frowned at her, as if he had no idea what she might be referring to. “Business, Veronica.”
Whatever. She hoped her “date” didn’t expect a good-night kiss. “Listen, I understand your warning, but I can’t cancel my tour. The record label already took a chance on me, taking me from an indie band to a regular on the pop charts. I need this tour to keep my momentum. Frankly, even if I wanted to cancel, I couldn’t. I’d lose all my deposits and end up owing my firstborn child to the record label.”
His face twitched. Oh, great choice of words, Veronica. She set her drink on the table. Might as well go for broke, since…she was. “The fact is, I need…I need help.”
His right eyebrow went up.
“I’m a little in the red right now.”
He folded his arms across his chest, and oh, yes, he had her right where he wanted her.
“I lost a lot with the stock market crash, and then, my accountant made some tax mistakes, and I ended up paying back taxes and penalties—”
“Are you still using your Harvard friend for your accounting?”
“—and Tommy D redid the condo for a photo shoot, and it went way over budget—”
“Did I mention I think he has stretched your image a little far? I don’t know why you insist on using your college friends to help your…career, or whatever you’re calling your flamboyant—”
“Father, please, Tommy D is a great manager, and this is what it takes to stand out.”
“Tommy D’Amico recognized ‘sucker’ written all over you the second he saw you serving at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. I think you need to look a little closer at why your money seems to be vanishing.”
“I’m not a fool for wanting to help people, Father.”
“But you’ve become a fool doing it.”
She stared at her juice, suddenly seeing again her so-called rescuer’s disgust.
Her father sighed, turned back toward the window. “So, you need money.”
She fought for her voice. “I’m good for it—you know that. I just…well, we put a lot into this tour already and I can’t back out. I was hoping…”
She winced. Okay, really, she felt sixteen, and begging for the car keys. How did she ever talk herself into believing this was a good idea?
But to her surprise, he began to nod, a gleam in his eye, something she’d seen too many times when he knew he had her cornered. Oh, no… “I think we can work something out.”
“Really?” She hated how she nearly lunged at his words.
He got up from the desk and walked over to the door. “I predicted that you would be averse to my suggestion to cancel, so I was prepared with a counteroffer. Which, I think, might be a win for both of us. Veronica, you can go to Europe on my dime, on one condition.”
Her stomach tightened with a sick feeling. “What?”
He opened the door. “Come in, please.” Then he backed away, wearing a smile that she’d seen on his campaign posters. “I’d like you to meet your new bodyguard.”
Her father’s henchman stepped up to the door, six-foot-plus of solid muscle, now dressed in a pedestrian suit, his dark, curly hair combed and tidy, his familiar, unforgiving eyes on her, looking serious, powerful and made of stone.
She let a groan escape. “Oh, no.” See? Solid proof that, cosmically, she would never get on God’s good side.
“Brody Wickham,” he said, holding out his hand. He smiled, looking nothing like the scowler she’d met in the dark alley outside the D.C. club. Then—and frankly, she should have expected his sarcasm—he asked, “Have we met?”
TWO
“Have we met?” Her words, repeated back to him, came out almost like a whisper, her big hazel-green eyes gulping him in as she slipped her hand in his. It took him a second—as her fingers closed around his hand—to realize that she was mocking him. “Very funny,” she said without a smile.
He stared at the girl, short brown hair in tight ringlets around her head, a slim black dress, a cultured strand of pearls at her neck, and tried to place her.
“Uh…I’m serious. You father said we’d met, but I don’t remember…” He slipped his hand from hers, casting a look at Senator Wagner. “Sir?”
Senator Wagner embodied everything Brody’s father had described—serious, a Harvard lawyer, a three-term senator with a hearty knowledge of foreign policy. He exuded the same aura of power that Brody once had while commanding his squad. Only now, a strange expression played on the senator’s face.
“You don’t recognize the woman you rescued the other night, Mr. Wickham?”
Brody turned back to his newest client, peering at her even as she stepped back from him. And then, he saw it. The slight hesitation, coupled with the hint of frown not unlike the one the crazy pink-haired rock star displayed right before she’d left her handprint on his cheek.
“Vonya? Seriously?” Oh, no.
“You’re kidding me, right?” She looked first at Brody, then her father, and he couldn’t figure out whom she might be talking to. “You want him to be my bodyguard?”
“That’s right. You two already know each other, and I did a background check. Mr. Wickham here works for an international security firm out of Prague. He’s a former Green Beret, and he’s got the experience I’m looking for—”
“You’re looking for? What about me? Do I have any say in this?” She stared back at Brody but his instincts told him to just keep his mouth shut. Not that she would let him speak. “Vonya” had begun to materialize via the sarcastic, exasperated tone. “You’re holding me hostage. No wait—this is blackmail.” But as she turned to her father, Vonya morphed back into this strange, almost breakable woman with pleading eyes. “Listen, I will have a bodyguard. But I want to pick him—especially if he’s going to shadow all my concerts.”
“Not just during your concerts, Veronica, but every moment, 24/7. I’m not letting General Mubar—or even last year’s crazy stalker, if we really have to go there—find you in the halls of the hostels you and your crew insisted on staying in last time.”
“Nonprofit housing, Father, and everything I do to help them goes to help the homeless in Europe. It was part of the tour hype, and where I got my first fans. I can’t desert them. I’m just as safe there as I would be in a Hyatt. What is he going to do? Sit outside my door as I sleep?”
“If I have to,” Brody said. But to start out, he’d just affix a security system onto her accommodations, and if anyone went in or out, he’d know. A room next door, or across the hall, would be just fine.
And there would be no youth hostels on this pleasure cruise. At least he and the senator agreed on that much.
Even if, right now, everything inside him screamed to turn and run from this room, this mansion, and back to his parents’ humble ranch home on the verge of being owned by the bank.
And it happened to be precisely that thought—his parents, homeless, after feeding nine children and working their fingers to the bone—that kept him rooted to the floor.
It was bad enough that Derek planned on joining the military rather than pursuing his basketball scholarship. Who turned down a partial ride to Duke?
Their conversation while they’d been playing a little one-on-one in the driveway—the one that ended with him nearly shouting at his brother—rushed back to him. “Over my dead body.” He hadn’t been sure where his anger came from, but with everything inside him, and more, he knew his brother wasn’t giving up Duke