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PART III

MARK

This was not what he was hired for.

That intrusive thought was easily swept away when he felt her bite the flesh of his lower lip.

It was a quick spark of pain and then a flood of hot desire rushed through every artery in his body.

Mark felt her lean into his body, her head tipping back so he could claim more of her mouth.

And that's where he stopped it.

He drew back and earned the ire of his heart and other harder, painful parts.

Her mouth was pursed at first as if she was still searching for his kiss.

When her eyes opened, and her mouth went slack, he saw the confusion and disappointment in her gaze.

"Why?"

She didn’t elucidate beyond that word.

Why did you kiss me?

Why did you stop?

He knew he could ask, but he didn't think he'd get an answer and honestly... he didn't deserve one.

"I'm here, Heather." He shook his head when she started to speak. He knew that she was going to fight him on that. "Fine. I won’t call you Heather, but don’t ask me to call you Nix. To call you nothing, because I remember a time when you were everything to me. I think you might still be everything to me in the future. No matter what, I'm here to keep you safe."

For one moment. One glorious moment. He thought that he’d broken through her reticence. He was sure that he’d managed to make a crack in her walls. If nothing else, that kiss had to show her that they both remembered what kind of passion they’d had in those days.

She spoke and that hope inside of him took a direct hit.

"Then find someone else to take over. I won't work with you."

She turned on her heel and walked away. Her hair had always ended at her shoulders, but it was now longer, almost to the soft swell of her beautiful backside. It swished back and forth as she left the room and disappeared into another part of the house.

Almost as if they were being watched, his phone rang.

He answered the call and wasn't all that surprised to hear Alex's voice in his ear. "Settling in?"

The wry tone of voice and the way he cleared his throat said that they were indeed being observed.

"There's a bit of a snafu."

"Oh?" Again, that knowing tone of voice. "Do tell?"

"Did you know that Heather... Nix and I have a shared past?"

"Does it make a difference?"

Mark ignored the question. It made no sense to answer it. If he didn't know he wouldn't have asked his first question the way he did.

"Do you have any information on what happened to her when she disappeared?"

The silence on the other end of the call didn't help. It also told him that Alex was holding back.

Normally Mark wouldn't really care.

Normally he didn't have a personal connection to his target.

But what he had with Heather, damn it, that wasn't just personal, it was earth shattering.

It had blown his life apart, his heart as well.

He'd feared the worst for years and years and now, she was here with him, but she obviously didn't feel the same as he did.

She didn't walk into his arms.

She didn't cuddle against him like she used to.

She was holding back. Emotionally.

Her passion flared easily, but passion could also be anger. Pain.

She didn’t think she was his any longer and she had a life that he wasn't a part of.

"I can't give you the information, Ares."

There it was again. That name. Was Alex drawing a line in the sand by reminding him of his military past. "Can't? Or won't?"

Alex's tone didn't leave room for argument. "You want to know what happened? Ask her yourself. It's her secret to share. Remember that."

"You need to connect with Nix again. When that happens, she'll let you lead her. Until then, we could have cameras covering her every second of the day and it wouldn't do any good if she argues with you or takes off in the wrong direction at the wrong time."

"You knew all of this coming into the assignment, Alex. I didn't."

"And now that you know, I hope you'll understand my reasoning."

"I'm too angry to understand." He bit out the words before he felt his heartbeat slow and soften a bit. "Still, I'm glad to know that she's alive.

"For too long, I thought... I meant that I believed she was lost to me."

"Well, if you don't keep her safe, she will be."

The phone call cut out and Mark squeezed it until he heard the plastic begin to crack.

Human?

Yes.

Professional?

Fuck no.

He knew enough not to press her right then. He had to give her some time to calm down. He just didn't know what to do with himself until then.

Mark turned his head and looked around the room.

His gaze landed on his bags, and he sighed. Without a word, he picked them up and headed down the hall, trying to retrace her steps.

He passed two doors before he heard the soft tread of feet across wooden flooring.

He tilted his head toward the door to listen in and when her footsteps went silent again, he retreated back to the door before that one and gave the knob a twist.

It swung open a moment later and he stepped inside.

The furniture reminded him of some old Sit Com that his grandmother used to watch. Something in black and white that changed to color over time.

It was almost as if Dick Van Dyke would step in the room and try out a new tv channel or pick up the paper to read before he sat in his chair to peruse the volumes.

One of the walls featured a wood furnace and he hoped he wouldn't have to use it.

He set his bag down at the foot of the bed and smiled at the wide surface it presented.

California King. As the name suggested, it was wide and laid back.

It was enough that he could sleep on a different section every night for a few days before he ran out of clean sheets to lay on.

A door closed on the other side of the wall, and he felt his back teeth grind against each other.

The walls were pretty thin if he could hear her closing doors.

Thin enough that he'd have to worry that she might hear him toss and turn.

He decided to give her time to settle down and get used to the idea of having him in her space. He also needed the time as well. Time to clear his head and batten down his heart.

That was the part of him most likely to be lost if he wasn’t careful.

So he put away his clothes and he used the gun safe in the closet of his room to store anything he didn’t want to carry around. After that, he took a quick, icy shower and changed clothes in time for her next rehearsal period.

He made sure that his main side arm was secured in his holster and with the progressive chill in the air, he could easily wear a suit coat to hide the piece from her.

Protection should be discreet until it is needed and then it needs to be decisive. Rarely do you get a second chance to save a life.

He found her standing in one of the archways of the central living space.

Leaning against the aged, stained wood, she looked smaller than he remembered, even as a teen.

He wasn’t sure if she knew how much distance she put between herself and the instrument on the table. Maybe he’d put her off her game, but standing more than an arm’s length away from an instrument you were scheduled to play seemed… strange.

She lifted her head and almost met his eyes. “So, you don’t work for Bart full time.”

He shook his head. “I’m part of Big Sky Bodyguards. We’re based in Montana and we’re a division of the Brotherhood Protectors.”

He saw recognition in her gaze.

“That’s probably how Bart found you. Sadie Patterson has come to a number of my concerts. She’s always invited me to come and vacation at her ranch, but the idea of being around so many bodyguards,” she turned her head away slightly, “it makes me nervous.”

“Is this because…” He let out a breath and struggled to ask her the question he wanted the most answers to. “Because of that night?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Heather-”

“Don’t!” She took a step away from him and he found himself with the table nearly between them. “Don’t push me.”

“I’m not trying to push you.” He felt a twitch in his cheek. The answer was true in some ways but a lie in others. He wanted to know.

No, he needed to know what had driven them apart at the end of that summer. Until he knew that, he really didn’t have a hope of reconnecting with her. Alex had told him to connect, but there was a fine line between connecting and seducing when it came to him and Heather.

They’d loved each other at one point.

He knew he still loved her, but until that very day, he’d been wondering if he was in love with a ghost.

Knowing she was alive hadn’t made it better.

She was still a ghost standing in the same room with him.

"How long have you worked as a bodyguard?"

"Just the last few months. Most of which we've had in training. We're all former military and some of us were a bit rough around the edges. Some of us needed polish."

"Not you though."

Her voice almost made him smile.

"There were a few edges that I needed ground down. I've spent a lot of time in the military. Deployments to a number of places you might know."

Her eyes softened a little. "And what about the ones I wouldn't know?"

Mark felt a hole open up in his belly and the darkness gnawed at what was left. "I wouldn't want you to know anything about those places. You don't need the nightmares."

"Oh..."

He knew that tone of voice.

He heard the soft hiccup of sound that had always plucked at his heart.

"I guess so. Or maybe," she met his gaze for a heartbeat before she looked away, “I have my own nightmares.”

The words were simple.

The echo of pain he heard in her tone humbled him.

“I’ve been struggling to play,” she told him as she moved to the side of the table and traced her fingers along the wooden part of her bow. “I’ve tried to play all of my normal pieces, but none of them call to me now. When I put the bow on the strings, they all sound thin… lifeless.”

“What about pieces that you don’t normally play?”

He saw the lift of her eyebrows and felt some of the tension in her shoulders relax.

“I don’t usually waste my time practicing something I’m not going to play. There are only so many hours in the day.”

He heard her dismiss his question, but there was a familiar tension building in the room. A tension that he recognized all too well. The air between them, around them, was like a battery, filling with energy, but it needed a spark.

The strike of metal against flint.

“Sometimes you need to step outside of expectations,” he offered the idea. “What if you just play something that’s not a piece of written music.”

He saw her stand a little straighter. Saw the line of her brows pitch a little higher towards her nose, a sure sign that her mind was working on an answer to her problem.

“You want me to compose something?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I remember you telling me that your favorite kind of day in New York City was a rainy day. You told me that the sound of the rain pelting against the windows of your bedroom was the most soothing sound in the world.”

She looked at him and he could see that she had thoughts whirling around in her head. He’d ask her about them later, but this wasn’t about thoughts.

This was about action.

He was trying to get her out of her head and into the music.

“Can you play the rain for me?”

She pulled back a little. Moving her hands away from the instrument. “You want me to play the rain ?”

“I want to hear what it sounds like in your head. I want to hear your memory of rain.”

There was a moment when he watched her fight her own instincts.

Given her words, he wondered if she’d been taught to play by someone who was strict, focusing on playing notes laid out on paper.

But Mark knew how creative she was inside.

The nights that they’d laid out under the stars, making up stories about the stars over their heads, had been mostly her creativity. He’d just followed her lead.

This was a whole new talent that she’d developed and while she was hesitant to try something new, he had a feeling that there was something inside of her waiting to be let out.

Heather drew her fingers along the strings like she was petting the instrument. Soothing it.

She was so beautiful when they were younger.

She was even more so now.

Beautiful, but there was a shadow behind that beauty, a sadness that made her beauty shine brighter because of the darkness.

Heather didn’t say anything, but he felt like he heard something whispering from the strings as her fingertips moved over them.

Mark saw the chair behind her, and the music stand set in front of it, but she stayed beside the table.

Her hand wrapped around the long neck of the violin, lifting it from its case until she fit the curved base of it under her chin.

The tiny adjustments she made, curving her fingers to reach for the strings, the way she lifted the bow in her hand and deftly laid it across the strings felt like a dance to him. The graceful rhythm of her movements was nearly hypnotizing.

When she placed the bow against the strings, he saw the faintest cloud of rosin lift from the strike. Her gaze was fixed on a point near the floor, but he didn’t think she was actually looking at something.

Her far away gaze reminded him of those summer nights when they’d stared up at the night sky speckled with light and they both drifted off into their thoughts.

He heard the soft notes glancing off of the strings and he sat down on the arm of a nearby couch.

Closing his eyes he thought he could hear raindrops against a roof, or a window.

When the volume rose, the quick notes that she’d been playing changed into a more complex rhythm. It sounded like there was a wind tossing the rain around, flying against a windowpane.

The storm started to build, and he heard the gaps in the rainfall. The slashing blows of a building storm against the walls and roof.

He sank down onto the couch and laid his hands on the upholstered cushion as he listened to the raw energy that danced off of the strings as she moved the bow to the song in her head.

Mark shook his head and stared at her gorgeous profile and the gentle curves of her body. Heather had always been beautiful to him, but there was a maturity and a pain in her movements now that called to his own dark memories and brought them rising to the surface.

He saw her gaze lift to his, her teeth biting into her lower lip.

That was when he realized that she’d stopped playing.

Her bow laid against her leg, but she still had her chin on the curved bottom of the violin.

She was looking at him, waiting for his reaction.

He’d never been one for opera or choral music, but he’d always had an appreciation for instrumental music from any era. Mark had been to his share of orchestral and symphonic performances and enjoyed them all.

But this impromptu performance.

This improvisation of sound laid bare her skill and talent.

“It was weird, right?”

He couldn’t put the words together to tell her that she was wrong. It felt like it was stuck in his head. When he didn’t answer her, she turned around and set her bow on the table, and lowered her head until he couldn’t see her face.