The Heiress & the Bodyguard Read online

  “We’re Here, Sleeping Beauty. Wake Up.”

  Once, twice…Julie’s lashes fluttered open on the third try. “Why are we sitting here with the car idling?”

  “We’re waiting for the door to open.”

  “Well, it’s not opening. The electronic beam must be…” Her voice trailed off as she exchanged a look with Billy. “There is no electronic beam, is there?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re slumming it. It’s manually operated.”

  She climbed out of the car, then lifted the heavy aluminum garage door as if she had been doing it all her life. She whirled toward Billy and clapped enthusiastically for herself. “It was easier to deal with than the rotary phone,” she called out. “I have great potential for becoming an ordinary woman.”

  “Not a chance, lady,” Billy whispered, unable to take his eyes off her. Her magnificent eyes were flashing, and her lavish smile was enough to break a former undercover cop’s heart….

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to the world of Silhouette Desire, where you can indulge yourself every month with romances that can only be described as passionate, powerful and provocative!

  Popular author Cait London offers you Gabriel’s Gift, this April’s MAN OF THE MONTH. We’re sure you’ll love this tale of lovers once separated who reunite eighteen years later and must overcome the past before they can begin their future together.

  The riveting Desire miniseries TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: LONE STAR JEWELS continues with Her Ardent Sheikh by Kristi Gold, in which a dashing sheikh must protect a free-spirited American woman from danger.

  In Wife with Amnesia by Metsy Hingle, the estranged husband of an amnesiac woman seeks to win back her love…and to save her from a mysterious assailant. Watch for Metsy Hingle’s debut MIRA title, The Wager, in August 2001. Barbara McCauley’s hero “wins” a woman in a poker game in Reese’s Wild Wager, another tantalizing addition to her SECRETS! miniseries. Enjoy a contemporary “beauty and the beast” story with Amy J. Fetzer’s Taming the Beast. And Ryanne Corey brings you a runaway heiress who takes a walk on the wild side with the bodyguard who’s fallen head over heels for her in The Heiress & the Bodyguard.

  Be sure to treat yourself this month, and read all six of these exhilarating Desire novels!

  Enjoy!

  Joan Marlow Golan

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

  The Heiress & the Bodyguard

  RYANNE COREY

  Books by Ryanne Corey

  Silhouette Desire

  The Valentine Street Hustle #615

  Leather and Lace #657

  The Stranger #764

  When She Was Bad #950

  Lady with a Past #1319

  The Heiress & the Bodyguard #1362

  RYANNE COREY

  An author of bestselling romance novels, Ryanne Corey lives in Idaho in the shadow of the Teton Mountains, “the best place in the world to write and write and write.” She has written over twenty novels and is recognized for the true-to-life humor and sensuality of her characters. She has received several awards over the past few years, including the Romantic Times Magazine Best Novel and Lifetime Achievement Awards. She has long believed that life is too serious to be taken too seriously. In her writing she enjoys creating appealing and amusing characters that take their first breath on page one, endearing themselves to the readers long after the book is finished. “For me,” Ryanne says, “bringing a smile to someone’s face is what life is all about.”

  Nothing is more satisfying to her than hearing from readers who share her enjoyment of “love and laughter.” You can write to her at P.O. Box 328, Tetonia, ID 83452. Please include a SASE if a reply is desired.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  One

  This job was cake.

  Billy Lucas lay stretched out on the bed, a banana Popsicle in his hand and three sinfully comfortable feather pillows behind his back. The Popsicle and the pillows were perks of the job. Ask for anything you need, Harris Roper had told him.

  Being Billy, he’d taken advantage of the offer. Besides, there was a lovely Latin maid who hustled over from the kitchen whenever he ordered food. She spoke no English, but had beautiful black eyes and giggled whenever Billy winked at her. Whatever it took to draw a woman’s attention, Billy had in spades. It was a gift he had enjoyed thoroughly in his life, but never abused. He respected women deeply, but had little regard for his own ability to make a lasting commitment. Life was far too interesting to settle down in the suburbs. Even the thought made him shiver.

  His room had originally been intended for a chauffeur, or so he assumed. He had not been born into the Palm Beach set, but rather into the crime-ridden Oakland, California, set. They didn’t have apartments for the chauffeur where he grew up. They had bars on the windows and jagged broken bottles topping cinder-block fences. The fine art of staying alive had kept him on his toes, however. Never once in his thirty-three years had he felt the boredom he’d seen on the faces of these poor Palm Beach trust-fund babies.

  And he knew what he was talking about. There were five separate camera monitors mounted on the ceiling above his bed. One gave him a panoramic view of the front of the pink-tiled palace, another covered the walk-way leading to the guesthouse. One covered the west side of the guesthouse, another the east side, which included the garage. And the last camera—his personal favorite—gave him a close-up of Julie Roper’s front door.

  For nearly two weeks now, he had watched Julie’s comings and goings night and day. On the rare occasions when she went out alone, he was an invisible shadow. Once, very late at night, he’d followed her down to the beach, watching from the redwood dock as she’d skipped barefoot through the surf. She’d actually skipped, like a child who could hardly contain her own energy. He’d known then she was one lady he would never be able to predict, which made the job all the more interesting. She had pure class written all over her. Her shoulder-length hair was dark blond, artfully streaked with platinum, and whenever she walked, her shoulders were thrown back and her head held high. Billy had never seen an actual princess, but he imagined princesses would walk something like Julie Roper did. She dressed with the classy nonchalance of someone who could afford the best, but who put on the first thing in her closet and forgot about it. She was small, with fine bones and a look of fragility, which he was beginning to suspect might be deceptive. For whatever reason, she chose to live in the small guesthouse rather than the palatial main house. He was having a hard time getting a fix on her personality, which was very unusual for Billy Lucas. He was famous in his humble circles for being able to predict someone’s next move with uncanny accuracy, but little Julie Roper kept him guessing. A gazillion-dollar heiress skipping through the surf? A woman who chose to live in a cottage rather than a palace? A woman who was terribly easy on the eyes, yet had no dates beyond an occasional evening with a stocky fellow who looked like a marine sergeant? No kisses, no cuddling, just a bear hug at her door.

  And speak of the devil…

  Billy perked up, watching as she emerged from the stucco monstrosity he had dubbed the Palm Beach Hilton. Her short white-sequined dress, slim-fitting but modest, sparkled as she strolled down the well-lit pathway to the guesthouse. She walked slowly, as if she had no place to go and all the time in the world to get there. Her head was down, her hair obscuring the expression on her face. Even her posture looked different, more broke
nhearted than cool and composed. Her small figure looked incredibly defenseless, a little blond angel framed on either side by hedges of vibrant tropical blooms.

  Something was wrong.

  Change camera. She walked slowly to her front door, motion-sensitive lights keeping her well-illuminated. She punched in a security code beside the door, then disappeared inside. The windows of the cottage lit up one by one.

  Shirtless, his longish dark hair tumbled, he sat up on the edge of the bed. His heavy-lidded blue eyes took on a new intensity as he kept them on the camera. He might not be able to predict Julie Roper, but he knew when trouble was brewing. That talent had kept him alive and almost in one piece after working the gang unit in Oakland for eight years. Three puckered scars on his back from bullet wounds gave witness to his survival instinct. Another jagged scar on his abdomen above his low-riding jeans was a memento of his one and only stab wound. It was a sad fact, but most everyone on the streets, good guys and bad, had guns these days. His third trip to the hospital had resulted in a medal of valor and an early retirement from life as an undercover cop. He hadn’t minded. He’d known for some time he was pushing his luck. Besides, he liked the idea of setting up a little security business for himself. There was very little chance of being shot while baby-sitting the rich and the paranoid.

  Billy watched Julie’s shadow crossing back and forth behind the blinds of the bedroom window. Suddenly, she was moving quickly, as if now she had a purpose. Billy shrugged on a flowered shirt and started putting on his runners, never taking his eye off the cameras for more than a few seconds at a time. What are you doing, little sister?

  And then he had his answer. The garage door opened, spilling a square of light on the driveway. Billy stood up and grabbed for his wallet, watching as Julie’s Porsche backed out at thirty miles an hour, tires squealing. The lady was in a hurry. This was no midnight visit to the beach.

  Billy knew his Rent-a-Wreck would have a tough time keeping up with the Porsche, particularly with an emotional blonde driving the fancy car. He grabbed his cell phone and sprinted out of the apartment like a bat out of hell, with no time to obey Harris Roper’s number-one rule of little sister surveillance: Call me immediately if anything unusual happens.

  Billy could take the time to call Harris and risk losing his charge, or follow Julie and call Harris ASAP.

  Some decisions practically made themselves.

  For Julie, it had started out as an ordinary, yawn-stifling evening. Harris had thrown one of his exclusive parties, inviting the few acquaintances he deemed suitable to associate with his sister. Her brother had terribly high standards, and none of his friends were particularly outgoing. Still, they could all trace their ancestry back to the May-flower, and each and every one was on the Forbes 500 list of wealthiest people. As usual, the party had turned out to be very small and very subdued. The ladies congregated on the sofa, keeping their legs crossed and their hands folded modestly in their laps. The gentlemen were gathered at the mirror-backed bar, drinking little but gazing often at the splendid figures they made in their designer tuxedos. The one exception to this was Beauregard James Farquhar III, a Palm Beach trust-fund baby who sat next to Julie, stood next to Julie and walked beside Julie the entire evening. He was a long-time friend of the family, a man Harris deeply respected for his financial acumen, impeccable manners and doggedly patient character. He looked like a tennis pro, with tanned skin, a perfectly trimmed blond crew cut and a square face that always reminded Julie of a young Ted Kennedy. Beau had returned from a wine-and-spirits tour of Europe that very day, a good ten pounds heavier than when last she’d seen him. He’d proclaimed himself “frightfully happy” to see Julie; indeed, he had been frightfully happy to see her on each and every occasion since Julie could remember. He was completely devoted to her and had been since she was eighteen. She had managed to keep him at arm’s length until she returned home from college a few months earlier. Prior to his leaving for Europe, he’d been constantly underfoot, rather like a co-dependent housepet. Julie knew it was only a matter of time before Beau asked her to marry him. Her twenty-third birthday was hanging on the horizon like a dreadful storm cloud. Beau had hinted that this year her special day would be truly a monumental occasion. He had also asked her ring size. Julie had suffered from a nasty case of hives ever since.

  Although it was not yet 10:00 p.m., Julie was wrestling with an overriding urge to take a nap in the middle of Harris’s party. The pianist her brother had hired for the evening was like a musical sandman, playing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” ever so softly. She sat on the sofa next to Beau and tried to appear interested in his detailed description of a smooth yet complex little cabernet he’d discovered in Italy. Unfortunately, Beau knew his wines, and could go on forever rhapsodizing about the subtle integration of aromatics and tannins. Julie had fallen asleep twice, her lolling head connecting painfully with the carved sofaback. Finally she’d pleaded a headache and politely excused herself from the festivities.

  The urge to sleep left her the moment she walked into the small guesthouse she called home. Away from Beau, the pianist and all talk of financial dealings, she was suddenly wide-awake and positively smoking with restlessness. She decided to take her Porsche out for a spin before bed. She didn’t bother changing from her evening dress, although she did lose the panty hose and exchange her high heels for a comfortable pair of high-top sneakers. She looked utterly ridiculous but felt more comfortable than she had all evening. Besides, no one would see her. More than likely, Harris wouldn’t even know she had left the grounds.

  She drove mindlessly, enjoying the cool air on her flushed cheeks and pondering the strange culture of the well-bred and confused. She’d mingled with Palm Beach’s finest families sporadically throughout her life, yet she always felt like a stranger in their midst. Six months earlier, she had graduated from a private women’s college, and now poor Harris didn’t know what to do with her. The two jobs she’d had since then had lasted four weeks and four days, respectively. First, she’d given in to Harris and accepted a job on the board of Roper Industries, doing what seemed to her absolutely nothing for an obscene amount of money. She had traveled to work with Harris, had lunch with Harris and traveled home with Harris. By week four she was bored to tears and told Harris she thought her destiny lay elsewhere. On her own, she had found a job as a personal shopper at a terribly chic oceanside boutique. It wasn’t something she wanted to make a career of, but she thought it might keep her occupied while she tried to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. Unfortunately, the self-absorbed clientele, set hours and lack of challenge was worse than working at Roper Industries. She was “voluntarily unemployed” after only four days. Harris was becoming more and more concerned about her future, and he made no secret of that fact. He was a dear soul, but a chronic, intense, agonizing worrier. Julie had been seven years old and Harris only twenty-one when their parents had been killed in a sailing accident. Julie thought of them often, remembering sparkling, beautiful people full of love, laughter and spontaneity. She had no idea how two such oddball personalities as Harris and herself had emerged from the family gene pool. Harris had done his best for her through the past sixteen years, but his responsibilities had been terribly heavy for one so young. He obsessed over her welfare as he obsessed over the management of the family fortune. Julie hadn’t realized just how much it had all worn on him until she’d returned from college. Suddenly he looked far older than his thirty-seven years, with shadow-rimmed blue eyes, pale skin and shoulders that hinted at weariness. Julie had tried to make him understand she wasn’t his responsibility any longer, but Harris continued to worry himself to death when it came to her safety and security. The Roper mansion might have some forty-odd rooms, but Julie was plagued with overwhelming claustrophobia. Harris was here, there and everywhere, forever anxious and apprehensive. It had taken Julie months to talk him into allowing her to move from the main house to the guesthouse. Two weeks earlier he had positively
stunned her by finally giving his permission. This had given her hope that someday she would be able to actually move off the grounds…until Beau had made it clear it was only a matter of days until he popped the big question. Julie had listened with barely disguised horror, visualizing a helium balloon going boom.

  Seeking advice on the best way to let Beau down, she’d approached Harris on the subject. His reaction had been uncharacteristically vehement. Although he didn’t go so far as to actually raise his voice, he demanded to know how long Julie was going to skim the surface of life like a paranoid butterfly, never committing to anything or anyone. She couldn’t do any better than Beau, and he had certainly proven himself to be truly devoted. She had to dedicate herself to something someday. Why not now? Why not a fine, decent fellow like Beau?

  Why not indeed? Julie thought. Beau certainly wasn’t the man she dreamed of, but the faceless fantasy she had visualized probably didn’t exist. Each night in her dreams her imagination went for a walk and came back with a mysterious, thrilling superhero who inspired a great deal more than respect. Logically, however, she knew Beau Farquhar would never mistreat her, and he’d proven long ago he was hopelessly devoted. The man was steady, persistent, kind, persistent, good-natured and persistent. He was also persistent. Why not indeed? Poor Harris had worried himself sick over her welfare too long as it was. She wasn’t particularly interested in getting married nor was she particularly determined to stay single. Quite honestly, she wasn’t particularly focused on anything. The death of her parents at such an impressionable age had left Julie emotionally scarred, wary of attachments which could result in vulnerability. Harris had been the only constant in her world. She loved her brother deeply and would do almost anything to repay him for all the sacrifices he had made on her behalf. She had been his responsibility for far too long.