Read Online Bodyguard by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online Page B

and …
    Glass was everywhere. The brand-new windows were shattered. Every one she could see in the dim light had been destroyed.
    An explosion.
    She’d fallen asleep upstairs in the tub and had awakened down in the kitchen from the sudden deafening sound and force of a tremendous explosion.
    Her mother had always warned her not to fall asleep in the tub.
    The house was on fire. Alessandra coughed, choking on the smoke, unable to breathe.
    Whatever exploded had ignited the house, and it was burning. She could see the flames from the west wing and …
    Her clothes! Her new clothes were still upstairs, up inher bedroom. She needed them for that meeting tomorrow! She leapt over the broken glass, scrambling toward the entryway, toward the staircase. The smoke was chokingly thick, and she dropped to her hands and knees, crawling up what was left of the stairs.
    “What the fuck are you doing?”
    The hoarse male voice came from out of nowhere, and she jerked back in surprise as hands came down on her shoulders, dragging her down the stairs.
    She wriggled away. She didn’t want to go that way. Her new clothes were upstairs. Without them, she didn’t stand a chance of getting Jane.
    Whoever he was—he of the foul mouth and large hands—he was bigger than she was. And he wasn’t about to take no for an answer. He reached for her again, but this time she was ready for him. She fought back in earnest, flailing and hitting and kicking. Her leg connected with him solidly, strategically, and she heard the breath leave his lungs, heard him squeeze out another hair-curling curse.
    He grabbed for her, catching the shower curtain, and she slipped out of it, leaving it behind. She wouldn’t need it, anyway, once she reached her new clothes—her new clothes that she would not let burn.
    But she hadn’t gone more than three steps farther before his hand closed around her leg. He dragged her toward him, roughly pinning her legs before picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder. He was coughing from the smoke that burned her lungs as well, and he staggered slightly as he carried her down and out of the house.
    She was naked. She was completely naked, and he must’ve realized that right before he carried her out the door. Because once outside, he didn’t stop to catch hisbreath before peeling off his overcoat and wrapping it around her.
    He carried her away from the house, set her down on the lawn, then sank to his knees beside her.
    And a second explosion rocked the house.
    He threw himself on top of her, shielding her as soot, ashes, and debris rained down upon them.
    “What the hell,” he asked, gasping for breath as he pulled himself off her, “is in there that’s so important you’ve got to die trying to get it out?”
    Alessandra gazed at the flames leaping from the entire west side of her house and couldn’t stop her tears.
    “Is the money still in there?” FBI Agent Harry O’Dell asked. For it was O’Dell who had pulled her out of the house. The man with the melting chocolate-brown eyes who could glance around a room and instantly see all the details that mere mortals missed. “Is that what you were after? Or is there someone else still inside?”
    Alessandra couldn’t answer. After days—no, weeks, months—of keeping her composure, she couldn’t do anything but cry.
    Fire engines were coming. Alessandra could hear the sirens in the distance. But it was too late. Too late. All she had left in the world was already burning. No one would ever let her have Jane now.
    She couldn’t keep from sobbing.
    “Is someone else inside?” Harry O’Dell all but picked her up by the lapels of his raincoat and shook her. “Come on, Alessandra, don’t lose it on me now!”
    “My clothes …”
    “What?”
    “My new clothes …”
    “Just tell me—yes or no—is someone else in the house?”
    She shook her head. “No—”
    Realization dawned in his eyes. “You were risking your life for some goddamn new