Excerpt of Out of Town Bride by Kara Lennox

Two weeks later John-Michael McPhee watched Sonya silently for a few moments. She sat at her mother's bedside, holding Muffy's limp hand, head bowed. Her artfully highlighted blond hair, which she usually kept pinned up in some elaborate arrangement, had long ago fallen from its confines and now hung in shimmering waves to her shoulders, reminding him of when she was a teenager.

At first, it had seemed that Muffy would recover quickly from her heart attack. She'd been doing so well, in fact, that Sonya had felt it was okay to leave town for a couple of days to help her mysterious new friend, Brenna, out of a jam up in Dallas. But as soon as Sonya had returned, Muffy had undergone bypass surgery, and her recovery hadn't gone well. She'd contracted a persistent infection that had kept her in Intensive Care.

John-Michael hadn't seen Sonya so devastated since her father's death when she was ten. Back then, the transformation of that bright, sunny chatterbox to the thin, solemn, pale little wraith floating about the estate had nearly broken his teenage heart, and he'd tried everything in his power to make her happy again.

Now, however, there wasn't much he could do; she wasn't a child to be distracted — especially not by him. He was one of her least favorite people these days.

He cleared his throat. Sonya looked over at him, for once open and vulnerable. She hadn't expressed that much feeling in years — not around him, anyway.

"You really should go home and get some sleep," John- Michael said. Sonya had been sitting by Muffy's bedside for almost twenty-four hours.

"But she woke up and spoke to me a few minutes ago. She said she was...sorry for getting sick so close to my wedding." Sonya's eyes filled with tears. "That was the first thing she wanted to say to me."

John-Michael felt the urge to put his arms around Sonya and comfort her. He knew she felt guilty for being gone when her mother was suddenly struck ill, and for not returning his urgent calls. And there was no one else she could turn to for comfort. Muffy and Sonya had no other family. They had no siblings in either generation.

But Sonya would not welcome comfort from him. Her fiancé should be with her now, John-Michael thought with a surge of anger. But Marvin, the insensitive lout, was halfway around the globe and apparently couldn't be bothered.

"Your mother wouldn't want you to wear yourself to a frazzle," John-Michael said.

"I'm staying," she said stubbornly. "If you're tired, go on home. I'll be fine."

John-Michael gritted his teeth. For ten years he'd hovered over Sonya, knowing her whereabouts at all times. He'd followed her at a discreet distance whenever she dated; he'd slept in his car outside strange houses when she'd elected to spend the night away from home. He'd sat in doctors' waiting rooms and outside college classrooms, watching as she lived her life, wondering if he would ever get to live his.

Sonya hadn't needed a bodyguard. She'd never been threatened or stalked, and she was in no more danger than any other wealthy young woman. But Muffy couldn't bear to take chances with her only daughter, not after her husband had been kidnapped and killed, targeted due to his wealth. The murderers were safely in prison, but Muffy worried it could happen again.

It wasn't likely John-Michael would abandon Sonya now, when Muffy was lying in Intensive Care.

Instead, he resumed his vigil on a padded bench in the ICU waiting area, a bench he'd been warming on and off since the day he brought Sonya here from New Orleans.

Thirty minutes later, Sonya emerged from the ICU. "The nurses kicked me out. I guess I've been trying their patience, abusing their visitors' rules."

"They probably just want you to get some sleep." She eyed the lumpy bench he was parked on. "I could sleep there."

"Sonya..."

"Oh, all right. I guess it wouldn't hurt for me to catch a couple of hours' sleep at home. The nurses have my cell number. They promised to call if there's any change." She gave him a rare, sympathetic look. "You look bushed. You don't really have to stay here with me all the time."

"Marvin's the one who should be with you."

She glanced away, a sure sign she was about to tell a lie. "I told you, he's somewhere in China right now. I can't get hold of him."

"Can't you call his company?" John-Michael said as they walked toward the elevator. "Surely they know how to reach him. And there are satellite phones, you know."

"He's working on an important deal, and I don't want to worry him unnecessarily. He calls me every few days. I'll let him know the situation next time he calls."

John-Michael sure wished he knew what was going on with her. He'd never known Sonya to be so secretive — or to tell so many lies. He and Sonya had had their differences, sure, but she'd always been able to trust him. He'd never told Muffy about those frat parties she used to attend that were little more than drunken orgies. Or about the time he'd had to rush Sonya's best friend, Cissy Trask, to the hospital when she'd had a miscarriage. No one but he and Sonya had known she was pregnant, and no one ever would.

Why now had Sonya decided he couldn't be trusted? Once they reached the Patterson estate, Sonya disappeared without a word up the curved staircase, her delicate heels noiseless on the Chinese silk carpeting.

John-Michael retreated to his own quarters, a small apartment above the five-car garage. But he was too keyed up to sleep. Instead, he pulled on a pair of gym shorts.

The Patterson estate had its own mini health club, with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, an indoor lap pool, wet and dry saunas and whirlpool.

Foregoing the fancier equipment, John-Michael went a few rounds with a punching bag.

As he moved through a series of jabs and kicks, he thought about the easy friendship he and Sonya had enjoyed when they were kids. Though he was only the gardener's son and Sonya was five years his junior, she'd been his sidekick, his little pest, always trailing after him, wanting to hang out with him and his friends. And sometimes he'd let her slum with him. He'd shown her how to work on his motorcycle and, at Muffy's insistence, how to handle the gun Sonya now kept in her nightstand.

When Muffy decided Sonya needed a bodyguard. John-Michael was the logical choice. He'd just graduated from the police academy, planning a career in law enforcement. Muffy offered him a higher salary than any of the local police departments paid, and she'd promised to send him to an elite bodyguard-training school. He'd cheerfully accepted, never realizing he was putting a noose around his own neck.

Muffy had a secondary motive for hiring John-Michael. She'd needed him close at hand to handle any "difficulties" that came up with Jock, her gardener — who happened to be John-Michael's father.

The job had gone okay until one night when Sonya attended her first sorority party. John-Michael had gone with her, lurking in the shadows like always, watching as she tried to assert her independence by getting drunk on margaritas. He'd pulled her away from the party before things had gone too far.

She'd been spitting angry with him at first, spouting off about how she was an adult, it was a free world, she would have her mother fire him. Then, when they'd reached the car, she'd surprised the hell out of him by throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her lush body up against his. "I really am a bad girl, aren't I?" Before he could answer, before he'd been able to think, she'd clamped her sweet little mouth over his.

His body had sprung to life, and for the first time he'd realized that his charge was no longer a child. She had a woman's body, a woman's moves....

After thirty seconds of hot kisses and body rubbing, he'd pulled himself together and gently pushed her away.

"What?" she'd objected, loudly enough to wake the whole neighborhood. "Don't tell me you don't want me. You do. I could feel it."

Dear God. At that moment he'd seen the utter folly of what he'd done, what he'd been about to do. Having sex with his charge, the girl he was supposed to be protecting, would be the grossest sort of irresponsibility he could imagine, not to mention a very short path to losing his job.

The only way to deal with this situation, he'd decided, was to end it in a way that was harsh and final, so it would never happen again. So he would never be tempted again.

He gave his punching bag a series of savage jabs as he remembered how difficult it had been to be cruel to her.

He'd forced himself to laugh at her. "You don't actually imagine I would be interested in a spoiled little brat like you," he'd said, deliberately filling his voice with derision.

The insult had cut, as it was meant to do. Her eyes filled with tears. "You kissed me back," she accused.

"I'm a man," he said harshly. "I have hormones. But I also have a brain, thank God, and I'm not stupid enough to get it on with Muffy Patterson's daughter."

"She would never know," Sonya said in a last-ditch effort to salvage the situation. And it almost worked. Seeing her standing there, more sober now than drunk, her blond hair mussed, her lips full from kissing, he'd almost grabbed her and kissed her again. And he wouldn't have stopped with kissing.

Savagely he turned his back on her and opened the passenger door of her BMW — her high school graduation present from Muffy. "Get in the car. You're embarrassing yourself."

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked, sounding devastated at the thought.

"That's none of your business." He hoped she would think that meant yes.

"I've never seen you with a girl."

"No girlfriend of mine is going to watch while a child orders me around."

He hadn't had a girlfriend. When would he have had time to find one? He'd spent every hour either watching over Sonya or dealing with the disasters his father created. But his ploy had worked. Sonya didn't say another word. And she never again tested her feminine wiles on him.

Back in the present, he took one final swing at the bag. He was out of breath and dripping with sweat, more so than the easy workout should have caused. Time hadn't lessened the intensity of his memories one bit.