by M. S. Parker
“And normally we have better manners than being late for meals,” Devlin said. His tone had changed, and I looked up to see him looking to the doorway behind me.
I turned, grateful for the distraction, and felt all the breath leave my body. Standing in the wide archway of the dining room was the vivid redhead from my memory, her bright blue eyes cutting into me the same as they had the first moment we'd met.
Bright blue eyes that were the same as Devlin Pope's.
“Mr. Welch, I'd like you to meet my granddaughter, Leighton Machus. Leighton, this is your bodyguard, Sergeant Cormac Welch,” Devlin said.
Bodyguard, I thought, my mouth going dry.
Her lithe body arching back in my hands, her hips against mine, the hotel bed rocking underneath us. The heat of her scorching me, burning me as I buried myself deep inside her.
I had thought about her, imagined her so many times, but never like this.
“It's nice to meet you, Ms. Machus,” I said, my voice shockingly calm. Automatically, I held out my hand.
She tipped her head to the side and gave me that delicious smile I remembered so well.
“Hello again,” she said as her hand slid into mine, sending sparks racing along my nerves.
Shit.
13
Leighton
This wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. I could barely breathe, and the sensation threw me into a memory.
I stood in the quiet hotel room and tried to breathe. The jagged inhales outnumbered the exhales, and I felt the pressure building in my chest.
He'd left.
My mysterious savior, the man who'd pulled me from the pool and stemmed the bleeding cut on my head, had promised to watch over me all night. The already warm LA sun was reaching into the hotel room, so I tried to tell myself I was fine. Haze had promised to watch over me. He'd carried me into the hotel, and he'd stayed until morning, just like he'd promised.
That had been all he'd promised.
It didn't matter that I'd seduced him and now I was the one feeling used. I'd known exactly what I was doing. I'd known what I'd gotten myself into. It had been clear that this had never been anything more than physical.
The problem was, all I could think about was him, us, our bodies fitted tight together, my hollow thoughts filled by those dark brown eyes…
Now, that same gorgeous man with those chocolate brown eyes was sitting at my grandfather's table. The hands that held me so completely were poised over the polished silverware as if he'd been reaching for something when I'd entered. I heard his hands drop to the lace tablecloth with a dull thud.
“Mr. Welch, I'd like you to meet my granddaughter, Leighton Machus. Leighton, this is your bodyguard, Sergeant Cormac Walsh.” My grandfather's voice sounded like it was coming from far away.
Cormac?
Bodyguard?
What the hell was going on here?
His body was stiff, and I wondered if he could still feel the rocking fusion of our bodies, if he remembered the hard, aching connection of him deep inside me.
If he'd thought about me at all since that night.
“It's nice to meet you, Ms. Machus,” he said.
“Hello again,” I said, giving him my best smile and my hand.
The flicker in his eyes could have been confusion, fear...or a flash of remembered passion. There was no way to be sure with my grandfather watching us both like a hawk.
Trying to act like I hadn't felt electricity shooting up my arm when I'd shaken his hand, I sauntered to the table and sat down. Despite the mask I had in place, my head was spinning.
Ever since the first moment I'd met Cormac – Haze or whatever the hell his name was – I'd been at a disadvantage.
In a flash of memory, I remembered everything. The party in the Hollywood Hills. Ricky acting like a drunken idiot. My deep sadness and grief that night. Falling into the pool. Waking up to Paris and…him.
I remember how I refused to go to the hospital or to let anyone take me home. He was my savior. Taking me with him. Protecting me until the morning.
Years later, I realize how foolish I’d been. I'd never considered how absolutely stupid my actions had been or how lucky I'd been that Haze had been a gentleman.
Or, at least he had been until the moment I decided that he was the perfect distraction. The perfect way to make myself forget the anniversary of my parents' death. I'd only meant it to be that…a distraction. Maybe a way to piss off Ricky for his wandering...dick. Instead, the passion between us had swallowed me whole. I'd still been quaking when I'd gone to the bathroom to clean up. When I'd opened the door, he was gone.
As wild as I was, I'd never been much for one-night stands, but I'd been with Ricky long enough to have racked up a long list of sexual encounters, most of which were pretty much unmemorable. Yet, four years later, I licked my lower lip and swore I could still taste Haze's kiss.
The idea he'd been able to walk away from me had pissed me off, offended my competitive spirit. And, if I was honest, the rejection had stung. In LA, hordes of women wielded their looks like weapons, and even though I rarely followed through with actual sex, I much preferred that playing field to money.
If I admitted knowing him, and shocked my grandfather with the details of what happened that night, I was certain Haze would be out the door in a matter of seconds. Which meant Grandfather would have to take the time to find another bodyguard, giving me a few more days of freedom.
But he'd saved my little brother's life. Ian was three years younger than me and had only been in the army a short time when he'd nearly been killed. It had been a Special Forces Sergeant who had saved him...and gotten himself injured in the process. According to the little my grandfather told me, the sergeant had been honorably discharged due to his injury and needed a job.
I could turn on the man who'd saved my life, fucked me, and walked away. I could sell him out to my grandfather and barely blink.
I couldn't do that to the man who'd saved Ian. This man. After our parents died, Grandfather and Ian were the only family I had left. I knew I had plenty of faults, but I loved Ian more than anything. The person who'd saved him deserved my gratitude.
I'd leave it up to Haze, then. I'd pretend I didn't recognize him. It'd been a long time, and there was no way our abbreviated time together meant anything. The simple lie would be a seal over what still felt like a crack in my confidence. Haze could never know what that night had meant to me. Or how hurt I’d been by his leaving. Unless he spoke up, he'd keep his job, and I could salvage my dignity.
“Have you two met?” Grandfather asked, pulling me out of my thoughts
I made my face carefully blank and let my eyes rove over Haze. He was taller than I remembered, easily six three, and a wide pillar of a man with muscles like carved marble. His light hair was longer than before, like he'd given up cutting it after being discharged. As my eyes moved over his broad shoulders and chest, I wondered if he had any new tattoos. Then my gaze reached his chocolate brown eyes and they were guarded, almost bored.
“This the guy who saved your life?” I turned to my brother who nodded in answer to my question. “He's never been here before, right?”
“No,” Ian said. “Sergeant Welch got in this morning.”
I tipped my head to the side, pretending to think. “Then I guess I haven't met him before. Who knows? I meet a lot of guys.” I tossed my red curls over my shoulder. “Cormac, was it?”
“Leighton.” Grandfather's voice was sharp.
“I prefer Haze,” he said quietly, “to Cormac. Only my mother calls me by my first name.”
Grandfather nodded at Haze, and then his bright blue eyes narrowed in on me. Our eyes were the same color, and I wondered for the hundredth time if that was what I looked like when I got mad.
“You'll have to excuse my granddaughter, Mr. Welch. She's a bit put out with me at the moment.”
“I'm not trying to be rude,” I said as I leaned forward to start putting food on
my empty plate. “Besides, he should get used to who I am if he's going to be guarding my body.” I smirked at the way Grandfather's face darkened. “Is there coffee?”
“Please, let me,” Haze said. He stood up to bring the hot pot of coffee around the table to me.
“Is he the butler now, too?” I asked. “You downsizing, Grandfather?”
I tried to ignore the heat of Haze's proximity as he leaned over my chair. He poured the coffee so slowly I thought he must've known I was holding my breath. He smelled the same, a mix of bergamot and cedar, and the sensory memory melted my insides. The only thing missing was the tang of the chlorine we'd both had thanks to our unintentional dip in the pool. At least, unintentional for me. He'd dived in after me on purpose.
I tried looking at his hands, but I could only remember how they'd felt on my body. His arms were covered, but I remembered what they looked like as well. Again, I wondered if he'd added to the ink I'd seen four years ago. Two arrows crossed above a dagger on his upper left arm.
And then the Celtic sun around his right nipple. I could still see it under my hands as I'd pressed my palms against his naked chest...
“Mr. Welch's job description is quite specific,” Grandfather said, again interrupting my trip down memory lane. “I expect you to review it before you leave the table, Leighton.”
I took the packet my grandfather handed me, glad for the distraction. Haze returned to his seat, smiled politely at me, and opened his copy of the packet.
Something about that smile aggravated me. “I have to read all of this before I let some guy I've never met follow me around?” I asked.
“It's good to have specific parameters,” Haze said, without looking at me. “I like knowing what's expected of me.”
His cordial tone burned me, and I dug my nails into the paper as I pretended to read. Did he remember me? I couldn't decide if it was better to be forgotten or remembered. Either way, he was about to become my constant shadow and that idea had my pulse jumping in a way I really didn't like.
“Grandfather's always very specific with the help,” I said. I put the packet back on the table and pulled out my phone. I needed to talk to Paris.
Things had gotten a whole hell of a lot more complicated.
14
Haze
Leighton was an ambush in her short sundress and tall heels. Hell, she would've been an ambush in a potato sack and flip-flops.
I remembered every inch of her, from her amazing body to her blazing hair. The black streaks were gone from her curls, and I couldn't take my eyes off her natural color, now an unbroken crown of fiery red. I was afraid if I did, I'd be flooded by the memories of everything else.
Her smooth creamy skin.
Her rosy lips open in a moan of ecstasy.
My hands on her slender waist, pulling her hard against me.
Shit, I could still feel her. My stomach clenched, and I hardened at the vivid memory. Four years. It couldn't have been four years. What surged through my head and body made it feel like it had been only minutes.
Was she the real reason I'd wanted to return to Los Angeles?
As much as I loved my family, I'd wanted to escape them and their damned insistence that I accept what had happened. There was no way I could build my way up to a reevaluation and a return to active duty with them telling me I couldn't do it. So, I'd told myself I wanted the sunny weather and the crowded city. I'd told myself I loved the Pacific Ocean. Still, there'd been a draw to Los Angeles that I couldn't explain. Or maybe I just hadn't wanted to.
My family hadn't understood.
My older sister, Gwen, had put her hand on her pregnant belly and tried not to beg me to stay in Kansas. Her husband, Blake, had been firmly on my side, but even he'd had to admit my choice was unexpected. I'd never been one who'd expressed any desire for sun and sand, celebrities and starlets. And yet, I'd been sure I wanted to move to Los Angeles.
The first time I visited, I'd spent forty-eight hours loving it before I found myself diving into a pool to save a stranger. Then she opened her eyes, and I felt as if I'd been the one who almost drowned. I knew the moment I scooped her up that I was in trouble. I simply hadn't been able to let her go. I knew it'd been a stupid decision to take her back to my hotel room, but everything inside me had been demanding I stay with her. I hadn't intended it to go any further than just being near her, but when she settled across my lap and kissed me, I hadn't been able to resist.
And now I was totally fucked in a different way.
It didn't matter if I couldn't figure out the right silver utensil to eat my salad. I wouldn't be staying past the first course once her grandfather found out what happened, especially since I'd just done the math and realized that Leighton had been only eighteen. Granted, I'd been twenty, but I doubted Mr. Pope would see it that way.
The moment Leighton had said 'hello again,' I'd felt as if I'd stepped on a land mine, and now I was just waiting for it to explode.
Devlin Pope's sharp blue stare moved between us. He wasn't a man who missed much. Not for the first time, I thanked my interrogation training and forced my expression to go blank. My new employer's acute gaze swept over me and then moved on to his grandson. I took a breath and allowed myself to look at Leighton again.
Her laser blue eyes, so like her grandfather's, cut me, but only for a moment before they went flat. Then she looked away and told her family we'd never met. It should have relaxed me, but my chest clenched as I realized she'd forgotten me. Even when I corrected her with the name I'd given her that night, I hadn't seen a flicker of recognition.
I'd known before I closed the hotel room door that morning that I'd never be able to forget her. She had reached through all the expectations of my family, past my intense Special Forces training, and straight through every ounce of willpower and conscious thought I possessed to touch a part of me I'd never realized existed. I realized in that moment that I needed to leave or I'd have gone AWOL, thrown away my entire family military tradition, and years of focused ambition, risked everything, just to touch her again.
From her side of the richly laid table, though, I'd been just another man. Now, I wasn't even that to her. I was 'the help,' a servant foisted on her against her will. What little research I'd done before accepting a position as her bodyguard had described a fashion-obsessed, insanely rich and spoiled party girl. I could see that girl across from me, but I couldn't reconcile any of that with the open and searching redhead who'd seduced me body and soul. Who'd left such a mark on me that I hadn't been able to look at another woman without seeing her.
That woman was gone, I realized suddenly. I'd walked out on her four years ago and she vanished.
The man I'd been back then was gone, too. I'd left as a twenty year-old who'd had his whole life worked out. Special Forces Medical Officer until I was either killed in the line of duty or was too old to do it anymore. Visiting my family in Kansas, but never anyone tying me down.
Then I'd saved Ian and everything, including the man I'd been, was destroyed.
Devlin Pope's voice brought me back. “Mr. Welch, I'm grateful to you for saving Ian's life.” He gave his granddaughter a sharp look. “We are grateful, right, Leighton?”
She rolled her eyes, but I saw the way she looked at her brother. She might've been spoiled and pretending to not care about anything beyond the next party, but there was still one thing she clearly cared about.
Ian.
Mr. Pope tapped the packet that outlined my job description in specific bullet points. Leighton was using her copy as a coaster for her coffee mug at the moment, but I opened mine and followed along as my employer reviewed it.
“Because of my family's wealth, there are security concerns and the occasional direct threat,” he said. “I'm afraid my rather meteoric rise from blue collar worker to wealthy entertainment industry tycoon didn't come without my share of enemies.”
Ian spoke up, his eyes bright, intelligent. “Special Forces training includes the identifi
cation of enemy combatants and tactics for neutralization.”
He didn't really look like his sister, I thought. His hair was more auburn, a duller shade of red than his sister's, and his eyes were a shamrock green rather than blue. Despite the age difference, I could see a lot of his grandfather in the younger man's features.
Including his determination. I'd saved his life and now that his injuries were fading, I could tell how much he wanted to be reinstated to active duty. I knew his grandfather had pulled strings for his honorable discharge and was adamant about the safety of his remaining family. I could understand that desire. Having lost Leighton and Ian's parents five years ago, they were the only family Mr. Pope had left.
“As my grandson just pointed out,” Devlin continued. “Your training applies perfectly to the position of bodyguard. What my granddaughter lacks in common sense, she makes up for in energy.”
I glanced at Leighton to see how she felt about her grandfather's assessment of her, but she appeared to be engrossed in something on her phone.
Devlin didn't look her way as he kept going. “Your job will mostly entail following her through a grueling gauntlet of shopping, eating in restaurants, and dancing at night clubs.”
“I'd rather be in the shit any day,” Ian muttered.
I refused to smile even though I wholeheartedly agreed with the young man. This job was my path back to active duty. If I could prove to everyone, especially the fancy doctor Devlin had first hired to treat my injury, that I could withstand the physicality of this assignment, then I stood a chance of getting a physical reevaluation and a clean bill of health.
Leighton continued to pretend not to be listening and faked a smile at a message on her phone, but I could tell it was in response to her brother's comment. I watched as Ian glanced between his plate and his sister, and I saw sympathy in his eyes. It was possible there was a side to the flippant heiress that very few people, her grandfather included, ever saw. My heart stumbled as I wondered if I had been one of the lucky few.