Protecting His Assets

by J. K. Coi

  The urge to say yes was almost crippling, but if she agreed, how hard would it be to leave tomorrow?

  Maybe he won’t want you to leave then, either.

  No, maybe not tomorrow, or even the next day. But one day he would be telling his friends that it was time to get serious. Guys like him fucked girls like her, but they didn’t get serious about girls like her. They got serious with girls who looked natural in an evening gown on a Wednesday night and went to the country club after hosting a dinner party the night before, while their kids scavenged the pantry for gourmet crackers.

  Someone had to leave; that’s the way it worked. She’d rather it be her, and she’d rather it be now, while she still had a chance of doing it without losing another piece of her soul to the pain of loss.

  “You wanted to get answers from Edward Fielding,” she reminded him with a sigh. “And I’ll probably have a new assignment waiting for me.”

  “What if I’ve decided that I like having a bodyguard?” He traced a finger across her collarbone and dipped into the neckline of her shirt. “Maybe I’ll just keep you.”

  “Don’t.” She stiffened. “I’ve already screwed up my chances in one career and what happened last night was this close to crossing the boundaries of the only respectable job prospect that I have left open to me.”

  “Are you saying you regret what we did?”

  “I have no regrets, but I won’t pretend it was anything more or less than—”

  “What?” His jaw clenched. “What do you think this was?”

  She sighed. “You know. It’s no secret. We’re from different worlds, Nolan. We have different paths. You’re on the verge of becoming a household name, and I…” She paused.

  “You’re…?”

  “A convenient way to keep your mind off everything.”

  He dropped his arm. “So, let me get this straight. You’re nothing but my convenient distraction so that I won’t have to deal with being targeted by a psychopath.” She wouldn’t nod, but she didn’t deny it. He stepped back, his expression blank. “And I suppose I’m your distraction, too, aren’t I?”

  His words hit her like a slap to the face, even though he hadn’t said as much as he could have. He hadn’t said that she was using him to stem her fear for her father, for example. Or using him to forget her failures for a little while. And yet, the way he looked at her, he was really saying all those things and more.

  Her hand fluttered at her throat.

  He waited. Waited for her to say something. What? What was she supposed to say?

  All the words choking her felt so…vulnerable. If she said them, gave him what he seemed to want, and he took her back into his arms, into his bed…into his life, how long before she loved him completely?

  Based on her feelings now? Not long.

  She stepped up to slip past him, her shoulder and the side curve of her breast brushing his arm.

  The electricity was immediate. She made the mistake of looking up at him instead of starting out of the room like she should and went completely still. He drew in a sharp breath, and his gaze flared with heat. Could he see it in her eyes? How much she still wanted him? How badly she was failing at denying it?

  “April,” he whispered.

  She curled her fingers over his shoulders and pulled him closer just as he buried his hand in her hair and tugged her head back. He crushed his mouth to hers without any finesse, but it was exactly what she wanted. It wasn’t the slick, polished Steve Nolan in his business suit that made her hot. She wanted this raw, real Steve Nolan. The one who put on boxing gloves and wasn’t afraid to sweat, and ate cookies on the kitchen floor, and made her feel like an Amazon.

  And the knowledge that she couldn’t really have him only made the want sharper.

  She kissed him back with every bit of the frustration, anger, and disappointment that she’d felt ever since waking up this morning.

  They were as desperate to touch one another as they’d been in the beginning, as they’d been all night long.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. She was supposed to let go today. The morning had come, and with it, revelations that made it even smarter for her to keep her distance. And yet here she was, reveling in the feel of his tongue slipping into her mouth, the feel of his arms holding her so tightly she almost felt…cherished.

  She pushed against his chest with a gasp. “Steve…Nolan, I can’t.” The taste of him was still heavy on her mouth, and the words stuck thick in her throat, but she squared her shoulders. “Our night is over,” she reminded him.

  He grinned and reached for her. “What’s the point of making rules, if you don’t get to break them?”

  She jerked back and shook her head. “Not this time,” she whispered. “It’s too complicated.”

  He saw the hesitation in her eyes. He saw the tremor in her arms. Her nipples were still so tight with need they were hard points through the cotton of his shirt. She wanted him so badly, she was shaking from it even as she moved to go.

  “It doesn’t have to be complicated,” he said. “We could have some fun together. Who knows what might happ—”

  “I know what will happen, and I can’t do it,” she interrupted. She had to get out now or she’d give in to his unspoken promise and sign on the dotted line, knowing full well that he’d be lying to himself and her.

  She bit her lip. It could be worth it.

  What are you doing? Her heart sputtered, froze. She couldn’t. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t give him what he wanted. Couldn’t let…

  His frown deepened with disappointment as the silence stretched across the ocean suddenly between them.

  “You don’t want anything more than this,” she murmured. He didn’t. He couldn’t.

  “You’re so sure about that?” He paused for a long moment, but then he shrugged as if all this talk had only been hypothetical. “Well, I guess you’re right. Why ruin something fun with a lot of seriousness? It’s not my style, anyway.”

  “Bad for the colon,” she whispered. Her own smile wouldn’t quite come.

  “Exactly.” He kissed her. Light. No pressure, no urgency, no expectations.

  She let out a fractured sigh and tried to ignore the heavy ball of lead in the hollow pit of her stomach. “You’re cold,” she choked out.

  “We are standing inside my refrigerator, and I am pretty close to naked,” he murmured.

  How she could have forgotten with all that male flesh staring her in the face… “Oh! I was going to make some eggs,” she said.

  A loud buzzing startled them both just as she turned to get the eggs and let the fridge door close. “The door.” He started for the front door.

  She followed and stopped him before he could open it. “Don’t answer it. Let me check first.”

  “I’m not your assignment anymore, remember?” He gave her that look, but she pointed to the towel barely clinging to his waist with a grin. He crossed his arms and propped his shoulder against the kitchen entrance.

  She couldn’t figure out why he was grinning back at her until he raised an eyebrow at her attire. She stretched onto her toes and squinted through the keyhole, but when she saw who was on the other side, she spun around and put her back to the door, eyes wide.

  “Who is it?” Nolan asked, arms crossed over a chest that could distract her, even now.

  “It’s your mother.” She clenched her eyes shut and shook her head. Pants. Where were her damn pants? “And I don’t need to meet her for only the second time ever…like this.”

  “Steven? Open up, please,” Mrs. Nolan said through the door.

  April opened her eyes and Nolan was coming out of the bedroom, having tugged on a pair of warmup pants but still no shirt. Why did he have pants but hers were gone? What kind of fucked-up karma was that?

  “I have no pants!” she hissed, running into the bedroom. Just the dress she’d been wearing last night, and that wasn’t exactly the message of professionalism she wanted to present to the mother of the man she was suppos
ed to be protecting with her life. “Don’t you dare open that door.”

  He glanced through the peephole and chuckled. “She’s not going to go away, you know. Doug will have told her I’m up here.”

  “Then you had better help me find something to wear.”

  “Steven, it’s your mother. Are you going to let me in?” April groaned, wishing she could melt right through the floor as she swung the door almost all the way closed and hid behind it like a guilty teenager.

  Nolan opened the door. “Hey Mother, what are you doing here?” she heard him ask. She peeked through the crack and watched the slim woman stepping forward to embrace him. He pressed an affectionate kiss on her cheek.

  “You didn’t return my calls last night. And after that nasty business with Justin Fielding’s son and all the awful things they’re saying in the news, I needed to see you, to make sure you were all right.” She touched his cheek reverently, and April’s heart lurched with a sudden memory of her own mother doing almost exactly the same.

  “I’m fine, but a bit busy right now,” he said. “I want to tell you everything, but can it wait for a little later?”

  Mrs. Nolan took in her son’s state of undress and looked around the apartment with pursed lips. April swore under her breath as the woman stopped and saw the pair of heels April had kicked off last night. They were still in the middle of the living room. Her small clutch purse was draped over the chair.

  Mrs. Nolan raised her brows with obvious distaste. “The bodyguard?”

  April winced and inched backward but tripped over the towel Nolan must have discarded on the floor when he’d grabbed his pants. She landed on her butt and didn’t hear Nolan’s response, but as she sat there with her eyes closed and her back up against the wall beside the door, she heard everything else.

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Since when do you care what I do with my personal life?” he replied.

  “Personal life? If I understand correctly, she was working for you.”

  “I wouldn’t quite put it like that,” he said.

  “And I’ve always cared. I want nothing but the best for you, and that woman is not it.” April gasped. She could understand why Nolan’s mother would not approve, but to put it like that was going a bit far. “I suppose you don’t know that she’s already told all the newspapers that she’s sleeping with you?”

  What?

  “I seriously doubt that, Mother,” Nolan said impatiently. “She would never have told anybody anything.”

  “Then why did someone from the country club send me a link this morning to an online article in which someone named April Porter is quoted as calling you ‘the best money she ever made’? The same article printed a tawdry photograph of the two of you all over each other in the elevator of this very apartment building.”

  April groaned. This couldn’t be happening. The photo had to be a fake—wait, the night they’d come up to find Nolan’s apartment trashed and he’d kissed her…when the elevator door had opened, she’d sworn she saw something. But she’d been distracted. Hadn’t been doing her job. This was her fault.

  His mother was mid-sentence, “…besides, I thought you were seeing Jennifer Halloway. When I talked to her at the gala yesterday evening, she mentioned that she’d had dinner with you just a few nights ago.”

  April put a hand over her eyes. Distracted again. Had she been so absorbed by her dance with Nolan last night that she hadn’t even seen the tall, red-haired bombshell at the party? “We did have dinner a few times, but it was never serious between us.”

  She let out a sigh. She’d believed him when he told her the same thing. She shouldn’t have cared, though. After this morning, she had even less of a right to be concerned with Nolan’s casual affairs—past, present, or future. She’d practically insisted on being nothing more than one of them.

  “Frankly, that’s probably a good thing. She’s not the right woman for you, either,” his mother said. “But I worry about you. It’s one thing to let off a little steam and have some fun, but your business is taking off, and you could use a real partner at your side.”

  “I have a partner for my business, Mother. I think Harrison would be offended to hear that you don’t consider his contributions worthy.”

  “You know that isn’t what I mean. Why do you always have to be a smart aleck?”

  April sympathized wholeheartedly.

  “Spit it out,” he said. “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m saying that it’s time to get serious and make some serious plans for the rest of your life.” April’s heart lurched at the word “serious.”

  “Maybe that’s what I’m doing,” he said, making April’s mouth fall open until she remembered that he was the king of antagonism and provocation.

  “Oh, please. You don’t get serious with the bodyguard,” she said dismissively, and April winced. “I’ve always thought that you and Meredith would be a wonderful match.”

  “Mother—”

  April remembered the smile on his face when he’d been speaking to Meredith on his cell phone. Who he’d also said was just a friend.

  “Meredith is beautiful, successful, and she comes from a good family—one of the only families that stood by us during the horrible period after your father’s death,” she said. “And you’ve always loved her, at least.”

  “Yes, but—”

  April pressed a hand over her mouth and scrambled up off the floor. You’ve always loved her. She couldn’t stop hearing the words in her head. She grabbed her dress and rushed to the bathroom and closed the door, shutting out anything else Nolan and his mother might be saying about the beautiful, perfect love of Nolan’s life.

  She stood under the steaming water in the shower, berating herself for her reaction. Why would it bother her if Nolan had feelings for another woman? Hadn’t she been the one to insist—just like a spooked chicken—that there was no chance of anything between them beyond last night? That it was all just fun and games, and they would each go back to their separate lives once this assignment was all wrapped up?

  So why did the knowledge that Nolan’s mother didn’t find her worthy of her son hurt so much? Why did her heart ache to hear that he was in love with someone else?

  Someone knocked on the door. Nolan. She didn’t answer and stayed exactly where she was until the water ran cold.

  Chapter Thirteen

  April had taken her time getting ready. Plenty of time. Her dress was a little wrinkled, but it would get her home. She’d towel-dried her hair and pulled it all back into a damp bun. Then she called the hospital and had another painful conversation with her father. He told her to stop fussing and stay away, and she swallowed her disappointment and frustration because she didn’t want to add to his pain.

  Finally, she called Nora, who tactfully refrained from asking how her night went and didn’t mention the article on the internet. She did confirm that the rest of the guard detail had been pulled off of Nolan’s apartment last night, although they’d left one guy over at Mrs. Nolan’s house until morning. Nora also advised that the police would allow Nolan to speak with Edward Fielding this morning…apparently at Fielding’s insistence. In fact, he’d refused to speak with anyone but Nolan.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Nolan’s mother had left, and he was making eggs. She bit her lip and tugged at the hem of her skirt. He dished out the contents of the frying pan into two plates and brought them to the table.

  “Steve, I…I heard a little of your conversation with Mrs. Nolan. I’m so sorry about that photograph. It never should have ended up online.”

  He frowned up at her. “Did you know about it?”

  She winced at the hard edge in his voice. “Well, I—”

  “So it’s true.”

  He was buying everything his mother had said—that she wasn’t up to his level, that she would stoop to selling him out to the tabloids.

  Not even bothering to defend herself, she nodded. “Yes
, it’s my fault.” Which was true. Because of her distraction, she’d been responsible for yet another torrid story about him showing up in the papers. She’d been responsible for the attack on him at the gala. She was so far from professional, it was laughable.

  He dropped both plates to the table with a clatter. One of them loudly rocked all the way around on its rim before coming to a stop. “Enjoy your breakfast. I’m going to get dressed.”

  She looked at the eggs, but couldn’t eat a thing.

  Yes, their one night was definitely over now.

  He refused to wait for her to get a taxi home so she could change and then come back for him before going to the police station. “Not my bodyguard anymore, remember? You don’t have to come with me,” he said.

  She crossed her arms. “I’d like to see it through to the end.” She refused to acknowledge that she was looking for excuses to get more time with him.

  “I don’t need you there,” he insisted sharply.

  His coldness hurt. Where had she heard that before? She clenched her jaw and nodded. “All right, if that’s what you want. But if you do need something, just—”

  “I won’t.”

  She left the apartment, but stood outside in the hallway in front of the elevator, frowning. She couldn’t just leave it like that.

  When she spun back around to knock on his door, he’d already opened it again. He was still pulling on his jacket as he pulled the door closed behind him when he glanced up and saw her. “You’re still here.”

  She stepped forward. “Nolan, I just want to say—”

  “I’ve got to get to the police station.” He tugged the sleeves of his suit and adjusted the collar of his shirt as he moved past her to the stairwell and pushed open the door.

  She followed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “When the elevator door opened that night, I swore I heard something—the click of the camera I suppose. I should have checked it out. I shouldn’t have let them get away with—”

  He stopped and turned to glare down at her. “I don’t care about the damn photograph,” he snapped. “The fucking article quoted you. You talked to them.”