Singe (Guardian Protection Book 1)

by Aly Martinez

  When my phone rang, I scooped it up fully expecting it to be Brianna with another lackluster plot attempt. However, my chin jerked to the side when I saw Katie’s name on the screen.

  I answered immediately. “Is everything okay?”

  “Why do you always assume something is wrong when I call?”

  I uncrossed my legs and rose off the bed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because your mother is the boogeyman.”

  “I prefer sorceress of evil.”

  “That too. And also because, the majority of the times when you call me, it’s because something’s wrong.”

  “Not always!” she defended.

  She was full of shit. Katie Spencer called me approximately three times a year. Usually, once around Christmas, when her mother, my former Cinderella-style stepmother, would lose her fucking mind about not being able to afford her yearly holiday vacation to the Hamptons. She’d terrorize Katie until I’d offer her the keys to my dad’s old house. I’d never even received a thank-you for my generosity. That is if you didn’t include the missing silver I had to replace each time my stepmom left.

  Then Katie would call me again when her mother would flip out over my father’s untimely death and check herself into a ridiculously expensive rehab center (read: spa), leaving Katie scrounging for a way to pay the bill. Though she did this knowing Katie would call me to cover it. Margaret Spencer was all too happy to allow her daughter to do her dirty work.

  Margaret didn’t care that I was grieving as well. It must have slipped her mind that I had been only twenty-two years old when my dad had had a heart attack in the middle of my celebratory college graduation dinner. A private dinner for which he had rented out an entire restaurant for the evening. This was also the dinner where I had been forced to perform CPR until a bodyguard dragged me off his lifeless body to make way for the paramedics.

  No, as far as Margaret was concerned, that was pishposh. She’d lost the love of her life. Never mind the fact that they’d gotten a divorce nearly six years before he passed away. What she’d really lost was her cash cow. Meanwhile, I was left to grieve the greatest father who had ever lived and the only parent I’d ever known.

  My father, being a decent man and one who valued his time too much to spend it fighting with a woman over money, had kept Margaret—and thus Katie—in the lifestyle she had become accustomed to during the whopping three years they had been wed. It was something he’d done for all of his ex-wives—all five of them.

  And lastly, Katie would always call in March, usually about three weeks before her birthday. A friendly reminder that she still existed. How else would I know where to send her gifts?

  I should have hated her. But I didn’t. I’d always wanted a sister, but after my mother had died, my father had refused to date women with kids. Don’t get me wrong. He’d loved me and my brother. But he’d had no desire to raise anyone else’s child or have any more of his own. It was his one rule when it came to relationships. That is until Margaret Spencer came along. I’d never understood his pull to her, but then again, I’d never questioned it. I was just so damn excited to finally have a sister, the step part being completely inconsequential as far as I was concerned.

  And, when I met Katie, I fell in love instantly. She wasn’t like her wicked witch of a mother. She was sweet, albeit a little quiet for my taste, but we got along well. Her mother never approved of me though. I played softball and rode horses. Generally any sport that involved dirt. Margaret preferred Katie to wear designer dresses while rubbing elbows with high society.

  My dad, however, encouraged my creativity and athletic endeavors. He once walked out on a multimillion-dollar deal because my team had advanced in a softball tournament. And, more times than I could count, he sat in a folding chair, dressed to the nines, not three feet from a pile of horse manure. Surrounded by two thoroughly disgusted bodyguards, he watched like a proud papa as I rounded barrels, my hair whipping in the wind behind me, a huge smile on my face. They were local shows, but he cheered like I’d won the Olympics when they presented me with that red ribbon. And, more often than not, it was only a second place out of six. Not exactly a huge accomplishment—unless you were my father.

  I was a daddy’s girl to the core. And I missed him. Daily.

  “Look, Mom is—” Katie started.

  I quickly stopped her. “I don’t have the money anymore, Katie. You know that. I haven’t written a book in over three months.”

  “Oh, come on, Rhion. You could call Mr. Higgins.”

  I could. But I promised I wouldn’t anymore.

  Guilt seeped into my stomach as I whispered, “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Rhion,” she begged. “Her car… I mean, she—”

  “No.” Closing my eyes, I sucked in a painful breath. “I told you last time I couldn’t help anymore. I just don’t have the money.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. You could easily—”

  I flopped back onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Is this all you called for?”

  She went silent. I could picture her perfectly painted red lips pursing in frustration.

  “No,” she gritted out.

  I smiled weakly. “Okay, then, so what’s new with you?”

  “Oh, not much. Just trying to figure out how to deal with mommy dearest.”

  My smile fell and I switched the phone to my other ear as I rolled to my side. Propping my elbow on the bed, I supported my head in my hand. “You know I’d help if I could.”

  Her voice softened, but her words might as well have been razor blades. “I’m not sure you would anymore. It feels a lot like you’ve forgotten about your family. But, unlike you, Rhion, I don’t have the ability to turn my back on her.”

  My whole body jerked. “Katie—”

  “Look, I have to go. We’ll talk soon.”

  I didn’t get a goodbye before she hung up.

  “Shit,” I groaned, my whole body sagging in defeat.

  Had I turned my back on Margaret? The answer was unequivocally yes. But I never would have done it to Katie. I’d sent her over five grand after I’d finished my last book.

  And the book before that.

  And the book before that.

  But I couldn’t do it forever. At some point, Margaret had to pull up her big-girl panties and stop relying on me for everything. But maybe all I’d done was transfer that stress and responsibility to Katie.

  She was right. She couldn’t walk away. Despite the fact that her mother was a self-absorbed bitch, she was still her mother. I didn’t remember much about my mom, but even if my father had become a raging lunatic, there was not one thing I wouldn’t have done for him.

  Groaning to myself, I plucked my phone off the bed and hit number one on my favorites list.

  “Peter Higgins’s office,” she answered.

  A comfortable warmth wash over me at the sound of his name. “Hey, Sandy. It’s Rhion. Pete around?”

  “Oh, hey, baby. He’s in with a client. Anything I can help you with?”

  I sat up, twisted my blond hair over one shoulder, and inspected the ends. Absently, I replied, “Any chance you can wire Margaret ten thousand dollars?”

  “Crap,” she breathed. “I thought we were done with that.”

  “Yeah, I did too. But Katie called, and…” I trailed off. She knew the rest.

  Sandy Morris had been my father’s secretary for over twenty years. I guessed, if I really thought about it, she was the closest thing to a mother figure I had left.

  She now worked for my father’s former assistant, Pete. My dad and Pete had been incredibly tight. And, after Dad had passed away, he’d often served as yet another makeshift family member for me. His role: uncle. And the best damn uncle a girl could have.

  Pete’s loyalty hadn’t ended with my father. He’d been with me through thick and thin. Refusing to let go, even when I wanted to. He’d taken my father’s companies over a few years earlier. And, in that time, he’d advanced them to
a whole new level. I might have provided him with the bricks by turning the family reigns over to him, but he’d more than paved his own path.

  “Hang on, Rhion. Let me grab Pete,” Sandy said, placing me on hold.

  I hadn’t made it through one song of the waiting music before I heard his voice across the line.

  “What’s up, kiddo?”

  I sat up straight and pulled my legs under me to sit cross-legged. “I need money.”

  “Writer’s block not budging?” he asked. I imagined his crooked grin as he raked his fingers through his perfectly styled salt-and-pepper hair.

  “No, it hasn’t budged. But the money’s not for me.”

  His gentle voice dropped to a warning. “Rhion.”

  “Please, Pete. I don’t know what’s going on. But I do know that Katie’s having a hell of a time dealing with her right now.”

  “And what I know is that she’s playing you.”

  I knew that too. “Maybe. But ten grand could really get her off Katie’s back for a while. And then maybe I could use that time to talk some sense into Katie.”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near her,” he ordered.

  I glowered at him through the phone. “I lived with Ursula for three years. I think I can handle a phone call to see if I can remove her slimy tentacles from her daughter.”

  “Jesus Christ, Rhion. I know you don’t see it, but I swear to you Katie is equally as toxic as Margaret. There is no helping either one of them. My concern is they’ll get their tentacles into you.”

  I should have been paying attention, but as I stared off into the distance, an idea struck me. A really fucking good idea too. The likes of one I hadn’t had in months.

  “Maybe I could recreate old fairytales and make the villains the heroines. Imagine if Maleficent falls for the handsome prince.” I suddenly jumped off the bed, inspiration firing through my veins like a surge of adrenaline. “Oh my God, Pete! It could be a series where I redeem the unredeemable. Where the roles of good and evil are reversed. I’ll show the good and decent parts of the villains and the broken and dark parts of the princes.” I wedged the phone between my head and my shoulder and snatched my computer off my nightstand. After prying it open, I typed a million miles a minute before the idea had the chance to escape me.

  Pete chuckled on the other end of the line, but he knew the drill and waited for me to finish typing.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked excitedly.

  “Is there going to be sex in these?”

  “Of course. Who writes romance without a little sexy time?”

  His voice was teasing as he feigned frustration. “Just once, I wish you’d write something I could read.”

  I laughed. “What’s wrong, Pete? Not into the kinky stuff?”

  He groaned. “Not when I consider the woman writing it a daughter.”

  The feeling was mutual, and my heart swelled in my chest.

  “Rhion, if you want ten grand, it’s on its way. But I don’t want to know what you do with it or, more specifically, who you give it to. I’ll never tell you no, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give up trying to keep you from falling prey to the Spencers’ games. There’s a reason your father divorced Margaret. Please remember that.”

  “I know. But there was also a reason he married her and took care of her for those years before we lost him.”

  He sighed in defeat. “You always have had a bleeding heart.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Thank me by coming to visit. And bring Johnson.”

  Now, that made me roll my eyes. “Johnson would rather jump off my balcony than fly to New York and be forced to go to dinner with you.”

  “Think about it, okay? I owe the man a scotch—or, more likely, a distillery.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I lied.

  “See what you can do about writing a wholesome book too.”

  I giggled. “Well, the good news is that, now that I’ve had this brilliant redemption idea, I won’t have to write that stepbrother male/male romance Brianna suggested this morning.”

  He began coughing loudly. “Jesus, Rhion. I’m an old man. You can’t say stuff like that to me.”

  I attempted to suppress a laugh but failed as I offered him a halfhearted, “Sorry.”

  “You always did enjoy torturing me.” He stated it seriously, but I could hear the smile in his voice.

  God, I missed him.

  I squeezed the phone tight as if he could feel it. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’m getting another tattoo today.”

  “Where? You can’t possibly have more than three inches of blank skin left.”

  “I’ll surprise you with a picture when I’m done.”

  “I’ll be waiting on pins and needles,” he deadpanned. “Okay, kiddo. I need to go. Love you, and stay safe.”

  “Love you too, Pete.”

  I listened until he hung up, and then I wasted not a single second before grabbing my laptop.

  Three hours and five thousand words later, I called and postponed my tattoo.

  Ink could wait.

  Words would not.

  “It’s four thirty in the morning here, Jude,” she said in a sleepy but still very bitchy voice.

  Sitting in the underground parking garage of a Chicago high rise, I gripped the steering wheel of my Jeep until my knuckles turned white. “Consider yourself lucky. I was gonna call at two thirty.”

  “Well, aren’t you generous,” she snipped. “What do you want?”

  “I wanna know why, when I checked my voicemails this morning, I had one from Val saying Kevin took her computer away last night.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jude. She got in trouble for not doing her chores.”

  I ground my teeth and cracked my neck. “I swear to God, April. I will not repeat myself again. Working out is not a fucking chore.”

  “It is when you’re fat,” she shot back.

  God had not granted me the patience to deal with her bullshit. Between my nightmares of Butterfly and the new job, my mind was completely maxed out on shit to worry about without my ex-wife adding to it.

  This had been going on with April and Val for as long as I could remember. I thought I’d made my stance on the issue clear before I’d left for Chicago. Apparently, I had not.

  “She’s not fat!” I boomed.

  “Yes, she—”

  I willed my heart to slow in hopes that my blood pressure wouldn’t turn my head into a geyser. Shifting the phone to my other hand, I glanced around the parking garage to make sure no one was watching me. “What she is is a kid. There is not the first thing wrong with the way she looks. You need to pull your head out of your ass and stop trying to turn her into some socially warped version of perfection. That shit does not exist. And you and your workout schedule and fad diets are ruining the kind of perfect she already is.”

  “Oh yeah? She’s so perfect that she can’t even buy clothes in the juniors’ section anymore. What’s next? The plus-size stores? Fuck that. She’s eleven!”

  “That’s my point. She’s only eleven!”

  She laughed sardonically. “I’m not having this conversation with you. She knows she’s fat and she’s embarrassed about it. She hasn’t worn anything but sweatpants and a hoodie to school in weeks. She’s a girl, not a homeless man.”

  “April,” I growled.

  “Besides, according to the quiz I found online, she does not have a healthy BMI. She needs to lose some weight and that’s the end of it.”

  “You know, April, if I thought you were doing this because you were worried for her health, that would be one thing. But your only concern is what she looks like standing next to you. Now, cut the crap. Act like a mother, and better yet, while you’re at it, see if you can pull off the façade of a decent human being too.”

  She gasped. “You’re such a dick.”

  I leaned back in my seat and straightened my suit coat. “Maybe I am, but
I’m not the one fucking with a little girl’s head because I’m scared what my friends will say about her. Make Kevin give back her computer. And I mean first thing this morning. I find out you waited until tonight—”

  “Fuck off, Jude,” she snapped. “She’s my daughter. I’ll decide when she gets her computer back. The same way I decide if she needs to work out or not.”

  “Do not make me fly back this weekend,” I warned.

  She laughed. “Fly back and do what?”

  When she paused, I sucked in a sharp breath and braced, anticipating her signature blow.

  “She’s not yours!”

  “She is mine!” I roared.

  “Not in any way that counts,” she sneered.

  “In every fucking way that counts,” I corrected through clenched teeth.

  “Whatever. If you’re done bitching, I’m going back to sleep. Don’t forget to pay her school tuition and I’ll see what I can do about not forgetting to give her back her computer.”

  Before I could reply, she severed the connection.

  “Fuck!” I slammed the heel of my hand down onto the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I cursed in beat with my pounding.

  Giving up on the boxing match against my steering wheel, I cut the engine and then shoved the door wide.

  “Thirty minutes early?” a man called from across the garage as I folded out.

  “Excuse me?” I replied, checking over my shoulder to see if he was actually talking to me.

  “Come on, man. You’re gonna make the rest of us look bad.” A big guy in pair of navy slacks and a crisp, white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms smirked as he sauntered in my direction. His hair was cut short, the dark color suiting his olive complexion. With aviator sunglasses hooked on the front of his shirt, he looked every bit the role of the typical LA bodyguard. Tall, well built, menacing if he needed to be, but friendly enough for the clients to feel comfortable.

  He clicked a remote over his shoulder and the taillights of a white Acura NSX blinked behind him. Either he didn’t work for Leo James or he was being paid significantly more than I was.