Guardian by Kaitlyn O'Connor (ebook e reader txt) 📗

“Oh my god! That’sit!”

She chuckled at herself, feeling likean idiot.

She should have thought aboutthat!

But the truth was she just never hadput everything together. She’d just picked up little things hereand there and she was usually so bowled over when she saw him shehad a hard time walking, let alone thinking.

That possibility would also explainwhy he never seemed to work, but he never seemed to need money. Hewas making money online … doing something.

She felt really bad now that she’dtalked to the cops.

What did it say about her that she’dimmediately jumped to the conclusion that he was up to somethingevil?

She’d just gotten too jaded by peoplefrom the internet and watching the news.

It made her sad to think she had usedto have such a positive view of her fellow Americans—humans—andshe’d lost that belief in the basic goodness of people.

Was she just glossing over everything,though, because she wanted to believe good things about him nowthat she’d felt him up all over and she was more addicted to himnot less, she thought sometime later as she lay down and composedherself for sleep? She didn’t get any further because that onlyoccurred to her just before she fell off the cliff into deepslumber.

* * * *

Jarowd’s expression was grim as hestudied the analysis report he had just gotten from thelab.

The almost innocent looking object hehad filched from Marilyn’s purse was a weapon.

Deleting the report, he jolted up fromhis chair and paced his apartment.

He supposed that answered thelingering question in his mind about his pretty lady’s suspicions.She was suspicious alright and nervous because she was scaredshitless.

“Gods damn it to hell!”Jarowd growled. “Now what?”

He knew what.

He was going to have to steer clear ofthe lust of his life.

He was going to have to move hisentire operation.

Except he had an entire family comingin.

“Shit! Hell, damn it!Fuck!”

Well, there was no hope for it. He hadto stay put until he got the new group situated.

He checked his chrono and saw he had afew hours before the new group was due to arrive, though, anddecided he was going to have to use the time to check out possiblerelocation sights.

It totally pissed him off.

Beyond the fact that he liked beingclose his lady so he could keep an eye on her and enjoy the view,it was a real pain in the ass to maneuver in the humansociety.

He had had to enter a contract to getthe hab he had and he had had to go through all kinds of shit justto make the contract.

Of course, the need to create all theproper paperwork for his existence had been there anyway, but allthat background stuff had taken a lot of time and effort to fakeand he was pretty sure he was going to have to start from scratchor there would be no point in relocating.

He used every ‘bad word’ he hadgleaned from the human languages—several of them because he’d foundhe was fond of them—under his breath as he locked up and left to doa search.

* * * *

With time and distance—contempt,Marilyn thought wryly. Or clarity, anyway.

She’d slept on it and woken with a farmore clear mind and the certainty that pretty much everything she’dconcluded the day before was the result of overtaxed hormonesfrying her brain.

Jarrod might be playing the part of anaspiring actor, she decided, and that did seem to fit what she’dnoticed, but she thought that was his cover.

She hoped she was wrong.She’d be lying to herself if she refused to acknowledge that, butshe also didn’t want to just accept that when something had triggered an alarmabout the hunky guy.

Call it intuition. Call it ‘thesight’. Call it instinct, but she still felt like there was a lotmore to the guy than anybody else had noticed.

But she had to accept that the copsjust weren’t going to pay her instincts any attention.

By the time she got to work thefollowing day, she’d decided she was just going to have to takematters into her own hands.

Obviously the cops aren’t going totake her seriously unless she had some sort of evidence to presentto them. But as resentful as she was that she was going to have todo their job for them, as scary as the prospect was of playingamateur detective, she wasn’t stupid enough to do anything that wasactually dangerous. She’s just going to keep her eyes and earsopen, watch and wait and report when she had what sheneeded.

Then maybe the dicks could do theirj-o-b.

With that in mind, whenshe got off work she headed downtown to a thrift store to look fora jogging suit. She had decided to take up jogging even though sheusually just did a short workout routine in her apartment to stayin shape because she thought, hoped, it would give her moreopportunities to watch her neighbor—not because she had anyintention of following him. She might see something useful if shewas out jogging. It wasn’t at all likely that she was going to ifshe stayed safely cooped up in her apartment.

The remote possibility that she mightfind herself in the middle of something dangerous, though, promptedher to look for a few things for self-protection—a whistle and ataser and bear spray to replace her lost canister of pepperspray—because she decided she didn’t want to have to get close to apotential assailant if she could help it.

She worked out regularly. She wasconvinced she was in great shape, but she was a woman and womenjust weren’t as strong as men.

She damned well didn’t want to testit!

* * * *

It was amazing, Marilynreflected, how much better she felt just to have weapons close tohand! She’d always avoided anything that had to do withviolence—even to self protection. Deep down, she knew cops wereonly there to ‘keep the peace’ by investigating crimes and huntingdown the person who had committed it. They couldn’t arrest anyonewho hadn’t committed a crime and that meant she was on her own,most likely, if she was in the middle of danger. The cops couldn’tget there fast enough to preventsomething from happening to her. They would comein afterwards to investigate who’d assaulted her or killedher.

It was terrifying to think of havingto defend