Connorâs deep, husky voice intruded into her thoughts.
âAre you all right?â
She tried to shrug away the emotions drenching her. âIâm fine.â She marched over to the safe covered by a portrait of her mother. âI donât understand why he kept this in here. He didnât love her.â When she opened the safe, its emptiness surprised her. âThis doesnât bode well.â
âSo someone could have come in here and broken into the safe?â
She turned at the same time Connor stepped closer. She collided into him. He steadied her, his hands on her arms branding her. His gaze captured hers and held it for a long moment, the thundering of her heart drowning out all common sense.
Why else would she wonder if he still kissed as good as he did when they were dating?
âI thought that was taken care of.â Cara Madison gripped her cell to her ear so tightly her hand ached as she hurried toward the foyer of her childhood home to answer the door. Exhaustion clung to her as though woven into every fiber of her being.
The bell chimed again.
âNo, the State Department still has some questions,â Kyra Morgan, her employer at Guardians, Inc., said.
âHold it a sec. Someoneâs at the door.â
She peered through the peephole, noting a deliveryman with a package and clipboard, dressed in a blue ball cap, blue shorts and white T-shirt. Probably another birthday present from one of Dadâs friends. She thrust open the door and cradled the cell against her shoulder to keep it in place.
âSo I have to make a trip into Washington, D.C., to see Mr. Richards at the State Department?â Cara asked her boss while she scribbled her name on the sheet of paper then took the box.
Stepping back into the house, Cara shut the door with a nudge of her hip and carried the package to the round table in the center of the dining room to put it with the multitude of othersâall presents from people around the world whom her father knew.
âCara, Iâm sorry you need to go at this time. I know that last assignment was rough and now with bringing your dad home from the rehabilitation center, you donât need this complication. Mr. Richards assured me itâs just a debriefing about the riots occurring in Nzadi.â
She wished she could say that wasnât her fault, but what she did had set the protests off. Guilt swamped her. In protecting her client, a revered humanitarian in Nzadi was killed instead. âDonât worry. Iâm tough. Iâll survive. Iâll call the man and set up an appointment after I get Dad home and settled.â
For a few seconds she studied the plain brown box from Global Magazine with C. Madison on the label before peeling back the top flap on the carton. The sound of the tape ripping the cardboard reverberated in the stillness, exposing the top of a gift wrapped in black paper. Black? True, her father was turning sixty tomorrow, but wasnât black wrapping a little too macabre after he suffered a stroke eight weeks ago?
âIâm sure itâs only a formality.â Her bossâs assurance drew Caraâs thoughts away from the gift. âMy impression from the State Department was you wonât have to go back to answer any more questions from the Nzadi government.â The word Nzadi shivered down her length, leaving a track of chills even though it was summer. âIâll call you after I talk to Mr. Richards. Bye.â Cara clicked off and stared down at the open box that nestled the new present, wrapped in black paper. Black like people wore to funerals. Black as the dress of the beloved lady who had been killed in the café. Cara shivered again. She wanted to forget Nzadi, but she didnât think she ever would.
The image of the beautiful woman, bleeding out on the floor of the café, nudged those last days in the African country to the foreground. Sheâd managed to push the trophy wife she was protecting out of the way of the assassinâs bullet, only to have it lodge in the woman across from them. Again she heard the angry shouts from the crowd as sheâd been driven to the Nzadian airport. The peopleâs grief over the death of Obioma Dia had evolved into fury at Cara and the woman sheâd been assigned to protect.