Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  Val loaded the wheelchair into the trunk and then slid into the car beside Geo. Sequence and May buckled into the front and off they went. Sequence was in plainclothes, dressed in a t-shirt and a baseball cap and May was no one famous. Despite the tinted back windows, Geo ducked down as they drove through the mass of paparazzi that were waiting for her to be discharged. No one seemed to realize that she was in the car and they were soon racing through the city toward Davy’s house.

  “They’re calling you Geo Jane in the press,” Sequence called back to her. She realized just how nervous she must have made everyone if Sequence was volunteering conversation topics. If he hadn’t been scared for her life, he would probably be his usual stony self in the front seat.

  “Geo Jane?”

  “Yeah. Like GI Jane, but with your name instead.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Geo rolled her eyes. She hoped they got there soon. She was tired and starting to feel a little woozy again. She took back what she had thought before about the wound not hurting. She was achy.

  A thought occurred to her and had her eyes flinging open. “The press has totally dug into my past by now, haven’t they?”

  Sequence met her eyes in the rear view. “Yeah. But you knew that was coming.”

  They’d known that the gossip rags would want to know who she was. But she hadn’t expected to be such a news item that even the reputable news sources would be digging into who she was.

  “My dad didn’t give any interviews, did he?”

  “Oh, honey, please,” May said, rolling her eyes. “You know Rook took care of that.”

  Geo let herself blink off into sleep again and when she woke up, she was being placed into a wheelchair again and wheeling down a familiar hallway. Then she was up, in a bed made of clouds, and she was out again, like a light.

  ***

  After his last stalker issue, where he’d found a woman in his bedroom uninvited, Moreau had downgraded his house. He’d realized that having too many guest rooms and two entertainment rooms and two living rooms etc. etc., well, it just always left him with the creepy feeling that someone was hiding in his house. So, he’d sold his old mansion and bought this much smaller place and had never looked back.

  But today was the first day he wished he had a bigger house again. Everywhere he turned, he was tripping over someone.

  Every member of Rook Securities was shacked up in the house, plus Leary, Val, and inevitably Wilkes stopping by. He’d also had to fend off every single member of his professional team from stopping by to check on him. He had to roll his eyes at the fact that none of them had been this worried after he’d been seriously injured in a car accident, but a high profile near-knifing that was making all the headlines?

  Maybe Geo was right. Maybe it was time to consider hiring a new team.

  And his thoughts were back on Geo.

  She’d been asleep in his bedroom for three hours before he let himself check on her. Leary was very adamant that she needed her rest, so Moreau had forced himself to stay in his crowded living room, listening to Rook bark orders to people over the phone, lifting his feet while May bustled around, straightening everything up, and trying not to throttle Atlas when his jouncing leg shook the entire couch.

  At three hours on the dot, Moreau couldn’t take it anymore.

  He was up and striding down the hall toward his bedroom. She was sleeping when he opened the door, but he just couldn’t go back out there.

  Instead, he padded softly across his bedroom and crawled carefully onto the far side of the king-sized bed, shoes and all. Of course she’d be lying on his side of the bed. This was Geo after all. Nothing was ever easy.

  He didn’t care. He’d give up that side of the bed for her.

  At least until she was all healed up.

  “Hi,” she whispered and he tilted his body toward her, lying on his side.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Do you need anything? Water? Medicine? Want me to get Leary?”

  “No.” She shook her head and frowned, pressing a palm to her forehead. “This damn headache. I always get one from anesthesia.”

  Moreau shifted so that he was sitting with his back to the headboard and leaned over her just enough to start smoothing his thumbs in circles over her temples. She mumbled a thanks and let her eyes close.

  “I’m in your bed,” she said after a while.

  “That you are.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Geo, you incapacitated a maniac and got stabbed in the side.”

  “Moreau,” she cut him off impatiently. “Why am I not in the hospital? Why did you have me moved here?”

  He let out a long breath. “What were you going to say to me before we got interrupted?”

  She frowned and looked up at him. “I got stabbed for you and you’re going to make me be the one who confesses first?”

  He grinned down at her for a moment before her words fully washed over him. The smile slid from his face. “God. I’ll never forget that moment. Not as long as I live.”

  “Atlas had to drag you away.”

  “And then there you were, in my arms in the back of the car, bleeding through your silk.” He groaned and let out a long breath before his thumbs resumed their soothing rub. He couldn’t help but let his fingers play in her hair, smooth her eyebrows, trace the curve of her lips. “What did you mean, confess?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You said that I was going to make you confess first. What did you mean?”

  She chuckled, winced, and exhaled slowly. “Moreau, what I was going to tell you before I got interrupted is the same thing you were about to tell me. It’s the reason you had me brought here instead of letting me heal in the hospital.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked very, very carefully.

  “You are such a doofus. I thought for sure you’d get it the moment I told you that I’d agreed to pose as your girlfriend. The moment I kissed all my anonymity goodbye.”

  “Get what?” He was frozen now, looking down at her. He shifted again, careful not to jostle her as he lined up along her side.

  Then Leary came in.

  “Jesus Christ!” Moreau rolled away from her and threw his hands in the air.

  “Wilkes needs you, lover boy. And I need some time with my patient.”

  Moreau stomped out to the living room where, to his chagrin, Wilkes shuffled him into a cop car and drove him down to the station. Rook and Cedric accompanied him in the long hours it took to document Moreau’s side of the story, to wrap everything up.

  By the time they returned home, the entire house was asleep and Moreau found himself tucked into the couch in the living room.

  At first light, he was rousted a flurry of phone calls that he shuffled out to the back patio to answer.

  The phone calls were from his agent, Margo. She was ringing him, not with sympathy over everything that had happened, but with the great news that a hundred offers had come in overnight. Since the attack, every single production company in Hollywood wanted a piece of him. This wasn’t exactly new, but it was renewed a bit. There was a rabid vigor with which his name was apparently on the wind right now.

  He deflected her countless offers and scowled at her clear directions to choose a project soon. Then he answered a phone call from his old friend Joey.

  “Joe.”

  “Moreau! Jesus, man. Are you all right? That shit is so crazy. Me and Kate have been so worried about you.”

  Kate was Joey’s wife and not someone that Moreau knew very well, but still, the sentiment was nice. “I’m okay.”

  “And your girl?”

  Moreau’s heart couldn’t help but skip when he thought of Geo. A million images filtered through his beleaguered consciousness. Midnight silk, blue eyes, gasping against her neck, her laughing next to him in the theater, flashbulbs, a maniac, a knife, Geo fighting for his life, bleeding in the backseat of a car. He shuddered.

  “She�
�s recovering. I’m trying to figure out how to talk her into a new profession, however. That took about fifteen years off my life.”

  “God. I can only imagine. Look, man, I have to apologize for something.”

  “What’s that?”

  Joey cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “After your car accident, when production halted on my movie, I wasn’t there for you the way I should have been.”

  “You called me just a few days afterwards.”

  “Sure. Yeah. But, Moreau, you were completely laid up. I should have flown to visit you. I was just so preoccupied with the movie falling dead and you were suddenly across the country. Yeah. I should have been there, man. Even for just a day or two. I’m sorry.”

  Moreau found himself impossibly touched. He didn’t detect any ulterior motives in Joey’s voice. He heard sincerity there. “I understand. I’m not angry at all. Everyone has a life, Joey.”

  Joey clucked in agreement and there was a brief silence on the line.

  “What do you mean the movie fell dead?” Moreau asked after a second.

  Joey cleared his throat. “After you pulled out of the movie, right after the accident, all the funding fell apart and… yeah. It’s been a big mess.”

  Moreau’s mouth gaped. “I didn’t pull out of the movie.”

  There was more silence. “Um. Yeah, you did.”

  “When?”

  “About two days after your accident. Your people called me, your agent and your manager. Said that you needed to concentrate on your recovery and on bigger projects. I… understood, dude. I mean, it was a huge favor you did for me, being in this movie. I know it’s small potatoes for you. I got it that you had been in this crazy accident and got jolted back to reality.”

  “Joey, two days after my accident, I was still unconscious. I did not pull out of your movie. My agent told me that production had stalled and that you were still figuring out which direction to go. I’ve been waiting for you to call me back in, now that my splint is off.”

  “Shit,” Joey swore. “I knew I should have waited until I could talk to you in person.”

  “You honestly think I would quit your movie through my people? Joey, you’re my friend. I would never disrespect you in that way. And I want to do this fucking movie. I love the script. We had a good group of people. If it weren’t for that car accident, this would already be the project I was most excited about for the entire year.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Joey?”

  “Yeah. I’m here. I’m just—I guess I’m just realizing that all my dreams didn’t die. Wow. Holy God. You’re serious?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “I mean, Moreau, we don’t have the funding anymore. Everybody pulled out of the project. And the filming schedule…”

  “How many more days of filming do you need to finish?”

  Joey was quiet for a minute. “Two weeks?”

  “And you think the rest of the cast would still be interested in the project?”

  “For the chance to work with you? Are you nuts? But Moreau, I repeat, there’s no more money. I’m still figuring out how to pay back the money we already used.”

  “I’ll want a producer’s credit, of course. And I still don’t think that scene in the Volkswagen is right. No matter what you say, brilliant writer man. I want a rewrite for that.”

  “Are you bargaining with me?”

  “In exchange for funding your movie.”

  There was a distinct choking sound. “Moreau, we’re talking millions—”

  “Say thank you, Joey.”

  Moreau grinned into the phone as he watched the sun pull up over the hills. There was a long moment where Joey wasn’t doing anything but whooping and hollering and calling for his wife to come guess the good news. And then the mania sunk it. Obviously, there were a hundred things to get done if they were gonna get this movie back on track.

  Moreau let him go and went back into the house for a cup of coffee before he made the rest of his phone calls.

  Back out on the porch, he promptly, firmly, and kindly fired his agent and his manager. He alerted his financial manager of the need to transfer money over to Joey’s project. Then he alerted his publicist and his stylist, both of whom he was going to be needing, that they were to contact him directly right now. Moreau Davy was apparently a free agent. He groaned at the process of hiring a new agent and manager. And during such a high profile time in his career. He wondered if Geo would help him hire someone. He needed her instincts.

  He set the phone on the porch beside him and looked out at the view.

  After a moment, he rose up to go find Rook. There were a hundred things to do that day. A hundred security itineraries to alter if he was really going to hit the ground running with this project.

  And if there was one thing that he knew, he was done paying people to have his best interests at heart. From now on, he was only going to pay people who already had that in mind in the first place.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Girl, this is not my fault. So, you better fix your face before it gets stuck like that.”

  Geo slapped Leary’s accusatory finger out of her face. “I know, I know.”

  And she did know. It was not Leary’s fault that Moreau had disappeared from the face of the earth. And he’d taken the entire Rook Securities team with him.

  Though Ryan Rogers had been apprehended and subsequently confessed, their alert levels were high where Moreau was concerned. The attack had made him the talk of the town even more than usual. And where there was talk there was always some nutjob waiting to bum rush their favorite movie star, begging for autographs and selfies and holy matrimony. It meant that while Rook was helping Moreau hire his new West Coast security team, he was also guarding Moreau.

  Apparently, they were guarding him on the set of a movie that he was speed-shooting over the course of just two weeks.

  Which meant that she and Leary and Val were alone in the house while she recovered.

  “Besides, you know he’s calling me every ten minutes for an update on how you are,” Leary reminded her.

  She did know that. And she supposed it eased the sting a bit. As did the fact that her own phone had been smashed in the course of the attack, so it wasn’t like he could contact her directly.

  She stared darkly at the shiny new phone that sat dark on her nightstand. So, she hadn’t opened it yet. She was technically off-duty while she healed, she had no desire to talk to her father at that moment, and Moreau was the only other person who would text her.

  Honestly, she kind of couldn’t believe that the man had up and abandoned her. Well, abandoned her with a private nurse and fully stocked kitchen and bougie house in the Hollywood hills. But still!

  She didn’t give a rat’s ass about all this opulence. She’d been stabbed and now she was recovering, and she and Moreau still hadn’t had a certain, very important, conversation.

  If things had shaken out a little bit differently, she might be taking his actions to mean that he was avoiding her. Or that he’d changed his mind about the whole girlfriend thing again. But any moment she found herself doubting him, his words in that fancy ass bathroom reverberated back to her.

  If you were my girlfriend…

  Indeed.

  Geo alternately dozed and scowled for the rest of the day. It wasn’t until the sun had set and Leary had force-fed her yet another bowl of soup did she start to get really mopey.

  She eyed the still-wrapped phone. Maybe he’d been trying to contact her? No. If he had things to say to her, he could very well find a way to say them to her face.

  She fluffed the pillows, got as comfortable as she could, and found a way to ignore the fact that she was sleeping in his bed.

  A few hours later, an irritated scoff had her blinking awake. The lamp next to her bed was still clicked on as she’d left it and now, a very annoyed Moreau blinked down at her, holding the wrapped up phone in one fist.

  “Davy
!” she said groggily. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.”

  She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Yeah, I know, but I thought you’d taken the team to go shoot on location somewhere. You left this morning.”

  “I did. But now I’m back. Every night, I will be back. Why didn’t you activate the phone I bought for you?”

  “I didn’t want to. What do you mean you’ll be back every night?”

  “I mean that I arranged with the director to shoot the movie only twenty miles away so that every night the team and I can be here with you. What do you mean you didn’t want to?”

  “Oh.” A little stymied, she glared up at him. “I didn’t want to talk to you because…”

  Understanding lit in his eyes. “Because you thought I left you for weeks without saying goodbye directly after you were stabbed in the line of duty?” Now he was the one scrubbing hands over his face. He set the phone down. “Savannah. Why the hell can we never uncross our wires?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

  He stepped forward and pushed hair out of her eyes. “Have you eaten?”

  She nodded. “Have you?”

  “Yes. We ate on set. And now I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing up.”

  He unhooked his watch and set it on the nightstand next to her half-full glass of water and the unopened phone.

  Her brows cinched down low when his fingers went next to the buttons at his wrists. He walked to his dresser and toed off one shoe and then the other as he emptied the pockets of his pants onto a dish on top of the dresser. Then he was unbuttoning his shirt and tugging it off, laying it neatly over the back of a chair. Next, his pants got the same treatment.

  His back was to her, but she could see his face in the mirror. He was lost in thought, unaware of the fact that he was unwrapping himself like a Christmas gift for Geo. He shucked off his socks and undershirt and tossed them into the hamper before he turned to her, wearing nothing but tight black boxer briefs.

  “You want me to shower?”