Sixteen
A LOT TO process there.
After the brothers stomped off in opposite directions, and Doc helped Connie back to her bed to rest, I found myself sitting in the hammock chair under the oak tree, realizing one very simple thing.
I had to quit.
It wasn’t Connie’s health troubles. I’d dealt with sick people before. And it wasn’t the mysterious beef between the brothers. All families had secrets.
It was Jack.
I’d hoped that being around him in real life would be disappointing—that without a stylist and a writer to feed him his lines, he’d lose his appeal. As much as I didn’t want to let the fantasy go, I also knew it was the only way to do this assignment right.
I’d been counting on the reality being worse than the fantasy.
But the reality … was better.
This was the problem. As mesmerizing as the celluloid version of Jack was, the real guy—the guy who left his clothes on the floor, and made fun of my nightgown, and gave me piggyback rides, and was terrified of bridges—this guy was better.
And whether it was because of those smiley eyes of his, or because I had none of my usual relentless busyness to keep me distracted, or because I’d already let myself swoon over him when I had no idea I’d ever meet him in real life—it didn’t matter.
The fact was, none of my usual defenses worked.
When he looked at me like he was in love, my insides melted. Everything I read for pretend on his face … I was feeling for real.
He was faking all those feelings—but I was feeling them. Genuinely.
And no matter what your skill level is, or how much you might care about your professional reputation, or what your boss has ordered you to do, or what other rules you might be able to break and get away with it … you can’t—absolutely cannot—have a thing for your principal.
That’s just Executive Protection 101.
And if I had to confess it to Glenn, I would. He’d respect my decision to do the right thing and put the principal first.
Or, at least—I really, really hoped so.
QUITTING.
The end of the job. The end of my career, too, most likely. But there was no way around it.
Love makes you muddled. Love clouds your judgment. Love derails you with longing.
Or so they say.
That hadn’t happened to me with Robby … but—and this was only occurring to me now—maybe that hadn’t been love? Because whatever was going on with Jack Stapleton was far more destabilizing.
I didn’t understand it, but one thing was clear. It was complex enough to make things pretty simple.
I needed to get out of here.
I climbed out of the hammock swing, stood up, and started walking along the gravel road toward the surveillance house. I’d walk over, call Glenn, and quit. Easy. But I’d only made it halfway to the gate when I heard an unmistakable sound. The crack of a rifle firing.
I stopped in my tracks.
Turned.
Another shot.
It was coming from past the barn.
I took off sprinting that way, and vaulted the fence, and, as I did, I heard another shot.
What was going on? Who was shooting? Had the corgi-breeding stalker found us? Gone ballistic? Tracked Jack down in a random ravine in the middle of five hundred acres of nowhere? As I charged across the field, stumbling over anthills and thistle bushes, I made mental lists of possibilities for what I was about to find—and a whole set of contingency plans for how to handle each one.
Why, oh, why hadn’t Glenn authorized a firearm for me?
“You won’t need it,” he’d promised.
Too late now.
Whatever I’d find in that ravine, I’d just have to think fast and figure something out.
God willing.
But what I found there wasn’t a mad corgi breeder. Or a blood-soaked Jack Stapleton.
It was sweet, kindly, Doc Stapleton, resident patriarch. With a lever-action rifle. Shooting at bottles.
By the time I crested the ravine and saw him, I was close enough for him to hear me. He turned as I descended. I slowed from a sprint to a stop, and then bent over, hands on my knees, panting like crazy and waiting for my lungs to stop burning.
When I finally looked up, Doc was staring at me like he couldn’t fathom what I was doing there.
“I heard the shots,” I said, gasping. “I thought—” Then I shifted. “You scared me.”
Doc made a pffft noise and then said, “City slicker.”
Fine. We could go with that.
I stood up, still panting, and walked closer. Lined up on rocks against a bend in the ravine were glass bottles—maybe twenty. Green ones, brown ones, clear ones. Below the rocks, on the ground underneath, was a veritable lake of shattered glass.
“Gunshots,” Doc went on, as I took in the sight, “mean a whole different thing in the country.”
As far as he knew. But I nodded. “Target practice.”
Doc held out his gun to me. “Care to take a shot?”
I looked at it. The answer was no, of course. No, I wasn’t going to stand around shooting bottles when I was just on my way to quit my job. No, I wasn’t going to spend one more minute on this loony-bin ranch than I had to. Or blow my cover at the last minute by putting my skills on display.
No. Just, no.
And yet, I did need a minute to catch my breath.
And it might actually feel good to shoot something right now.
And that’s when Doc said, “You don’t have to hit anything,” in a tone like I was hesitating because I didn’t know how to shoot.
I was still resisting that little challenge when he added:
“This rifle’s a little tough for ladies to handle, anyway.”
I mean, Come on.
I could spare five minutes. Right?
I held my hands out for the rifle, and I let him hand it to me. Then I let him give me a lesson.
I didn’t lie to him, exactly. I just stayed pleasantly mute while he walked me through the most basic of basic introductions to the gun in my hands: “This is the stock,” he said, “and this is the barrel. This is the trigger. You pull this lever to reload between shots.” Then he pointed at the muzzle. “This is where the bullets come out. Be sure to point that at the ground until you’re ready to make some trouble.”
This is where the bullets come out? The urge to show him up rose in my body like water filling a glass.
“Take that little group over there,” Doc said, gesturing at row of old beer bottles. “If you can hit one, I’ll give you a quarter.”
Wow. There was something so inspiring about being so underestimated.
Right then I decided to do more than just hit the bottles. I was going to hit them with some style.
Fast and easy. Like a badass. And also: from the hip.
“Okay, little lady,” Doc said then. “Just try your best.”
My best?
Okay.
I flipped off the safety, stepped into a comfortable stance, pressed the rifle butt to my hip bone, and pulled the trigger with a BOOM!
The rifle had a hell of a kick, but the first bottle disappeared in a puff of sand.
But I didn’t even stop to enjoy it. As soon as I’d pulled the trigger, I was popping the lever out and back with a satisfying ka-chunk and then pulling the trigger again.
Another BOOM! And another bottle turned to dust.
Then another, then another, then another. BOOM—ka-chunk, BOOM—ka-chunk, BOOM! Right across the row, as the bottles exploded one after the other.
It was over almost as soon as it started.
Then I turned back to Doc with one final shift of the lever—ka-chunk. Nice and ladylike.
I flipped the safety, took the rifle off my hip, and said to Doc’s gaping face, “That was fun.”
I’d just revealed way too much about myself, and I should’ve been halfway back to Houston by now. But it was worth it.
That’s when I noticed something up the ravine.
It was Jack. Watching us. And from the admiring look behind those slightly crooked glasses, he’d seen the whole thing.
He gave me a little salute of respect.
And I gave him a little nod.
And now it was time to get the hell out.