Hard and Fast

by Raven Scott

  “Usually, I’m just at the shop late, then home. But I have a bridal shower to go to tonight. At the Metropolitan, actually,” she explained evenly. “The wedding is tomorrow morning also, if you’re still staying there.”

  “We have a couple of rooms booked there,” he confirmed. “And who is this person, Shawn, you’re staying with tonight?”

  He watched her carefully.

  “Shawn Hampton is the groom for the wedding,” she clarified. “He’s my best friend, and I’ll be his ‘best man’ for the ceremony”

  She used air quotes at the term.

  “Or maybe it’s best woman . . .” Alex pondered, clearly amused by the unconventional concept. “Anyway, since the wedding party is staying at the hotel for the night, Shawn and I decided to share a room.”

  Lucas nodded, stringing together various facts.

  “That’s why you were there on Sunday?”

  “Yeah. It was the bachelor party,” Alex confirmed.

  “All right. I’ll accompany you to the shower, we’ll stay in my room for the night, then I’ll go with you to the wedding,” Lucas confirmed. “What time is the shower?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “Okay. Probably best for you to take everything you need with you now, then we’ll go straight there after you finish work. Send me an e-mail with all the details and I’ll make arrangements to get access to rooms in the hotel early to ensure they are secure.”

  Alex stared back at him, obviously confounded by his plan.

  “What do you mean, access the rooms early? Why would you need to do that?”

  “It’s just a pre—”

  “I know, a precaution,” she interrupted, standing up and closing the distance between them. “You’ve said that already, it’s starting to sound more and more like bullshit.”

  Lucas clenched his teeth, but kept his face neutral and his stance relaxed.

  “I’m not a pop star, Lucas! I’m an engineer. There are no crazy stalker fans hiding in hotel rooms dying to get access to me,” Alex surmised, crossing her arms also in a much more assertive fashion. “So unless you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on, there is no way I’m going to let you go all Secret Service on me.”

  For one moment, Lucas considered telling her about the murder of Timothy Pratt and the fresh gunshot wound in his shoulder, closed with eight stitches. But he dismissed it just as quickly. While he needed her cooperation, he didn’t want her to be unnecessarily afraid.

  “Why don’t you just let me do my job,” he replied with a small grin and a slightly patronizing tone that he knew would annoy her enough to be distracting. “Just send me the details for tonight and tomorrow and I’ll take care of things on my end.”

  She shot daggers at him, but didn’t reply. He took it as reluctant agreement.

  “Now, get your things together,” Lucas added, looking pointedly at his watch. “I’d like to be at Magnus by eight o’clock.”

  For a few seconds, he was certain Alex was going to argue with his direction. But she surprised him by walking away without another word.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Look on the bright side, Shawn. You can have the bathroom to yourself all morning. I know how long it takes to get your hair to sit just right,” Alex teased her best friend over the phone.

  She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in Lucas’s hotel suite on the top floor of the Metropolitan Hotel. It was almost six thirty and they had stopped there so she could drop off her things and change her clothes before going to the shower for Kate Nguyen, Shawn’s bride-to-be, in another room. Lucas was waiting for her in the room, and Alex could hear the faint rumbles of his voice suggesting he was also on a call. She redirected her attention to her own tricky conversation as she explained to Shawn why she needed to stay with her new bodyguard tonight rather than in his room.

  “It’s just weird, that’s all, Lex,” Shawn replied. “I know you’ve always said your prototype engine is completely different than anything made today, but I didn’t think it was dangerous. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Alex sighed. Shawn was a successful real estate agent and a pretty simple guy except for his expensive taste. He made good money selling high-value properties, and worked as little as possible to do it. Alex knew that he never really understood her drive to work sixty-plus hours per week designing new car components that may or may not work marginally better than ones that already existed.

  “It’s really no big deal, Shawn. Honestly. Someone tried to hack our system and steal my work, and these security guys my boss hired have gone a little over the top. So, I’ll have a tail for a few days until it blows ever,” she dismissed, sounding much more carefree about it than she actually felt. “Anyway, I’ll stop by after Kate’s shower and we’ll hang out for a bit so you won’t be lonely.”

  Shawn snorted and Alex laughed.

  “Adrian and I are going out to eat nearby. I’ll send you a text when I’m back,” he told her.

  “Do me a favor, Shawn? Don’t tell Adrian about all this yet, okay?” she asked.

  “Sure. But how are you going to explain your shadow tomorrow?”

  “I’ll tell him before the wedding,” Alex promised.

  “Yeah, sure,” Shawn finally agreed. “See you later.”

  “Bye.”

  Alex hung up her cell phone and placed it on the marble bathroom counter. She sighed again, something she seemed to be doing a lot lately. This whole bodyguard thing was a huge pain in the neck. Explaining it to Noelle and Shawn was annoying enough. Tomorrow, she’d have to convince her father and three domineering brothers why they shouldn’t be alarmed about an ex–Secret Service consultant shadowing her indefinitely.

  Alex looked into the mirror to finish brushing on a light layer of mascara and eyeliner, then a sheer pink lip gloss. She had changed out of her work clothes into dark blue skinny jeans and a soft, blush pink cashmere tunic. Her thick curtain of dreadlocks was now hanging loose in spirals around her shoulders from the twists she had pinned her hair into over night. Alex toyed with the strands around her face until they fell in her desired pattern, then stepped out of the bathroom carrying her other clothes and purse.

  Lucas was on the phone, standing in the living area in front of a deep sofa on the left side of the large room, next to the full wall of windows. He barely looked up as she walked in. Alex quickly folded her work clothes and put them into her large tote bag, on the floor next to a wide, king-size bed to the right of the bathroom door. Her outfit for the wedding was already hanging in the closet next to the room door.

  “All set?” Lucas finally asked, walking toward her.

  She nodded as he passed her, then took a deep breath and followed behind him.

  The next couple of hours went by fairly painlessly. Kate had booked a small meeting room on the third floor of the hotel. It was a typical shower event with about twenty-five of her female friends and family eating and drinking between silly games to win small prizes. Alex and Lucas arrived a few minutes before Kate, while two of her friends and the hotel staff were still setting things up. Lucas casually did his now-familiar inspection around the room, while Alex introduced herself and offered to help out the two women. While they definitely noticed Lucas, occasionally looking him over with speculative glances, they didn’t comment about his presence, not even after he took a watchful position in the back corner of the room near the bar table.

  Once the party was in full swing, Alex had to admit that Lucas did a good job of blending into the background. In his black shirt and black cotton pants, he easily passed for one of the hotel staff. Of those women that did take note of his sentry-like presence, Alex suspected they were too busy appreciating how good he looked to care why he was there. He was that kind of male specimen.

  “Everything okay?” Noelle asked about an hour into the shower, between even more competitive quizzes about the bride and groom. Noelle looked over at Lucas and back at Alex, clearly still co
ncerned about what was going on.

  Alex nodded and smiled.

  “It’s fine, Noelle. Please don’t worry, okay?” she pleaded.

  Noelle sighed.

  “If you say so. But you’d tell me if you were in any serious trouble, right?”

  “Yes, of course I would,” Alex promised.

  Noelle nodded, appearing to be satisfied for the moment.

  “What are you going to tell Uncle Hubert?” her cousin asked after a few minutes, reminding Alex of the dilemma still unsolved.

  She bit her lip and looked at the ground. Noelle groaned, reading her very clearly.

  “You’re not going to tell him or your brothers, are you?” guessed Noelle with a groan.

  “Noelle, you know what they’re like. They’ll start freaking out no matter how much I try to explain things. And I don’t want to ruin Shawn’s wedding with the commotion,” Alex explained her reasoning. “Lucas will probably only follow me around for a few days before he realizes it’s completely unnecessary, so why stress them out over nothing?”

  Noelle had that disapproving look on her face that Alex saw fairly regularly.

  “If I need the protection for more than a week, or if anything more serious happens, I’ll tell them. I promise,” she finally swore.

  Her cousin was still not happy about it, but her face softened a bit. Maybe the real possibility of four Cotts men dragging Alex away from the wedding to hide her somewhere under lock and key made her see reason.

  “Okay. But how are you going to explain him?”

  Noelle pointed a thumb over her shoulder at Lucas, who seemed capable of standing forever without moving.

  “My date?” suggested Alex.

  They both looked over at him and back at each other.

  “Will he go along with it?”

  “He will once he sees the Cotts men and I explain the alternative.”

  The two women grinned at each other then walked over to the bar to get a glass of wine.

  Alex and Lucas stayed at the shower until just after nine o’clock.

  “I’m going to hang out with Shawn for an hour or so,” she stated once they were in the hallway walking toward the elevator. “He’s in room eleven twenty-two.”

  Lucas didn’t reply but did press the button for the eleventh floor when they got into the elevator.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about Shawn and me?” she finally questioned as the elevator slowly climbed upward.

  Lucas shrugged.

  “Ask about what?”

  “Our friendship. Me sharing a hotel room with him the night before his wedding. Most people find it very unusual for a man and woman to be best friends with no benefits,” she stated, watching his reaction.

  He was pretty straight-faced.

  “It’s not my place to question,” he finally replied in the easy tone that was so attractive and annoying at the same time. “I’m sure it’s possible. But I don’t think his fiancée is as open-minded.”

  His lips twisted into a teasing smile.

  Alex let out a sharp laugh at his understatement. Kate Nguyen absolutely did not think such friendships were possible, and wasn’t very good at hiding her resentment about how close Alex and Shawn were.

  “Yes, well. That’s old news,” she told him with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m not going anywhere, so she’ll have to get used to me eventually.”

  “How long have they been together?” he asked when the elevator door opened.

  Alex grinned.

  “Almost four years.” He raised a brow. “She’s a little stubborn and Shawn’s way too tolerant. I, for one, couldn’t give a rat’s ass what she thinks, as long as she doesn’t make his life miserable about it.”

  They reached Shawn’s room door, but Alex stopped Lucas with a touch on his shoulder before he could knock.

  “Listen, about tomorrow,” she began, feeling awkward about what she was going to propose. “Can we just act like you’re my date for the wedding instead of my bodyguard?”

  He looked down at her speculatively.

  “Why?”

  Alex cleared her throat.

  “It’s my dad. And my brothers,” she stated, wrinkling her nose. “They can be a little protective and hard to reason with. I’d rather not get them all worked up over this security thing if we don’t have to.”

  He continued to look down at her face, brows lowered in thought.

  “Trust me, Lucas. It will make your job a lot easier if you don’t have to deal with them.”

  Finally, he nodded.

  “Okay, it’s a plan.”

  She let out a deep breath.

  “Good. I’ve already asked Noelle not to say anything, and I’m sure Shawn will agree also.”

  He nodded and then knocked on the door.

  “Thank you,” Alex told him sincerely.

  Lucas smiled back at her, his eyes softer than usual. Shawn opened the door, wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Hey, Lex, you made it,” stated her best friend loudly with a board grin.

  He was a handsome man, almost five feet ten inches tall, with dark blond hair and hazel-brown eyes. His tanned face was a little flushed.

  “Someone’s been having his own party,” she laughed back.

  It was pretty obvious that he had enjoyed a few drinks through the evening.

  “Don’t worry, I saved some for you,” Shawn replied before he spotted Lucas off to the side of the doorway. “You must be the muscle.”

  Alex laughed and Lucas had that stoic, patient look on his face.

  “Lucas, meet Shawn Hampton,” Alex stated.

  “Come in, grab a drink! Relax for a while,” Shawn invited, a little louder than needed as he turned back into his room.

  She laughed again, then whispered dramatically to Lucas as they both followed.

  “You can’t fault him for dulling his senses with alcohol. He’s tying himself to that insecure sourpuss tomorrow, and it’s almost too late to back out.”

  “Help yourselves to beer,” Shawn told them as he flopped back on one of the beds and grabbed his own half-empty bottle from the nightstand. “Should we order some food? Are you hungry?”

  Alex took a chilled bottle of beer out of the twelve-pack on the television credenza. There were now only six remaining, with four empties lined together beside the box. Shawn was usually just a casual drinker, having one or two whenever they went out. Alex could count the times he got more than just a little tipsy. So she could tell a little intervention was needed tonight, or he was going to be a mess in the morning.

  “I ate at the shower,” she replied, sitting on the bed beside him. “Didn’t you go out for dinner with Adrian?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Shawn confirmed, taking another big gulp of beer.

  “Lucas, are you hungry?” Alex asked, looking over at him as he walked around the space to do a discreet security inspection.

  “I’ll eat something later,” he replied from a spot between the bathroom and front door.

  “You okay, Shawn? You’re drunk,” she stated, looking back at her friend as he lay across the bed with his eyes closed.

  “Isn’t that what a man’s supposed to do the night before his wedding,” Shawn questioned with a goofy smile. Thank God he was a happy drunk.

  “I have no idea,” Alex said with a laugh.

  She shoved him over then lay down beside him.

  “I’m fine, Lex. Just chilling,” he eventually added, sounding sleepy. “How was Kate at the shower?”

  “She was good,” Alex told him in a neutral voice.

  The tension between the two women closest to him was something she and Shawn didn’t discuss. Not since the first year or so of his new relationship when Kate could not seem to fathom that Shawn’s best friend was a girl.

  “Good,” he sighed in a low, rumbly voice. “Tomorrow is going to be great, Lex. I can’t wait to marry her.”

  Alex patted his shoulder reassuringly and took th
e bottle of beer out of his hand to place it back on the side table. Despite how immature Kate often behaved, it was great to see Shawn so dedicated and in love. Alex only hoped it would last and their marriage would go the distance.

  “’K, I’ll leave you to get some sleep,” she whispered to him when it was clear that he was almost completely out of commission. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “Bye, Lex,” he mumbled.

  Alex stood up from the bed and smiled down at him indulgently. He really did look happily in love, even as he started snoring. As though she felt his gaze, Alex glanced up to find Lucas watching her blankly, still rooted in the spot next to the front door.

  “All set?” he asked.

  She nodded, giving Shawn a final glance.

  With her still unopened beer in hand, Alex followed Lucas back up to his top-floor suite. It was still early, only minutes to ten o’clock. Now that all her obligations were over, Alex suddenly felt awkward and uncomfortable. Ever since the incident in her office, she had tried hard to dismiss it as a crazy moment of weakness with no significant meaning, to her or Lucas. Sure, he was extremely attractive, probably to any woman with a pulse. Trapped so close to him, while he looked down at her so intense and demanding, would naturally cause her heart to race and hormones to spiral out of control.

  That’s all it was. Anything else would be incredibly inconvenient and just plain stupid. Alex had spent the last day and a half running that dialogue in her mind, willing her body and wayward thoughts to cooperate with her rational mind. Even now, while looking through her bag on the floor to pull out nightclothes, Alex tried to look casual and unaffected. Like this wasn’t the same hotel room that she had seriously contemplated hooking up with Lucas in less than a week ago for some much needed stress release.

  “I’m going to order room service,” he told her from where he was now sitting, at the desk in the living room area with his laptop open. “Do want anything?”