Beauty and the Bodyguard by Lovelace Merline

Author:Lovelace, Merline [Lovelace, Merline]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1996-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

She didn’t get either her run or her first taste of the mysterious dish.

She and Rafe had just begun their warm-up exercises the next morning when the phone rang. Allie froze with her left cheek halfway down to her right calf. Before she could even unbend, Rafe had moved into the bedroom. Holding the extension in his hand, he signaled her to answer the phone in the sitting room.

Allie swallowed and picked up the receiver at the same instant Rafe did his. Before she had it halfway to her ear, Dom’s voice leaped out at her.

“Have you seen this sunrise? It’s unbelievable. I want you outside in twenty minutes.”

“Dom, I’m not dressed!”

“I don’t need you dressed. Wear a goddamn sheet if you want. No, put on something black. I don’t care what. I just want your eyes. Move it, Allie.”

She winced as he slammed the receiver down. Replacing hers with a bit more care, she gave Rafe a small, lopsided smile.

“You’d better go grab a cup of coffee and some of those chila-whatevers while you can. If I’m not mistaken, all hell’s going to break loose around here in about ten minutes.”

Sure enough, Xola and Stephanie and the rest of the prep crew descended on the casita within moments. Like Allie, they were in varying states of undress. Unlike Allie, they weren’t happy about turning out to enjoy a spectacular New Mexico dawn. In a flurry of brushes and moisturizer pads and scathing remarks about photographers who demanded the impossible, they went to work.

Twenty minutes later, Rafe propped a shoulder against an archway, sipped from a steaming cup of coffee and watched Avendez position Allie. Wrapped in a black cloak Xola had miraculously procured from some unspecified source, she stood with her face to the dark mountain peaks in the west. Behind her, blazing color pinwheeled across the eastern sky. It was the kind of sunrise only New Mexico could produce.

The swirling, brilliant hues had to do with the altitude, Rafe had learned. The lowest point in New Mexico was over a thousand feet higher than the loftiest peak in the Ozarks. At this height, the air was so thin, so lacking in oxygen and carbon dioxide, that it offered little to diffuse or defract the light. Instead of glowing softly, streetlights became pinpoints of brilliance in the night. White buildings set against the dark green backdrop of ponderosa pines could be seen for thirty or more miles away. Sunrises and sunsets became awesome displays of reds and purples and golds, with slashes of turquoise thrown in.

Reluctantly Rafe conceded that the agony this thin air caused him during his early-morning runs with Allie might be a small price to pay for something that could only be classified as one of the wonders of the natural world. The question yet to be answered in his mind, however, was why Avendez had been up so early to view this particular display.

If he was up at five, had he also been up at two, when Allie’s call came in?

It was a definite possibility.

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