europe.

The member of the security team who’d handed over the Kendrick woman to him had told him that the jet flew with two full crews. That meant no layover was required for the inbound pilot and copilot to rest. The plane would be gone before anyone who noticed it could do much more than speculate about which member of the Kendrick family had arrived or departed. As quickly as the transfer from plane to SUV had been made, Parker felt certain his client’s identity remained secure.

With his initial objective accomplished, he left the small airport by a back access road and glanced into the rearview mirror.

Tess Kendrick was stroking her son’s pale hair, murmuring something to him that had the child giving her a tired nod.

She was taller than he’d thought she’d be. Thinner, too, in a willowy, waiflike sort of way, and even more striking than she’d appeared in photographs. Mostly she looked more delicate to him than he had expected. More…fragile, somehow. But he knew looks could be deceiving, especially among the rich and pampered. And pampered she clearly was. With shades of gold and platinum woven through her sable hair, her French manicure and the white, undoubtedly designer pantsuit that seemed totally impractical for a transatlantic flight with a small child, she practically screamed high-maintenance. And quiet sensuality.

She’d secured her shimmering hair back from the classic lines of her face, exposing the delicate lobes of her ears, the long line of her neck. The low cut of her jacket ended at the buttons between her breasts. An arrow of bare skin adorned with varying lengths of gold chains beckoned between the lapels. The longest of those shiny strands rested against a hint of cleavage.

Ignoring the tightening sensation low in his groin, he jerked his glance back to the road. He would admit that she was incredibly easy on the eyes, and the heat he’d felt at the contact of her impossibly soft skin when he’d found her hand beneath his had definitely caught him off guard, but he dismissed his body’s primitive response as nothing more than a normal red-blooded male’s reaction to a beautiful woman. A spoiled, childish woman ten years younger than his own hardened thirty-six years, he reminded himself.

Other than for her physical appeal, he wasn’t impressed with his new client at all.

From what he’d heard, her bewildered husband had been as shocked as the rest of the world when she’d suddenly asked him for a divorce, taken his son and left the country. Bradley-Something-Ashworth-the-Whatever apparently hadn’t had a clue there’d been any sort of problem. Even her friends—women she’d known since before college—had indicated nothing more substantive than that she hadn’t seemed as happy as she once had. For her part, Tess had publicly refused to say why she’d wanted out. The press had found no clues in the couples’ no-fault divorce petition, either. She’d left all the explanations up to her ex.

In his review of old news videos a few days ago, Parker had watched her yacht-club-type husband reluctantly confess to a barrage of reporters outside a courthouse that she had finally told him marriage bored her and that she didn’t think she could ever be happy with just one man.

A guy had to feel for any man who’d married a woman like that.

Parker had a healthy respect for the state of matrimony—for everyone but himself. He was wedded to his work, and what he did for a living wasn’t a job for a married man. Especially a married man with kids. It was his unfaltering belief that kids deserved to have their dad around, and he never knew where he’d find himself next. But the woman now resting her hand on her son’s knee while she gazed out the tinted window beside her had made a promise when she’d married. A promise she’d broken because she’d been bored, he reminded himself with a mental shake of his head. Taking a guy’s son and leaving him to deal with the public humiliation of her decision on his own was pretty low in his book, too.

The GPS on the dashboard gave a low ding, pulling his attention to the navigation system directing him to a turn up ahead. It wasn’t his job to like her, he reminded himself. His job until the bodyguard she’d requested became available was to act as her driver and to protect her and her son from any of the public or paparazzi who might attempt to encroach upon her privacy. In his spare time, he would stay in touch by computer and cell phone with the tactical team he’d been promoted to oversee.

With everything else he had to do, he wouldn’t have taken this additional assignment at all had her brother, Cord, not had her ask for him. He liked Cord, though. The man was a good client. He’d been his bodyguard on a few decidedly wild gambling jaunts to Las Vegas and Monte Carlo and one memorable trip to Cannes. He’d gotten to know the internationally infamous playboy over hands of poker in various hotel suites when Cord hadn’t felt like hitting the clubs or playing high-stakes games with the other whales. He had even once provided protection for his ladylike sister, Ashley, and for Madison, the woman Cord had just married.

Having watched out for the other women in his client’s life and being nothing if not loyal to those loyal to him, he would have felt a certain obligation to protect the man’s kid sister even if his boss hadn’t pretty much insisted that he take the assignment. The Kendricks were some of the firm’s oldest and best customers. Since declining wouldn’t have been the politically correct thing to do, that left him to do his regular job and keep up with the logistics for security surrounding an upcoming judicial conference in his downtime.

The drive from the little airport took less than ten minutes. Miles of open fields planted with peanuts and corn led to land that had been left forested to seclude the mansions and more modest residences of the local gentry. Like many of those homes, the Kendrick estate wasn’t visible at all from the two-lane country road. A double iron gate suspended between stone pillars blocked the driveway itself.

Parker pulled to a stop beside the pillar concealing the entry keypad.

Tess leaned forward. “Twenty-four, sixteen, fifty-seven.”

Aware of her settling back to cross her long legs, he punched in the security code, waited for the gates to swing open and pulled onto the long drive. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the trees lining the way, their leaves joined at the tops like the arches of a cathedral. With his window still down, he felt the change in the air, the coolness of the shadows, heard the distant whinny of a horse. The manse itself, all three gabled and mullioned stories of it, came into view as the road curved to the left.

The trees opened to a sweep of manicured lawns, a bubbling fountain in front of a wide portico and a view of enough windows to keep a Manhattan window-washer busy for the rest of his life.

A man didn’t do what Parker did for a living without being exposed to a certain amount of extravagance. He’d protected clientele on yachts, in the world’s finest hotels, on estates that rambled on forever. What impressed him about them all was the amount of staff it took, invisible for the most part, to keep the places running.

He fully expected to see staff now as he pulled beneath the portico, climbed from the driver’s seat and opened the back door for his passengers.

The mansion’s massive double doors stayed closed as he leaned forward to take the now-sleeping child from the woman who’d already unfastened and lifted him from the child seat.

“I’ll carry him and his backpack,” she said, “if you’ll get the rest of the luggage. Here’s my key.” With the boy’s head resting on her shoulder, she dangled a small gem-encrusted key ring toward him. “It’s the silver one.”

Thinking it odd that she didn’t expect a butler or maid to unlock the door for her, he ignored her intention to slide out on her own and cupped her elbow as she rose. The slenderness of supple muscle beneath white silk barely registered before she thanked him, headed for the back of the vehicle and stood there waiting for him to lift the tailgate.

Her little boy hadn’t moved. The child lay limply against her, drooling on the shoulder of her jacket. Fine blond lashes formed crescents against his pink cheeks.

Struck by how oblivious she was to the drool and still expecting someone to show up and help, he handed her a bright blue Harry Potter backpack and started hauling out enough designer luggage to stock a small boutique. Not quite sure how to tell her that playing butler wasn’t part of the service, he grabbed four of the suitcases—one under each arm and one in each hand—and followed her up the rounded and sweeping stairs to the massive double doors.

Using the key she’d given him, he opened one door, picked up the luggage again and followed her inside.