by Misty Evans
“Who’s he?” Coldplay asked, still standing formidably beside the couch.
“Brady Garrison the second. Senator.” On screen, Courtney and Lindsey were giggling over something Brady has said. Even though she no longer loved him, Savanna definitely wanted to throw her glass at the two women. She forced the next words out. “My ex-boyfriend.”
Coldplay seemed to stiffen. Without shifting his stance, he cut his eyes to her. “Right. I saw his name in your files. What does he have to do with them crucifying you and making you look like a fraud to the public?”
Brady’s smile disappeared as he began telling Courtney and Lindsey about Savanna’s fickle, temperamental mood swings and mercurial personality. He suggested she had untreated mental issues.
Bastard.
“I’m a woman,” Savanna said, her voice flat in her own ears. “The surest way to undermine me is to have a man tell the world I’m emotional and bitchy. If you’re male, they discredit you by showing you’re a failure in your career. If you’re female, it’s all about your weight, your mood swings, and your hair.”
“What?”
“It’s like a tabloid. The famous women—actresses and TV personalities—are always being left by their men, not the other way around. No matter what the man did, it’s the woman’s fault. Either his wife or current girlfriend is too much of a bitch and drove him away, or the other woman is too sexy and he couldn’t help himself. This is the world we live in.”
She pointed at the screen where Brady continued to capitalize on lying about their past relationship. “Viewers eat this up. They don’t care about real news if there’s a fictitious or erroneous story that’s juicier.”
“Linc Norman pulled out all the stops on this one.”
“You think he’s behind this?”
“Did anyone mention the shooting at the studio today?”
She shook her head.
“Those bullets were directed at you, and although my team suppressed the hell out of the fact that it happened, the story got out. Petit wanted me to keep you away from the news and the internet so you wouldn’t see it. But this is worse. They’re running with a complete fabrication and editing out anything that suggests you’re in danger.” He faced her fully now. “That smacks of Norman.”
He was right, like always. Savanna turned off the TV. She couldn’t stand the sight of Brady, Courtney, or Lindsey a minute longer. “Lindsey got what she wanted after all.”
Coldplay took a seat beside her, digging her phone out from under his butt when he sat on it. He tossed it on the coffee table. “We’ll get this straightened out.”
She shrugged, every bit of energy draining away as she set her glass on the table. “The damage is done. Even if I prove they falsified information and I was telling the truth, the damage they’ve done tonight will haunt me forever.”
Flopping back in the pillows, she covered her eyes with her hands. “I’ll never work in broadcasting again, so…yeah. There’s that. Life threatened and career up in flames.”
“I shouldn’t have let you watch.”
“Bullshit.” She sat up, a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I appreciate Emit wanting to protect me, but I appreciate you letting me face the truth even more. I would have to eventually, anyway.”
His eyes were that uncanny dark blue, staring at her like he was trying to dig into her mind, her soul. “The news is your world. Shielding you from negative publicity would be pointless.”
“Exactly.” Her mind was churning. Being made a public spectacle was embarrassing and eviscerating on so many levels. The Three Stooges—Courtney, Lindsey, and Brady—had managed to discredit and invalidate everything she’d worked for in five minutes flat. Every story she’d ever done was now suspect.
And if they dug hard enough, they could prove they were right. At least on one story. A headliner. You didn’t do your research on that one.
The thought chilled her. “You did the right thing,” she told Coldplay. “I hate secrets. Their accusations aren’t truthful”—for the most part—“and I’ll prove that once I’m able to confront the president and stop him. How’s the decryption coming?”
“Still working. Your sister did a number on that USB. She obviously didn’t want the information to fall into the wrong hands.”
His steady gaze did funny things to her. What went on behind those blue eyes? She still wanted to throw the wine glass at the TV and she felt sick that her career was in danger, but there was something else. A warmth spreading in her stomach not due to the alcohol.
She wasn’t in this alone. She was safe. She still had a chance at finding Parker and stopping this whole crazy charade.
Maybe it was the wine this time, but her head was spinning slightly. The quiet of the house and the intensity of Coldplay’s stare made her feel lightheaded and exhilarated. Like she’d jumped off a cliff but he was her parachute.
Her fingers fiddled with a lint ball on the upholstery between them. “Do you think that USB will help us?”
“To find Parker or to blackmail Norman into leaving us—I mean you—alone?”
“Either. Both.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Me too.” She rubbed the top of her thighs, anxious and worried at the same time, but not about her predicament or Parker. “I take it I’m not your first.”
He sat back. “First what?”
“First bodyguard mission. You’re so calm about all of this. So…professional. How many people have you brought here?”
For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed flustered. “I, um…”
Kiss him. “I get it. That would break the rules. Never mind.”
He smiled. “I’ve never brought anyone else here.”
Oh, that smile. Talk about eviscerating her.
That lightheaded, exhilarated feeling spread through her limbs. “So I am your first.”
“Yeeesss…”
“But?”
A frown creased his forehead.
“I sensed a but coming,” she said.
“No buts. You’re my first bodyguard mission. Not sure I should tell you that since that probably makes you want someone else now.”
“Why would I want someone else?”
“Because I have no experience with this.”
For so many years, she’d had to be strong, unflinching, and perfect in the public eye. She hadn’t needed anyone, and when she did, it was Parker. The two of them, inseparable, but now she realized, they’d each had their own secrets.
She didn’t have Parker tonight. She had Coldplay. “You’ve saved my life twice. I’d say you’re pretty damn good for someone with no experience.”
And there it was again. That smile that made her pulse speed up. It made her ache. Ache to be held, to be touched. He didn’t give it freely and a part of her understood that. She’d smiled for the camera daily for years, never feeling true happiness. Feeling locked inside a prison she’d created.
Since the age of fourteen, she’d suppressed those emotions. Her gymnastics career had been exhausting, the daily grind and injuries taking its toll, but it had made her feel alive. Whole.
And then it had been stripped away. Her world had crumbled. The people she’d depended on and looked to for guidance had pulled her safety net out from under her. She wasn’t sure she could feel that deeply ever again.
Had Coldplay experienced something similar? Was that why he was so contained, so aloof?
“How do you remain so calm?” she asked. “If you’ve never done this before…and after the couple of days we’ve had…how do you seem so unfazed by all of this?”
He started to speak, stopped. Sighed. “Power and control come from external things. Your show, your fame—they’re all tied to external objects and feedback from other people.” He touched the center of his chest with a fist. “For me, power and control come from in here.”
“External factors don’t affect you?”
“They affect who I am, but not wh
at I am.”
“That sounds very Zen.”
A grin quirked the side of his mouth. “It’s like in yoga. You focus on your breathing and what you’re feeling internally to perform a challenging pose. If you’re distracted by the person next to you, or by street noise, you can’t push through and hold the pose correctly. If you’re focused on the right things—those inside you—you tune out the unimportant and tune in to your core power and strength.”
He was powerful and definitely in control. All the potential she’d believed the future held now seemed out of reach. She was hiding in a safe house, afraid to go out in public, and no longer able to barter on her looks or her fame.
Yet, sitting there with Coldplay, she felt almost relieved. Happy. She had the potential now to do something really important—reveal the truth about the man in the Oval Office.
No more secrets. She wasn’t keeping her mouth shut anymore.
“I’m about to do something prohibited by my contract,” she said, not giving a damn.
He gave her a questioning look, but he was trained to make educated guesses. Outthink his enemy. He was wary, like always, but almost…anticipating. “And what is that?”
Before she could change her mind, she leaned forward. “We’ll blame it on the wine.”
Tilting her head, she gently touched his lips with hers. Surprisingly, he didn’t back away.
His lips were warm and firm and she felt him suck in his breath. Closing her eyes, she kissed him again, lingering, sliding her lips to the corner of his mouth and sneaking her tongue out to taste him.
He moaned.
It was so faint, she almost didn’t hear it. But he didn’t touch her, didn’t draw her close and deepen the kiss. He simply sat there.
Alrighty then.
Savanna sat back, then shot to her feet and looked down at his broad shoulders and his delicious mouth. His eyes didn’t rise to meet hers and she felt ridiculously embarrassed.
She wanted more but he didn’t. He probably got this all the time—women throwing themselves at him—even if she was his first protection case.
“I’m going to go to bed now.” She put her head down. The hollowness was back and it wasn’t just in her stomach now. It invaded her chest too. “Wake me if the decryption software works and you’re able to read that USB.”
Her feet felt like concrete blocks as she dragged herself out of the living room and to the stairs to find a bedroom.
HE WAS A drowning man.
Savanna’s kiss—her boldness—had nearly done him in.
He was a SEAL for God’s sake. An assassin. A man in control of his body and his emotions.
And yet this woman…this willow-thin, in-your-face, beautiful woman was killing him.
The pain in her face, the incredulity of her situation, had made him want to comfort and protect her. Those huge blue eyes had drawn him in, her toughness trying to cover her vulnerability.
She’d been devastated that her own news station had turned against her, pissed that Lindsey had stolen her show, hurt that her ex-boyfriend—what a loser—had turned her into a psychotic bitch on national television.
Everything they’d said about her was a lie to create doubt about her stability and competence.
He knew the feeling.
Guilt slammed him.
Why do I feel guilty? She ruined my life and now she’s getting a taste of her own damn medicine.
But he knew her now. Knew she hadn’t made up stories about him and ruined his life on purpose. She’d been lied to, had put her trust in the wrong people.
He’d known she was going to kiss him. Hell, he’d wanted her to kiss him. And then she had and his world had spun down to that one moment, the soft brush of her lips against his.
For the first time in a long time, he’d felt need. True, honest, raw need. Suffusing. Saturating. Flooding his system with desire.
Drowning him.
He couldn’t let her—or anyone—get under his skin like this. It was pretty fucking sad that after all of his training, all the shit he’d lived through, that a single kiss could upend his carefully controlled existence.
He was better than this. Emotions, feelings, a thing of his past. There was no room for them in his present or future. Detachment was his mantra, and…
Shit.
Glancing down, he realized he was still sitting rigid on the couch. Savanna’s kiss had paralyzed him. All but one important part anyway. The bulge in his pants was freaking huge.
Yep, even though she’d fled the room minutes ago, embarrassed, her sweet backside beckoning to him as she walked out, his dick continued to remain hard as steel. It strained against his zipper, nearly painful in its diligence to escape.
Follow her.
Scrubbing his face with his hands, he shook off the longing, the need. While he’d entertained a few fantasies inside Witcher of fucking Ms. Savanna Bunkett over, he’d never actually thought about fucking her.
Now, all his mind wanted to do was think about that big ol’ bed on the third floor and her spread wide on top of it, naked and waiting for him.
Pathetic. A woman hadn’t touched him in so long, hadn’t kissed him, he’d turned into a horny pushover the minute one did.
Trace pushed himself off the couch, adjusting his pants and his painful erection. Grabbing Savanna’s wine glass, he downed the remaining liquid in the bottom, wishing it was something stronger, because it was going to be one long-ass night if he had to keep himself from taking the stairs to that master suite two at a time.
Chapter Sixteen
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COMPARED TO SOME of the hellholes Trace had lived in, the safe house felt like a mansion.
He found a room that would work to release his tension with tall windows that overlooked the rear garden next to the library he’d told Savanna about. His pulse was elevated and he needed to center himself.
Killing a man barely raised his blood pressure. Being in the center of combat relaxed him. He could rely on his training, trust his heightened natural abilities.
Being alone in a house with Savanna, being subjected to her probing questions and hot, supple body, however, had him crawling out of his skin.
It was no surprise she’d guessed he was a former SEAL. The part about the experimental drugs and the DOD, though, was too close for comfort.
Focus on that, he told himself. Not her kiss.
Stripping down to his underwear, he left the lights off and took a seat on the floor facing the bank of windows—the snow provided enough reflection from the night sky and the landscape lights that he could see just fine. His heightened night vision didn’t hurt either.
The gardens and woods behind the house were covered in snow, the storm winding down as it approached midnight. He’d checked in with his fellow guards and all was normal.
Going through a set of stretches, he held each one until his muscles strained and his breathing increased. He listened to the sound of his breath and let the cascade of wild thoughts—and the images of a naked Savanna—flit through his mind and disappear as he took his practice deeper.
The thoughts slowed with his breathing. The images of long legs, a flat stomach, and those lips that could bring a man to his knees, didn’t.
Fighting mental chaos never worked. You had to give in to it. Acknowledge it. Make peace with it.
But making peace with the fantasies running through his head would mean getting rid of the massive hard-on between his legs. And the only way he wanted to do that was by going upstairs and waking the sexy woman sleeping there.
Once his body was tired and sweating from the extreme poses he forced it into, he’d achieved a reasonable amount of headspace again. His fantasies were still there, along with the hard-on, but he could feel his pulse slowing, his breath coming easier.
Two hours. It took two hours of holding poses to feel the release he needed from the mental chaos. Never h
ad it taken so long.
That’s what Savanna did to him—threw his internal rhythms off, made him crazy.
Meditation came next, his mind happy to continue the struggle to make peace with his Savanna fantasies. Even if they were now “friends” in her book, there was no good end to this situation. Once she found out who he was, that he’d deceived her, it wouldn’t matter that he’d also saved her life. She would hate him.
Like always, that thought dampened the fire in his gut, and clearing his mind came easier as he folded his primed body into a restorative sit and stared out at the snow-covered garden.
He set the timer on his watch, and a few minutes later, his body slipped into the deep space of mediation between nothingness and sleep. He welcomed it, his body needing the recharge.
Sometime later, his nose woke him before the alarm, as he picked up a scent that never failed to make his mouth water.
Bacon.
A quick check of his watch showed he’d slept for two hours. It was now four in the morning.
Tapping his comm, he checked in with his team as he dressed. “Perimeter check?”
“Frosty as ever,” came the reply from Poison. “My piss freezes before it hits the ground every time I take a leak.”
A snort sounded from Henley, a new arrival, followed by a horrible rendition of some Disney song, telling Poison to let it go. “Other than the frozen landscape, all’s secure, mate.”
“Copy that.”
The laptop was still working on decrypting the USB. Sounds from downstairs made him stop for a second and listen. The occasional muffled bang of a pan, the clink of silverware—how long had it been since he’d heard those normal, homey sounds?
Trace made his way downstairs cautiously. No one could have gotten through the security team or the surveillance system, so that only left one person who could be cooking bacon.
Savanna.
At four in the morning?
A tiny amount of light spilled from the kitchen. Not enough to be from the bright overhead lights, but…
Trace turned the corner and saw Savanna standing at the stove, the bacon scent now mixed with other smells that reminded him of his childhood home, his grandmother.