Her skin still had all the color of a corpse, especially framed by the dark coat and the floppy hat, which was too large for her small body. She was terrified out of her mind, but still managed to nod. Jack breathed a sigh of relief.
“A—about three months ago, someone started sending me mail. Pictures of me in different places, mostly public. Weird, but not threatening. About five weeks ago, he started taking pictures of me in and around my house, through windows. O—one he took of me pulling out of my driveway while he was in my garage. I can tell he’s angry. I don’t know why.
“I came to Houston to be with a…friend and to escape him.” She blew out a breath, forged ahead. “He followed me. I didn’t know it until yesterday when this arrived.”
She unzipped her boxy coat just enough to fish out a folded-over envelope from the oversized purse bisecting her chest. Morgan handed it to him with a shaking hand.
Tension gripping his gut, Jack ripped it open. Pictures spilled out. Morgan in an airport, dressed in low-rise jeans, a baggy T-shirt, and her hair shoved into a baseball cap. He only recognized her profile, her stubborn chin, the freckles across her nose that made him wonder how far they extended down her body. They gave him an insane urge to play connect the dots.
The next one was of her reading a magazine on a patio chair. The magazine covered her face. He saw only her hands, the cover of People, a splattering of delicate freckles on her arms— and sweet, unbound br**sts, nearly visible through a thin white tank top, with ripe cherry ni**les that made his mouth water.
From the instant he’d heard whispers that she was his former pal Brandon’s fiancée, he’d been intrigued. Talking to her online had only heightened his interest. Morgan in these pictures, in the flesh, engorged his cock. He couldn’t wait to get her bound to his bed and begging to come—granting his revenge.
But there was something else about her…something pounded him with familiarity. He felt as if he should know her, like he’d seen her before and not just her picture on her show’s Web site. Had he ever met her? No, he would have remembered a woman like Morgan. Still, there was something about her. He’d figure it out.
Swallowing a lump of rising lust, Jack flipped to the last picture and froze. The always-elegant Brandon Ross in a designer suit. He had his back to the camera as he leaned down to kiss Morgan. Jack could see only her half-bare legs covered by a bit of green silk and black lace, and the lightly freckled arms she curled around the Brandon’s neck. The sight made his gut roll.
And the haphazard scrawl of the note at the bottom of the envelope, with its ominous, possessive tone did nothing to ease his tension.
The last picture, the wife-to-be saying goodbye to her man before he left for a day at the office, also confirmed that Morgan O’Malley was Brandon Ross’s woman. She was the means to pay his old buddy back for his stab in the back. He had to get Morgan out of here alive and undetected to do it.
“So this stalker followed you here from L.A.?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her voice still shook.
Jack sighed. “Dedicated and sick. Not a good combination. Clearly, he’s smart if he’s able to take pictures of you without you knowing it or his identity. He knows his way around a gun. I don’t think you can just walk out of here on your own unharmed, Morgan. You need help. I can give it to you.”
She hesitated, then spoke in a surprisingly smoky voice. “You’ve gotten me out of the path of bullets that would have likely killed me. I can’t ask you to risk—”
“You didn’t ask; I’m offering.” The ass**le clearly knew his way to Brandon’s house, and Morgan didn’t look like the kind of girl with training in weapons and hand-to-hand combat. It was up to him to keep her alive. “Morgan, I’m a bodyguard. I won’t watch you die when I can get you out of here in one piece.”
“How much?”
Jesus, someone had been shooting at her and she wanted to barter? “On the house.”
Surprise widened her mouth. “Why?”
He sent her a cool shrug. “If you’re dead, there goes my fifteen minutes of fame.”
She lifted her red-rimmed blue eyes to him and shot him a cynical glare. “Seriously. It’s clear you’re not a famemonger.”
So she had better sense than to fall for his line. But Jack still wanted to make her look at him with those innocent blue eyes while he force-fed her some logic. She couldn’t be sane and deny that she needed help. But he understood why she’d try.
He was a relative stranger—but that wasn’t her only hesitation. He’d bet every dime in his pocket on that. From their brief face time before the shooter arrived, he realized Morgan had some interest in him. And that she had curiosity about his sexual leanings. More curiosity than someone merely researching a TV show. Her reluctant arousal drew him like nothing had in years.
“That still doesn’t change the fact you need me. The shooter knows you’re in this building. You can’t just walk out now. I can get you out of here.”
Morgan set her jaw. Jack watched her fighting the urge to bite off a refusal. She didn’t, proving once again that she was smart.
“How?”
“You’ll dress as Alyssa. She’ll fix you up with appropriately inappropriate clothes.”
“She’ll need help with makeup, too,” Alyssa pointed out. “I don’t have freckles, Jack.”
A quick glance at Morgan proved she had a mere hint of cosmetics on her pale face. “Yeah, okay. Do it.”
“No. This plan won’t work,” Morgan protested.