Barefoot With a Bodyguard Read Online Free PDF Page A

burn in her belly. Always, always , a man in charge. When would she ever have control of her own life?
    Never if she gave up as easily as she had with Steven for all those years. Barely listening to her father, she straightened up, squared her shoulders, and renewed her fight.
    “No, Dad. No. This isn’t how it’s going to be. I’ll stay away from people. I’ll get room service and lock myself up. All I want to do is study. I don’t need a…a…” She glanced over her shoulder, but the sun’s reflection on the glass blinded her to the room inside. But she knew he was there. A big, hulking kind of scary-looking man who looked like he might eat her. And made her feel…tense.
    Wasn’t that why her throat was so damn dry? And her heart rate seemed to double when he sliced her with those piercing blue eyes.
    “Katherine, this is not up for discussion. You need protection.” Her father’s voice was tight and focused, his judge’s tone, which was not to be messed with.
    Not that she messed with him very often, but sometimes, especially since her divorce, she’d been fighting back. And she would now. She didn’t like this damn arrangement, or the fact that it was set up without her knowledge while she thought she was stealing some solitude and study time.
    “Protection provided by some troglodyte pretending to be my husband?” She hissed the last word, that despicable word that represented entrapment and misery and indentured servitude.
    “The honeymoon thing is a—”
    “Cover,” she said, hoping just the stupidity of that concept sank into the head of her generally very smart father.
    “Yes. You’re undercover, like a cop.”
    Nothing like a cop. More like a prisoner.
    “You have to trust the people who are professionals,” he continued. “And this is what they recommend.”
    “It’s ludicrous, Dad!”
    He was silent, and she could swear she heard him swallow. “I can’t lose you, too.”
    And there it was. Fifteen years of fear all rolled into five words she’d heard ten thousand times from him.
    “Please,” she said, purposely taking the fight out of her tone. “Please don’t play the guilt card. You promised me the day I divorced Steven that you wouldn’t ever do that again. You promised me I could control my own life from now on.”
    “I know, and I want to keep that promise, honey, I really do. But…” His voice was laced with a desperation that seemed way out of proportion to the situation.
    “But what?” she prodded.
    He sighed. “Kate, listen to me.” He went quiet for a moment, making her press the phone to her ear so she could do just that. “There was another note, left just outside my chambers.” His voice was an ominous whisper.
    “What did it say?”
    “I won’t tell you the exact words, but I made the right decision to get you far away from Boston.”
    Hadn’t she actually made the decision? The question tweaked, but Dad continued, “Honey, you have to trust me on this. Even I have beefed-up security now, at the courthouse and at home. But it’s you I’m worried about. We are dealing with someone who knows my most vulnerable spot.”
    She was his most vulnerable spot, a role Kate had alternately loved, hated, used, and refused her whole life. Well, since she was fifteen, and her mother had died. Her father’s determination to protect—or smother, depending on your point of view—the only person he had left had started that day and had yet to end. Oh, he’d taken a break during her marriage because he’d thought the sun rose and set on Steven, but ultimately even Dad had to see his son-in-law for the control freak he was.
    Even though he’d promised to let her have some breathing space, the divorce made Dad even more protective in some ways.
    He felt guilty, too, for pushing that marriage.
    “Did you turn the note over to the FBI like the others?”
    “Of course. And Special Agent in Charge Colton Lang is handling it personally. And I’m using his wife’s