Safe by His Side

A terrified scream stayed trapped in her constricted throat.

Blythe stared at the spot right outside the door where she could swear she’d seen the ghost of a man moving past.

No one there now. It had to have been nothing at all. Just her imagination playing tricks.

Blythe turned. But as she reached the foyer, he moved out of a shadow behind the door and into the light.

Oh. My. God. This must be the stalker. In the house!

Ashley. By now Blythe could actually hear the little girl’s screams coming from out behind the house and she needed to reach her. But how to get past the stalker?

Time stopped, even as the alarm kept ringing and sounds of Ashley’s voice continued to vie for her attention. But the stranger’s stare felt stronger than all of that and it held her immobile. She began counting her own heartbeats as she fought to breathe. Those eyes of his were amazingly calm and penetrating. Cold steel gray, they studied her with dispassion.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the world of THE SAFEKEEPERS, featuring the Ryans and their family curse. There’s a slim chance that the curse can be lifted! But it will take two more good deeds by patriarch Brody Ryan. Time is growing short….

Second son Ethan Ryan has little concern for the family curse. Not being able to have children just makes his life easier. But this charmer will have to face his own demons in order to keep his clients Safe by His Side. He has a lot to learn, and I had a great time putting him through the wringer!

In Safe by His Side, I also continue my exploration of what it means to be a woman. When I began the trilogy, I came up with three traits I thought were representative of the best of womankind: courage, motherhood and love. In this second book, Blythe Cooper must overcome her preconceived ideas of both who she is and what it takes to be a real mother. She thinks fulfilling her job as a child’s guardian will take her automatically to motherhood. Ah, if only it were that easy.

I loved taking THE SAFEKEEPERS to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood with this book. Mixing Mexican witchcraft with limos and the make-believe of TV production made for an interesting combination. One I hope you enjoy!

Happy reading!

With all my best,

Linda Conrad

LINDA CONRAD

was inspired by her mother, who gave her a deep love of storytelling. “Mom told me I was the best liar she ever knew. And that’s saying something for a woman with an Irish storyteller’s background!” Winner of many writing awards, including the Romantic Times BOOKreviews Reviewers Choice and the Maggie, Linda often appears on bestseller lists. Her favorite pastime is finding true passion in life. Linda, her husband and KiKi, the puppy, work, play, live and love in the sunshine of the Florida Keys. Visit Linda’s Web site at www.LindaConrad.com.

Safe by his Side
Linda Conrad

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Tashya, with gratitude. You made me better.

Best wishes on new directions.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

“You son of a dog!” The witch’s black words rang out in Spanish under a rain-forest canopy on the Veracruz mountainside. “You have murdered my grandchild and banished my child. And your own children dare to join with you on this dark deed. I curse you all!”

The old woman’s words fell like poison darts on the ears of her victims. “Your punishment will match the crime, Brody Ryan.” Black snake eyes watched from treetops and cold stars blinked in the heavens as her voice rang in the night air. “You shall never have the pleasure of seeing a grandchild. From this time forward, each child of yours will be barren. Your family will suffer for the sins of the father. Go to hell!”

The curandera Lupe Ixtepan Delgado slowly climbed down the mountain path from her mother’s house with those hateful words of long ago still ringing loud and clear in her mind. She would do anything to help her grandchildren escape the curses and hexes of her mother, the bruja. For fifteen years Lupe had sought a way of making her mother see reason. She longed to find a way to change the direction of her mother’s blackened soul. The ancient woman neared death, and Lupe didn’t want her to die without seeking God’s forgiveness for the pain she’d wrought.

Yet the reversal of her mother’s curse depended entirely upon another. The man who had committed the original crime must be the one to redeem himself before the curse could be lifted. Lupe had no love for her son-in-law, Brody Ryan. But she loved his children—her grandchildren—beyond measure.

Brody Ryan was the key, and his children’s salvation might still be possible. He’d already managed one good deed and had brought a needy child and its mother to their destiny with Lupe’s eldest grandson, Josh. Two more kind and selfless acts from Brody Ryan, and Lupe’s mother had promised to reverse the curse on the entire Ryan family.

As Lupe wound her way home at the edge of her maternal family’s lake, she swore to keep a careful watch over all the Ryan family. She wished that she could force something good to happen. But when it came to Brody Ryan’s good or bad deeds, he held all the power.

Chapter 1

The evening sky over Beverly Hills grew ever more dull and gray as sea fog rolled across the 101. Soupy haze lent a chilly cast to what had been a warm spring day.

As the old song said, maybe “it never rained in Southern California.” But Blythe Cooper would have much preferred a good thunder boomer to this creepy, opaque veil that uniformly covered palm trees, green grass and brilliant sunsets with its dark and somber mists.

Glancing at her winking computer screen, she tried to ignore the goose bumps running along her arms. She picked up the nearest file folder in preparation to continue her work. But her mind swung back to the murky shadows outside. She missed the old-fashioned, late spring thunder and lightning storms of her South Carolina childhood home. A good storm was exhilarating. It could take your breath away with its power and majesty.

Sighing deeply, she shrugged a shoulder and flipped open her folder. Blythe had long ago decided she couldn’t be happier to have taken this job as tutor-turned-guardian for child star Ashley Nicole Davis—even with the difference in weather. It was the job at which everyday, average Blythe Cooper had potential to be great. A job where her practical intelligence and her dogged eye for details meant she stood out and even excelled in the midst of all the fantasy, beauty and fanfare of the entertainment industry.

Here, she was needed and would be Ashley’s rock in the storm. A solid presence was exactly what Blythe had been born to be, despite her rocky past.

A chilly air draft curled around her ankles and brought Blythe’s head up from the stacks of travel plans and touring accommodations. Was there an open window somewhere? Both Ashley and the housekeeper knew better than to leave a window or a door ajar in inclement weather.

The house had felt especially gloomy ever since forty-year-old Melissa Davis, Ashley’s mother, had been moved. Along with her twenty-four-hour nurses, Melissa now resided in the guesthouse on the other side of the pool, where she no doubt was sleeping off another round of chemotherapy treatments. Melissa would continue living out there for the remaining months—or weeks—of her life.

At some point after her mother passed away, little Ashley would be free to open windows and invite friends over and be as loud as she wanted to be in her own house again. Blythe wished for Ashley’s sake that a miracle would happen and her mother could be cured. However, the most renowned physicians in the country had said there wasn’t any possibility of Melissa surviving her illness.

Life did continue in this house, regardless of the impending death of its owner. Melissa had seen to that. The three other females still living in the house continued to work every day and dreamed of their futures, while Melissa continued to organize everyone and everything to her exacting standards from her deathbed.

According to her mother’s wishes, Ashley would finish two more days of filming on the current season of her television show and then she would leave on the promotional tour for her summer movie. Mrs. Jenson, their housekeeper, would continue cleaning and cooking and taking care of the place as she had since the days of Ashley’s first TV appearance. And Blythe herself would begin taking full responsibility for Ashley’s personal well-being. Melissa wanted things to be that way.

Blythe had agreed to remain as Ashley’s guardian after Melissa was gone. It was a long-term commitment, she knew, but Blythe had been both ready and happy to sign up. She’d grown to love Ashley over the last two years, and she would stand beside her in grief as she stood beside her in all of life.

Tired of the omnipresent depression that seemed to hang over the house, Blythe got up from her desk and went to search for the origin of the draft. She couldn’t imagine where it might be coming from, but she supposed that seven-year-old Ashley’s room might be a good place to check. She started down the long hall.

The house felt too quiet.

By this time of day, the housekeeper usually could be heard downstairs either making dinner or ordering out. As Ashley played in her room, her muffled giggles would dance gaily down the halls. And oftentimes the sounds Ash made as she memorized her lines along with the taped version the director sent over would provide a low-key and happy buzz to the atmosphere.

Not this particular late afternoon. This afternoon, you could almost hear the foggy mists creeping in through unseen cracks. As Blythe reached Ashley’s half-open door, chills were already riding down the back of her neck. She eased through the doorway, half expecting to see her little star catnapping on the bed, though Ashley hadn’t been interested in taking naps since before she’d turned five.

“Ash?” Nothing. The bed was littered with coloring books and stuffed toys, but no sign of a droopy seven-year-old fast asleep on top of the covers. And the French doors to Ashley’s private balcony appeared to be closed up tight, too. So where was the draft coming from? And more important, where was Ashley?

Blythe stepped farther into the room for a closer inspection of the bathroom and the balcony. She needed to keep a closer eye on the little girl now that her mother had become incapable of most personal supervision. Especially now that the child star had begun receiving a few very odd pieces of fan mail.

Didn’t it always work that way? Just when things looked darkest, something came along that had the potential for making it all so much worse. Ashley already had been dealing with her mother’s illness and the somber reality of it when her guardians had been forced to cut off her Internet and free access to her fan mail because of a series of nasty e-mails and vague threats. Good thing Ashley was one tough kid.

As Blythe walked toward the bathroom, her attention was caught by a flashing dot at the top of Ashley’s computer screen. When they’d cut off Ash’s Internet, the technicians had set up an intrahouse circuit so that all the computers in the mansion could instant-message one another. But only one computer in the whole place—Blythe’s—could still receive and send via the Internet.

To Blythe’s surprise Ashley hadn’t really minded the change. She’d learned to like having her own personal message system direct to the housekeeper and to her mother. And what made her the happiest was that she still had the ability to play all her video games.

So who was trying to reach Ashley via internal IM now? Was it the housekeeper, wanting Ashley to come down to dinner? Or could it be the girl’s mother? And if so, was it something that Melissa Davis would need attending to right away?

Curious, Blythe sidestepped the bed and pressed the Enter button to read the message. There, against a cobalt-blue screen, came a six-line message in bold bloodred.

Twinkle twinkle little star

I don’t need to wonder where you are

Come down to me from up on high

I promise you the world and sky

Don’t fret, little girl, we’ll be together soon

Come to me, Ashley, and I’ll give you the moon

Blythe’s stomach turned over and her palms grew clammy. This was the same kind of rhyme, done in the same chilling colors and with the same icky connotation, as Ashley had received before. The earlier ones were awful notes that usually ended with disturbing lines, sounding a lot like the overtures of a pedophile on the prowl. The police hadn’t liked the tone of the letters and e-mail, but they’d said their hands were tied until the sender made an overt move.

To appear on Ashley’s computer, this particular message had to have originated from somewhere within the house. That seemed pretty overt to Blythe. Someone was here. The evil had broken in despite their efforts to keep it out.

Oh, Ashley, where are you?

Ethan Ryan checked his watch as he kept one hand on the steering wheel of his rental car. He waited with his usual impatience for his sister to answer her cell phone back in Texas while he sat in L.A. rush-hour traffic.

“Where are you?” His sister Maggie was always in too much of a hurry for the niceties. No “Hello.” No “How was your flight?” Just get right to the point. But that was okay by him. His own limited patience was legendary. It ran in the family.

“Sitting on the freeway in L.A.,” he said grumpily to the baby sister who was, at least temporarily, his boss. “But I’ve got plenty of time yet. My appointment to meet with our new client isn’t scheduled until seven thirty. I called you to double-check on—”

“Ethan, you have to get there now.”

“What’s up, sis?” Ethan approved of his sister’s and brother’s efforts to save their deceased grandfather’s business by turning his run-down private investigators’ office into a security firm that specialized in guarding children. It was poetic justice, if nothing else. That’s why Ethan had agreed to use his expertise to help them out. Well, that and the fact that he’d had to leave the Secret Service.

“You didn’t move the appointment time up without checking with me, did you?” he blurted, not letting her answer the first question. “We were lucky the plane landed on schedule. This is the big city, Maggie. Not Texas. You just can’t schedule things too tight. As it is, traffic will keep me on the freeway an extra—”

“I don’t care how you do it, brother. But you have to be at Ashley Nicole Davis’s house right now.”

“Have you heard something new from her manager? That, um…Grandpa Ryan’s old college friend, what’s his name?”

“His name is Max Slotsmeyer, as you would know if you’d read the complete info packet I put together for you. And no, he hasn’t contacted me.”

“Then why should I show up two hours early for a scheduled appointment?” Ethan asked a little too irritably. “I wouldn’t do that even if I could sprout wings and fly over this danged inconvenient line of cars. Which, as it happens, I can’t.”

“Ethan.” Maggie lowered her voice to a whisper in order to capture his attention and make him listen. “Remember what Abuela Lupe used to say when she’d have a premonition—about feeling someone’s bones walking across her grave?”

Ethan remembered all too well his maternal grandmother Delgado’s special words and curses. Her witchcraft was part of the Mexican side of his family heritage. Most of the time he was glad about knowing Abuela Lupe’s sayings and spells. But sometimes he wished he’d never learned them. His sister’s tone told him this wasn’t going to be one of the glad times.

“Yeah, I remember,” he told Maggie. “And the connection is?”

“I’m feeling that same thing right now. Don’t ask me how I know, but something is terribly wrong at Ashley Davis’s house. They need you there. Please do something. You have to go now.”

It would do no good to try talking practicalities to his sister. When it came to family witchcraft, spells and curses, they had all learned to accept each other’s feelings and wishes unreservedly.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said in as soothing a voice as he could manage.

He hung up and took a breath before reaching for his briefcase on the passenger seat beside him. There hadn’t been a reason to use any spells in a while. Not since the fiasco when none of his curses or magic would’ve worked to save him from an embarrassing and life-changing incident.

Abuela Lupe had spent most of their formative years teaching him, his older brother and their younger sister the art of being curanderos—Mexican white witches—much to his very American-Texan father’s chagrin. But when they’d entered their teen years, they’d begged Abuela to also teach them a few of the spells and curses of the black witches—the brujos.

By then the siblings had learned that hexes and blessings could be muttered with the same breath. And as teenagers, they’d wanted some of the fun of knowing black witchcraft. Ethan’s young mind had reeled at the idea of getting any date he wanted with just the right hex, or raising his grade in any class with the proper combination of potions and herbs.

Their grandmother refused their request. According to her, black magic could not be trusted. They’d tried a few spells on their own and were fairly successful. In the long run, however, their immature white and black witchcraft hadn’t turned out to be strong enough for everything. The brothers’ and sister’s magic had failed to make a difference when it had mattered most.

But today, Ethan felt sure he still knew enough magic to cause a break in this traffic jam. Enough of a break, that is, to transport him to his destination in a few minutes instead of hours.

Pulling a finger-size red amulet in the shape of an egg from a secret compartment in his briefcase, Ethan began channeling his powers. He reached into his memory for the right words to use and started an incantation.

Not sure what lay in store for him, Ethan nevertheless knew to trust his sister’s hunches. If she felt it was imperative for him to be at Ashley Davis’s house now, then his job was to make that happen.

Blythe quietly moved back to her office and picked up her cell phone to call the police. But as her hand hovered over the lighted keys, she remembered how unsympathetic they’d been the last time she’d called them about scary e-mails and letters.

They’d made her promise not to call again unless the threat was real and imminent. Could she swear an intruder was in the house now? She hadn’t heard a thing, and the place did have a security alarm that was activated—most of the time. With a seven-year-old in residence, it was difficult to keep a security system set during the daylight hours. Still, there were no sounds at all.

Undecided about her next move, Blythe reached the top of the stairs with the cell phone still in her hand. She looked down the hallway in the direction of Melissa’s old master bedroom, but decided she needed to check downstairs for Ashley first. This whole thing could just be a mix-up of some sort and in a few moments she would find Ashley sitting in the kitchen eating chocolate chip cookies.

Could Ashley have written the note herself as a joke? That didn’t sound like something Ash would do, but you never knew. The girl did like making up her own poetry. She was a genius at some things, and she tended to be melodramatic at the best of times. Her mother’s illness was the worst of times in Ashley’s world.

Shaking her head sadly, Blythe pocketed the phone and headed down the stairway. Her best move would be locating Ashley and making sure she was not simply playing a game, since an intruder seemed impossible with the alarm system.

By the time Blythe reached the bottom stair, she had almost convinced herself that the spooky message was some kind of prank. Then she came to a sudden stop mid-thought, certain she had heard a noise this time. She froze in place, listening. Deadly silence was the only thing to reach her ears.

Blythe gave in to a momentary frisson of panic. Had she somehow failed in her responsibility to Ashley? No. Please, no. Refusing to believe that she’d messed up yet again, she set her shoulders and took another step. Before she angered Melissa by calling in the police, only to find Ashley had been acting out her grief by writing that note, Blythe decided her first move had better be to perform a thorough search of the house and grounds.

She headed toward the kitchen. Occasionally Mrs. Jenson gave Ash a treat before dinner. Those cookies, maybe, or a bowl of popcorn. Such things were not permitted according to Melissa’s rules, but perhaps Blythe would find the girl trying to be extra quiet while she snuck in a forbidden snack.

Hitting the switch on the overhead spot lighting in the dining room, Blythe sought to dispel the claustrophobic feeling. She ran an uneasy hand through her hair, knowing it was useless to try to contain her noncompliant dishwater-blond curls. Between the humidity and the stress causing her to perspire, this was bound to be a bad hair day. No matter. Her life was filled with bad hair days. And how she looked was the least important thing on her mind at the moment.

Reaching out slowly to press against the swinging door leading to the kitchen, she caught just a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye. Blythe stopped and whirled in the direction of the French doors, which opened onto the terrace that ran around the back of the house. A terrified scream stayed trapped in her constricted throat as she stared at the spot right outside where she could swear she’d seen the shadow of a man moving past.

No one there now. Just her imagination playing tricks.

She let out a sigh. But then, just as her body began to relax, it seemed as though the whole world exploded around her in a whirl of noise. The doorbell rang, the alarm sounded and voices shouted.

Blythe turned and ran toward the front door. As she reached the foyer, he moved out of a shadow behind the door and into the light.

Oh. My. God. This must be the stalker. In the house!

Ashley. By now Blythe could actually hear the little girl’s screams coming from behind the house. She needed to reach her. But how to find Ash without leading the stalker to her?

Time stopped, even as the alarm kept ringing. The stranger’s stare felt strong and held her immobile. She began counting her own heartbeats as she fought to breathe. Those eyes of his were amazingly calm and penetrating. Cold, steely gray, they studied her with dispassion.

Blythe fought to speak, but no sound came out. She tried dredging up a little anger or indignation, something to hang on to and use in her defense. Still nothing.

The pressure in her chest expanded and she began worrying that she might pass out. But she had to do something. Hold him there to wait for the police and keep him from Ashley. A little girl’s life depended on it.

Ethan tried to make sense of everything he was seeing and hearing. When he first arrived at Ashley Davis’s house, he’d noticed that the front door was ajar. That looked wrong, and the foggy silence surrounding the place seemed somehow deafening.

He’d rung the bell on the way in, but he hadn’t taken two steps inside the door when a big ol’ devil wind broke loose. The alarm began sounding. Someone—was that a child’s high-pitched voice?—shouted from the back of the house. And now this…this…schoolmarm-looking woman was standing there staring at him as if she were a mouse and he was the cat about to pounce. Well, hell.

“Where’s the kid?” he yelled above all the din.

The woman’s eyes grew wide, but she didn’t make a sound.

“This is Ashley Nicole Davis’s house, correct?” He took a step toward the woman. “Are you the housekeeper? What the hell is going on? Why’s the alarm going off? And where is Ashley?”

Still nothing came from the woman’s mouth. “Right. First we need to turn off that damned alarm.” He headed off toward the back of the house and to the spot inside the back door where alarm installers normally placed their keypads.

He strode through the garishly decorated mansion and found the key-in pad exactly where he had expected. Seconds later, he’d used his magic to enter the right code to turn off the alarm. The kitchen phone rang and he picked it up, expecting the call to be from the security company. He was right. He identified himself, gave them the new password that had been prearranged and explained that he was already on the job and would complete a security check immediately. The company assured him that they had been notified of the change in procedures and about the new bodyguard and said they would stand by.

Ethan didn’t waste another minute but started out in the direction of the earlier shouting. Whoever had been making all the noise must’ve been close to his current location, or maybe just outside the French doors to the pool and terrace. He followed his instincts at a trot, coming out of the kitchen into a wide family room at just the same moment as the woman he’d seen before came racing in from the other direction.

Well, at least she could actually move. Now if he could just be sure she could talk, too…

“Stop where you are,” she shouted at him from about twenty feet back. “That alarm will bring the police.”

He did a quick assessment. Noted she had no visible weapon but did have a bulge in her dress’s pocket that could be a tiny automatic—or more probably a cell phone. She was slightly above average height and slightly over average weight under that rather dowdy flower-print dress. Which meant her figure might be just a little on the lush side for his taste. Her brownish-blond hair ringed her head with a riot of soggy-looking curls, and her brown eyes were still on the wide and frightened side.

Nothing there that was too exciting, except maybe for the determined tilt to her chin. That was totally out of character for the rest of her image, and Ethan decided that one single attribute might be worth a second glance. Later. After he figured out what the hell was going on and found the child.

“Hang on, ma’am,” he drawled, plastering on the wide grin that usually bought him whatever he wanted. “I’ve got it covered. I’m on the job now. But unless you can tell me that wasn’t her yelling a moment ago, my first duty is to check on the welfare of Ashley Davis.”

The woman turned and picked up a heavy lamp, ripping the cord from the wall. “Stay away from her.” She hefted it above her head and moved toward him.

Well, that pretty well answered the question of the weapon in her pocket. But there was no time for explanations.

Making two quick maneuvers, Ethan forced her to drop the lamp. Then he pulled her back against his chest, tightening down on her in an incapacitating bear hug.

“Sorry I don’t have time to play games, darlin’,” he whispered. “Ashley comes first. So you and I are stepping out these doors right now to see if we can find her.”

“Bastard,” she hissed.

“Probably,” he said, dragging her to the door.

The woman squirmed and kicked him hard in the shins.

Ethan drew in a quick breath at the sharp pain, then tightened his hold—maybe a little more than he should’ve. He almost chuckled at the sound of her discomfort.

With a grunt of satisfaction, he pulled her even closer. “Make that a definitely.”