by Lucy Score
She was on the early side of forty-five but could easily pass for younger. Even this close, Xavier couldn’t tell if it was good genes or the steady hands of a very talented plastic surgeon.
“Mrs. Sinner,” Micah said, extending his hand. “I’m Micah Ross, and this is Xavier Saint. We understand you have a delicate situation.”
Her laughter, light and airy, trilled through the room. She brought a hand to the swell of her breasts in a practiced flirtation. The woman was used to having an audience.
“Sinner and Saint,” she said, with a slow wink. “It can’t be a coincidence. And please, both of you call me Sylvia.”
Sylvia looked Xavier up and down appreciatively as she held out her hand knuckles up. He wasn’t about to start off a business relationship with a kiss. He firmly gripped her hand in both of his and shook.
She shot him a calculating look before offering her hand to Micah.
“Please sit,” she said, gesturing toward the couch they’d just pried themselves out of. Sylvia arranged herself on a wingback chair covered in stark white fabric. They sat and waited. The elicitation training Xavier had aced with the DCS served him well in business. The quieter they were, the chattier the clients became.
Sylvia’s expression seamlessly transformed from welcoming to distressed, her baby doll blue eyes filled with unshed tears. “I’m afraid my daughter is in danger,” she said, wringing her hands together, careful to avoid smudging her fresh paint.
Xavier had done his due diligence in the car on the way over. Waverly Sinner was a twenty-year-old all-American beauty with a list of movie credits that any actress twice her age would envy. He’d actually taken his younger sisters to see one of her movies years ago after losing a bet with them. She’d been a pretty, long-legged teen then and had since grown into a genetic lottery winner.
She was also paparazzi bait, if the accident last week was any indication.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the news,” Sylvia continued.
They both had. The three-vehicle accident in the hills had gotten its fair share of screen time. First with the media outlets’ speculation that Sinner was at fault and then again when police released the 911 call and dash cam footage from her Mercedes. This time around, she was labeled a hero.
“The photographer involved in that accident was extremely aggressive,” Micah stated. “Is that common?”
“It’s not an everyday occurrence,” Sylvia said, pulling her feet up under her. “But it’s something we’ve all had to get used to. It goes with the territory.” She sipped delicately from her glass.
“What’s your main concern about your daughter’s safety?” Xavier asked, his curiosity piqued.
Sylvia shifted again, this time from concerned mother to beleaguered parent, her lovely features rearranging themselves effortlessly.
“Honestly, she’s going through some sort of willful phase. She’s turning down movies, refusing interviews—”
“Mrs.— Sylvia,” Micah interrupted. “That isn’t the kind of situation that we generally work with.”
It was, of course, a service they did reluctantly provide. For a fee.
She waved a slim hand that looked too fragile to hold the cluster of diamond rings she wore. “Of course not. It’s just that this little rebellion of Waverly’s is putting her in danger. That accident occurred shortly after she and her father had some sort of argument over who knows what? Neither of them tell me anything,” she said with a charming eye roll. She took another sip from her glass. “I need someone who can protect Waverly from herself.”
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“Thoughts?” Micah asked as Xavier drove the company Tahoe down the drive.
Xavier waited until they were through the security gate before answering. “She wants a glorified babysitter.”
“And?”
“And yet she seems to be painfully unaware that her daughter actually finds herself in dangerous situations. That guy on the bike could have killed her, but she’s more concerned that her daughter get used to it and start picking up parts again.”
“And?” Micah probed again.
“And that wasn’t water in her glass,” Xavier concluded.
“Same page. So are you up for a security detail with some babysitting thrown in to appease a very insistent client?” Micah asked, breaking the rules of an operative and rolling down his window to let the early summer air into the car.
“I have no interest in making this my specialty,” Xavier warned his friend.
“But you do it so well,” Micah said with a grin.
He was referring to Xavier’s last princess-sitting job. The daughter of a British business magnate with a trust fund in the eight figures. She’d pranced around in lingerie and sunbathed topless by the pool for two weeks before realizing he wasn’t going to bite. Once that realization had set in, she’d thrown a hissy fit and tried to go on a cocaine binge in the bathroom of a club. He’d gotten her out of the club, cleaned up, and dumped in a swanky rehab facility without anyone snapping any embarrassing pictures.
The bonus the grateful father gave them was enough to send an entire kindergarten class to a four-year college.
If Waverly Sinner thought she could get around him, she was going to learn very quickly that no one swayed Xavier Saint from his purpose.
CHAPTER TWO
Xavier had done a high-level run on the Sinners before his meeting with Sylvia, but now that Invictus had a contract, he would perform a more in-depth scan. Intel helped him anticipate potential threats and problems well before any materialized. He could usually build a fairly accurate snapshot of a client, which gave him a leg up.
Xavier’s guard duty started tomorrow, and he needed that leg up immediately.
When Sylvia was walking them to the door, her husband had come home. At fifty, he still pulled down leading roles effortlessly. His hair was streaked with gray, and the lines around his eyes crinkled when he flashed his movie star grin. He was distinguished, polished, and completely checked out.
He’d had no idea that his wife was hiring security for their daughter and wasn’t overly concerned with the why. He smiled affably, his tanned hands resting on his wife’s thin shoulders. “Whatever you think, darling,” Robert had told his wife vaguely. With parents like that, Xavier didn’t have high hopes for the daughter.
Feet bare, his evening run in the books, and his hair still damp from a shower, he cracked open a beer and settled in behind his home workstation. He used the term “home” loosely. Since leaving the DCS, the two-bedroom condo with its bland beige everything had been a place to lay his head and hang his clothes. The workstation in the spare room was the only place he’d bothered to put any personal mementos. Pictures of his parents and his sisters smiled back at him next to his widescreen monitors.
He was getting a picture of Waverly Sinner now, too.
Young. Beautiful. Talented. She was a purebred Hollywood princess. At twenty, Waverly Sinner appeared to have it all. The California beauty had looks that could stop traffic. Her bank account was big enough to buy just about anything a girl could want, which made him curious why she still lived at home. In a city where wealthy teenagers snapped up multi-million dollar mansions like they were candy bars in the grocery store checkout line, Waverly was closeted away in her parents’ pool house.
There were plenty of red carpet glam shots and magazine pictorials that promised tell-alls that amounted to next to nothing. Favorite food: sushi. Favorite band: The Killers. How she got those abs for her role in Bleed Out? A personal trainer, a chef, and an assistant that slapped donuts out of her hand. Many of her answers showed a tongue-in-cheek humor that seemed to go over the interviewers’ heads. There were a handful of the requisite party girl club pictures but not enough to make him worry.
Xavier clicked on the YouTube results while the background check printed. One nice thing about guarding the rich and famous was the diamond mine of data available to him at his fin
gertips. The first video that caught his eye was almost sixteen years old. It was a clip from an entertainment news show and featured a young and striking Sylvia Sinner outside a trendy L.A. boutique, her entourage lugging a dozen shopping bags. Sylvia wore a form-fitting tank dress in siren red and stilettos with straps that wrapped halfway up her shins.
She was blowing kisses to the crowd of photographers and fans that had congregated at the store’s entrance. Just behind her, in a matching dress, her silvery blond hair pulled back into a high ponytail, was five-year-old Waverly. The little girl was missing her front tooth and had plugged her fingers in her ears.
Her little diva sunglasses were a tiny replica of the ones Sylvia wore. An exact copy of her mother with the exception that Sylvia devoured the attention, reveled in it, while Waverly looked terrified.
“Come on, darling. Show the nice men how pretty you are,” Sylvia coaxed. She lifted her daughter into her arms like a prize-winning pumpkin at the state fair. “Smile for the cameras, Waverly.”
But the little girl’s face was set in fearful lines. When Waverly buried her face in her mother’s neck, Sylvia gave one last wave to the crowd. “I think someone is ready for her beauty sleep,” she trilled. She set Waverly down, and Xavier wondered if it was because she didn’t want a child ruining her exit or if she just couldn’t bear the weight of the little girl with her bird-like arms.
Sylvia signaled her entourage. The photographers swarmed closer, and Xavier watched as Sylvia strutted off toward her next fabulous destination while her entourage—a team of beasts of burdens—hurried to follow.
In the chaos, Waverly was separated from them. He watched in disgust as the paparazzi swarmed like sharks scenting fresh blood. Flashes exploded in her face and loud men and women shouted questions at her.
“Are you going to be a movie star like your mommy?”
“Who’s a better actor? Your mommy or your daddy?”
A photographer bumped her and Waverly took a tumble, landing hard on her knees on the sidewalk. Her mini movie star sunglasses were crushed underfoot. Xavier saw twin tears slide down her sweet, round cheeks and wanted to shoot every single one of the fuckers.
Finally, a hero appeared. A Middle Eastern guy wearing a ball cap and an apron elbowed his way through the crowd. He snatched Waverly up and pressed her face to his shoulder. Her little hands gripped his shoulders.
“Vultures!” he shouted. “She’s just a little girl, not a carcass to feed on.”
Xavier felt an echo of the man’s rage inside him. A swift rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins as the spray tanned entertainment hosts with bleached teeth made jokes about Waverly’s first paparazzi experience.
Poor kid never had a chance, Xavier thought as he took a deep pull of his beer.
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Waverly had been summoned to the big house. Lecture time again, she sighed to herself, her bare feet padding over the sun warmed marble of the patio. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and braced herself for passive aggressive manipulations or a diva-worthy meltdown. It all depended on her mother’s unpredictable mood.
She could envision the stack of scripts at her mother’s elbow, the look of motherly concern. Everything her mother did was playing a part. The woman had never had an authentic reaction to anything in her life.
Waverly let herself in through the TV room off the kitchen and ignored the giant bouquet of fussy white peonies. It was the twin of the one shoved in a corner of her living space. It was her father’s showy apology for banging someone who wasn’t his wife on his daughter’s couch.
“I’m sorry Waverly. I’m under so much pressure these days. I don’t know what I was thinking. Please don’t discuss this with your mother,” his card had said.
She had discussed it with her mother. Once, long ago.
Sylvia had shared neither Waverly’s surprise nor devastation. Her mother was already used to it by the time Waverly caught on to the family dynamics. The next morning, her mother had cheerfully shown off a spectacular, new tennis bracelet and all returned to normal.
From that point on, Waverly had made it a point to keep her nose out of her parents’ business. And she wished that they would return the favor. She hadn’t mentioned her father’s latest indiscretion to her mother, but her father had taken to covering all his bases. Every time an apology was owed to one of them, they both got one. Waverly had a drawer full of “I’m sorry” jewelry she’d never worn.
She turned her back on the peonies and what they represented and made her way into the kitchen. It was a space designed for magazine spreads with its wall of windows overlooking the gardens and thick timber beams that created a cathedral-like ceiling. The gleam of stainless steel and granite echoed everywhere.
Louie, her mother’s personal chef, was running his knife through a small mound of radishes. His chevron mustache perched above lips that were set in a near constant frown.
“Good morning, Louie,” Waverly greeted him with a peck on one of his perpetually ruddy cheeks.
“Bonjour, my dear,” he said, his knife never ceasing its murderous precision.
Waverly helped herself to a glass of fresh lemon cucumber water. “So what’s the mood like in there?” She nodded her head in the direction of the morning room.
Louie’s coal black eyebrows raised speculatively. “It’s…interesting,” he said finally. He put the knife down and wiped his hands on the checkered towel he always kept slung over his shoulder. “You’re not going in there like that are you?” he asked, eyeing up her yoga shorts and hoodie.
“That’s funny because there for a second I thought you were a chef, not my personal stylist,” Waverly teased. If there was one thing Louie loved more than his precious cast iron skillets, it was fashion.
“I’m both to you until you finally develop some taste of your own. I can’t understand why a girl who looks the way you do goes stomping around in sweaty gym clothes.”
“A. I don’t stomp,” Waverly corrected. “And B. I just had a yoga session. I’m supposed to be sweaty.”
It was an old argument between them, and a moot one at that, since Waverly and her assistant, Kate, deferred all decisions on her public outfits to Louie.
“You can help us go through the options for that thing this weekend if it will make you feel better,” she promised him.
His frown deepened, but she knew from the pink flush on his ears that he was pleased. “That ‘thing’ this weekend is the Women in Hollywood awards, and you’re presenting. Don’t you ever look at your calendar?”
“Why would I do that when I have you, Louie?”
He shot her a dark look that had absolutely no effect on her. “I will do my best to choose something that doesn’t make you look like a homeless Pilates instructor,” he told her.
Waverly stuck her tongue out at him, and Louie tossed a handful of spinach at her.
“There you are!” A tiny woman dressed in head-to-toe gray bustled into the kitchen. Her dark hair with its spider web of silvery strands was pulled back in a severe bun. Marisol Cote topped out at five-foot-two, nearly a full head shorter than Waverly, but the woman carried herself with the aplomb of a four-star general. She’d been in Waverly’s life from birth. Originally the nanny, Marisol had been promoted to house manager when Waverly hit her teens. Now she ran the family home—and the family—with a loving, if iron, fist.
“Morning, Mari,” Waverly said, giving the woman an exaggerated kiss on her smooth cheek. Marisol was ageless, and she credited her unlined complexion to her Dominican blood and her deadpan expression. Her serene expression was even evident in her wedding pictures to the French Canadian she’d fallen for at nineteen. No smiling, no frowning, no wrinkles was her motto.
“Don’t pucker, girl. It will give you wrinkles.”
Waverly laughed. “Louie has not been a fount of information this morning, Mari. What’s the big pow-wow about?”
“They tel
l me nothing,” Marisol said evasively. She eyed Waverly’s outfit. “This is what you are wearing?”
“Why does everyone suddenly care about what I wear around the house?”
Louie and Marisol exchanged a knowing look.
“What? If I’m going to be emotionally manipulated for failing to live up to the family legacy, I can at least be comfortable, can’t I?”
Marisol took her by the shoulders and shoved her toward the door. “Go talk to your parents and remember that they do this out of love.”
Crap. That wasn’t a good sign.
Waverly let Marisol shove her out of the kitchen. She used the walk across the hallway to steel herself for whatever assault her mother had planned. She was an adult, Waverly reminded herself, and her desire to call her own shots was finally starting to override her need to not rock the boat.
She let herself into the morning room with a deep breath, the gold handles of the door cool to her touch. She was halfway into the room when she came to a halt, her bare feet buried in the snowy depth of the area rug.
The welcoming committee was bigger than she expected.
Her father was texting from a cream-colored wingback chair near the fireplace. Her mother was on the divan pouring tea no one wanted into delicate china. Phil, the agent that the two Sinner women shared, sat next to her mother. His thinning hair was trimmed short and inadvertently showcased the near-constant sweat that beaded his ever lengthening forehead. His customary wire-rimmed spectacles rode low on his nose.
But it wasn’t the usual cast of characters that caught Waverly’s eye. It was the man leaning against the mantel across from her. The man whose presence was definitely responsible for Louie and Marisol’s preoccupation with her gym clothes.
He was tall, at least an inch or two taller than her father and more athletically built. His thick hair blurred the line between brown and blonde and was worn short enough to make Waverly think military. Eyes the color of amber studied her coolly. There was no hint of a smile on his firm lips. Broad shoulders wore the black Brioni suit with a careless confidence. His arms were crossed over his chest, his stance casual, but there was nothing casual about the way his gaze locked on her. A hunter and his prey, the thought came unbidden, spiking her pulse into a tattoo rhythm.