Her One and Only Read online

  © 2016 by Rebecca Wade

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6946-1

  Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jennifer Parker

  Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC

  For editor extraordinaire, Charlene Patterson

  Thank you so much for the effort and belief you dedicated to my novels. Your intelligence and experience were matched only by your kindness and enthusiasm. Your input strengthened each story in important ways and I’m wholeheartedly grateful to you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Questions for Conversation

  About the Author

  Books by Becky Wade

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  Dru lifted her handgun, leveling it on Gray’s stalker as she rushed forward through the crowd. The realization that she’d been outsmarted washed over her with sickening certainty. Gray was unprotected. The stalker had pistols in both hands, both barrels aimed at Gray. Had she been next to Gray, she’d have shoved him down, been able to dodge in front of him to keep him safe. But she was much too far away for that. Despair arced through her mind and heart. She was too far. He was unprotected.

  “Lower your weapons,” she demanded, shouldering past bystanders.

  The stalker’s face turned sharply in her direction, giving her a direct line of sight into facial features that were drawn and blank. Viciously cold.

  The attacker kept one of the guns trained on Gray. The other pistol moved, with chilling deliberation, until its barrel aimed squarely at Dru.

  “No!” Gray yelled.

  The stalker’s attention returned to Gray, fingers whitening on the triggers.

  Dru fired.

  Her bullet met its mark.

  But so did the stalker’s. So did the stalker’s.

  Ammunition tore into tender flesh, destroying the muscle and bone and organs in its path. A screaming denial the color of red obliterated Dru’s thoughts.

  Furious, she fired again.

  Chapter One

  Three months earlier

  Dru Angelica Porter was a former Marine, a black belt in jiu-jitsu, a national pistol-shooting champion, and an experienced executive protection agent for Dallas’s most prestigious security company. She was also about to meet her new client. A new client who would, just like all her past clients, be too busy trying to process the fact that she was female to give a hoot about her qualifications.

  When people heard the term bodyguard, they very predictably imagined big, muscle-bound guys in suits and sunglasses, with wires coiling up from their shirts into earpieces.

  Dru wasn’t big or muscle-bound. Today’s “suit” consisted of a pewter-colored leather jacket, closely fitted, with several creatively placed zippers and a collar that turned up behind her neck. High-quality white shirt. Slim black trousers. Heels. Her sunglasses were stashed in her purse. No wire coiled into an earpiece.

  She was an executive protection agent à la the new millennium.

  She made her way down the hallway that led to the administrative offices for the NFL’s Dallas Mustangs. The Mustangs’ complex, which also housed the team’s practice field, gym, and a physical therapy wing, had been decorated, without a great deal of creativity, in the Mustangs’ colors. A carpet of light blue trimmed in hunter green and white absorbed her footfalls. The gleaming ivory walls sported horizontal green and blue stripes, as well as framed action shots of the team.

  Go Mustangs! the decor seemed to shout. Rah, rah, rah! Go, fight, win, team!

  She paused to peer at one of the photos. Confetti laced a brightly lit sky behind the team as they hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. The season before last, the Mustangs had won the Super Bowl. Dru frowned slightly at the image, which showed the players with sweaty hair and big grins and hastily donned hats and t-shirts pronouncing them the champs. No doubt she’d find all this team spirit more charming if she actually liked the Mustangs.

  Like any good Texan, she was a born and bred Cowboys fan. She’d always viewed the Mustangs, a relatively new franchise team and the Cowboys’ crosstown rivals, the way one might view an upstart in-law who arrived at a family reunion and ate all the sheet cake.

  Her gaze traced across the photo before coming to a stop on the face of her new client. Gray Fowler, famed Mustangs’ tight end, battle-hardened warrior, object of a million infatuations, was not the client she’d have chosen for her first executive protection assignment after the disaster in Mexico.

  Celebrities who’d reached Gray Fowler’s level of fame could be egotistical, bossy, and unmanageable. Athletes of his caliber were sometimes full of testosterone and stupid machismo. Add the two together and—no. They did not equal Dru’s dream client. Any type of businessperson, even the brash, hard-charging type who never set aside their smartphone, would have been preferable. A politician? Fine. The teenage daughter of a billionaire who needed to be taken to field hockey practice after school? Sure.

  Since Mexico, for the past year and a half, she’d been riding a desk job at Sutton Security’s downtown Dallas office. It had taken her longer than she’d expected to rehabilitate her body. To put her life back together. To earn back the complete trust of her boss, Anthony Sutton. The backward step on her career ladder had dealt a blow to both her professional aspirations and her pride. She’d been itching for, praying for, waiting for this chance to get back out in the field and prove her capability.

  So she would be fulfilling her protective responsibilities toward Gray Fowler expertly, doggedly, and exactly by the book. She drew
in a slow, determined breath and straightened her posture. Gray Fowler had decimated the baddest defensive players the NFL could serve up. But he’d yet to meet the likes of her. Woe to him if he got in her way.

  She knocked on the door of the team’s GM at exactly two o’clock. An administrative assistant ushered her into a spacious office filled with at least twelve people and five conversations.

  One group of executives thronged the centrally positioned desk. Another had gathered on the room’s left. On the right, she caught sight of Big Mack, her co-worker at Sutton. An African-American man in his early forties, Mack looked every inch the bodyguard stereotype. Unless one knew him, one would never guess that his two tween daughters had gotten their gentle giant of a father hooked on the Disney Channel and the musical stylings of 5 Seconds of Summer.

  Big Mack smiled at her and motioned her forward with a large paw of a hand. “Afternoon, Dru. How you been?”

  “Afternoon, Mack. I’ve been well. You?”

  “Can’t complain.” He stepped to the side, giving Dru her first glimpse of Gray Fowler. Their agency’s newest client was sitting on a small sofa, leaning back, one hand tucked casually behind his head. He’d focused his attention up and to the side and was in conversation with a fellow player who stood at the sofa’s end.

  Fowler had the profile of a gladiator, no prettiness to it whatsoever. His corded neck gave way to the hard, clean line of his jaw. His skin was lightly tanned, his lean cheeks marked with a five-o’clock shadow. He kept his dark brown hair short on the sides, slightly longer on top.

  Dru had done her best to study him, both through the information provided by her agency and through her own private research. Very few details existed about his childhood. She’d been able to learn only that he had a younger brother and sister and that he’d overcome a mysteriously rocky start in small-town Mullins, Texas. He’d then parlayed his athletic ability into a star turn at Texas A&M before being drafted in the early rounds by the Mustangs.

  He was not a man who’d stumbled or bought or lucked his way into success. He’d earned his success one tackle, catch, block, and injury at a time. His toughness, speed, and steely concentration had lifted him to his current status as one of the Mustangs’ most popular players. He had a reputation with journalists as a straight talker and a reputation with entertainment reporters as a ladies’ man. He’d been selected to the Pro Bowl eight times in his ten-year career, was one of the architects of the Mustangs’ Super Bowl victory, and in general, broke football records as easily as other people ate cereal.

  The player Gray had been talking to moved off, and Gray’s face turned toward Dru. He looked squarely at her, holding himself still, his eyes glinting an unusual pale green.

  He’s trouble. Of all the words in the English language, those were the two that slid into her mind.

  This particular client might prove even more difficult than the garden-variety celebrity athlete she’d been steeling herself for. Grayson Robert Fowler looked to her like a load of dark, headstrong, dangerous trouble.

  He rose smoothly to his feet without breaking eye contact. She’d known before entering the room that he stood at six feet, four inches and weighed two fifty. Even so, the physical reality of his size took her back.

  It wasn’t common, in everyday life, to come across a person as big as he was. Beneath the Mustangs hooded sweatshirt and track pants he wore, his body was huge, his muscles ropy and hard.

  Not for the first time, she wished she’d grown to a height of six feet, eight inches, like some of the WNBA stars. Instead, her three-inch heels boosted her up to five-eleven, not a quarter inch more.

  “Gray,” Mack said, “this is Dru Porter. She’s with Sutton Security. She’ll be your protective agent for the 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift five days a week, starting today.”

  Gray’s face remained unmoving, as if he was waiting for someone to shout, Just kidding, dude! and fist bump him. Exactly as expected, he was busy trying to process the fact that she was female.

  “This is Gray Fowler,” Mack said to Dru, “our new client.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She extended her hand, and Gray shook it, his grip strong and slightly calloused.

  “Likewise.” He had blunt cheekbones. Faint creases marked the skin at the edges of his eyes and across his forehead.

  Mack edged toward the GM’s desk. “I’ll just go and let Mr. Morris know that Dru’s arrived.”

  Gray stuck his hands into either side of the rectangular front pocket on his sweatshirt and took his time studying her. “You’re my new bodyguard,” he stated slowly.

  “Executive protective agent.”

  “You’re my new executive protective agent.”

  “I’m one of them, yes.”

  “You.”

  “Yes. Me.” She brought her long, straight, dark hair forward over one shoulder.

  “I was expecting all of the agents from Sutton Security to look like Mack.”

  “All of our clients expect the agents to look like Mack.”

  “You don’t look like Mack.”

  “No.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  He scratched the side of his head, returned his hand to the pocket. “Why would Sutton Security send a woman younger than I am and half my size to protect me?”

  On the one hand, his skepticism irritated her like stinging nettles. She’d faced this same sort of skepticism all her life from her three older brothers. On the other hand, his directness meant that she could address him with equal directness. She wouldn’t have to waste her time on political correctness and fake politeness. “Sutton sent me because I’m qualified. I’m a former Marine, and before I became an agent I had to undergo rigorous training at Sutton Security—”

  “Which included?”

  “Study of armed combat, threat assessment, first aid, and lots more. On top of all that, I’ve been licensed by the state of Texas to do this job.”

  He still looked doubtful.

  “Executive protection mostly requires me to use my brain,” she stated, “rarely my body or my gun.”

  “What was your name again?”

  “Dru Porter. What was yours again?”

  His expression filled with a mix of humor and disbelief. “Gray Fowler.”

  “Ah.” She gave him a small smile. “That’s right.”

  “How do you spell your name?”

  “D. R. U.”

  “Huh.” He sized her up. “Just between you and me, Dru Porter, I’m not worried about my safety.” Gray’s team had hired Sutton’s services, not Gray himself. “I didn’t ask for protection in the first place, so if Sutton wants me to hang out with someone who looks like a model, I’m fine with it.”

  “I don’t look like a model.”

  “You look exactly like a model.”

  “Also, I won’t be hanging out with you. I’ll be working.”

  “Here’s my issue with you.” He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I can’t have everyone knowing that a hot-looking, twenty-something girl—”

  “—woman—”

  “Is my bodyguard—”

  “Executive protection agent.”

  “I’ll never hear the end of it in the locker room.”

  Chauvinism was still alive and well. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Your safety is my top priority, not your locker-room reputation.”

  “My reputation’s important to me, though. And if it’s important to me, it’ll be important to him.” He angled a shoulder toward Brian Morris, the general manager.

  She wanted to tell Gray to shove his concerns about his reputation. In fact, she wished she could bark out all sorts of orders that her clients would be compelled to follow. As it was, her clients were entitled to a pesky thing called free will. She could advise them, but she couldn’t force.

  Compromise stunk.

  “No one has to know that I’m assigned to you other than the people you decide to tel
l,” Dru said, her voice level. “But if you want us to go that route, then you’ll lose the deterring effect that agents can have. If your assailant sees that you’re accompanied by agents, he or she will be less likely to attack.”

  “I don’t care about the deterring effect.”

  Figured. “In that case, I can provide low-profile protection that won’t give people any reason to think I’m an agent.”

  “You could pose as my girlfriend.”

  Dru centered him in the crosshairs of her iciest glare. Strong men—Marines, protection agents, and some of the best pistol shooters on the planet—had wilted under that glare.

  Gray didn’t. In fact, since their conversation had begun, his demeanor toward her had been frank and unflinching.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend currently?” Dru asked.

  “I’m in between.”

  “Wouldn’t any girlfriend of yours have a job? I can’t imagine that she’d be free to trail after you five afternoons a week.”

  Two of the team’s coaches nodded to Gray in parting as they moved toward the door. Gray lifted his chin in response. “Maybe my new girlfriend is a preschool teacher who only works in the mornings.”

  She uncrossed her arms, somewhat incredulous. “Does anything about me read preschool teacher?”

  “Nothing. But there’s always an exception that proves the rule. You can pretend to be my unorthodox, preschool-teaching girlfriend.”

  Dru had never—not even in elementary school when she’d done a unit called What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?—hoped to become anyone’s preschool-teaching girlfriend. “I think it makes far more sense for me to pose as your administrative assistant.”

  “I don’t need an administrative assistant. I have a housekeeper named Ashley who handles my house and my schedule for me. All the players know her.”

  “I could be a journalist working on a story about you.”

  He raised an eyebrow with an air of smugness. “For days and days on end? No one would believe that, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

  Brian Morris stood and politely requested that everyone not a part of his scheduled 2:15 meeting clear out of the office.