The boys didn’t lift their eyes.
Connie studied Hank for a second, like she was thinking. Then she said to him, “I want you to move home, too.”
Hank looked up. “What?”
“I want you to move back into your room. Here at the house. Stay until Thanksgiving.”
“Mom, I’ve got my own—”
“I know,” Connie said.
“It’s not gonna be—”
“I agree,” Connie said. “But I don’t know what else to do, and there’s no time to figure it out.”
Hank looked down at the floor, toeing a spot with his boot.
“Bring your things by dinnertime,” Connie said then. “You boys are going to find a way to get along—or kill each other trying.”
Sixteen
A LOT TO process there.
After the brothers stomped off in opposite directions, and Doc helped Connie back to her bed to rest, I found myself sitting in the hammock chair under the oak tree, realizing one very simple thing.
I had to quit.
It wasn’t Connie’s health troubles. I’d dealt with sick people before. And it wasn’t the mysterious beef between the brothers. All families had secrets.
It was Jack.
I’d hoped that being around him in real life would be disappointing—that without a stylist and a writer to feed him his lines, he’d lose his appeal. As much as I didn’t want to let the fantasy go, I also knew it was the only way to do this assignment right.
I’d been counting on the reality being worse than the fantasy.
But the reality … was better.
This was the problem. As mesmerizing as the celluloid version of Jack was, the real guy—the guy who left his clothes on the floor, and made fun of my nightgown, and gave me piggyback rides, and was terrified of bridges—this guy was better.
And whether it was because of those smiley eyes of his, or because I had none of my usual relentless busyness to keep me distracted, or because I’d already let myself swoon over him when I had no idea I’d ever meet him in real life—it didn’t matter.
The fact was, none of my usual defenses worked.
When he looked at me like he was in love, my insides melted. Everything I read for pretend on his face … I was feeling for real.
He was faking all those feelings—but I was feeling them. Genuinely.
And no matter what your skill level is, or how much you might care about your professional reputation, or what your boss has ordered you to do, or what other rules you might be able to break and get away with it … you can’t—absolutely cannot—have a thing for your principal.
That’s just Executive Protection 101.
And if I had to confess it to Glenn, I would. He’d respect my decision to do the right thing and put the principal first.
Or, at least—I really, really hoped so.
* * *
QUITTING.
The end of the job. The end of my career, too, most likely. But there was no way around it.
Love makes you muddled. Love clouds your judgment. Love derails you with longing.
Or so they say.
That hadn’t happened to me with Robby … but—and this was only occurring to me now—maybe that hadn’t been love? Because whatever was going on with Jack Stapleton was far more destabilizing.
I didn’t understand it, but one thing was clear. It was complex enough to make things pretty simple.
I needed to get out of here.
I climbed out of the hammock swing, stood up, and started walking along the gravel road toward the surveillance house. I’d walk over, call Glenn, and quit. Easy. But I’d only made it halfway to the gate when I heard an unmistakable sound. The crack of a rifle firing.
I stopped in my tracks.
Turned.
Another shot.
It was coming from past the barn.
I took off sprinting that way, and vaulted the fence, and, as I did, I heard another shot.
What was going on? Who was shooting? Had the corgi-breeding stalker found us? Gone ballistic? Tracked Jack down in a random ravine in the middle of five hundred acres of nowhere? As I charged across the field, stumbling over anthills and thistle bushes, I made mental lists of possibilities for what I was about to find—and a whole set of contingency plans for how to handle each one.
Why, oh, why hadn’t Glenn authorized a firearm for me?
“You won’t need it,” he’d promised.
Too late now.
Whatever I’d find in that ravine, I’d just have to think fast and figure something out.
God willing.
But what I found there wasn’t a mad corgi breeder. Or a blood-soaked Jack Stapleton.