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coiled in her chest unwound Like a spring, then rewrapped into a squeezing knot of pure, primal rage.
    "Are you telling me you hired this . . . this ... person to scare twenty years off my life just to convince me I need protection?"
    "I hired him to convince you how vulnerable you are to attack."
    She lifted a hand to the top of her head, fisted her fingers in her wet hair, and tugged until it burned. "I don't believe this."
    "Come home, Jillian," he insisted as if it were the only logical conclusion in the face of such obvious proof. "You're not safe there. Move back to the estate—at least until this maniac is caught. No one can get past my security."
    "Do you know what he did to me?" she demanded, ignoring her father's suggestion, enunciating each word with care, working with everything that was in her to control the fury slamming through her blood and flushing her face with heat.
    "Not precisely, no. He did tell me that he got into your penthouse with minimum effort."
    Little prickling sensations tingled through her fingers and toes. She was less relieved that he hadn't come here to kill or rape her than she was livid—and she was about two breaths away from hyperventilating. "And you sanctioned this?"
    His heavy sigh said yes, he had. "I want you safe."
    "I'm not leaving the penthouse."
    A long silence punctuated the anger simmering on both ends of the line.
    "I was afraid that's what you'd say," he said finally. "If you're insistent on staying there, then he stays, too."
    She actually managed a laugh, although there was little humor in it. "Over my dead body."
    "Which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. It's settled, Jillian. And so is he."
    Settled? He was settled?
    Eyes blazing, Jillian marched out of her bedroom and down the hallway. A sick feeling rolled through her chest even before she swung open the door to her guest bedroom. The beat-up army surplus duffel sitting open in the middle of the bed was an abomination against the pristine white designer spread; the scuffed black lace-up boots splayed drunkenly beside the closet door were as out of place on the polished cypress floor as a velvet Elvis in a Monet exhibit.
    She spun around, her fury rising. She flew into the kitchen, her bare feet slapping tile just as her bodyguard reached into the refrigerator. He pulled out a bottle of root beer that he'd evidently buried out of sight somewhere on the bottom shelf.
    "Jillian? Are you still there?" her father asked, his voice infused with wary tension.
    "Where else would I possibly be?" she ground out.
    "Sweetheart. I was hoping we could talk about this rationally."
    "Oh, it's waaay too late for that."
    Darin Kincaid sighed heavily. "You know, sometimes you're just too damn stubborn for your own good. Sometimes you don't see the sense of things for your pride. Think about it, baby. The police department's investigation into these death threats has turned up nothing. Nothing," he repeated for emphasis. "I'm sorry, but until this lunatic is caught, I'm not taking any chances with your life."
    She shook with anger as she turned to the man who had just twisted the cap off the bottle of soda and tossed it onto her black granite countertop.
    "What's your name?" she bit out.
    He leaned a hip against the lip of granite, took a long, deep pull from the bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before giving her a mock salute. "Nolan Garrett, at your service. Ma'am."
    "ID." She snapped her fingers, ignoring his insolence. He had the nerve to grin—if you could call the sneer tipping up one corner of his mouth a grin—as he dug into his hip pocket and fished out his wallet.
    She flipped it open when he held it out to her, then scowled at the driver's license with his photo and name. His raised brow said, Satisfied?
    Ignoring him, she repeated the same clipped question into the phone. "What's his name?"
    "Garrett," her father said, confirming that the reprobate lounging in her kitchen, drinking root beer, was, in