by Sybil Bartel
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” she screeched. “Don’t stop, drive!”
Shots hitting the SUV, Cara screaming, Dominic yelling, Summer shaking, I pulled the trigger four times.
The back wheels on both cars went flat.
Putting the window up, I threw the Escalade into Drive and gunned it.
A couple more shots plunked off the SUV, but a block later, we were in the clear.
Checking my rearview mirror, I spared Summer a glance. “You can get up now.”
Breathing heavy, she didn’t move.
I scanned her body, even though I knew she wasn’t hit. “The vehicle’s armored, princess. You’re safe.” Grasping her shoulder, I pulled her up to a sitting position. “Put your seat belt on.”
Her face white, her arms crossed, she stared straight ahead. “You’re worried about my seat belt after shooting over my head?” Her voice and hands shaking, she reached for her seat belt.
I checked my side mirror and changed lanes at the last minute to make a turn. “You were never in danger.” Not from my shots.
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “They were shooting at us.”
From what some of the other men at Luna and Associates had said, this wasn’t her first rodeo. “Heard you were in the middle of a firefight at the Ultimate Music Festival.” Scanning the streets and rearview mirror for more of Vincenzo’s men, I blew through a yellow light.
“That was different,” she protested, some of the color returning to her cheeks. “I was high, and I was running away from a stupid drug dealer who thought he owned me.” She looked behind us. “Those guys just shot at us for no reason.”
Feeling protective of her for some fucking reason, I didn’t explain to her how Vincenzo, the sick fuck, operated. A half a step away from being as brutal as the cartel, Antonio Vincenzo had made a name for himself and his family that was nothing short of ruthless. I didn’t need to fill Summer’s head with that kind of fear.
“We’re safe,” I half lied, pulling my cell out.
She glanced behind us again. “Are we?”
I didn’t answer. I dialed Luna.
He picked up on the first ring. “Luna.”
I switched to Spanish. “I’ve got a problem.”
“Dios mio. The fact that you’re speaking Spanish and not Italian doesn’t make me want to know.”
No time to dick around, I gave him a sitrep. “Cara left Vincenzo and followed me up here, tracking my cell. Vincenzo’s men followed her. Just took heat in a restaurant parking lot when they caught up to her. Client’s fine. We got out before the cops showed, but the Escalade took a few rounds. No idea if the restaurant has surveillance cameras, but there’d be nothing to see except me taking out the back tires on Vincenzo’s men’s vehicle and Cara’s. I’m making sure I don’t have a tail, then I’m heading back south. I don’t need backup yet, but I don’t know what Vincenzo’s end game is.” I switched back to English. “I’m taking my cell offline so we can’t be tracked. Call Vincenzo and flush it out. Let him know I didn’t have any part of this.” Luna could fucking deal with his former client.
“Copy that. Hang on.” Luna spoke to someone else, then came back. “Ronan’s available if you need him. I’ll call Vincenzo now and see what I can do. Switch to a burner.”
“Copy. Later.” I started to hang up.
“Shade, wait.”
“What?”
“How is she?” he asked.
I glanced at Summer. Her arms still crossed, looking nervous as fuck, her gaze immediately cut to me. She raised an eyebrow.
I tipped my chin and focused back on the road. “Fine,” I told Luna.
“All right. Stay alert and keep it tight,” Luna ordered. “We don’t usually have to protect clients from our own shit. I don’t want to return her damaged or traumatized.”
Too fucking late. “Copy.” I hung up and powered down my cell before pulling out my burner. Then I grasped the back of her neck. “Hey.”
She flinched. “What?”
“Look at me,” I demanded.
Her eyes cut to mine.
“You’re fine. Take a deep breath.” Focusing back on the road, I took the turn for the highway on ramp, but I heard her inhale. “Another.”
She took a shallow breath.
“Not what I’m after, princess. I said deep breath. In through your nose, hold it for a count of five, then let it out slow. Right now, inhale,” I commanded.
HIS HUGE, ROUGH HAND ON my neck acting as an anchor, I did exactly what he told me to do.
I inhaled.
Then I breathed out slow, just like he told me.
His warm hand tightened as if to say do it again.
I inhaled deep, and the SUV took on speed.
“Good, princess.”
My hand latched on to his arm, my body leaned toward him, and I closed my eyes.
I wanted to please him.
In that moment, it was all I wanted to do—please him and keep his hand on me. Because after the initial shock of being shot at for the second time in my life, I wasn’t afraid something was going to happen to me.
I was afraid for him.
Summer Amherst, afraid for her bodyguard.
I didn’t even know how to process that.
If I looked in a mirror right now, I wouldn’t even recognize who was staring back.
A week before Shade had picked me up, I’d gotten out of rehab for a couple hours only because I’d threatened to leave with all my money. The counselors had no choice but to give me a hall pass. Then I’d gone to a hair salon to get rid of the bottle blonde I’d been sporting since I was twelve. Now I was a dark brunette with hair that actually matched the color of my eyebrows, but I still did a double take when I looked in the mirror.
Except that’s not what would throw me if I saw my damn self right now.
I wasn’t submissive.
I didn’t worry about the security staff, as my father referred to André Luna’s men.
And I sure as hell didn’t give a damn about guys.
I was the spoiled-as-fuck only daughter and heir to music mogul Leo Amherst. Minus attention from my father, I’d gotten what I’d wanted my whole life. Which was a distracting substitute until I was about ten. Then it started to get boring. By twelve, it’d surpassed boring and gone straight to tedious.
When you got every material thing you ever wanted, what was the point of anything anymore? Not a thought my twelve-year-old preteen self could handle.
So, I’d found drugs.
It’d felt reckless and exhilarating and dangerous. Until it’d actually become dangerous. Then I was selling out the money-hungry groupie chicks who’d hung around me for the rich girl perks. I knew they were only pretending to be my friends to get into the best clubs and never-ending party that followed the circles I moved in. Whether they wanted to fuck rich old dudes for money or not, I still shouldn’t have traded their names to my dealer for drugs.
Hell, I could’ve bought my own damn drugs.
But that hadn’t been the point anymore.
The high had become tied to the danger, until I’d almost gotten my stepmom killed.
So, I went to rehab and tried to get my head screwed on straight before I accidentally killed myself with too much coke or too many downers or ate too damn much ecstasy. Or drove my Maserati into a telephone pole.
Whatever.
I wanted to live.
But so what? No one except the overpaid counselors at rehab seemed to care. I had no real friends because I’d alienated everyone. My father was always working, and my stepmom still wasn’t talking to me, not really, even though I’d apologized about a hundred times. I’d probably try a hundred more times before I gave up. It wasn’t like she asked to raise me. I knew my dad tricked her into it by dumping my baby self in her lap after the crack whore he’d fucked dropped me off at his office and said she was done.
But all of that was ancient history.
Now I was hold
ing on to a six-and-a-half-foot former Marine who wore guns like women wore jewelry, and I was letting him tell me what to do because nothing had felt this natural since my first line of coke.
I knew I was in trouble.
Taking transference to whole new level, I was turning fucked-up into an Olympic sport. Sinking faster than I could swim, I held on to a Marine whose skill set would’ve been better utilized as a mercenary extracting hostages from behind enemy lines than playing chauffeur and breathing coach for Leo Amherst’s daughter.
But I selfishly didn’t care.
He was here, my father wasn’t, and that dangerously felt more real than the flying bullets a few minutes ago. I didn’t even care about the stupid shooting anymore or that crazy bitch, Cara, pawing Shade like she owned him. I just wanted my bodyguard to keep his anchoring hold on me.
But just like everything in life, the moment couldn’t last forever.
His thumb stroked my neck, he squeezed once, then he let go of me. “You’re safe, princess. Just sit back and relax.”
Suddenly cold, feeling the loss of his touch, I shivered. But I buried my hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt and tried to play off my physical reaction by making it about the shooting. “You didn’t even flinch when the bullets started flying.”
He snorted out a half laugh. “Not the first time I’ve been shot at.”
Me either. But it was the first time I’d been shot at when I was sober, and it took on a whole new dimension I wasn’t eager to repeat. “It sucks.”
“Getting shot sucks,” Shade countered.
I didn’t say anything.
The healed wounds on my lower back and arm tingled like they did every time I thought about them. And the ghost sensation of burning flared, but I shoved it down. I didn’t like to talk about it or think about the Ultimate Music Festival last year when I’d run from my piece-of-shit dealer after he’d tried to kidnap me. Then he’d sent his asshole guards after me, and those fuckers had shot at me in the middle of the festival. If one of André Luna’s men hadn’t happened to be there and intervened, I would’ve been dead.
Suddenly feeling too warm for the sweatshirt he’d zipped me into but too stubborn to take it off because it smelled like him, I leaned back against my seat and sighed.
“Bored already, princess?” His huge, muscled arm with all his ink on display casually rested on the center console as he flew down the highway.
“Pretty sure it’d be hard to be bored around you.” Which was exactly the problem. I got into trouble when I found something that didn’t bore me.
He chuckled. “Glad you think so highly of me, but don’t overestimate me.” He checked the rearview mirrors.
I wasn’t. He was fearless, merciless, quick-thinking, a lethal shot, and more capable than anyone I’d ever met. I’d be a fool to not see that, or to ignore the fact that’d it take a hell of a dominant man to handle a woman like that Cara bitch. “Your ex is crazy.”
“Not my ex.” He glanced behind us and changed lanes.
“Yeah.” I smirked to hide the jealously that’d had time to simmer. “She didn’t think you were her ex either.”
His dark eyes cut to me. “She would’ve had to have been my woman to be my ex.” He paused for a fraction of a second, then his voice turned hard. “She wasn’t.”
Not that I didn’t want to believe every word out of his mouth, but it’d be idiotic to overlook the obvious. “Good to know women you sleep with leave their husbands and track you down hundreds of miles from home.”
“You got something to say, princess?”
Not touching that, I picked at his word choice instead. “I have a name, you know.”
“Summer Amherst,” he stated without emotion before sparing me a quick glance that was lethally serious. “I am aware.”
Suddenly depressed, I looked out the window at the kind of cold, gray day you didn’t get in Miami. “So, you are just like all the rest.”
Giving the Escalade gas, he passed a car. “No idea what you’re talking about, but I’m already offended.”
He was offended? “My whole life I’ve been Summer Amherst. Not Summer, Summer Amherst. I hate it,” I admitted.
He snorted. “Sounds real tough being rich, princess.”
I knew what I sounded like saying that shit out loud, but I still stupidly defended myself. “Until you walk in my shoes, you have no right to judge.” I didn’t have a clue what kind of background he came from, and I didn’t ask. Not that I thought he’d answer me if I did. All I knew for sure was he didn’t grow up like me. Not that I was judging him, because clearly, he’d turned out more equipped to handle life than I did.
He glanced over his shoulder, then checked the side mirrors again. “Not judging, stating opinion sarcastically.”
“Whatever, forget I said anything.”
“Done.” Shifting in his seat, he took the wheel with his right arm and rested his left on the windowsill.
Trying to gage if he was being dickish or not, I glanced at him. His expression stone, I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me or not. And I kinda hated that. “Are you mocking me?” Already down the rabbit hole that was everything Shade, I didn’t want this infuriatingly bossy bodyguard to think less of me.
He let out a half snort, half laugh. “Princess, if I was making fun of you, you’d fucking know it.”
“And he calls her princess again.”
“Third person now?” He glanced at me as the corner of his mouth tipped up. “You sure that was rehab I picked you up at?” He winked. “For the record, that was teasing, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
A single word, and my stomach was an instant riot of butterflies as I pulsed uncomfortably between my legs.
Trying to play off the sudden wave of heat coursing through my veins, I unzipped the sweatshirt and forced words past my dry mouth. “Do you ever call a woman by her name, or are all those names so hard to remember that you have to resort to pet names?”
Holding the wheel with his ridiculously huge arm that was stretching the sleeve of his shirt, he gave me a sideways glance.
Then he dropped his voice to a deep, sexy rasp. “Summer.”
Oh.
My fucking God.
“Shade,” I countered, breathless, dissolving into a fucking puddle on his leather seat for the second time today.
I KNEW HER FUCKING NAME.
“Summer,” I taunted.
“Shade,” she whispered, breathless.
“Who’s using pet names now?” I challenged, fucking with her because I liked the blush on her face.
“What?” Looking shocked, then affronted, she frowned. “You said your name was Shade.”
“No,” I corrected. “I told you to call me Shade.”
“So what’s your name?”
Enjoying sparring with her too damn much, I fought a smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Nope.” Quickly looking away, she crossed her arms. “Don’t care.”
“Sure, princess, keep telling yourself that.” I glanced at her tits that were pushed up by her crossed arms. “It’ll be our little secret.”
Before she could give me more attitude, my burner rang.
Hating the smaller phone, I answered on speaker. “Shade.”
“We got a problem,” Luna stated.
“Fucking Cara.” I knew our exfil had been too easy.
“Not her, Antonio.”
“I figured.” Remembering Summer, I warned Luna. “Hold on, you’re on speaker.”
“This involves her,” Luna said before I could get the cell to my ear.
“How does any of what happened involve me?” Summer asked.
I held a finger up to Summer and spoke to Luna. “Did you let Vincenzo know it was his crazy wife who came after me?” If I was a dick, I’d blame Luna for putting me on the damn assignment in the first place. That woman was looking for a way out from day one, but not a legit one. She wanted another man to replace the one she
wanted to get rid of.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t care how it happened, even though he’s got her phone tapped and heard it all for himself. He’s not taking the fact that she came after you lightly, so you’re now enemy number one. Then add in the scene in the restaurant parking lot that tied up his men with the cops while his trusted driver whisked his wife away right out from under them again, and he’s officially losing his shit.”
“What else is new?” It was the reason I wasn’t on the assignment anymore. The last time Antonio lost his temper was when Cara drove herself to go fucking shopping. Blaming me, he terminated his contract with Luna and brought in his own security from Sicily. “Tell him she’ll show back up back eventually.” She always did. I’d even driven her ass back a couple times.
“I tried. Vincenzo said he’s done.” Luna paused, then his tone turned solemn. “He’s not looking to keep her.”
“Fucking Christ.” I hated Cara, but I didn’t want her dead. “Find her and bring her in, then call the Feds. They’ll nut themselves to get a piece of her in exchange for WITSEC. In the meantime, I’ll watch my back till the Feds pick him up.”
“Already working on that angle, but we have another issue.” Luna stepped the whole fucking mess up a level. “Vincenzo heard Summer say her name on the call. Not only that, he heard her cuss Cara out, and whether or not he wants his wife back is irrelevant to that fact. You know how he is. He views the whole disrespect thing as a punishable offense. Now he’s not just gunning for you, but both you and Summer are in his sights.”
Anger flared. “He’s fucking insane.”
“He’s Antonio Vincenzo, that’s redundant,” Luna countered. “So, change in plans. You’re not coming back here. There’re too many of his men down here. Head to Christensen’s ranch in Ocala. I’ll text you the address. He’ll meet you there and wait with you until I get Ronan up there for backup. Once we get Vincenzo taken care of, the heat on you two should blow over.”
My day got fucking worse. Neil Christensen, former Danish Special Forces, friend of Luna’s, was a cagey, overbearing prick. He was the last person I wanted to owe a favor to. Not to mention, a ranch meant open land on all sides. I wasn’t fucking suicidal.