scrubbed a hand over his face and grimaced. “With so much happening, I hadn’t thought about that.” He stared at Shelby. “Brace yourself.”
Shelby’s belly tightened. So much was changing around her, she was having a hard time grasping it all.
Sam touched her arm reassuringly. “The fact our mother had an illicit love affair before marrying our father will have the tabloids screaming for all the details. You’ll be a celebrity by association.”
“Sam Winston, don’t you have something better to do than scare this poor child?” Maddie waved her hands toward the big Winston man as if she was shooing a fly. She took Shelby’s hand and tugged her toward the stairs. “Come with me. I’ll show you two to your rooms.”
Shelby was swept away by the woman and herded up the stairs, her grandfather following and Daniel bringing up the rear.
Everything was happening too fast. From a nameless college student to the granddaughter of the former vice president of the United States all in the span of a day. Or rather, in the span of the two weeks she’d been held prisoner.
Shelby shivered, wishing she could go back to being the faceless college student who had nothing more to worry about than the next exam or the next paper due.
Daniel followed Shelby up the stairs. The consummate professional, he shouldn’t have been focusing on the sway of her hips as she took one step at a time. In the tailored slacks and cashmere short-sleeved sweater, she looked more like one of the Winstons than the soot-covered waif he’d found passed out on the kitchen floor of a burning house.
Even in the new clothes, she still conveyed a sense of vulnerability, no matter how fiercely she valued her independence. The kidnapping had to have taken its toll on her and made her aware of just how helpless one woman could be against two strong men. Hell, a grown man would be equally helpless in the same circumstances. Especially if he wasn’t expecting an attack.
His back stung where shards of metal and glass had impaled him, but he refused to tend to himself until he was certain Shelby was secure. After he’d taken a bullet for Kate Winston, he knew the threats to the Winstons were real and not only in the outside world, but behind their supposedly secure gates.
Shrugging his shoulders, he winced and continued up the stairs, concentrating on Shelby’s sweet derriere. Each of her movements took his mind off the pain in his back and his bum knee.
At the first opportunity, he’d seek out Mrs. Winston and ask her to remove him from the responsibility of watching out for Shelby. She was young, opinionated and didn’t want the added aggravation of someone following her around. He couldn’t blame her. He’d grown up in a large family and he valued his privacy. But there was inconvenience and there was danger. She needed to understand the difference.
Shelby had to figure out really quickly which was more important. But Daniel didn’t want to be the man to play babysitter to the college coed. Let someone else be.
Still, she was pretty, slim, athletic, and when she smiled, as she had when he’d pulled her from the fire, it did funny things to his insides. Apparently, she’d gone through hell being kept in the dark for two weeks, not knowing why she’d been targeted, who was keeping her, or if they’d eventually kill her. Poor kid.
She reached up to push the hair back from her forehead, the motion emphasizing her narrow waist, the swell of her hips and the sexy way she moved. His groin tightened and he had to retract his previous thought. She wasn’t a kid. At twenty-three, she was six years younger than he was. He told himself that she might as well be a baby. While he performed the role of her bodyguard, he had to get his mind and his gaze off those hips. The woman was his job, not a conquest.
Maddie climbed the steps as quickly and with as much agility as a woman half her age.
Tired and still recuperating from her ordeal in the basement, Shelby wasn’t going to complain about the stairs. She held on to the railing and climbed, wishing she could find a nice soft bed to fall into.
“You’ll have the blue guest room,” Maddie was saying. “On account of it’s the most feminine of the rooms. Your grandfather will be staying in the brown room.” She stopped and threw open the door to a room decorated in creams and browns. The bed was made from intricately carved burled wood. The mattress was covered with a cream duvet and pillows in various shades from cream to a rich, dark chocolate. In one corner stood a deep brown leather wing-back chair and a burled wood table with a wrought iron and stained glass reading lamp. Wide windows gave them a view out of the back of the house.
Directly below was a swimming pool, the water rippling in the breeze, sun sparkling off its surface.
Shelby blinked her eyes at the intensity of the sunlight. After days spent in complete darkness, it would take time before she got used to light again.
Beyond the pool lay an expansive garden and neatly trimmed grass. Trees shaded the edges of the lawn and made Shelby long to walk among them. She had to stop herself from exclaiming over the beauty of the room, the house and the surrounding grounds. O’Hara’s Bar and Grill on the Outer Banks was nothing to compare with the elegance and luxury of the Winston Estate.
Her grandfather stood beside her, his lips pressed into a thin line, the dark circles beneath his eyes more pronounced.
Maddie chattered on, “There’s a private bathroom through this door and it’s fully equipped with towels and toiletries. If you should need anything that isn’t provided, let me know.” She faced Patrick, her smile fading. “Is something wrong?”
Patrick forced a smile. “Nothing at all. This will be fine.”
Shelby could tell by the tightness of his jaw that everything was not fine. She could bet what was going through his mind. He was probably comparing their home over the bar to the Winston Estate and coming up short. She slipped her arm around him and squeezed. “Think of it as a fancy hotel. We won’t be here long,” she whispered.
He nodded and squared his shoulders. “The main thing is to keep you safe. Come on, let’s see your digs.” He winked and stepped out of the beautiful room.
Maddie crossed the hallway and opened another room. “This is the blue room where you will be staying, Miss O’Hara.” She led the way in and crossed to another door. “You have your own walk-in closet and bathroom. Mrs. Winston is having additional clothing delivered this afternoon. If there’s anything in particular you’d like her to include, just let me or Debra know and we’ll add it to the order.”
Shelby raised her hand. “Wait. What’s this about clothes?” She shook her head. “I don’t need clothes. I have my own.”
“Mrs. Winston wanted you to have anything you might need brought here.”
Shelby glanced around at the soft blue-gray painted walls, the gauzy white curtains and the beautiful driftwood-style white headboard. The room was too beautiful. Too pristine. All light and clean. Almost sterile. Had she traded a dark hell of a prison in a basement for a lighter, beautiful cage so foreign to everything she’d known and grown up with? “I’d rather have my own clothing. Please thank Mrs. Winston. But as soon as I can, I’ll go get my own.”
Maddie smiled and nodded. “I completely understand. I’ll have someone sent out to collect whatever you want from your home.”
Shelby bit down on her tongue, wanting to tell the woman what she thought of someone else digging through her drawers in her tiny bedroom above the bar. But to do so would be attacking an older woman with an open, honest, welcoming face who was only doing what she was ordered to do.
Shelby squeezed out a smile. “Thank you, Maddie. If you don’t mind,