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Marlowe looked at Bowie. Ordinarily, she would have been spoiling for a fight. But there was something annoyingly endearing about ho
w adamant this man, who hadn’t been part of her life a mere two months ago, was about keeping her safe. Not because he wanted something from her, not because he was getting anything out of it, but just because he...cared?
The thought hit her with the force of a six megaton bomb exploding in her brain.
“What?” Bowie asked. “You just got a really strange look on your face. Like something frightened you. Is something wrong?”
She looked at him, not certain how to process this newest thought that had suddenly cropped up in her head. “I’m not really sure,” Marlowe told him honestly. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Okay,” Bowie agreed, backing away from the subject, “but as long as we’re clear, Wallace stays,” he told her.
Marlowe pressed her lips together, then nodded her head. Resigned. “Wallace stays,” she said. “But he stays restricted.”
“Meaning what?” Bowie asked.
To her it was self-explanatory. “He can’t venture into any areas that might contain restricted company secrets.”
Was that all? He could respect that, Bowie thought. “Fair enough,” he agreed. “Wallace is being paid to be your bodyguard, not my spy. Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, our companies have slightly different approaches toward producing energy.”
“No, I didn’t forget,” she told Bowie. Her mind went back to that evening at the conference, when everyone else had left and they were still talking, at first trying to convince the other of their stands and then...well, then they weren’t standing at all. “Yes, I remember. I remember that debate we had at the conference that night.”
“Okay,” he told her. “I’ve got to be getting back for a meeting, but Wallace is going to stay with you 24/7. I’ll call you later and check in,” he told the bodyguard.
“Wait, what?” Marlowe cried, stopping Bowie. “I thought he was only going to be around during working hours.”
She should know better than that. “Crazy people don’t punch a time clock,” he told her. “That includes stalkers who leave oversize gifts in your office. Just because he left this for you at work by no means guarantees that this guy won’t pop up anywhere else—and that includes your condo.”
“We have security at the house,” she informed Bowie. That went without saying.
“Well, now you have a little more,” he told her, trying to be reassuring. “It’s just until we catch the guy, Marlowe,” he promised.
“And when will that be?” she asked.
She expected Bowie to say something, but it was Wallace who answered her question. “Soon, ma’am. Very soon.”
“Not soon enough for me,” she couldn’t help adding.
“I’ll call you later,” Bowie promised. His eyes took them both in. “Both of you.”
Then, before she knew what was happening, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply and thoroughly before releasing her just as abruptly.
And with that, he was gone.
Chapter 15
“I’m sorry, Ms. Colton. She insisted on seeing you,” Karen apologized as Selina Barnes Colton pushed her way into Marlowe’s office.
“Oh, stop your whining, you useless waste of space. I am part of Colton Oil’s board of directors. That gives me a perfect right to see anyone I damn well please in this building, and I don’t need permission to do it,” Selina informed Marlowe’s assistant in her high-handed manner.
To Marlowe, hearing Selina’s voice was tantamount to hearing nails being slowly drawn across a chalkboard. It took everything she had not to wince.
“I’ll thank you not to talk to my assistant that way, Selina,” Marlowe told the woman coldly. “Karen was only doing her job.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the attractive woman she and the rest of her siblings thought of as a venomous snake. “Now what’s so important that you have to come barging into my office like this, disrupting everything?”
But Selina’s attention was diverted to the man she saw standing in the background.
“And who is this?” she asked Marlowe. Her eyes slowly appraised everything about the wide, imposing bodyguard. Finished, Selina’s eyes shifted back toward Marlowe. There was a smirk on her full lips. “He’s a little old for you, isn’t he, dear? Has your father met him yet?”
Not waiting for an answer, Selina continued her biting monologue. “I bet Payne hasn’t, and when he does, there will be hell to pay, you do realize that, don’t you, dear?” Selina laughed to herself, as if enjoying her own private joke. “It’s rather ironic. Your father doesn’t really take an interest in any of your lives,” she said pointedly, “except whenever something one of you does might reflect badly on the company.”
