by Nina Quinn
Her Protector
A Curvy Girl Romance
Book 2
By Nina Quinn
Her Shield, A Curvy Girl Romance, Book One
Copyright ©2020 by Nina Quinn
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Chapter One
Emily
I was nervous about meeting my new boss for dinner at her boyfriend's house. I knew Jack’s business partners would be there and for some reason, meeting the other men behind Shield Protective Services made me anxious.
I’d been working for Lisa for all of two weeks and it was a fantastic job and we’d hit it off immediately. But the background check her boyfriend ran on me--damn the guy had been thorough.
I’ve no doubt he found out all the shenanigans my ex pulled during our divorce. He must have decided none of it was my fault because he gave Lisa the go-ahead to hire me. I’d always be grateful to the man. Lisa and I had become BFF’s on my first day on the job.
It was really going to suck if I had to pack up and move again, courtesy of the man who threatened to kidnap our daughter.
“Katie, are you ready to go to dinner?” I tried to give my five-year-old as much independence as possible.
Katie came twirling into the living room like a prima ballerina, arms above her head, smile on her face, and said, “Yes, I’m almost ready! But, I can’t find George. Have you seen him?” George was a hideous stuffed monkey that Katie liked to take everywhere. My girl didn’t like dolls. Hated them. But hideous George was her kind of guy.
She’d dressed herself for dinner and had carefully selected her pink ballerina tutu, white tights, her ballet shoes, and a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt fourteen sizes too big. I didn’t bother to remind her it was late spring in Albuquerque and the current temperature was 82 degrees. I checked to be sure she had something on under the sweatshirt so she wouldn’t be dancing around naked when she got too hot.
“Kate, we’re going to be late, baby. I promise we’ll find George when we get home, okay?” She stuck her bottom lip out in a pout.
“Pinkie swear?” she asked. I nodded and looped my pinkie around hers and the pact was made. I grabbed my phone and purse, set the alarm, and off we went.
I’d lucked out when I found the place we were renting. It was a small Casita, already furnished, and perfect for the two of us. When I came up with three months’ rent in advance, the landlady let it slide that I didn’t have a job at the time.
Sometimes, people went out of their way to be kind when you needed it most.
Chapter Two
Archer
Thursday night was poker night at Jack’s house. We went way back, Jack, Maverick, and I. We’d served together for ten years as Army Rangers. Three years ago, Jack had talked us into forming Shield Protective Services when we retired.
We’d done it. Retired, relocated to Albuquerque and started our company. Business was good. Good enough we might actually have to start turning down work, or hire a few more employees to keep up with the volume.
Jack’s girl Lisa said, “Archer, just try one bite of the pineapple pizza. Just one little bite.” Fuck. I’d had it with the damn pineapple pizza. Only heathens ate that crap. She pushed the plate in my direction.
“Never gonna happen, Lisa,” I said. She batted her eyes at me. Which was tempting, but I’d rather slit my wrist than try a fruit pizza. I pushed the plate back at her.
The doorbell rang and Jack walked over to answer it. I didn’t know we’d expected anyone else for poker night. I listened to see if I could identify the newcomer.
What I heard was the voice of an angel.
What I saw when she walked into the kitchen was a woman straight out of a Peter Paul Rubens painting. Soft, voluptuous curves I wanted to crush up against all the hard planes and edges of my body. She had a tiny human with her.
The woman took my breath away.
Whoever she was, I wanted her.
Jack introduced us. “Emily, this jackass is Archer Beck, and that one is Maverick Frost.”
The tiny girl, not more than five, walked right up to me and tugged on my pant leg. “Can I have a piece of pineapple pizza? She asked.
The little blond-haired blue-eyed beauty was the spitting image of her mother. Last I heard, they were only cloning sheep, but this mother-daughter duo were exact replicas.
With about twenty-five years between them.
I reached for the tiny piece of pizza on the plate I’d rejected from Lisa and handed it to the girl. She seemed delighted.
“It’s my most favoritest kind. Do you like it too?”
Jack flashed me a shit-eating-grin. Jerk.
I grabbed a slice of the offending fruit covered pizza and slapped it onto a plate. “It’s my most favoritest kind, too,” I said and took a big bite. The little girl looked at me like I’d hung the moon. Which was worth choking down a few bites of the crap on my plate.
My eyes went back to her mother. Damn. I could swear I glimpsed heaven in those luminous blue eyes of hers.
Just then Emily’s phone chirped with an incoming text message. The blood drained from her face and she reached out a hand to steady herself against the kitchen counter. She looked terrified.
“I can’t believe it. He’s found us.” Her voice was incredulous. The instant the words were out of her mouth, Emily looked like she wanted to call them back, collect her daughter, and run for the hills.
I slid off my stool at the kitchen island, closed the distance between us and tipped her chin up so I could see her eyes. Crystal blue and horrified.
“Tell me. All of it.” Emily shivered. She canted her head toward her daughter, happily on her second slice of fruity pizza. “Lisa, stay with her,” I said, indicating the child.
I took Emily’s hand and led her to the living room. Jack and Maverick followed. I had a feeling this woman needed our protection services. My protection services. This case, whatever it was, was all mine.
Emily’s voice was barely a whisper. “Katie’s dad. We’re divorced. It was messy. He’s--unstable. He wants custody of Katie and has threatened to kidnap her in order to take from me what no court will give him. He wants our daughter and he doesn’t care what he has to do to get her.” Emily’s eyes welled with unshed tears.
She was tough. Not a single one slid down her beautiful face.
“Do you have shared custody?” I asked. I needed to know how far I could go to protect her. Them.
Emily shook her head. “No. She’s mine. One hundred percent. I have the papers to prove it.”
I held out my hand for the phone she held. Her hand shook as she handed it over to me. I read aloud the phone number associated with the incoming text from her former husband. Jack grabbed his laptop and pinged the number. “Miami,” he said.
“That’s where I was before coming to Albuquerque,” Emily said.
Not ideal, but at least the fucker wasn’t parked down the street. Still, it was only a six-hour flight, assuming there was a connection in Dallas or Houston. That didn’t give them much time.
“Mommy, do we have to leave again?” Katie asked. The girl had wandered in from the kitchen and wrapped herself around Emily’s thigh.
Emily looked at me, searched my face for the answer. I bent down and swung Katie up into my arms and planted her on my hip.
“No, peanut. You and your mom are done running.”
Chapter Three
Emily
I’m not one of those people who believed in fate, or destiny, or soul mates. Not until the moment I laid eyes on Archer Beck. He made me believe in all three.
And that, was a very bad thing.
I was through with men. I’d made horrible choices in the past and the likelihood of my ability to choose a great guy improving anytime in the next century was slim to none. Nothing like a mentally unstable, deranged ex-husband to make a girl want to give up men, forever.
But Archer sure was nice to look at.
His eyes were darker than midnight. When he stared down at me from his six-foot four-inch vantage point, with my baby girl on his hip, I just about puddled on the floor.
Katie had taken an instant liking to the man and that completely confounded me. That I had taken an instant liking to him and was terrifying.
“Restraining order?” Archer asked. His voice was a deep baritone that rumbled in his chest.
“Yes. And a bench warrant for violating it,” I replied.
“Excellent. You’re not going to run, Emily. We’re going to wait for him to show up and make a move. In the meantime, you and Katie will stay with me,” he insisted. I wanted to protest. I wanted to say that I could handle the situation.
But I didn’t. Because a part of me knew that the men of Shield Protective Services were my best shot at putting my ex behind bars.
“Oh, mommy, we’re having a sleepover!” Katie looked at Archer adoringly. “Do you have ice-cream at your house?” she asked.
“We’ll pick some up on the way home. What kind do you like, peanut?” he asked.
“Well, chocolate is the best, but any kind of ice-cream is good,” she said. Katie wrapped her pudgy little arms around Archer’s neck and gave him a squeeze. His features softened and he smiled at my little girl’s embrace.
Jack said, “I’ll let you know the minute he leaves Miami.”
Lisa hugged me on our way out the door. “Don’t worry about work. Your job isn’t going anywhere.” Thank God. I loved working with Lisa. And I was damn tired of uprooting my life.
Archer carried Katie to my car and got her situated in the car seat. I was impressed he knew how to buckle her in. He didn’t seem the type to have a lot of experience with kids, but Katie seemed enamored with him.
We left my car at my house and I packed a few bags, snagged a few of Katie’s favorite toys, and a few of her favorite books.
I watered Henry, the one houseplant I’d lugged from Boston to Miami, and from Miami to Albuquerque. I’d nearly killed him a dozen times, but apologizing and playing classical music for him seemed to help. Nobody could say I didn’t try to save the sorry-looking thing. Luckily, the Casita I’d rented had a xeriscaped front lawn so there was literally nothing growing for me to kill.
I also grabbed three boxes of thin mints from the freezer and stuffed them in my suitcase. I felt a binge coming on and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Yoga pants were going to be required. I grabbed those, too.
I locked up and walked outside. Archer already had Katie’s car seat moved into the backseat of his SUV. He loaded our suitcases into the vehicle and off we went.
“Kate and I worked out the details on the ice-cream. I ordered us another pizza seeing as she only had a slice-and-a-half and we left before you had any at all,” he said.
Mmmm. It was definitely a pizza-n-thin-mint kind of night. I touched his forearm as he backed out of my driveway.
A shock of sensation zinged from my fingers to my toes. “Thank you, Archer. I’m guessing taking in a stranger and her daughter probably isn’t how you thought poker night was going to play out.”
He turned those midnight eyes on me and said, “This is the best hand I’ve been dealt in a damn long time.” His eyes lingered a moment before he returned them to the road.
I didn’t know what to say. But my heart squeezed in my chest and at that moment, I might have fallen a little bit in love with Archer Beck.
We headed East toward the Sandia’s and Archer took a right at the top of Candelaria into a subdivision of mostly townhomes. Archer’s home was a mere stone’s throw from the foothills.
The inside surprised me. Archer was dressed all in black, but his home was decorated with bright greens, oranges, and reds. Which, when you say it out loud sounds garish. But it wasn’t. It was perfect. Bright, cheery, a happy refuge to come home to at the end of a long day.
“Why don’t you guys make yourselves at home while I run upstairs and make sure the master bedroom has clean sheets,” he said.
“Archer, we’re fine in a spare room. I don’t want to kick you out of your own bedroom.” I was already feeling guilty about him taking us in without adding to my indebtedness to the man.
“Not happening. I’d rather you two be on the second floor. Katie can use the loft to play, you can share the bedroom and the bathroom up there. You’ll have plenty of privacy that way.” He turned and grabbed our suitcases and bounded up the stairs taking them three at a time, leaving a cloud of testosterone in his wake. The man exuded sex appeal without even trying.
I took a moment to look around. The upstairs loft overlooked the living room where I stood. There were windows way up high near the ceiling that let in an abundance of light.
I was suddenly happy that Archer hadn’t come inside at my place to help with the packing. He’d have found a half-dead Henry-the-houseplant and dismissed me as a black thumb. He wouldn’t have been wrong.
That was not the case for Archer. There were plants everywhere. Happy, healthy, thriving plants. Green ones, blooming ones, none of which I could name. Except for the orchids. I knew an orchid when I saw one. He had at least a dozen different varieties and they were all in bloom. How the hell did people do that? I’d tried fourteen times to keep an orchid alive. Every one of them died inside of a month. I was a little bit in awe. My bodyguard was a plant-whisperer.
Chapter Four
Archer
I ran upstairs hoping Emily wouldn’t follow me. I hadn’t had an overnight guest since I’d moved into the place six months ago. And it showed. I gathered an armful of dirty clothes off the floor and stuffed them into a cotton bag to bring downstairs and wash. I decided it wouldn’t do my reputation any good for her to find my unopened box of condoms in the nightstand, so I put them way back in the corner of the closet, on the top.
I kept telling myself I was having a little dry spell since settling into a new city. But the truth was I was tired of meaningless hookups. Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t a man whore. But I wasn’t relationship material either.
When I’d joined up, I promised myself I wouldn’t drag a woman into the nomadic lifestyle of a military man. Now that I’d done my twenty, I was at a complete loss as to how to proceed. Hell, even my sexy neighbor with whom I shared a condo wall had given up flirting with me.
&
nbsp; Just as well. She wasn’t my type, and when it ended badly, I didn’t want to have to do the chivalrous thing and fucking move.
But the woman downstairs in my living room--she was my type. I’d had a perpetual hard-on since I’d first laid eyes on her. How she hadn’t noticed I have no clue. It’s not like a pair of cargo pants could hide what I carried around between my legs.
Unless I was giving myself too much credit? I glanced down at my crotch. Nah. Ego aside, I was hung.
I moved on to giving the toilet a quick scrub, put out clean towels, and headed back downstairs.
Emily had made herself at home in my kitchen, setting the table and dishing out disgusting fruit pizza. I continued on to the laundry room, threw everything in the wash and joined my girls in the dining room. I wasn’t sure when they became my girls, but I’m pretty sure it was thirty seconds after they walked into Jack’s living room.
It was less a dining room and more an extension of the kitchen, but I couldn’t recall ever sitting down there for a meal. The coffee table in the living room was where I ate all my meals. There, and in my vehicle.
So, this was shaping up to be a very domesticated evening. Sitting at the adult table might be a nice change of pace. In fact, I was looking forward to it.
I needed to get into the details of Emily’s situation with her ex, but I couldn’t do that with Katie in the room. So instead, I focused on making dinner enjoyable for all of us. And that started with me picking pineapple off my pizza and putting them on Katie’s plate. Emily flashed me a grin that told me my secret had been discovered. Katie didn’t know about my little white lie and so watching her face light up and her blue eyes sparkle when her pineapple pile grew, was pretty damn awesome.
I had no idea five-year-olds could chatter on about nothing for such inordinate periods of time. We’d long since finished dinner, cleaned up, and settled in for an episode or two of Super Why.
Katie lasted through one episode, and Emily was dozing on her end of the sofa. I carried Katie up to the bedroom, tugged off her ballet slippers, and tucked her in. I left the bathroom light on and cracked the door hoping she wouldn’t freak out if she woke up alone in a stranger's home.