by Selma Wolfe
“Flattered?” Hope asked, scrunching up her forehead in confusion.
Trinity’s smile deepened. “The way Mr. Stone listens to you. He never listens to anybody.” Then she disappeared around the corner before Hope could get out a word.
As Hope had never particularly noticed Rick listening to her, either, she didn’t quite know what to make of that.
The next day there was another extraordinarily boring yacht outing where even Rick pretty much failed at looking interested. The four men and three women on board with them had dinner-plate sunglasses and smiles that could swallow you whole. Hope was extremely grateful that nobody expected her to smile. Nobody seemed to notice her much at all except for Rick, who kept giving her sidelong looks when he thought she wasn’t watching.
She was always watching.
Hope was focusing so hard on her employer that she almost missed it when a tall, olive-skinned man walked up beside her and reached out.
She was halfway through a smooth move-out-of-reach-and-turn-to-glare when recognition struck.
“Boran?”
The burly man grinned at her. He was dressed formally in a black suit and tie that looked tailored to fit his muscled bulk. There was an expensive silver watch buckled around one wrist and his shoes were expertly shined.
“You’re not in uniform,” Boran laughed, a familiar lilt accenting his words. It was true. Among this crowd Hope looked close to normal in her setting-ambiguous black clothes, but as a bodyguard, her dress was unusually casual. Most employers liked their bodyguards to look the part. Boran’s six-foot-plus frame filled it out nicely.
She gave him a small, conspiratorial smile. “Mr. Stone isn’t like our last employer. He prefers the subtle approach,” Hope told Boran in an undertone. It wasn’t information she’d usually share, but over three years as colleagues deserved some kind of acknowledgment, and she was startlingly glad to see him. A touch of familiarity in a brave new world.
His thick eyebrows flew up high on his forehead. He immediately glanced over at Rick. So Javier was right, everyone else in the world really did know who Rick was.
“What about you?” Hope asked. “Who are you with?”
Boran caught her eye and jerked his head to indicate a squat man in a truly heinous Hawaiian shirt. She cocked her head in a silent who is he?
“Rich guy.” Boran shrugged. “Invests a lot of money in a lot of people, including your client. Not the brightest spark, but it’s a hell of a lot easier work than Africa.”
The two of them blew out a low sigh together and stared out over the ocean for a moment. They were required by unofficial bodyguard law to act relieved, but Hope suspected she wasn’t the only one who missed Botswana a little.
“Hope! I’m going over… uh, there,” Rick’s voice called, and she jerked her head around. He was standing a few yards away ignoring a tall man who was hopelessly talking at him. Hope nodded and glanced back at Boran.
“I’d better…”
Boran clapped her on the shoulder. “I miss you at my back, Lasser,” he said, and ambled off with a parting grin.
Hope moved toward Rick, feeling warmed. At least there was someone on her side, even if Rick wasn’t there anymore.
She was kept busy for a long time shadowing Rick’s footsteps; he kept turning to check that she was there and consulting her on a variety of topics - everything from the future of the oil industry (Hope had no opinion) to what beer he should drink (Hope had no opinion) to whether Boran’s client, who kept leering at Hope when Rick wasn’t looking, was a jerk (Hope definitely had an opinion, but she kept it to herself).
Finally, finally things seemed to wind down and people started to disembark off the boat that, once again, had never actually left the dock. Everyone gave each other kisses and practically pulled out their handkerchiefs to wave farewell to people they’d be seeing the next day. Rick participated in this with the closest thing to impatience that she’d ever seen in him, and then headed for his car without a word to Hope. He beeped it open and reached out for the door.
Here Hope put her foot down. She shook her head, walked in front of him, and put a hand over the driver’s side door handle.
“One of us is trained in getaway driving. The one of us is not you. If it’s just the two of us, I’m driving,” she hissed.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt snorted and gave a raucous laugh. Behind him, Boran gave Hope a sympathetic look and pulled open the door of a sleek black limo. The subtle push didn’t work. “Ha, dream on, chicky! Rick doesn’t let anyone touch his car, let alone - ”
Rick angled his shoulders away from Hawaiian Shirt and curved a lopsided grin at Hope. He dug into his pocket and tossed something to her. Hope caught it automatically and looked down at the extra set of keys in her hand.
Had he planned this?
“You can drive my car,” he said with casual authority that made Hawaiian Shirt stop laughing and scratch his head.
A tall guy with an atrocious hat standing a few yards off looked almost personally offended. He moved in close to them, staring longingly at the sleek red curves of Rick’s car. “But Rick, you said…”
Rick held up a hand, not bothering to look over, and the man fell silent.
“I said she can drive it.” He looked at Hope with those intense brown eyes for another moment and she just looked back silently, not sure what to do or where this was coming from. Finally Rick gave her another small smile, walked around, and got in on the passenger side. He gestured to Hope from inside and she hopped in.
Rick stretched out, lying nearly flat in his seat. “C’mon, quick, go!” he urged. “Before everyone else piles in.”
“You should sit up and put your seatbelt on properly,” Hope admonished, but she twisted the key in the ignition and moved out fast. God knew she didn’t want the yacht crew to come along. They were out of sight of the ocean by the time Rick clicked his seatbelt into place, grinning and looking more awake than he’d looked all day.
“So how did you know that guy?” he asked almost immediately. Hope gave him a few points for at least not beating around the bush.
“Africa,” she said succinctly. “We were colleagues.”
Rick seemed to consider this.
“Africa, huh. That’s quite a ways away. How’d you get over there?”
Hope sighed. “You’ve read my resume,” she pointed out. “And now I know you’re… Uh, well. You know what I’ve done.”
Rick gave her a sardonic smile from the passenger seat and she winced a little. Nice save, Lasser. Way to not tell your boss you thought he was a complete moron until a day ago.
“I know that you provided security to some South African prince,” Rick agreed. “And I know that you managed to come out on top in several firefights. That’s why I hired you. But I don’t know how you got there or why.”
Hope’s lips flattened into a thin line and her knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. She stared out at the road, but all she could see were dusty plains and crowded cities, fighting each other for space in her head.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Rick said, his voice more gentle now. Hope forced herself not to jerk in surprise at the sound of his voice intruding into her thoughts, which were tinged by Dutch and Tswana accents. “I’m not demanding to know as your employer. I’m just… asking.”
The tension in her shoulders eased and her grip on the steering wheel loosened. That made it easier, somehow.
“I trained with the Secret Service, briefly - very briefly. They let me go because I wasn’t good at teamwork.” Hope’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “I couldn’t adapt to the team structure; kept making my own decisions if I thought the team leader was wrong.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rick frown. “That doesn’t seem right,” he said indignantly. “They should appreciate people who can think out of the box.”
Hope spared a wry glance at him before focusing her gaze on the road again.
“A war?” She didn’t have to look at him to know she had Rick’s full attention.
“A fairly civilized one.” She shrugged. “You know who - no, you probably don’t. The Afrikaners are…”
“Dutch people who settled in South Africa ages ago. I’m not totally uninformed,” Rick said drily. Clearly her cut-off comment had not escaped him.
“Right, well. They own a lot of land in South Africa, and it borders on Botswana, which is owned by a few different tribes. The Afrikaners were claiming some land at the border, and the Botswana disagreed. Mostly what I did was escort my client back and forth between arguments with the Afrikaner leadership.”
“Which one was right?” Rick asked.
Hope grinned at the windshield. “Who cares? I was guarding Thabo, who wasn’t a prince, by the way. He was the kgosi - that’s chief, basically, or king, as you like - of the tribe whose land the Afrikaners wanted. He was a pretty decent fellow, all told. Raised an eyebrow at me when I first showed up and told me I’d better do my job like the men, and then we were alright.”
“So… did you win?” Rick asked tentatively.
Her smile faded and she pulled a hand off the wheel to rub at her cheek. “I guess. For now. Willem Gouws - that’s the Afrikaner leader - is a determined cuss, and he’s got more money than the Botswana can dream of. And they really, really hate to lose to the Africans. It’s sort of a blood feud, in a way. It’s not something Americans really get, but when your ancestors have been fighting for hundreds of years, things are different. They’ll do pretty much anything to win, no matter what the fight’s about. Or who’s really in the right.”
“Sounds like that particular fight did matter to you, a bit,” Rick said softly, Boran long forgotten about.
They drove in silence for miles. The fancy mechanics of the car took Hope a little bit to get adjusted for, but she couldn’t deny the familiar buzz of adrenaline under her skin when she got comfortable enough to really press down the pedal and the engine roared in response.
“Like the car?” Rick said. She didn’t have to glance over to know he was smirking at her.
Hope shrugged and did her best stone face. “It’s nice,” she said flatly, and Rick snorted. She ruthlessly suppressed a smile.
She could have left it at that, but between checking the mirrors and angling over to the next lane, Hope found herself asking, “Why do you see them?” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rick move like he was startled by the question. Or maybe just by her talking to him at all.
This was so, so stupid. She’d been getting too close, and then they’d screwed everything up, and now they had the perfect opportunity to let it go. And yet here she was, reaching out with her fingertips, testing the gap.
After a long pause, a much longer pause than Rick usually took, he asked, “What do you mean?”
Oh come on, he could not possibly be confused. The man was apparently some kind of genius and now he was just baiting her. So irritation tinged her voice when Hope responded, “You know what I mean. You don’t like them. They’re - you don’t like them. So why do you see them?”
The spark of anger in her voice caught and flamed to life; Hope didn’t have to be looking at Rick to know that his jaw tightened and he turned his head to stare straight ahead.
“Maybe I’m just like them,” he said. The bitterness was only visible from the right angle. “Two days ago you thought I was functionally illiterate, and now you’re asking why I waste my time with people that you think are vapid and weak.”
Hope didn’t bother to argue with him. Why lie?
Somewhere deep in his throat Rick growled and he reached up to drag his fingers through his hair.
“I’m trying to run a company, Lasser.” There was a discordant bitter note in his voice, the kind that only came after years of resentment. Hope wanted to study his face, so she didn’t allow herself to look away from the road at all. “I’m the lucky bastard who inherited Stone Industries, so I’ve got to keep it going.”
“Why?” Hope couldn’t help asking. The view outside the windshield was flat and dark. “You clearly don’t enjoy it. Do you really need a fleet of cars that bad? Do something else.”
There was a pause, and when Rick spoke, he sounded weary. “You think it’s just me who needs the money? Got more people than me dependent on a paycheck,” The first time he’d been so formal with her name since they’d met, Hope couldn’t stop herself from noting. “I could afford to quit tomorrow and live like this forever, but I didn’t just inherit a fortune. I inherited a responsibility. That means doing my job, and sometimes that job is making nice with people who have lots of money to invest. You see?”
“Oh. Seems…” Hope bit off her words and shook her head, amazed at herself. When had her tongue gotten so free? She kept wanting to hear what Rick would say next, that was the problem. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to say anything. I apologize.”
At that, Rick twisted around in his seat to look at her.
“That’s not true,” he said quietly, before turning to face front again. Which was good, because it meant Hope could breathe properly again. “Don’t - look, even if I hate what you’re saying, even if I hated you for saying it, you still have a right to your opinion, okay? Don’t apologize for it.” The side of his mouth pulled up in half a grin. “Just expect me to argue with you.”
“Deal,” Hope said, and he laughed.
Rick fell quiet and Hope found herself turning her head to chance a glance at him. He looked uncharacteristically serious, almost sad, his profile highlighted with the California sun and his dark eyes narrowed to glare straight into it.
Hope didn’t have any words left after their conversation. Her stomach was filled with a churning mix of nostalgia, surprise, and regret. She stayed quiet and kept her focus trained on the road ahead, no farther than that. Rick didn’t seem to mind the silence, though she caught him sneaking glances at her all the way home.
When they pulled up, Rick got out of the car slowly.
“There’s a…” he started.
“I know,” Hope interrupted. “There’s a thing tonight. I’ll just… get ready.”
Rick waved his hand dismissively and leaned up against the car, leaving careless fingerprints on the spotless paint job. “No need to be fancy. It’s just a few friends having a couple drinks.”
The corners of Hope’s mouth turned up.
“I wasn’t planning on changing my clothes,” she said, and bit back a laugh when she saw Rick’s eyes widen in understanding.
A few hours later, Hope wasn’t laughing anymore.
“I thought you said this would be a few friends having a few drinks,” she hissed in Rick’s ear, almost too worked up to be circumspect.
Rick laughed and tilted his head back to down the rest of his drink. He wasn’t sober enough to do either of these things well, so he half-fell into Hope’s side. She felt her folding knife dig into her ribs under her jacket and was, for the millionth or so time, grateful that she wasn’t one of the idiots that insisted on packing heavy heat everywhere.
“Darling, you should know better,” he said, and wandered off toward a table surrounded by giggling women before Hope could ask him to clarify. She should know better than what? To assume that Rick Stone was capable of throwing a half-hearted party? To believe that he’d tell her the truth?
She trailed him, hopelessly caught in his wake, not because she wanted to participate in the festivities but because she was getting paid to keep an eye on him. Every few minutes Hope glanced upward and felt a little smug about the rou
nd mirrors she’d quietly had installed up there. Without Rick’s permission, sure, but Trinity had okayed it, which was the important thing.
Trinity had nothing good to say about the party. When Hope dropped by the kitchen beforehand to see what she was cooking for the guests, Trinity laughed in her face.
“I’m cooking,” the woman glanced down at a pamphlet on the counter, “Luxury Living Catering.”
Now Hope understood why Trinity hadn’t been interested in attending in the least. This was another scene for rich, pampered people to mill around and congratulate each other.
Rick’s words drifted into her mind, unbidden. I’m trying to run a company, Lasser. Got more people than me dependent on a paycheck. The idea nagged at her.
Then Rick shouted, “Catch!” and threw an expensive-looking bottle of champagne at a man wearing a three piece suit. The man dodged it and the bottle smashed into the wall; the group cracked up in laughter and left the foamy mess to drip down the wall and bubble around the shards of glass.
Hope grit her teeth and monitored the exits with grim determination.
At 1:45 Rick stumbled into a table, bounced off it, and fell across the laps of three different women who seemed to be sitting on chairs solely for that purpose. One of them seemed stuck on giggle mode; one of them had very accurate grab-hands. One of them just patted Rick on the head and rolled her eyes (Hope assumed that woman actually knew him).
Hope made an executive decision. She stalked over, grabbed Rick by the collar, pulled him away, and dragged him out the door. She’d like to say that she did it more gracefully than that, but it would be a lie.
"Where's the fire?" Rick said, sounding remarkably coherent. He tugged away gently from Hope's grasp but followed her willingly enough.
Hope made a pointed effort not to grit her teeth. "You're drunk. Any one of those women could have done whatever she wanted to you."
Rick smirked and raised an eyebrow. "That's the point, babe."