Guardian by Kaitlyn O'Connor (digital book reader .TXT) 📕

herself from something besides harsh words—which sheactually never had been terribly good at. But it was empowering tothink she had a better chance of survival because she had a way tofend off terrible things.

She felt great about it all the wayhome, buoyed by the fact that she’d taken a bold, active role,taken steps to defend herself, and she was able to consider waysshe might find the evidence she needed to find without feeling likeshe might poop herself.

She felt great right up until sheneared the second floor and Jarrod stepped into view.

She looked up instinctively when shecaught a glimpse of movement, gaped in horror when she saw it wasJarrod, and clutched her bag full of weapons to herchest.

Unfortunately, she was so distractedshe hung her toe on the tread of the last step and tripped,slinging her bag full of weapons across the hall as she tried,instinctively, to catch herself before she could face plant on thefloor.

Jarrod was fast, but she was short anda step below him. He made a grab for her as she flew toward thefloor and only managed to grab clothing.

Which did not prevent her fromsmacking into the floor hard enough she bounced when shestruck.

It rattled her brains. It threw herinto a state of shock so profound she couldn’t figure out what hadhappened just at first or what to do about the pain that wasbeginning to filter through her.

Jarrod stooped over, shoved his handsbeneath her and lifted her off the floor …. By herbreasts.

It just went to show how rattledMarilyn was that he’d hauled her all the way up before she realizedhe had a hand on each boob.

He seemed to realize it at the sametime. He let go and grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “Youok?”

Marilyn looked at him hazily, tryingto figure out where she hurt and how bad it was.

Her shin hurt like hell and so did thetoes she’d driven into the step.

She really, really just wanted to goin her apartment and hide to die.

“You dropped yourstuff.”

That comment was enough to bring hermind back to those moments when she was trying to save herself andhad flung her arms out.

She turned her head with an effort anddiscovered she’d thrown the damn bag against the wall everythingthat had been in it was strewn across the hallway. Her eyes nearlybulged from their sockets.

Shoving away from him, she fought fordominance, trying to get to her purchases and shove them into thebroken bag before he could pick them up and study them.

“Hehe,” she managedweakly, realizing it was patently obvious what she’d bought—a bagfull of deterrents. “One can never be too careful in the big city.Always good to have something close for protection.”

When she’d gathered everything up, shethrew an absent and very fake smile in his direction and took onelast look around to be sure she’d gotten everything and thenhurried away. “Thanks so much for helping! Sorry if I … uh …stepped on you or anything.”

She was so relieved when she made itinside her apartment and bolted the door behind her she felt likecrying.

Settling her package and purse, shedragged her skirt up high enough to examine her shin and discoveredwithout much surprise that she’d left DNA all over the stairs—bloodand skin. It was more bruised than damaged, thankfully, and alsoher palm and knee.

She wasn’t sure which were freshbruises and which were from her last close encounter with ‘thehunk’.

As if it mattered!

Now that he knew everything she wasgoing to have stashed in her purse, she really doubted he wouldhave any trouble figuring out a way around it.

All he would have to do would be tostep out of the shadows and she would fall on her face and throwthe damned stuff as far as she could fling it.

Chapter Five

Jarowd watched Marilyn beat a hastyretreat, frowning, struggling between anger and … wellanger.

He was pretty sure he could dismissany doubts that Marilyn was suspicious of him. In fact, she seemedscared enough to have suspicions that he was alien.

He damned sure had not ever seen herjust fall down like that before when he had been admiring her fromafar. Now he had only to appear and she collapsed.

He would have liked to continue tryingto convince himself it was because she was nervous because she wasattracted to him, but the hollow feeling in the pit of his bellygave the lie to that happy scenario.

She was scared.

What the hell could she have seen,though?

“Jesus!” His eyes! “Godsdamn it to hell,” he muttered, whirling on his heel and headingback to his hab. Once there, he went to the mirror in the bathroomand studied the effect of having his glasses half off and concludedhe was right.

He hadn’t been wearing his damned eyepieces—because it was miserably uncomfortable—and she’d bumped intohim and his sunglasses and half fallen off.

He’d forgotten she’d looked up at himbefore he could straighten them.

Actually, not forgotten. He hadn’trealized he’d even noticed it until he’d replayed it.

He’d been way too fucking focused onhow good it felt when she slid down him.

What to do about it,though?

He had not found a suitable place torelocate yet and even if he had he still had that group coming in.He could not afford to take everything apart when he had ascheduled landing.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” hesnarled and began to pace, thinking, thinking.

It was a hard thing to do when he gothard every time he thought about her, but eventually an ideaoccurred to him.

He would have to try to get closer toher and see if he could convince her that whatever she thoughtshe’d seen was something else.

He had the memory delete, of course,but it wouldn’t be able to delete any memories from that far backwithout doing some serious damage, or at least a high risk of it,and he wasn’t willing to harm the sweet little thing. Besideswhich, it was only designed to delete maybe five or ten minutes andthere would be no way to track back to whatever it was andselectively remove it.

So that was out.

He had to get close and find out whatit was she’d seen or