by Shayla Black
He followed Roman down to the beach and joined the party.
ONE
Washington, D.C.
Twenty-one years later
I don’t really need a bodyguard.” Lara Armstrong took a sip of her chai tea and sat back, staring out the coffeehouse window. Everywhere she looked, people bustled by, their briefcases in hand, cell phones pressed to their ears. They were lawyers and politicians, along with their aides, and anyone else who thought they were important on the political spectrum. Soon, one of the people moving along this street would be a man sworn to throwing himself in front of a bullet for her.
Connor. No last name. Or maybe that was his last name and he hadn’t given her his first name. She wasn’t sure. She only knew that enigmatic Connor had commanded she meet him here at three thirty. Did he realize how bad traffic was going to get?
“Look, someone knows what you’ve been doing, L, and that means you need a bodyguard.” Her best friend, Kiki, traded a look with the only male at the table.
Tom sat forward, his hands around his nonfat latte as though he needed the warmth. “I don’t know. I kind of agree with Lara.”
Kiki rolled her dark eyes. “You always agree with Lara. You even agreed with her when she broke off your engagement. You’re a doormat.”
“I’m helpful and practical.” He frowned. “Look, she’s only received a couple of e-mails, and it wasn’t as if the sender attached a bomb or anything. The contents simply stated that they ‘know.’ Know what? That could mean anything.”
Lara sighed and lowered her voice. Only a couple of people in the world knew what she did for a living and she meant to keep it that way. “He knows I run CS.”
Capitol Scandals, D.C.’s most fun and informative news site. Oh, most people called it a horrid tabloid rag that aimed to ruin the lives and reputations of politicians and bigwigs, but Lara liked her description better. And she never ran a piece about any deserving public servant that she couldn’t verify. Well, at least not any serious piece. She didn’t personally know the size of the current president’s penis, though several confidential informants had used the words extra-extra-large.
“Shit.” Tom’s thin lips flattened further, and she knew she was in for a lecture. Unlike Kiki, who often wrote articles for CS, Tom thought the site was a horrible idea. “I told you something bad would come of this. You can’t expose the powerful people you do and expect to get away with it. I thought someone had finally realized you spearheaded the effort to remove vending machines from public schools or something.”
“Those vending machines never sell anything but processed foods. Kids should have healthier options in school,” she began.
Tom shook his head and every strand of his light brown hair stayed perfectly in place. “People don’t like it when you take away their sodas, L. They get crabby. Still, I was fairly certain no one would actually kill you over that. But running a tabloid that ruins high-powered careers? That might be a little different.”
Kiki nodded. “Exactly. Have you told your father?”
Lara winced. Her father knew about Capitol Scandals. He’d been very supportive when it had been a little site that reported on things like environmental bills and ran essays on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. When she changed the contents to the current iteration, she knew she’d tested him. He’d called screaming when she ran a not-so-glowing story about one of his closest allies on the congressional floor. She’d detailed just how much money the congressman had spent on hookers outside his district while those actually working in his district had lamented about a drastic downturn in income.
She’d been perfectly right to publish the story since the congressman had been running on a platform to bring new jobs and opportunities to his constituency. All the while, he’d been making deals with businessmen to send jobs offshore to Korea. So it really was a true-life metaphor for all that was wrong in politics.
Shortly after she’d published the story, the late-night TV talk show circuit had picked it up. While the comedians and hosts had laughed about the hookers, their viewers had also heard the very true news about backdoor deals, too. Lara had learned early on that she needed to catch the public’s attention if she wanted to do any good in the world. And she wouldn’t do that with a protest or a well-crafted op-ed piece.
“I’m not telling my dad about this. He already blackmails me. If he found out that someone else knows and is sending me semi-threatening e-mails, he would likely strong-arm me into moving in with him or something. It would be awful.”
It wasn’t as if she didn’t love her father. Her parents were amazing people. She couldn’t think of another man in the world who would support her the way her dad did. He’d been angry when he’d learned about CS, but he hadn’t outed her. And given that he was a senator from the great state of Virginia, he probably should have. Instead, he’d forced her to accept a condo in a swanky part of town. She could never have afforded her Dupont Circle pad on her own. She’d wanted a little loft in a more real part of town, but her parents had been insistent.
Luckily, she’d never had to decide whether or not to run a story about her father. He was madly in love with her mom and he played things straight. She’d never gotten a tip about him taking bribes or selling out his constituents. When she’d started Capitol Scandals, she realized a surprising majority of politicians thought they were acting in the public’s best interests. It was just that rancid 10 percent who really screwed things up for everyone else.
She’d created Capitol Scandals to call them out.
“Maybe you should stay with your folks temporarily. Your dad has a serious security system.” Kiki set down her mocha. “Not just a doorman named Moe who sleeps on the job.”
“Moe has a serious case of narcolepsy. You shouldn’t judge.” She shook her head. “Besides, I can’t risk working at Dad’s place for two reasons: One, I don’t know who’s watching him. I’ve long thought the CIA, the NSA, or DARPA listens in on all elected officials.”
Tom coughed but the noise sounded suspiciously like he’d called her paranoid.
She ignored him because she knew paranoia could be a lifesaver. “And two, if anyone ever learns my secret and outs me, I want my parents to have plausible deniability.”
“I don’t think they’d care. They would stand by you,” Kiki said.
Bringing trouble down on them was Lara’s only real fear. Well, that and global climate change. She fought for what she believed in, but she loved her parents, too. She didn’t want to cause her dad issues.
“I have a plan,” Tom said, getting serious again. “Hear me out. You close down the site for a while and come stay with me. I have a second bedroom. I can watch out for you. I am a Krav Maga god. We’ll hang, and the heat will die down. Then you can go back to fighting the good fight.”
She loved Tom, but she wasn’t going there again. There was a reason she’d broken off their engagement. There was also the fact that Niall thought she needed someone to watch out for her.
Niall Smith. Her heart gave a little shiver as she thought about him. Since he ran a small site that called for transparency in California politics, he’d come to her as a confidential informant. Nothing he’d sent her had actually panned out, but that wasn’t so surprising. Ninety percent of her leads were dead ends. But Niall had come to mean more to her than just a source. Over the course of a few months, she’d come to view him as something of a soul mate.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “I need to meet this bodyguard. I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks. He’s supposed to be a professional. He can give me advice.”
“He can give you protection,” Kiki argued. She was dressed in her normal Bohemian garb, a peasant blouse and a flowy skirt. She somehow managed to make it sexy. “You have to take this seriously. Whoever sent you that threat knew your personal e-mail.”
“But there wasn’t anything specific about the threat,” Tom argued, then turned to Kiki. “In fact, I’m not even sure it was a thr
eat. Maybe we’re freaking out about nothing. What are the real odds that someone’s put all the pieces of the puzzle together? There are rumors everywhere about who runs CS, and not one of them mentions you, Lara.”
She wasn’t sure that was true. What might someone else know about her? She was Senator Armstrong’s vegan hippie daughter, whom everyone in the Republican party knew not to put on camera because she would use the opportunity to talk about policy as she saw it.
There really wasn’t anything else about her that would be considered even slightly gossip-worthy. Good grades in the right schools. A degree in political science that would probably lead to law school when she found the time. She’d broken her engagement an acceptable amount of time before the wedding. She hadn’t even dated in the two years since she and Tom had broken up. Capitol Scandals was the sum of her “nefarious” existence. She’d put everything she had into it, and she was finally scenting something big.
Could this new threat have anything to do with the anonymous stranger who claimed to know what really happened to Maddox Crawford? He’d hinted that if she figured out the truth, the trail would lead to something much bigger.
She merely needed to find a woman named Natalia Kuilikov. Just find one Russian immigrant, and the yellow brick road would open up and take her straight to Oz.
Lara found it interesting that her first big case and her first potential death threat had come so close together.
“I don’t know that there’s no threat, but simply figuring out who I am doesn’t mean someone intends to kill me. I might have overstated that,” she admitted.
“To your Internet guy?” Kiki wasn’t Niall’s biggest fan. She might have suggested on more than one occasion that he was likely a middle-aged creep looking for an online hookup. “He’s the one you told, even before you told me. Before you told Tom. I hate to say it, but you seem to have some stake in the guy and that’s why you’re listening to him.”
“Maybe you should listen to the people who have been with you for years. What do we know about this Niall guy? Next to nothing. You can’t just let this random dude start to dictate your life.” Tom hopped off his barstool and straightened his V-neck tee. “I’ve got to run. We have oral arguments on the McNally case tomorrow. Lara, call me if you need me. You know I’m always here for you.” He walked away.
Tom clerked for an appellate judge, so he was always talking about oral arguments and drafting opinions. She had to admit, watching Tom was one of the reasons she hadn’t given in to her parents’ pressure and gone to law school. He was endlessly writing other people’s opinions. She wanted to make up her own mind.
“Holy jeez. My mouth just watered.” Kiki’s eyes went wide as she stared beyond the door through which Tom had exited moments ago. “I finally understand what that means.”
“What?” Lara turned and caught sight of a man in jeans and a black T-shirt. He stood right outside the coffeehouse, his cell phone pressed against his ear.
His shoulders were so wide they almost spanned the window. He had to be six and a half feet tall, and his T-shirt molded to every muscle and sinew of his lean form.
He turned slightly, his profile coming into view. Lara realized then that mouthwatering was really just an elevated term. Drooling was more accurate. The man was stunning. His jaw looked perfectly square, though the lines of his face were far too angular to be beautiful. His dark blond hair was cut in an almost military style, accentuating his features. Manly. Handsome. Sexy.
His lips suddenly curled up in the hottest smirk she’d ever seen.
Caveman. Alpha male. And probably straight off some military base. While she could appreciate him on an aesthetic level, Lara preferred her men a little more civilized. “He’s very nice looking, Kiki.”
Kiki groaned. “Nice looking? There is nothing ‘nice’ about him. He’s dirty. He’s bad. And you can’t dare call him a boy because he’s all man.”
Lara adjusted her glasses. “I like Niall more.”
Niall had perfect surfer hair and the sweetest face.
“You’ve never met Niall.”
She shrugged. “But I know Niall’s soul. He’s more my type.”
“And by that you mean a thousand miles away and safely unobtainable.” Kiki slapped the table. “Damn it, it’s time you got laid. How long has it been?”
“Not long.” She put her head down and mumbled. “Two years.”
Kiki gasped. “You haven’t slept with anyone since Tom? Oh my god. I never imagined it was this bad. I thought you just didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I talk to you about everything and you didn’t think I would mention a couple of one-night stands?”
Her stare trailed back to Caveman Hottie. He really was amazing to gawk at. The slightest hint of a beard spread across his jaw. Though he’d probably shaved this morning, his masculinity wouldn’t be tamed or denied.
“It’s a muscle, you know. You have to use it to keep it healthy. I think your vajayjay has atrophied. That’s why you can’t think straight about this death threat stuff.”
“It’s not a muscle,” Lara argued. But it probably had atrophied . . . and maybe grown a few cobwebs because she hadn’t even played around down there herself in the longest time. She hadn’t had time. Even in her head she sounded prim, like she was already hoarding cats and newspapers in preparation for old maid–dom.
She had a sudden vision of that caveman putting his big hands on her. They wouldn’t be soft. When he touched her, she would be able to feel every callus and rough edge of his skin. He would have working hands, hands that had built things and protected people. He wouldn’t ask her what she wanted . . . but he also wouldn’t hesitate to give her exactly what she needed.
“Um, do you want to borrow my sweater?” Kiki’s question forced her out of her daydream.
“No. Why?” Lara turned, not wanting her friend to catch her staring.
“Yours is really thin and your nipples are giving everyone here a show,” she pointed out.
Lara crossed her arms over her ridiculously erect nipples. “Guess I was a little cold.”
Kiki gave her a skeptical glare. “How about we go and introduce ourselves to the hottie and see if we can buy him a coffee. Or better yet, we could take him to the bar next door, get him tipsy, and have our wicked way with him.”
“Our?”
“There’s a reason I’m known as Kinky Kiki, hon.” She grinned, looking back at the caveman. “I’ll go talk to him, and you can join us after you interview the bodyguard.” She glanced down at her watch. “He’s late.”
Lara checked her phone. Sure enough, she was supposed to have met the mysterious Connor five minutes ago. She’d gotten here early enough to have a cup of tea and assumed he’d join her. But now that she thought about it, he’d actually instructed her to meet him outside.
She nearly fell off her seat. There was only one person standing outside the coffeehouse.
That glorious hunk of man.
“Kiki?” she squeaked.
Her friend settled a designer bag over her shoulder. Lara had tried to convince her to buy a purse from a Nepalese women’s organization that supported indigenous children, but Kiki had replied that when Louis Vuitton supported them, she would, too. “Yes?”
“I think he may be my bodyguard.”
Kiki’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit. That man is supposed to be your close cover for the next few weeks? Why can’t someone want to kill me?”
Lara shook her head. Nope. She didn’t need a bodyguard. At least she didn’t need one as gorgeous as him. “I’ll call you later.”
“Make sure you do and it better be juicy.” Kiki’s gaze was still glued to the man outside.
Lara took a deep breath and strode toward the door to fix her problem.
* * *
Connor stood outside the coffeehouse, his stare traveling the path he’d just walked from Union Station. He’d picked this as their meeting spot because he could walk. Three hours on a train f
rom Penn Station to D.C. had done little to elevate his mood. He would rather have had Gabe fly him here, but if Lara had seen him, he wouldn’t resemble a sad-sack ex-military man looking for a job, carrying everything he owned in the world in his beaten-up duffel.
He fully intended to play on the woman’s soft instincts. If she had them . . .
A chalkboard sign beside him proudly announced that someone named Goldie Starshine would be performing tonight, and all proceeds would go to the global fair trade initiative.
Yeah, it was that kind of place.
He really would have preferred some seedy bar. He’d come to like the dark places of the world. He felt far more at home there.