Out Run the Night

by Leah Ashton

  She managed half a smile, but it was less than convincing. She was wearing a vivid orange lipstick Griff found himself staring at – although maybe that was also because of the lips beneath the lipstick – which were wide and full. He made himself meet her gaze again, but now it was her eyes he found distracting.

  She was beautiful, he realised. Not in a way that was immediately obvious – he certainly hadn’t paid much attention to the photos of Emily Valente included in the assignment file he’d received this morning – and this woman was clearly Emily. Maybe she was too far different to conventional beauty standards – her nose was thin and long, her jaw square and strong, her mouth generous, her eyes direct. But the more he looked at her, the more he wanted to look at her.

  She reached out suddenly, rubbing her thumb against his chest, just beside the buttons of his shirt.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “I’ve got lipstick on you, right here.”

  He went absolutely still beneath her touch – and then she went still too, seeming to belatedly realise what she was doing. She snatched her hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What is it with me today?” She ran a hand through her pixie short hair. “I’ll pay to get that dry-cleaned. And I’m sorry for touching you like that.”

  He shrugged and grinned. “It’s okay.”

  He’d been totally okay with having this woman’s hands on him.

  “There’s a bathroom just down here if you want to try and get some of it off. I’ll show you.”

  She skirted past him and took a few steps down the hall, then went still outside the room he’d just himself exited.

  “Oh.” Was all she said.

  He turned and went to stand beside her. It was a guest room, not that he’d paid much attention when he’d ducked inside to take a call from Elite SWAT HQ. It was a sumptuous, neutral room, decorated in shades of white and cream.

  “This is my room,” she said quietly. “Was, I mean.”

  She stepped inside, but Griff remained where he was, watching her.

  She ran a hand over the satin bound wool blanket folded at the bottom of the bed, then across the top of the white painted chest of drawers, and along the length of the windowsill. The curtains were open, and through the large windows was a panoramic view of the Swan River, its shores literally across the road from the Valente home. The water was choppy today, and a pair of kite surfers zipped across and above the foamy crests of waves in the distance.

  Emily turned to face him.

  “You know who I am,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  He remained where he was, not entering the room.

  “Are you my mother’s bodyguard or mine?” she asked, her gaze direct.

  “Yours,” he said. He clasped his hands before him, his stance strong – typical bodyguard pose. It was both a habit and also deliberate. A reminder he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about how beautiful Emily Valente was – he was supposed to be protecting her. “Along with my partner, of course. I’m Senior Constable Griffin Walters – call me Griff - and together with Senior Constable Ben Smith, we’ll be looking after you most days. Another team will take over at night and our days off.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Days off? How long do you reckon you’ll need to be following me around?”

  “Until they either catch the people who threatened you and the premier, or they downgrade the threat.”

  She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “This sucks.”

  He didn’t comment.

  That was the thing, he wasn’t supposed to talk to the principal – the person he was protecting – all that much beyond what was necessary for their protection. No one wanted a chatty bodyguard – he was supposed to blend into the background. Which he was good at, very good at. Keeping a low profile, keeping his attention focused purely on the job he had to do.

  It had literally never been difficult for him to hold his tongue, no matter how famous or interesting the person he was protecting. And he’d looked after prime ministers, visiting presidents, royalty, and at one time in his life, several high-profile celebrities.

  Yet he couldn’t ignore Emily’s obvious reaction to this room. Her expression was pained and confused.

  Of course, he knew Emily was estranged from the premier. It had been in her file.

  Of course he knew this was clearly a complex, private family situation – the type of situation he had absolutely no interest in getting tangled up in.

  “Has the room changed a lot since you left?” he asked anyway.

  She blinked, then paused – and eventually spoke. “No,” she said. “My mother hasn’t changed a thing.”

  Chapter Two

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing generic about Senior Constable Griffin Walters.

  Emily walked beside him back to her mother’s office keeping her gaze straight ahead. He was tall and broad, and his body was hard. She knew that because she’d run straight into him, and there hadn’t been an ounce of fat on him to soften her landing. And then she’d reached out and touched his chest to rub off her lipstick – and while the action had been instinctive, innocent, and stupid …

  Damn, he’d felt good.

  Her cheeks warmed again as she silently berated herself. This was not like her at all, to be all stupid-headed about a man she didn’t know.

  The other bodyguards she’d seen today – or the male political staffers in her mother’s office – they’d all just looked like men in suits to her. She’d been so focused on being in this house and seeing her mother again, that everyone else had practically blurred together. But this man – Griff Walters – he’d made her forget all that. Just for a moment or two.

  But he’d done it. With his piercing blue eyes and the way he’d steadied her. The way he’d looked at her.

  And then, from nowhere, when he’d asked her about her room … the way he’d seemed to give a shit about her …

  It was … it was …

  What on earth was she thinking?

  He was a bodyguard who worked for her mother. To be thinking like this …

  It was crazy. Ridiculous.

  He was just some guy doing his job, and her mixed up emotions were messing with her head. That was all.

  She straightened her shoulders as she stepped into her mother’s office.

  “I see you’ve met one of your bodyguards,” the detective said, as Griff walked to stand beside the detective and another man almost as tall as himself. “Senior Constables Walters and Smith will be looking after you for the rest of today, including at the event this evening. They will of course do their utmost to allow you to go about your life as normal.”

  Emily knew that was impossible, but she also knew there was zero point in stating that fact.

  “Hello,” Emily said to Smith, and he smiled back. He had light hair and grey eyes and looked just like the bodyguards she’d had in high school and university. Professional, distant, and absolutely interchangeable.

  She didn’t look at Griff again.

  She met her mother’s gaze, who now sat behind her desk, a pen in her hand. “Can I go now?” Emily said.

  She sounded like a whiny teenager again, but still – she couldn’t make herself care. She just needed out of this place.

  The detective began to speak, but her mother held up a hand to silence her. Instead, she just looked at Emily. And the way she looked at her was different, more direct, and more intense than before. Immediately Emily looked away, she had to, and her gaze instead diverted to Griff.

  He looked just like he had in her old bedroom. Thoughtful, and assessing. Like he might know what she was thinking, and he might give a damn about that.

  But this time – maybe because she was far enough away from him that her brain was working properly again – she didn’t like that look at all. Now that she could be logical and unclouded by thoughts of how he’d felt pressed against her body or beneath her fingertips, what w
as really going on was clear.

  Senior Constable Walters didn’t know her. He knew exactly what he’d been told or had read about her – and that was it.

  So rather than reading something stupid into it – that this total stranger who didn’t know her somehow cared – she saw it for what it was.

  Pity.

  Pity for the woman disowned by her brilliant mother.

  She didn’t wait for her mother to speak. Instead, she turned on her heel and left.

  And with heavy, determined steps, her bodyguards followed behind.

  Griff and Ben shadowed Emily home in their unmarked E-SWAT SUV. Griff knew where she lived of course – it was in her file – but they hadn’t had a chance to scout out the location as the assignment had progressed too rapidly. Just hours ago the premier had found an envelope on the lawn inside the gates of her Applecross mansion. Security footage had revealed it’d been creatively delivered – via drone – and its contents were sufficiently sophisticated for the threat to be considered genuine, even if the threat itself didn’t seem to fit the Notechi’s known MO. But that was the thing about the Notechi – they were a new OMCG, but their growth was rapid and their influence significant. In his role at Elite SWAT, Griff hadn’t yet worked on anything directly related to the Notechi – who’d named themselves after Western Australia’s native lethal tiger snakes using a bastardised version of their Latin name, Notechis. But he – and everyone at Elite SWAT – was very aware of their criminal activity: a hostage situation on a train, a shooting, a kidnapping, and a lot of drug offences. But for now, the Notechi president remained free, and the gang continued to grow.

  Emily lived in a single level house from around the 1960s, with a steeply pitched asymmetrical roof and lots of floor to ceiling windows across the front. It sat on a decent-sized block a few suburbs from the river near Fremantle, only ten minutes from her mother’s home. She parked her nondescript emerald green hatchback beneath her carport and didn’t wait for Smith to park their SUV before exiting her car and stalking to her front door.

  “Fuck,” Griff muttered as he flung open the door of the still moving SUV and went after her, reaching her about half way to the door. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against his chest, acting as a shield as he dragged her the rest of the way to the front door, ignoring her yelp of disapproval.

  “What the hell?” she asked against his chest, but they were at her door now.

  “Get us inside,” he barked, and she blinked in surprise before complying and grabbing her keys out of her handbag.

  Moments later, they stood in her front hallway, door closed, with Emily looking up at him with narrowed eyes and pink cheeks.

  “What was that?” she asked. “Surely that wasn’t necessary.”

  Through the comms Griff wore in his ear, Smith was talking, letting him know he was checking out the street and the perimeter of the house.

  “Roger that,” Griff replied, ducking his head just slightly to speak into the small microphone near his collar.

  Emily’s forehead wrinkled. “Is something going on?”

  “Probably not,” he replied.

  “Then why on Earth –“

  “Did I do my job?” he finished for her. “How many years did you have protection teams looking after you, Ms Valente? You must know that exiting a vehicle in the open is high risk.”

  She looked non plussed. “Not even an hour ago Elite SWAT was quite happy for me to walk from my front door to my car before I drove to my mother’s. Are you telling me a crack bikie gang sniper team has assembled themselves outside my house since then?”

  “Constable Smith is currently confirming that’s not the case,” he replied, keeping his tone serious and ignoring the urge to grin. She was – probably – right, in this instance. But that didn’t mean he got to slack off from protecting her.

  She rolled her eyes. “He won’t find anything. Nothing is going to happen. Ever.” She sighed. “This is such a waste of time.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She frowned. “Because I do.”

  He did smile now. “What a compelling argument.”

  She bit her lip, and the creases across her forehead smoothed out. “This is shit,” she said. Her gaze met his, her eyes hot with frustration. “I hate this,” she said. “I don’t want any of this. I –“

  Her voice cracked, just a little, and for the first time he realised how close he stood to her. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in her deep brown eyes, and that she’d worried some of her lipstick off with her teeth. She was such a contradiction – anger, and frustration and fire – and then these little glimpses of vulnerability.

  But just as at the Prem’s house, all he saw was that glimpse, as a moment later she’d taken a step back and straightened her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and it sounded reasonably sincere. “It’s been over ten years since I’ve had security. I do know I’m not supposed to just get out of my car like that.”

  Her demeanour was totally different now. Compliant. Obedient.

  Griff didn’t believe it at all.

  “Next time, please wait for our direction before exiting your vehicle,” Griff said gruffly, taking his own step back from her. He sounded professional and distant, like Emily was any other principal he’d ever worked with.

  But yeah, he didn’t believe that either.

  He would’ve chased after any principal who’d exited their vehicle the way Emily had, given the same threat level. No question, it’d been the right thing to do. However, with any other principal he would not be standing here trying to forget how good she’d felt pressed against him once again. All curves and perfection.

  The silence between them had stretched too long, and he met her gaze again.

  Fuck, she was gorgeous.

  She was chewing on her lip again, and his eyes dropped there.

  Then she licked her lips, and the instant reaction in his groin was so powerful, so unexpected, for a moment he forgot where he was. Who she was. His gaze went up to her meet hers again, and her eyes were hot, surprised, and –

  There was a knock on the door. Smith.

  Jesus Christ.

  He was working. She needed to trust him to protect her. What the fuck was he thinking? What the fuck had he been about to do?

  He opened the door, but barely looked at Smith before turning and heading down the hall before either Emily or Smith noticed the very obvious evidence of his fucked up libido.

  “I’ll clear the place,” he said, and didn’t look back.

  Griff methodically worked his way through the house, focussing on ensuring each room was clear rather than how easily he’d almost thrown away an exemplary career.

  He’d almost kissed her. There was no way around that fact. He’d wanted to kiss Emily, and he was pretty damn sure Emily had wanted to kiss him back.

  But what was with that? He’d met her not even an hour ago. She was a stranger, just as he was to her, and that hadn’t mattered. It must be pheromones or something, because Griff couldn’t remember ever being so desperate to kiss someone, even when he’d been the randy teenager he’d very nearly acted like. If Smith had been thirty seconds later…

  He would’ve been screwed.

  It was pretty much Bodyguard 101 – don’t creep on your principal. And honestly, no matter if Emily seemed into it too, she literally received a death threat today. She was vulnerable, and if he’d taken advantage of that, he deserved every book thrown at him.

  Fuck, he was an arsehole.

  Want to find out what happens next? You can read Danger in Trust (Elite SWAT Book Three) now!

  About the Author

  www.leah-ashton.com

  RITA® Award-winning author Leah Ashton writes fast-paced, sexy romantic suspense and smart, modern contemporary romance. All her books feature strong heroines, deliciously heroic heroes and swoon worthy happily ever afters.

  Leah lives in Perth, Western Australia with her g
orgeous husband, two amazing daughters and the best intentions to meal plan and have an effortlessly tidy home. When she’s not writing, Leah loves all day breakfast, rambling conversations and laughing until she cries. She really hates cucumber. And scary movies.

  Also by Leah Ashton

  Elite SWAT Series

  Books can be read in any order

  For the Fight

  Out Run the Night

  Danger in Trust

  Beneath the Fear

  In His Sights (prequel novella)

  Contemporary Romance

  Secrets & Speed Dating

  A Girl Less Ordinary

  Why Resist a Rebel?

  Beware of the Boss

  Nine Month Countdown (Molyneux Sisters #1)

  The Billionaire from her Past (Molyneux Sisters #2)

  Behind the Billionaire’s Guarded Heart (Molyneux Sisters #3)

  The Prince’s Fake Fiancee (Vela Ada #1)

  His Pregnant Christmas Princess (Vela Ada #2)

  Mining for Love (trade anthology of the Molyneux Sisters)