Scotland for Christmas Read online

  He would like to know the details and circumstances surrounding his father’s death. If he was honest with himself, he’d wanted to know for his whole life. He’d been almost twelve when it had happened—just a kid—and nobody had talked much about it to him.

  Until now, he’d been discouraged from asking questions. He just wished that his future didn’t rest on his ability to dig up answers from a reclusive Scotsman.

  Beside him, Eddie cleared his throat. Jacob had forgotten he’d been listening in. Had forgotten he was standing there with a phone in his hand while he stared into space, lost in the past, furious and not knowing what to do about it.

  But he owed Lee an answer.

  “Jake,” Lee said quietly into his ear, “if you want the job, it’s yours. But only if you feel you can give Isabel Sage the professional security she deserves. Sage works with my firm because he trusts me. He knows I hire only the best. You’ve got to promise me you can handle the assignment—to guard and protect her—with the professionalism you were trained to do. I’m exposing myself here, big-time, but I don’t need to tell you that. You know where I’m coming from. You know what I owe you.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said. He did know. He got what a favor this was to him, but Lee also knew he could trust Jacob with his business. Hell, he’d trusted him with his life.

  “Discretion,” Lee repeated. “Confidentiality. Professionalism. Remember those things and you’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I live discretion and professionalism.”

  It was all Jacob knew how to do. He never said a word about the people on his jobs. Ever.

  And if he wanted to continue on the path of doing what he was meant to do, to the ultimate prize of being allowed to guard the most important and most defensively vulnerable people in the country, then he needed to have a conversation with John Sage.

  Just one hour would be enough. Whatever reservations Jacob felt about the man or his family members—he needed to put it aside in favor of his future.

  The past is over, as his mother had so often said when he’d asked questions. It’s what’s in front of you that counts.

  Well, that was what he was concentrating on now—what was in front of him. That was what this upcoming weekend would be about, despite the lousy choice that it was. But the choice to bail on the opportunity was even worse.

  “I’ll do it,” he said to Lee. “I’ll guard Isabel Sage. Thanks for setting this up. I mean it.”

  As he hung up, he felt Eddie’s gaze on him. Jacob sighed. “Do you want to go with me?”

  “I wish I could. But Donna wouldn’t be happy if I left her and Alden for another work weekend.”

  Jacob nodded, thinking of Eddie’s four-month-old son. “You’re right.”

  “So you’ll be alone this time,” Eddie remarked, hunching deeper into his jacket. “There’ll be no team behind you to back you up. That’ll be different.”

  Jacob considered that. Secret Service protective details were huge and complex. Whenever they did bodyguard assignments for a visiting head of state or a foreign dignitary, they worked in large, interconnected teams, with command posts, operation centers, motorcade service. One-on-one coverage was unheard of. “Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that.”

  “Are you gonna be all right with this?” Eddie asked.

  Jacob shoved his phone into his pocket. “Two days ago, we were responsible for escorting a murdering dictator—sorry, a member head of state—safely from the U.N. to his five-star hotel and back, and I did it without so much as looking cross-eyed at him. It’s a job, Eddie.”

  “Yeah, but it’s also personal this time, Jake.”

  A gust of wind sent some dead oak leaves skittering across the sidewalk. That, and the now-driving rain, soaking his bare head, seemed to slam into him personally.

  “Why don’t you come in and finish dinner with us,” Eddie said. “We’ll talk about it. Sherry’s not bad. She’s just—”

  “No,” Jacob interrupted. “Thanks. But I need to prepare for this job.”

  He didn’t stick around to discuss it with Eddie any longer. But while Jacob jogged the few short blocks uptown to his apartment building, folded newspaper over his head, service weapon and badge at his hip, he couldn’t help deliberating on Eddie’s question.

  Are you gonna be all right with this?

  Of course. He had to be.

  Even if Isabel Sage was as privileged and entitled as he assumed she was—the niece of a billionaire industrialist—he would never react to anything she said or did. Guarding people was his business, and he was damn good at it. He couldn’t let it matter that she was related to the family that had been involved with his father’s death.

  Besides, his job didn’t affect him emotionally. Just as his father’s death didn’t.

  As soon as he had the operational details for the psychologist, she would see that, and all would be well. He would soon be on his way to D.C.

  * * *

  JUST ONE MORE year and then you’ll be happy.

  Those were the words Isabel Sage had written on the corner of a notebook. Old graffiti, scribbled last winter during a study session while a sad song played on her internet radio.

  Outside Isabel’s window, three stories above the pavement, the city’s shop windows displayed the beginnings of winter decorations. In six more weeks came the Christmas break and the end of her term.

  She’d been privileged to be here—a Scottish woman from the Highlands, living in the biggest city in America and studying international finance with the savviest people on Wall Street—though, to be honest, she’d been shocked by how lonely she’d felt.

  Sighing, Isabel watched a queue of yellow taxicabs snake down Broadway, toward the route she knew led to the airport. Really, she was most looking forward to that day when she could fly home.

  Isabel pulled off her earphones and turned away from the window to her case still open on her bed, and tossed inside a bra, some pants—underpants here, she reminded herself—and then added the dress she would wear to her cousin’s wedding reception.

  Somehow, not even the promise of a weekend respite was raising her spirits, because at the end of the day, there was no escaping the fact that she would be attending a wedding without Alex, her longtime boyfriend. Which didn’t exactly ease her loneliness.

  Another part of the problem, she reflected as she tossed in her cosmetics bag, was that the groom at the wedding was her cousin, Malcolm, her competitor for the job at home—the reason she was here, studying in New York. Malcolm—her uncle’s favorite—had a leg up on her. Now he was even getting married at a pretty inn—or so they said, though she hadn’t the heart to look it up online—in Vermont.

  Like Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, she supposed. Her late father had enjoyed that old romantic film very much. But her father had died long ago. Her boyfriend was thousands of miles away in Scotland, on assignment as part of his lawyer duties, and he wouldn’t be available to accompany her, either.

  Feeling gloomy, Isabel added her flatiron and comb to the case. Tossed a pair of shoes on top. She had better cover her disappointment soon, though she supposed it was the “attending solo” part that was truly bothering her.

  All she knew was that she would give anything to have someone to go with. Just someone who knew her as she really was—someone she didn’t have to pretend with.

  She heard a commotion outside in the corridor, near the lifts. Isabel straightened. Before she could investigate, her mobile phone rang. For a moment her heart skipped. Alex? But no, he was too busy to contact her on weekdays. And he was five time zones away, besides.

  She checked the caller ID. It was the driver service her uncle used in New York. Her spirits sank lower, but she stuffed the disappointment down. Smile. If she put a smile on her face, then a smile would
sound in her voice. A pleasant voice covered all manner of sins.

  “Yes,” she said lightly into the phone. “This is Isabel.”

  “Ms. Sage?” the dispatcher said. “I’m calling to confirm your one o’clock pickup.”

  She forced herself to smile so hard, her lips hurt. “I was told it was a two o’clock pickup.”

  “That explains it, then. Your assigned security agent buzzed you on the intercom but received no response.”

  Isabel groaned. She’d been wearing a headset. Obviously, she’d been playing her music so loudly, she hadn’t heard the bell. “I’ll go down to the lobby and escort him upstairs myself. Is this the same driver who met me at the airport last September?”

  “No. It’s not.” There was a pause. “You’ve been assigned to Jake Ross.”

  A good Scots name. A Highland Scots name. That lifted her mood. Even if the man himself wasn’t Scottish, the name was a nice reminder of home. “Brilliant. I’ll go straight down and look for Mr. Ross.”

  She piled everything still on her bed into her case and then zipped it up quickly. Made one last check of her face in the mirror: fine. She looked presentable.

  As she opened her door, she bumped into Rajesh, his fist lifted to knock. He blinked at her. Rajesh was her suite mate, an engineering PhD candidate, with a dark moustache and snow-white turban.

  “Braveheart,” he said. “There’s a man looking for you in the hallway.”

  She didn’t react when he said Braveheart, though she felt a bit like cringing. So hard she’d worked to stay low-key amongst the members of her residence hall. For security purposes, she’d been taught since childhood never to let people know she was a member of the wealthy Sage family from Scotland.

  Still, she smiled at him. “Thank you, Rajesh. I appreciate it.”

  “Did you know he’s a Secret Service agent?” Rajesh asked. “Why would a Secret Service agent be looking for you?” He peered at her. “Did you do something wrong?”

  “What? No. Of course not.” Isabel never so much as dropped a wrapper on the street. Shaking her head, she marched past him, into the living area of their four-person suite.

  “Freedom,” Rajesh whispered as she brushed past, and he made that signal with his fist from the movie Braveheart.

  Usually, she smiled congenially when he did that, but today she just couldn’t. He walked off, back to his group of engineer friends. She couldn’t see what they were doing in his room, but she could smell the pizza and hear the adverts on his television set.

  Sighing, she headed off to staunch the much bigger problem before it escalated, like the good future CEO she hoped she’d be.

  She skipped out to the hallway that ran the length of the residence hall, hearing her neighbors before she saw them. They were four older graduate students who lived in the nearby suites, thirty-somethings, most of them midcareer, and they rented their miniapartments directly from the university. Usually the building was quiet, save for the occasional homeless person who set up camp in their lobby before being chased out by the superintendent.

  She found her driver trapped beside the lift doors, being quizzed by Courtney and Philip, the two most vocal of the group who also happened to be journalists. Isabel groaned. Her driver—Jake—did indeed dress like an active U.S. Secret Service agent. She understood their confusion.

  He had close-cropped hair. Dark sunglasses that screamed policeman! He wore a dark suit with a white collared shirt. At his waist, he definitely carried a gun.

  For a split second, Isabel froze. She’d been around security agents for most of her life, but they were never her security agents. They usually belonged to someone else—her famous uncle John, or her cousin Malcolm, who was lately becoming equally famous for his new startup venture in Vermont, at least in business circles and the financial press.

  But her? She’d never been assigned her own bodyguard before. Until now, apparently. And for the sake of the job she hoped for in the future, she had better show that she could handle it.

  “Isabel,” Courtney asked her outright, “why is a Secret Service agent asking for you? Are you threatening the president?”

  “Are you counterfeiting money in your room?” Philip asked, winking slyly.

  It took Isabel a moment to realize that they were mostly joking. Secret Service agents did in fact investigate both presidential threats and counterfeit money schemes, though this man her uncle had hired was no doubt a former agent, not current.

  She felt like shaking her head—why on earth would this Jake Ross telegraph who he was?—but she ran a hand through her hair and smiled at Mr. Ross as best she could.

  “I only counterfeit on the weekends,” she said lightly to Philip. But he was still staring suspiciously at Mr. Ross, so she tried another tactic. She didn’t want her suite mates to know she needed a bodyguard, or security of any sort. “Actually, Jake and I are old friends.”

  “Oh,” Philip said. “I see.” Courtney nodded as if she understood perfectly, too.

  Exhaling, Isabel glanced to Jake and found him staring so hard at her that there were two pinched lines between his eyes.

  She swallowed. “Jake,” she managed to say calmly. And then, because it needed to be done—she’d uttered her white lie and now it needed to be followed up—she hooked her arm around his. “Sorry I didn’t hear you—I had my headphones on. Come into my room. I’ve been waiting for you all day.”

  Deeper lines appeared on his forehead, and he glanced at her hand—clutched around the thin, fine wool of his dark suit jacket—as if she’d shocked him.

  Well, she’d shocked herself, too. She was definitely not in the habit of groping strange men. And really, it was his fault as well as hers. He shouldn’t be so obvious—he was a terrible actor.

  She would have to explain to him that if he wanted to drive her and be her security agent, then he could not go around looking and acting like a paid bodyguard, no matter how true it might be.

  She smiled harder and gently dug her fingers into his arm to spur him into movement.

  His biceps tensed beneath her fingertips. She heard a slight intake of breath.

  But luckily, her neighbors were looking at her reaction—silly and grinning—and not his.

  “Isabel, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” a familiar voice said loudly behind her.

  Isabel gritted her teeth, but smiled broadly at Charles, unfortunately the team lead on her group economics project. Charles was wearing his favorite Che Guevara T-shirt and a beard styled like his icon.

  Jake glared at Charles and his shirt. If two people were ever polar opposites, it had to be these two.

  “Let’s go, Jake.” Isabel tugged on his arm as she escorted him down the corridor and through the doors to her suite. Touching him so familiarly seemed strange, much too intimate and close. But her heart was beating so quickly, she didn’t pause to think. She just wanted him out of the way, out of the line of scrutiny.

  This time, she managed to get him into her bedroom and safely behind a closed door.

  Alone with him, she stepped back, catching her breath. Yes, Jake had probably been a real Secret Service agent at one point—that was all her uncle tended to hire—but there was something else about him, something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in a low voice.

  She swallowed, trying to calm her racing pulse. His expression was stone-faced. The dark sunglasses still covered his eyes, not giving her any hint as to his thoughts, but she had the impression of anger.

  This just made her determined to change his mind. “I should ask the same of you,” she said lightly. “What I’m doing is behaving in a low-key manner. It’s what people in my family are required to do. Didn’t my uncle explain this?”

  “Your uncle is John Sage?” he asked in
a gruff voice. It was a wholly appealing voice. Strong. That was the first word she thought of. His arms were crossed over his chest. His lips were set. Kind of full, actually. He had a crease in his chin and lines on his forehead. His hair was cut so short as to be practically shaved off. It gave him a sexy, naked look. And she, with all her long hair—well, he was such a contrast to her.

  “Yes, I’m Isabel Sage.” She snapped out of her distraction and gave him her winsome smile. People usually responded favorably to it.

  He, however, did not. He just scowled harder at her. “We need to get going. Friday traffic is brutal.”

  Brutal? Were people going to jump out at them with knives and swords drawn?

  She laughed at the image, and then exhaled, letting her smile relax into a normal expression. It felt good, for a change.

  “May I check your credentials, please, Mr. Ross?” she asked calmly. “If I’m to get in a car with you, then I need to be sure I’m safe.”

  His expression stilled. Well, she didn’t move, either, because her request was perfectly valid. He reached into a front coat pocket and pulled out a badge for her.

  It appeared he really did currently work for the U.S. Secret Service. She stared at the star on his badge, amazed.

  “May I see your driver’s license as well, please?” she asked.

  He seemed to stare her down. She felt a catch in her throat, but no, she had a stony business face she could give him, as well. She was a master at pretending—the more so since her stay in America.

  “I always check credentials,” she murmured.

  With a slight exhale, he reached for his wallet, removing a card, which he handed to her.

  She took it. The plastic was still warm from being in his back pocket, close to his, well... She willed herself not to blush. He was a good-looking man, beneath all his gruffness. And anger, too—there was definitely an undercurrent of anger in there.