by Snow, Nicole
There he is, tapping away on his phone, the small thing clenched in his massive paws. He fires back, then shoots an almost mutinous glare at the window just as my phone buzzes.
Do I even dare look? Sadly, I have to.
So, what you're calling fine means only sleeping for three or four hours and working yourself ragged, huh? Funny definition.
I scowl at him, barely looking at my phone as I send, Mind your own business, lughead. Landon isn’t paying you to track how long I sleep. Got it?
And he barely looks at his phone before the retort comes, Landon’s paying me to look after you, Sky. And you seem like you need a whole lot of looking after. If you got something you wanna say about Joannie, I’m all ears.
My throat seizes. I don't know whether to hurl the phone against the nearest wall or scream.
It’s the weirdest real-time argument in the world, communicating through glares and texts, and I’m done with it.
So done. Done with anyone who thinks I need looking after.
I flip him off, every ounce of venom I can muster on my face.
Then I just close the blinds, silence my phone, and crawl into bed.
Fine. I'm fine. And it's whatever.
I’ll sleep.
But there’s no way in hell I rest easy, when my thoughts are bitter, restless, and full of hurting, awful things.
Not when a tiny, deeply buried part of me actually feels guilty for shutting out this huge stranger who cares and knowing I won't let him.
* * *
By Monday morning, work is a refuge.
Gabe doesn’t have to follow me into the office, at least. Not when at work, I’m surrounded by the best, most highly trained security personnel on the West Coast.
I hate that I even need that kind of protection, but at least keeping busy is a distraction. I’m tucked into my corner desk reviewing and re-reviewing all the security prep for the Duke of Sealesland’s private jet hangar and the venue for his charity talk when the door swings open.
I'm just glad his cousin, King Silas, won't be tagging along. The dirty tabloid prince turned charismatic ruler, adoring husband, and doting father of the world's favorite royal baby would have to involve more firms than just ours, plus a full foreign security detail.
I glance up as Landon comes striding in. He’s not even supposed to be here; he’s leading the convoy route prep team. I frown, coming alert in my chair.
“Boss?” I ask. “What’s up?”
He blinks as if he’d forgotten I’d be there, then laughs. “Stand down, Pixie. I just forgot the damn car adapter for the frequency scanner.” He crosses to one of the shared desks and pulls the drawer open, rummaging inside. “How’re things going with Gabe?”
I wince. I want to tell him things aren’t going at all.
I want to flip him off for sticking me with that oversized, painfully attractive asshole.
I want to tell him Gabe is weird and too nice to me and all kinds of trouble that I don’t need right now.
But I’m mad enough at both of them to be an asshole right now, and it’s the asshole in me that shrugs diffidently and offers a catty little smile. “Things are fine. We’ve been having some...interesting times together. He’s been really interested in showing me some new grappling techniques.”
Landon’s head jerks up sharply. His gaze goes flat, and he eyes me. “What do you mean ‘grappling techniques?’”
I’m playing with fire, I know.
But maybe if Landon and Gabe are busy yelling at each other and sorting things out, it’ll keep Gabe away from me. It'll keep him preoccupied so I can find Joannie's kidnapper.
So, of course, I reply, “Let’s just say it took him less than thirty seconds to get me pinned underneath him.”
Landon sets his jaw grimly. “Really.”
I arch both brows mildly. “What? Something wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Landon grinds out.
Then he turns and walks right out, stiff-legged and fists clenched.
I smirk to myself and swivel my chair back to my computer screen.
I should be pleased. Gabe is about to get the reaming he deserves.
So, why do I just feel flat out uncomfortable, awkward, and bizarrely guilty as hell?
Guiltier, I should say. I still haven't gotten over that weirdness I felt the other night, shutting him out.
The door rattling shut brings me out of it.
It’s just me in the office, and Riker – Riker over at his station, tapping away on the keyboard, seeming to mind his own business. But he glances back at me, green eyes thoughtful, framed by the weathered lines around them.
There’s an assessment in them that makes me almost uncomfortable, like he’s my Dad and he knows exactly what I just did and maybe he’s disappointed in me, too.
But all he says, after a quiet moment, is, “Was that really necessary?”
I wince. “No, but also...yes.”
He smiles faintly. There're so many shadows around his eyes, his mouth, haunted things.
I don’t know a lot about him. Lots of the higher ranking people around here have been with Landon from the start, or they're his old Army buddies.
I’ve only been here a few years, coming in green right out of the Navy when Landon was looking for ex-military on the hunt for a job. I had no idea answering a job ad would plunk me into a company where I felt like the little stepsister all the time.
It wasn’t that they weren’t kind to me. They treated me like family from the get-go, but it was just that they all actually were family in the military sense, and knew each other in ways so easy it was like they spoke a language I was still trying to learn.
So, yeah, maybe I missed the little things about them. Maybe sometimes I felt like the most awkward dork, everybody's little sister, trying to navigate my way around these hardened men with their egos and demons and crazy will to build a security firm from the ground up.
All I know about Riker is that he's a widower. And his daughter's so whip smart, she probably put those silver streaks in his hair just by being precocious. We’d never talked one-on-one much, even with both of us tending to pull long hours until we were the last ones at the office.
He’s still studying me now, though, and finally he chuckles. “Just don’t let it go too far. You don’t have to look at me like that, Sky. I’m not judging. Sometimes it’s fun to pull old Landon’s tail.”
My shoulders come down from around my ears, but I still feel like a brat.
“Yeah,” I answer weakly. “Guess I could use a little fun.”
His gaze softens. “Still no news, then?”
Joannie, he means. Everybody in the office knows it, of course, but they respect my silence. Usually.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m trying, though. I can’t quit.”
“You’ll find her,” Riker assures me with that grave, calm, solemn growl that makes everything he says sound like the truth.
It's the kind of voice that makes even a grown woman feel like a little girl who just needs her father to say things will be okay and mean it. “I fully believe it,” he says again.
I say nothing, just nod, as I swivel my chair back to my workstation.
Riker's calm, reassuring confidence helps. It still means something to know so many people believe in me.
I just wish I had the same faith in myself.
6
Don't Get Too Comfortable (Gabe)
I’m halfway through the best crab salad sandwich of my life, something new on the shop's menu, when my phone starts ringing.
I glance at the door of the Enguard Security office, but Sky's nowhere to be seen, probably still plugging away inside. I set the sandwich back down in its paper wrapper on the dash of the Dodge and dig my phone from the glove box.
Landon’s number. Weird. I frown.
I’d seen his Impala peeling out of the parking lot from a block away when I’d gotten here, but that was hours ago, so why's he calling me now?
<
br /> I swipe the accept call icon and lift the phone to my ear. “Hey.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he spits back in a low, seething growl.
I blink. “Uh. Eating a sandwich, last I checked. Something up, boss?”
“Don’t get cute with me, Barin.”
I clench my teeth, wondering if that’s where Skylar got that phrase from.
“Shit. I’m a little confused,” I say. “Why the hell you crawling up my ass, Landon? What's going on?”
“I’m not paying you to be a damn escort, that's what,” he snarls. “I’m paying you for security. Protection. Trust. You want an hourly rate, you get someone else to buy your humongous ass.”
“Okay, now you’re really not making any sense. Since when am I an escort? I never needed to sell these bones to any woman in my life.”
“Since you started fucking Skylar?”
I blink.
And then blink again as my blood boils.
“Look, Landon, I ain’t getting much sleep lately, but I’m pretty sure I’d remember if that happened.”
“Fooling around or fucking, it doesn’t matter. Keep your head in the game, Gabe. Keep your shit in your pants, too.”
“My head's right where it belongs. You’re the one talking like a damn fool!” I frown, drumming my fingers against the steering wheel. “Nothing happened between me and Skylar. Honest. We ain’t kissed, ain’t nothing. We had ourselves a little sparring session because she’s dead set on a pissing contest, and things maybe got a little hot under the collar, but I’m not putting any moves on her, and she’s not putting any on me. Where the hell did you get the idea?”
“Straight from her,” he snaps back.
That’s when it hits me.
That little hellion set me up.
Fuck me silly. That tiny, two-timing, Tinker Bell...
I don’t know if I want to swear or laugh. That’s getting to be my norm around that damned woman. She drives me crazy and makes me grin nonstop when I’m not fit to blister the paint off the walls cursing.
Groaning, I thunk my head back against the seat. “I promise it’s not what you think,” I say. I’m not gonna rat her out, but we are gonna have words when I see her. “Look, man, I’m not gonna endanger her that way. Never. Mission first. Focus. Always. Let me talk to her and straighten this out.”
“As long as all you’re doing is talking. I’m serious, Gabe. If something happens to her or her family because you lost sight of the objective over your hound dog dick, you’ll be worse than fired.”
I can’t help being hurt, my chest tight. Landon’s my oldest damned friend, and you’d think he’d trust me more.
But then he knew the old me, too.
He knew how I’d drown myself in booze and women while I was running from what I was afraid to become, a shadow of my old man.
He knows the monster, the fool, I turned into for a while, back when I was trying to convince myself I didn’t give a damn about everything I was losing.
He knows there’s a weakness inside me. He knows that underneath my skin, there’s a terrible man.
That doesn’t change the fact I’d give anything for somebody, anybody to have a little more faith in me for once.
* * *
The call with Landon ends awkwardly.
I mean, it’s hard to hang up after your best friend chews you out for not fucking his employee after she went and told a goddamned whopper on you.
Why the hell did she even do that?
And why can’t I stop thinking about what it'd be like if we had? If that little minx was telling the gospel?
Fuck! If I’m gonna get reamed for something I didn’t do, might as well just damn well do it.
Except, she’d rather claw my eyes out instead.
I know she’s attracted to me.
There’s a heat that fills the space between us, and a certain way she has of not looking at me, like she’s trying her best not to see me so she won’t have to acknowledge that subtle smolder that almost turned into flame when I had her pinned under me.
Sky's so damn small. That shouldn’t turn me on but it does.
Like I can just wrap her up in me and completely shelter her, completely protect her, completely take every part of her.
If we ever fucked, I'd brand her from the inside out, and I know damn well she’d feel me everywhere for days to come when she can barely even get her legs open wide enough to fit me. She’d had her thighs around me, wrapped against my hips, and I’d been able to feel every tension and pull of her muscles when she struggled to hold me.
Lord, if it hadn't fucked me up inside, till I thought my cock was gonna bust out of my jeans.
I hadn’t thought I was that kind of possessive animal. Not anymore. But just the thought of Sunbeam straining like that, her thighs against my hips, has me so hard right now I can barely stand to sit still against the truck's leather seats.
I’m so mad at her I could spit.
I want her so goddamned bad I could die.
How's that for contrast? Or torture?
This really, really ain’t like me. I know I said it before, but looking at it in the hard light of day, it’s a little unnerving.
I don’t act like this. Not since I settled down and sobered up. I just don’t play around anymore.
Don't risk chasing strange skirt, getting myself into all kinds of trouble I don't need.
If I’m gonna fuck someone, it’s gotta mean something. We don’t have to be deep in love, but there’s at least gotta be a little liking there. Something mutual.
With Sky? Who the fuck knows.
Hate's a better one-word emotion for what's blazing on between us.
Shit.
Maybe Landon’s right. Maybe I really just need to stop thinking about this so much. Keep my head in the game, without worrying about the what and why.
Still, can't help how my heart jumps when Skylar comes strutting out of the office; it’s not hard to tell the pixie’s tired, but there’s also a certain air of smugness about her – and when her gaze flicks from its scan of the parking lot to me, she actually smiles. A wicked, triumphant little curl of her tiny, heart-shaped mouth that confirms everything.
That little hellcat set me up.
And I can’t talk to her. Not fucking now.
I’m simmering, betrayed, arrow jammed deep in my side. If I talk right now, I’m gonna say something rude to a lady, and my momma taught me to never be really, truly rude to a lady.
So, I just wait for her to get in the damn truck, start it up, and pull out onto the highway in complete silence.
She seems content to let it hold. Honestly, she’s looking pretty pleased with herself, and that sinks the claws in even deeper.
We’re almost to her place when she finally speaks, glancing over at me with her victory smirk still on her lips, a few strands of her hair loosely drifting from its bun to tease across her eyes. “If you still want me to show you around town, it’s not happening.”
“Never thought it was,” I say through my teeth. I’m gonna be polite and civil if it kills me. “I’m here to do a job. Serve, watch, and protect. That’s it.”
She snorts. “Wow. Somebody’s pissy.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You don’t think I have a right to be?”
“I’d say we’re even now,” she tosses back with a saucy little shrug.
“Even? For what?”
“You followed me to the restaurant,” she retorts firmly, her smugness fading to bristling annoyance, “and put me in a position to lie to my family. You lied to my family, and now they think we’re a...a thing.”
I gotta wait a whole ten-count while I shift gears and take a few breaths before I speak, keeping my voice calm and even.
“I’m just doing my job. A job you agreed to let me do,” I point out firmly. “And you’re already lying to your family. You’re lying to your own damn self, too, but don’t even pretend I didn’t lie to foll
ow your wishes. You made it clear you don’t want your family involved in this. So, now you’re gonna get revenge on me for making sure they stay out of it, just like you wanted?”
She makes a faltering, hesitant sound. “I...I...”
I risk a sidelong glance at her. She’s got an odd look on her face.
Like she’s struggling, fighting something, fighting herself. I never met no one who had as hard a time dealing with anything but anger as this woman, and damn it I’m mad myself, but I’m still gonna go diving in and fish her out so she doesn’t have to fumble for something to say.
“Look,” I say, sighing. “You got a lot going on right now. I get it. I know you’re wrapped up inside your head and dealing with a lot of hurt you won’t let out. But if you wanna be an asshole to someone, remember I’m just following orders for a paycheck. Do you shit on the waiter ‘cause the cook fucked up your meal?”
I hate myself for it before it’s even out, but there it is. A brief second of hurt flashes in those wide blue eyes, before they ice over with fresh, angry pride again. She draws herself up.
“Is that the kind of person you think I am? Seriously?”
“No. And that’s why this is so damn frustrating.” I hit the turn for her place and steer down the off-ramp toward the beach, but my mind’s on her and not the road. “I know damn well you’re a good person. Kind. Warm. Caring. Loving. You done buried all that way down where no one can reach it, but that can’t stop me from seeing it. You wouldn’t be such a mess over Joannie if you weren’t the kind of person who loves hard and with everything in you. But you’re in so much goddamned pain from all this poison you got walled up inside you, and you’re pushing that pain on anyone who wants to help out. It ain't fair. Not to you, not to anybody.”
She jerks her gaze away, glaring out the window; her reflection all pale and washed out in the window, glaring at me in reverse. “No one can help me.”
“Bull. You won’t even let me try.” In for a penny, in for a pound, and I admit, “I read about what happened with Joannie, Sky. I know you were there that day. Know you blame yourself, though you shouldn’t. You’ve been gnawing on that and gnawing on that some more, and soon you’re gonna gnaw yourself right in two if you don’t let it out. Open up. So maybe you could sit down and talk instead of flinging around like a frigging hand grenade with the pin pulled.”