“You aren’t afraid I’ll sneak out the window?”
“We’re on the tenth floor. If you want to go out the window, I say more power to you.”
She shot me a dirty look just as the door opened and the nurse walked in.
“I need to remove your IV,” she said, all business as she tugged on a pair of rubber gloves. “If you’ll just lie back and try to relax.”
A flash of fear crossed Kate’s face as she did as she was told, laying back against the pillow again and turning her face to the window. I leaned against the wall and watched as the nurse easily and professionally slid the long needle out of the back of Kate’s hand and covered the wound with a Band-Aid.
“Done,” she said.
Kate kept her face averted, holding her hand against her chest as the nurse disposed of the needle and removed her gloves. She glanced at me, a flirty smile slipping over her thin lips. I nodded, but then my attention moved back to Kate.
“Still not good with blood?” I asked after I heard the door close.
Kate stiffened. “Don’t act like you know anything about me.”
“Then I’m supposed to forget I haven’t known you since I was seven?”
“You might have known me once upon a time, but you don’t know me anymore.”
She threw her legs over the side of the bed, still cradling her hand, and stood. She hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure where she was going next.
“I can ask Veronica to come help you,” I offered.
That earned me another hard glare. “I’d rather have you help me than her.”
“She’s…interesting.”
“She must be really good in bed since that’s the only reason I can imagine why Daddy would marry a woman like her.”
“How long have they been married?”
“Six months. And I’ll be surprised if it lasts another six.”
I had to agree with her. I’d only known her a few minutes, but the way Daniel looked at Veronica didn’t seem to bode well for a long marriage.
Kate crossed to the tall, plastic wardrobe stuck in a corner of the room and pulled out her clothes, a pencil skirt and simple, white blouse. She glanced back at me, a little bit of a blush on her cheeks.
“Stay there.”
“That’s my job.”
She rolled her eyes, then disappeared into the bathroom.
I pulled out my cell phone and called the head of the prep team, Carson, to check on their progress at her house. He assured me they were finished and on their way out. The cameras were up and working, routed to David’s computers back at the compound. David had a program that monitored the cameras and motion detectors set up by Carson’s team. If anything were to happen at the house, David’s program would alert me instantly and set off an alarm to which David could respond. It was a system that had saved more than a few of my targets since it was implemented a year ago. David was constantly tweaking it, so it was more and more efficient each time we used it.
Thank God for computer nerds.
She came out of the bathroom a minute later, so beautiful that I couldn’t take my eyes off of her for a moment. She’d always been beautiful. Tall and slender, with curves that were subtle, yet incredibly feminine; she was the object of so many teenage dreams that Joshua and I used to joke about the gun his father should have bought. But again, most of those boys were burned pretty significantly by Kate herself whenever they tried to get too close. Yet, there was something different about her now—something that had been missing back when we were teens—that called to something deep inside of me that I’d thought I’d successfully destroyed when I left town.
“Stop staring at me,” she said, as she gathered the rest of her stuff.
“Just watching over my target.”
“Do you stare at all your female clients that way?”
“Sometimes.”
The blush I’d noticed earlier was more profound now. She glanced at me and quickly looked away as she drew her bottom lip between her teeth. I’d forgotten about that, about how she chewed her lip when there was something, or someone, she was thinking about having for herself.
Interesting.
“Ash said that they were putting cameras in my house.”
“They did.”
“And that you’d have to stay in my house with me until this is over.”
“Yes.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to play hostess to you. My fridge is empty, and I don’t even know if there are sheets that fit the bed in my spare bedroom.”
“I can take care of those things.”
“Can you?”
“I’ve done this a few times before, Kate.”
She nodded as she stood and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’m sure you have. But this is the first time I’ve had a bodyguard following me around, so excuse me if I’m not quite sure how it works.”
“Just think of me as an old friend come for a visit.”