It wasn’t his fault her life was about to be upended. Yet, something about the way she struggled to mask her apprehension as she searched his face brought an unexpected twinge of sympathy. And guilt. She was looking to him for help. Just not the kind he was prepared to offer.
“The pictures were sold?” Looking as if she absolutely did not want to believe what she’d heard, she lifted her hand, pushed her fingers through the wild tangle of her incredible hair. “Who else had access to them?”
Her motions drew the soft cotton of her tank top taut below the fullness of her breasts. Ben felt his breath stall. He was already more aware than he wanted to be of the litheness of her feminine body, the delicacy of her shoulder blades, the long length of her shapely legs. He preferred women who looked refined, sophisticated, sleek. Standing barefoot in the grass with the soft, golden skin of her slender limbs exposed and her thick curls uncontrolled, she looked more like a young earth mother. He could easily see her wandering down a beach or through the woods with a dozen little kids in tow.
Still, there was no denying the quick tightening low in his gut as he met the anxiety in her eyes once more. As cynical as he’d become, the sympathy he felt for her was disconcerting enough. The last thing he wanted was the reminder of just how long he’d gone without a woman.
“Tess Kendrick’s ex-husband. Bradley Ashworth,” he said, burying his responses to her the way he did anything else he didn’t want to think about. “We suspect he sold them in retaliation for William exposing him as the louse he is.”
A little panic on her part wouldn’t have surprised him. At the very least, he expected a little more cooperation.
“They might know who I am,” she conceded, “but I don’t have to talk to them.”
“That’s not going to stop them from invading your life. That’s why I’m here,” he emphasized, needing her to grasp the gravity of the situation. “My job is to help you with the media that’s going to descend the minute they discover your identity.” And to put the proper spin on what you say, he admitted to himself. If she knew that, though, she’d only want to get rid of him that much faster. “They will arrive,” he assured her. “If not today, then tomorrow for certain. As difficult as it may be to accept, you can’t avoid any of this.”
The woman clearly had no idea how vulnerable she was. Hoping he didn’t sound impatient with her, he deliberately gentled his tone.
“William wants you to know he’s not about to leave you to the wolves. And that’s exactly what you’ll think has happened once your phone starts ringing with requests for statements and interviews.” He slowly shook his head. “This really isn’t something you want to try to handle alone.”
For a moment Jillian said nothing. She found it disconcerting enough to be face-to-face with one of her famous father’s associates. But Ben Garrett was unsettling in his own right. The man was confident to a fault, incredibly persuasive in his arguments and utterly convinced of his certainty of what was about to happen. Yet, even more disturbing than his absolute insistence was the physical impact of his presence.
He possessed the same compelling aura of authority and influence she’d sensed in William when she’d met him, only in a more elemental and infinitely more disquieting way. He stood nearly ten feet from her, yet she could almost feel the energy that radiated from him like a force field. That raw power sensitized her nerves, tugged hard at something low in her belly.
She didn’t doubt for an instant that he was a man accustomed to achieving exactly what he set out to accomplish. He was the alpha other men envied and women turned stupid for—just as her mother had done with William. But turning stupid over a total stranger wasn’t on her list of back-to-school resolutions. Nor was she about to have a stranger tell her what she should do. Especially one she strongly suspected wanted only to cover William’s tracks.
Feeling a definite need for the situation in general and this unnerving man in particular to go away, she adopted the end-of-discussion tone she used when a student was being particularly obtuse.
“Mr. Garrett,” she began, “please tell your client I appreciate his concern, but I can manage on my own. If I can handle thirty second-graders on a sugar high after a class birthday party, I can probably deal with a few reporters.”
“It’ll be more than a few.”
“Then, I’ll handle however many there are,” she insisted, only to immediately soften her tone. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing. I’m sure you’re very qualified to do whatever it is you do, but I don’t want anything from William. Not even his help.
“No offense to you,” she concluded, because she didn’t believe in shooting the messenger—even if the messenger was part of the reason her stomach was jumping.
She’d seen something that looked suspiciously like sympathy in his disturbing blue eyes moments ago. She caught a glimpse of it again before he glanced away. She just couldn’t tell if it was real or calculated.
She never should have gone to see William, she thought, reaching to stuff the last of the stones and twigs into the bag. Loss and anger had pushed her. That alone should have told her seeking him out would be a mistake.
The chirping of birds joined the rustle of plastic as Ben prepared to argue his position. The woman really had no concept of what she was about to face. He’d seen seasoned politicians and corporate heads cave under the media’s badgering, and he had no clear idea of what she would say or do when the press found her. But pressing his point didn’t seem like such a good idea just then. Jillian Hadley might be as naive as a newborn about what was to come, but there was a sense of independence about her—or maybe it was simply stubbornness—that told him pushing too hard would only push her farther away. He needed her cooperation. He wouldn’t get it by badgering her.
With his first efforts frustrated, Ben prepared to retreat. He wasn’t admitting defeat by any means. He would simply let time work in his favor.
Reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a pen and one of his business cards. Using the table beside him, he wrote his cell phone number on the back of the card. Two steps later he held it out to her.
The breeze shifted. As it did, it caught her scent, something elusive, faintly exotic and far more sensual than he would have expected a woman who worked with small children to wear.
A muscle in his jaw jerked.
“Call me when you change your mind.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Jillian assured him, but took the card anyway. Anything to get him on his way. “But thank you.”
With a nod of his dark head, he murmured, “You’re welcome,” and turned to stride back the way he’d come.
Not until he’d disappeared around the side of the house did Jillian realize she’d been holding her breath. Realizing it now, it escaped in a rush as she stuffed his card in her skirt pocket and grabbed her sack.
Considering the amount of doom he’d predicted, she hadn’t expected him to give up and go so easily. Just glad that he had, she hurried toward her back door with her chest feeling far too tight and a sense of foreboding fast on her heels. If the press did find her, the next few days could be a little unsettling. But she had weathered upsetting days before.
For months after her mom had been diagnosed and she’d lost both her mom and Eric, she’d felt as if she’d been in a total, stomach-dropping free fall. Nothing about her world had felt the same. Not even the parts that had kept her from feeling as if she had nothing to latch on to, nothing to keep her life from spinning completely