“Adam.”
He dragged his glance back up to her face. “What?”
“Second, you do the work I assign you, on your own.”
“Sure.”
“Third, no cancellations.”
He crossed his arms. “What if I have—”
“Fourth, no excuses. Follow my rules, do as I say, and you’ll get the results you’re expecting.”
He grinned. She refused take his shit, and he respected that. “Okay.”
“I mean it.” Her eyebrows lowered sternly. “You screw up, and you’re out of here. We’re done.”
Damn.
He sobered.
Looks like school’s in session.
CHAPTER 1
“Wait. Did I walk into the wrong office?”
At the sound of Slone Rowan’s voice, Adam Soren glared from beneath his eyebrows at his second-in-command. He slapped shut the well-worn paperback book in his hands. Uncrossing his ankles from the corner of his desk, he sat up and planted his biker boots on the floor.
“Some light afternoon reading?” Slone asked, strolling in from the doorway, a grin hooking the corner of his mouth.
“Screw you, Rowan. I’ve got homework thanks to you. It’s bullshit,” he muttered.
“It’s making up for all the stuff you skipped in school. All part of the process.”
Adam glowered. “You can take you process and shove it up your—”
“As you requested, I’ve gathered the profiles of the bodyguards we have on staff with powerful military backgrounds. Are you looking into these guys for the team you and Liam wanted to put together?”
“Are putting together. Present tense.” He raised his chin. “Maybe next week I can explain to you past participles.”
Slone arched an eyebrow. “You’re learning that level of grammar already?”
Adam snorted. “Hell if I know. I’m being haunted by grammar from the past, present and future.”
“Whatever, Ebenezer Scrooge. Marissa’s doing us all a favor by taking you on. We’re paying her by the second for each one she manages to tolerate you.”
Adam tapped the center of his chest. “What about my suffering? What I have to deal with?”
Slone curled his lip wryly. “The pity train left that station years ago.”
“I noticed,” Adam muttered.
“Come on. It can’t be that bad. At least she’s cute.”
“Didn’t notice.” Adam couldn’t look Slone in the eye when he said that. Yeah, he’d noticed—to the point of distraction.
“Why, because she’s not the one-night-stand blonde airheads you’re used to?”
“She’s not tutoring me in bed, so what’s it matter?” The defensiveness in Adam’s tone didn’t belong there, and he wasn’t sure where it came from or why his shoulders tensed.
One eyebrow raised, Slone stared at him with equal parts amusement and curiosity. But he didn’t comment on Adam’s uncharacteristic response.
The air conditioning kicked on and streamed from the vents overhead, ruffling the printed pages in Slone’s hand.
Adam stashed the book in a drawer and sat forward. “Show me whose profiles you’ve flagged so far.”
“I will, when you tell me what you’re reading.”
“Reading? That’s a joke, right?”
Slone made an annoyed sound. “Yeah, that’s me. The jerk who picks on people with disabilities trying to better themselves.”
“I’m not a fucking defect.” Adam’s pulse thundered in his ears, drowning out taunts from childhood he’d used his fists to silence.
“I never said you were.” Slone waited for him to slow his breathing. “Dyslexia is a brain disorder, not a dysfunction. Though you have plenty of those, too.”
Flashing a grin, Adam put carelessness back into his tone. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Sure.” Slone waved the pages he held. “When you tell me the title of your book.”
Exhaling irritation, Adam retrieved the book from the drawer and tossed it onto his desk in Slone’s direction. It slid across the glossy surface, about to fall over the edge before Slone stopped it with a fingertip.
“Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea. Nice. A classic.”
Seeing his coworker impressed, Adam experienced a flicker of satisfaction. Not that he’d let him know. “A classic snooze-fest.”
Slone’s jaw dropped. “Dude, it’s written by one of the literary geniuses of this past century. And it looks worn, like it’s been read a few dozen times,” he pointed out.
“Marissa gave me the copy.” The damned defensiveness returned again. He shrugged. “I was just bored, flipping through pages waiting for you. I don’t care about the story.”
“Man, how can any self-respecting guy hate a book about fishing?”
“Have we met? Because you should know by now I have no self-respect.”
Slone shook his head. “As long as you respect Marissa and put in some effort, I don’t care what you tell yourself to help you sleep at night.”
“You know what helps me sleep at night?” Adam smirked. “One-night-stands with blonde airheads.”
Slone rubbed his left temple. “God, maybe you are hopeless.”
“I never said I wasn’t. It’s you and my cousins who’re under the mistaken impression I’m redeemable.”
Slone rolled his eyes. “Just let Marissa teach you how to read, so you can follow a teleprompter in time for your onstage appearance at our company’s security conference. That’s the minimum redemption we’re asking for.”
“Fine. Can we work now?”
Nodding, Slone stepped forward and produced the profiles of the bodyguards Adam and Liam wanted for an elite security team in the pipeline. He and his brother hadn’t pitched their idea yet to their cousins Trey and Cade. Adam wanted to make sure they could create a task force in-house, and provide at least a dozen provable scenarios where such a force would come into play in their developing business of providing higher-end clients with bodyguards. Superior, trained guardians who specialize in extracting or protecting people directly in the line of fire.
As Slone detailed the backgrounds of the guys, Adam found his thoughts drifting to Marissa. They’d done way too much drifting lately. He hated that, recently, he couldn’t focus on work the way he needed to because her spelling drills marched through his brain at the most inconvenient times.
The thing was, those drills seemed to be making a difference. She was making a difference—in him.
There were days when letters on signs or office memos arranged themselves in the right order, into words that made sense. The experience startled him every time, made him want to pump the air with his fist like he’d scored a football touchdown.
Football.
The only school-related activity he’d ever mastered.
Until the beginning of sophomore year, first game of the season, and some preppy, pretty-faced pansy on the opposing team talked trash and made an illegal play that landed his cousin Trey on the bench. Totally bad call by a blind ref. During the next play, Adam had rammed the kid so hard the little prick had left the field on a stretcher. Seemed like a reasonable trade-off out at the time.
Expelled from the team after the incident, Adam had seen no reason to keep torturing himself or his teachers, who’d reluctantly passed him to keep his coaches happy and the school’s winning streak alive. His dreams of entering pro-football had crumbled along with his already dismal academics, and he’d dropped out two weeks later with Pop’s blessing—and a career as a bounty hunter waiting for him.
Hell, those events had happened ages ago. He didn’t know why his memories shoved reminders of his past failures in his face now, of all times. In his huge gleaming being he had no business owning, part-CEO alongside Trey, Cade and Liam.
Because he knew he didn’t belong here, sitting at a desk in a corner office—illiterate asshole—overseeing hundreds of bodyguards who protected people’s lives. Pretty unreal. That’s
why he chose not to think about it too much, just did his thing and banked his checks, waiting for something better, more exciting, to come along and capture his attention, taking him along for the ride.
Then Marissa had arrived out of nowhere—more accurately, he’d shown up on her doorstep—and a sense of excitement had entered his life.
He looked forward to their tutoring sessions, not just because he needed to be there, but because he wanted to be there. With her. Learning. Changing a part of him he’d never thought could change.
The craziest aphrodisiac, and he couldn’t even try to explain it. Didn’t want to, so some logical reason couldn’t pierce the magic.
Wait, what? Magic? What the—? Are you kidding? No. Hell, no.
He scoffed at the stupidity of the concept, but that made him no less eager to meet Marissa tonight after work.
Looking up from the profiles in front of him, he glanced at the clock above his door. He always could read numbers, no problem. 2:15 pm.
Only five more hours to go…
*
Marissa Denning hiked her black-and-white checkered skirt up her thighs and zipped it up at her waist. She smoothed her palms down the uncomfortable fabric. At this rate, she’d run out of skirts by the weekend.
She wished her problem centered on a string of hot dates lined up. But no. She wore skirts whenever sexy bad boy Adam Soren came for a tutoring session.
Not because she wanted to flash some leg to grab his attention.
Just the opposite.
Since last week, when he’d bumped up their tutoring sessions to three times a week, versus once, he’d asked her every time they met to go on a motorcycle ride with him. God, how she wanted to, but couldn’t.
The first night the hunky bad boy had showed up on her doorstep, accepting her tutoring help to overcome his severe dyslexia, she’d tipped her hand. He’d arrived on a beautiful custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and she couldn’t resist sharing her in-depth knowledge about Harleys with someone who’d appreciate it.
The motorcycle had been as tantalizing and forbidden as him. A physical link to her past…a past that no longer existed. Because she no longer existed, since she’d become Marissa Denning. In exchange for safety, she’d assumed a completely new identity.
Even her best friend and fellow second grade teacher, Lindsey Rowan, didn’t know. No one did. No one could. Ever.
Marshal Sharp, her witness protection contact, had drilled the gory repercussions into her brain until it hurt worse than a lobotomy without anesthesia. Her life, and the lives of all the people she loved, would be snuffed out if the MC gang-banger she’d testified against discovered her identity.
If Ames Grey ever found out about her existence, a mere three states away from where she’d incarcerated him, he’d put a hit out on her instantly. Prison offered no protection for her, or her family, since Gray retained dozens of local gang members, and worse their “prospects,” who’d gladly carry out his requests. Just for the dubious honor of wearing Gray’s gang patch in hopes of becoming a full-fledged member.
At twenty-one years old, she’d worked in her grandfather’s bar, and had witnessed the gruesome event. She’d ratted out Ames Gray. Her testimony had put him away for twenty-five to life for the rape and murder of an innocent sixteen-year-old girl who’d been at the wrong place, at the wrong time. A girl desperate for the chance at acceptance and belonging. She’d chosen to follow the call of a bad crowd, and had paid for it dearly.
Without question, Marissa knew she’d done the right thing. Unfortunately, she’d had no idea it would cost her everything—except her life.
Some days she floated through her new reality wondering if existence was the same as living. Most days it sure didn’t feel like it. And God, she wanted to feel again.
Then Adam Soren had burst into her life with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He reminded her of everything she’d loved about the first twenty-one years of her life. Going to live with her grandfather at six, raised inhaling the grease and fumes of a motorcycle repair shop, working the cash drawer after school. Then tending bar way too young when Grandpa Tate sold the shop to accomplish his dream of owning a bar that catered to the same folks whose bikes he’d repaired for thirty years.
Ten years…that’s how long she’d been out of touch with the entire life she’d loved. Missing him every day. Knowing if she dared to contact him or anyone from her former life, all hell would break loose.
Grandpa Tate had been the only source of unconditional love she’d ever known. A lump swelled in her throat. She swallowed hard, but it wouldn’t dissolve.
The doorbell rang.
Adam.
Surprised, she checked her watch. Way too soon, even for Adam, who always arrived fifteen minutes ahead of their tutoring time. Unless he had a pressing reason for coming at this hour.
Please don’t ask me out, she thought. He’d been blatant about asking her out on motorcycle rides. But now that they were meeting more often, their tutoring and friendship bordered on something more. She felt her resistance wearing thin until she might take off on his motorcycle with him, even share the truth she’d never told anyone.
She would love to date Adam. He was more than her type—he was perfect for her. She loved everything he stood for, everything he was, all that reminded her of her past. Which was why she could never date him. For her secrets and her sanity, she needed to maintain a safe, professional distance. Even though her stomach fluttered and excitement coursed through her veins in the hours leading up to their tutoring sessions.
Traipsing down the steps in high heels and a skirt—her built-in excuses for not accepting his requests for her to ride with him—she ran her fingers through her hair. She paused in front of the downstairs mirror at the bottom of her steps.
Admittedly, she liked looking good for Adam. She enjoyed the flare of desire in his eyes when she opened the door and he glanced her up and down, soaking her in with his gaze. Like any second he might shed his semi-respectable veneer, back her against the wall, and kiss her senseless.
I wish.
Whipping open the door, she said, “Hey, you’re early—” She froze mid-sentence. “Marshal Sharp.” Instantly her stomach plummeted. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know,” he said, removing his hat. He sported a black fedora and trench coat like a reincarnated Elliot Ness.
“You do realize you showing up in that outfit makes you more conspicuous, not less. I mean, seriously, are you here to check my basement for bootlegged booze?”
He appeared mildly relieved. “So you haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” she asked frostily, making her unhappiness with his presence known. “Al Capone has risen from the grave, and you’re here to condemn his ghost?”
“Wrong ghost.” He cleared his throat. “Can I come in?”
“I guess,” she said as he invited himself into her home. He locked the porch door behind him, then urged her into the house and locked the front door as well.
Crossing her arms, she glared at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Would I show up and risk your cover if it wasn’t important?”
She spread her arms and slapped her hands on her thighs. “I never know when or why you show up, except to torment me. And if you didn’t want to blow my cover, you’d bother to wear jeans and a hardhat like you’re a random repairman.”
His hard expression remained implacable. “You might want to sit down.”
She remained standing. “I’m fine. What’s this about?” Then a quiver of fear shot up her spine. “Has Ames Gray been released from prison, or something?”
“Or something.” Rolling his fingers around the circumference of the brim of his hat, he made a great show of interest in her well-equipped tutoring space to the right of her living room.
Though she’d never anticipated becoming a schoolteacher, she’d followed the path using the government funding they’d offered her to obtain a four-year degree
on their dime. And her teaching license.
Grandpa Tate had always told her she was smart. But hanging around his repair shop, running the register, and hanging out with her much older boyfriend had been vastly more interesting than high school algebra. When Marshal Sharp had offered her a new identity, she’d taken the clean slate as her chance to prove her grandfather had been right. And she had.
“You’ve really taken to your new role,” Sharp commented. “I’d never guess, looking around here, that you came from trailer trash.”
Fury ignited inside her. “Excuse me? Who the hell are you to judge my past?”
“I’m the one who gave you a real future,” he said haughtily, like a self-righteous parent who thought she should be grateful for his costly exchange.
“You gave me nothing, Sharp,” she spat. “I made this life for myself, because you took everything else away.”
He slanted a pompous look in her direction. “You’re a success. I’m proud of you. Does it matter how you arrived here?”
“Yes, it matters. You didn’t raise me. You gave me no foundation, no love, no real support. You basically dropped me off in Iowa and said have a nice life.”
“Not true.” He affected a hurt expression. “I’ve watched over you. I put you in touch with all the right people. Gave you a college education. I’ve been your advocate.” His perfectly clean-shaven jaw hardened. “I secured your relocation to Denver, despite my personal reservations. You’re far too close to Arizona for the bureau’s taste, and mine, but I made it happen. For you.”
Her blood boiled. Was he actually daring to compare himself to Grandpa Tate? “So what do you want from me? A plaque like I give to my kids who earn the Student of the Year award?”
Sharp grew quiet for a long moment. “I want you to know I’ve done everything in my power to make your life better.”
“You can’t be the judge of that. No one can, except our Higher power.”
A weary look pinched the wrinkled corners of his eyes. “Maybe not, but I do wish you’d think better of me. I did my best on your behalf. I’ll always be here for you.”
The Billionaire's Dare (Book 4 - Billionaire Bodyguard Series) Page 2