Free Guarding Miranda by Amanda M. Holt

rising from his seat.
    “Goodnight, Brian.” Lynn again rested her chin lightly upon her fist.  Her light green eyes seemed distant as Miranda looked into them.  The girl was clearly quite taken with the man who towered over her father. “Keep in touch.”
    “Goodnight, Gundys.” Brian walked out of the room with Russ, headed for the front door. 
    Lynn was rapt in her chair as she watched the retreat of bodyguard’s glorious derriere.
    As soon as the men were out of earshot, Lynn clasped her hand over her heart, rolled her luminous sea foam green eyes and cooed to her cousin and mother, “I think I’m in love.”
    “Not until you’re finished University, you aren’t.” Nancee scolded, tucking a loosed tendril of blond hair behind one of her tiny ears.
    “What a man!” Lynn continued, eyes full of wonder. “So big and strong and—“
    “-far too old for you, Lynn,” said Nancee to Miranda’s laughter as she cleared away her dessert bowl. “Goodness, girl – he’s thirty-six!”
    “He’s perfect!” She countered with a sigh.  
    Nancee laughed. “Get your head out of the clouds and help me clear the table.”
    At the sound of the front door closing, Miranda rose from her chair and helped the bantering Gundy women with the clearing of the table.  She managed to grasp the salad bowl firmly in her right hand, for all the uselessness her left arm was in its sling.
    With her free left arm she grasped a salad dressing by the neck.
    “So?” Asked Lynn, eyes sparkling, face full of mischief.
    “So what?” Miranda replied, walking with her to the huge gourmet kitchen.
    “What did you think of Brian?”
    “He was all right, Lynn.  Very polite, very gracious.  Seemed intelligent enough and quite capable of carrying his end of a conversation.”
    Her cousin rolled her young eyes skyward. “I meant his body , Miranda. His body!   Isn’t he to die for?”
    “Sure, he’s attractive, yeah but he’s no Richard.” Her voice lowered to echo the painful ache in her heart. “There was only one Richard.”
    “Yes, Richard.” Lynn fought to keep the grimace off of her face.
    Like her mother, she was privy to a certain amount of truth about Miranda’s former fiancé. 
    Swallowing that unflattering truth, Lynn instead forced a wide, false smile and said, “He was... definitely one of a kind.”
    Lynn turned her back on her cousin and frowned into the dishwasher. 
    How long was she expected to keep the secret from Miranda? 
    Richard had been a criminal of the worst sort, his plans for her cousin nefarious ones. 
    His ties to the drug underworld had very nearly cost Miranda her life.
    She chewed the pink lip gloss from her lower lip as she considered telling Miranda what a bastard her fiancé had truly been, in life. 
    It seemed such a shame to Lynn, that a woman so attractive, so full of life would be in such deep and painful mourning for a lout who would have seen her death as a means to collect a small fortune in insurance money. 
    If not to collect the fortune Miranda had inherited from her parents’ estate and the twenty percent stake in COSSCO as well!
    “Bastard.” Lynn muttered, under her breath.
    “Pardon?” Miranda wore a mask of confusion on her furrowed brow.
    “Stubbed my toe,” the red head lied, though in her mind she silently damned Richard Alba to the Hell that he deserved.
     
     
    Chapter Five
     
    It was the fourth time Miranda had been mugged by reporters since leaving the hospital. 
    As the only heir to the Fowler family fortune she was very much the Silicon Valley equivalent of royalty and therefor the public property of the kingdom of San Francisco. Her father had co-founded COSSCO with her uncle and so Miranda had been raised in the public eye.
    The tragic death of her parents and brother in her sixteenth year had been further fuel for the fire that burned in the heart of the public. 
    Everybody loved a tragedy.
    Images of her grieving her loss had been plastered