Charming Like Us (Like Us Series: Billionaires & Bodyguards Book 7)

by Krista Ritchie

  Christ.

  Blood cracking another thousand degrees, I glance over his shoulder at the numbers ticking downward. Floor 3. He follows my gaze and sees too. We pull apart. Lit up to an indescribable degree.

  I grab the hardbacks, still set to broil. He faces the elevator doors, his hands on his head and breath coming hard.

  He seems relaxed. Like he’s basking in the aftermath of a good fuck, even if all we did was kiss. He made the first move. This time, at least. I almost can’t believe it. But then again, his blood cells might as well be named Charisma and Confidence, swimming around in his veins.

  As I near him, I notice Jack has a single freckle by his temple. The randomness makes it even more beautiful. Makes him beautiful.

  Call me a poet.

  D-rated, probably, but hell, I’m a poet after kissing this guy.

  Books in my grasp, I stand beside Jack. His gorgeous honey-brown eyes pool against mine, and then he smiles, still catching breath.

  I grin. “Guess I don’t need to ask if you’re alright, Highland.”

  He drops his hands off his head with a soft laugh. “I’m better than alright. That was…” He zones into the elevator number. Ground floor.

  Our stop.

  I want to hear what he has to say, but I’m on-duty, and protecting Charlie has to take priority. “This conversation isn’t over,” I tell him with a wider grin while we exit the elevator. “Just on ice for a second.”

  “Good, because I need to cool off before we see Charlie.” He adjusts his package and walks with me to the parking deck.

  Charlie. That little bastard hooked me up with Highland, and somehow, it worked.

  I unlock my Hell’s Kitchen studio apartment as the time closes in on 4 a.m. And that’s exactly what happens when you have to chase after Charlie’s shadow all day.

  Say hello to the never-ending job. Home to sleep-deprived, hungry motherfuckers, which is why I remember to bring snacks. Or else I’d accidentally drop twenty pounds.

  I complain a lot, but I love it. Being a bodyguard.

  My life didn’t make sense before security, and it doesn’t make sense without it.

  Today was typical, but not with Jack in tow. What started as a trip to the Morgan Library, ended up being another visit to NYPL, a pitstop at the hospital to donate blood, drinks and dinner at The Purple Room, and a handoff of cash for entrance into a private garden after-hours.

  Somewhere between the beginning and end, we also dropped off his bloody button-down to his assistant. Parker’s going to package and ship the shirt off to the eBay winner tomorrow.

  Stranger than that, I’m not coming home alone. Or with a one-night stand. Or with a bad night’s worth of baggage.

  But I don’t know how to classify what Jack and I are, and I don’t need a definition.

  As long as he’s not messing with me.

  Jack is so alluring, he could sell me the heart already in my chest, and I know he said I can trust him—but I’m a bodyguard. Being cautious is second nature.

  And right now, I am actually carrying baggage. In the form of a black camera bag. “What the hell do you have in here?” I ask. “A small child?”

  It weighs at least forty-five pounds. Nothing I can’t carry, but when I’m on-duty, I can’t carry shit for him. He has to tote all his equipment himself, and honestly, I’m concerned for Highland. Prep is over; this was the first time he’s actually tried to film Charlie all day. And not to bruise his ego too much, it went…less than stellar.

  Jack shuts the apartment door, yawning out, “No small children. Just a boom kit, lighting kit, batteries, clamps, quick releases, a gimbal and slider…” He pats the blue backpack he slips off his shoulder. “This has three lenses and two cameras.” I watch him rub the corner of his eye tiredly as he says, “I’m banking on it being easier with a two-man crew.”

  “With your brother, you mean?” He told me Jesse is in Philly.

  Jack nods. “Being a solo shooter is harder when the subject keeps changing locations.” He yawns again. “I have to fix that quick release plate. The screw came loose a dozen times, and I kept having to stop shooting and retighten it.”

  My concern is on him as I place his camera bag on a barstool.

  For years, I’ve been around We Are Calloway crew as they did their thing, but I never realized how much went into it. Equipment malfunctions, not having the right accessories, sound issues, lighting issues, all while they’re trying to make art.

  I study his sinking posture. “Is there any way to leave behind an extra lens or something to keep the weight down?”

  He shakes his head, smearing a hand down his face a few times. Exhaustion drags his limbs. He’s six-four and hunching. He’s the “make-the-best-first-and-last-impression” guy. He doesn’t hunch.

  Christ. “You won’t have a subject to film, if you can’t keep up with his pace, Highland. I almost left you in the dust after The Purple Room, and you’re not that slow.”

  His smile tries to fight fatigue. “I appreciate the compliment. Taking a page from my handbook?”

  “No,” I say with a small grin. “I always compliment guys I like.”

  Jack shifts, his breath shallow before he lets out a larger yawn.

  Fuck. Now I’m yawning.

  I flip on the dim lights over a bookcase, and a warm glow casts on the dark wood of the luxury apartment.

  We haven’t mentioned the kiss in the elevator yet. His first kiss with a guy. Our first kiss together. Hell, as far as Charlie knows, we’re still just co-workers. We’re both serious about our work, so we fell into keeping it professional.

  Work is now done, and I want to take the conversation off ice. But he’s clearly spent.

  “Thanks for letting me keep my equipment here,” Jack says while fumbling dazedly in his pockets. “It’ll save me time to pick-up and go.”

  Because Charlie lives in New York. And I’m in New York.

  “Yeah, no problem,” I say, but my light tone is hijacked by seriousness. Good Lord, he looks like he’s about to pass out.

  Elbow on the edge of my kitchen bar, Jack digs in his back pocket again. Finally, he finds…a set of car keys.

  I frown. No fucking way. “You’re not driving.”

  Wrinkles crease his forehead. “It’s only a couple hours.”

  “Only a couple hours,” I say. “Bro, you look like you’re two minutes away from collapsing on the floor.”

  Jack laughs exhaustedly into a wide smile. “Some of my best work is done on the floor.”

  Instantly, I picture fucking him on the floor.

  Fuck me, flirting while fatigued should be a crime. Someone needs to come restrain Highland. And I’ll be the first volunteer.

  I’m the only one handling this guy tonight.

  I walk closer. “How about the couch? You can crash here.”

  He tries to stand fully upright. “Are you sure?”

  “You’re not driving to Philly tonight, and a two-hour Uber ride is too expensive. So either you spend the night at my place or I’ll drive you home.”

  He mumbles something about it not being that pricey but he’s nodding. “I’ll stay.” He pockets his keys, a smile in his eyes. “You put all the guys you like on the couch?”

  “Honestly? Usually they’re in the bed with me.”

  His smile is gone. “Yeah?” He’s nodding a lot, too much, and my muscles constrict. Didn’t mean to hurt him. But fucking ugh, I can’t lie, and I don’t want to rush into sex with Jack.

  The bed seems like a danger zone.

  I nod back. “You know I can take the couch and you can take the—”

  “The couch is perfect,” Jack says, hunching again. He winces as he tries to straighten up, and he explains before I ask, “My back is so tight, dude. I should’ve stretched this morning before handling equipment.”

  His choice of words drops my eyes.

  Drops his eyes.

  I recall the feeling of his erection brushing against
mine in the elevator. “You handle equipment often?” I joke.

  Jack wears a forty-watt, tired smile. “Yeah. When can I handle yours?” He knows the double-meaning of all his words as he says them, and it makes me think all the times he’s joked with me, like about “top” and “bottom” Jenga pieces at Farrow’s bachelor party—he wasn’t that innocent.

  “When you aren’t falling over.”

  He stretches his arms behind his back.

  “You still feeling strain?”

  “Mmmh, yeah. Right here.” He taps his upper back.

  “You want me to crack it?” I ask.

  “You know how?”

  I nod. “I studied Kinesiology. Sports medicine. It’s actually how I met Farrow. We had some classes together at Yale since the sciences overlap.”

  Jack quickly agrees to let me help him out, and I tell him to rotate. His back to me, he faces the kitchen, and I come behind his lopsided stance. “Stand straight. Cross your arms over your chest,” I instruct.

  He crosses them.

  I never considered cracking someone’s back an intimate affair. But as I press my chest up against his shoulder blades, my jaw teasingly near his jaw—I’m distinctly in tune with how my breath warms his skin and how I can hear and feel the beat of our hearts. Heavy, loud.

  Proud.

  His smile is going to ruin me. Frat bro. Repeating that isn’t making my cock soft like I thought it would, so at this point, I doubt anything about him will.

  I wrap my arms around Jack, holding each of his sculpted biceps. Like I’m hugging him from behind. “Breathe in,” I tell him.

  He inhales.

  “And out.” I lean back with him in my grip as he exhales. The cracking sound comes, then his sigh of relief.

  When I draw away, my arm skates against his bicep, and his gaze descends my muscular build from head…to toe.

  My chest rises, blood sweltering. I can feel myself resisting the pull towards Jack. I’m just afraid of where this ends.

  It has short-term fling written all over it.

  Normally I wouldn’t even give a shit. But I just wanted more for myself.

  I detach from his attractive sphere and start to chuck off leather sofa cushions.

  Jack stops me. “Don’t pull out the sofa bed. I can just sleep on it.”

  I hesitate because he clearly has muscle aches. But he’s yawning again, too tired to have a full-on debate.

  Fine.

  I toss them back on the couch, and Jack takes a slouching seat with another sigh. “This is a good place to be stuck, I guess.”

  “You guess?” I give him a look. “You fail Geometry in high school, Long Beach? Your place is half the size of mine.”

  “Mmmhmm, true.” His eyelids weigh heavy. They close, then open. He’s even more exhausted than I realized. Evidence: he’s still wearing Allbirds. I don’t remember a time Jack has ever kept his shoes on past the doormat.

  I kneel in front of the couch. My fingers gingerly unlace the sneakers. When I shift off his left shoe, he glances down at me.

  I meet his eyes as I untie the right laces. “You know you don’t have to follow Charlie the whole time. You can grab a couple hours of footage and call it a night.”

  “I want to make sure I have everything,” Jack replies softly. “I haven’t figured out the narrative structure of the pilot yet…and I figure…more footage will make that easier on me in the long-run.”

  I know next to nothing about filming a documentary. And Jack only has one person to rely on. His seventeen-year-old brother.

  I feel badly I’ve made it harder on him by requesting a small crew. But then I remember how annoying it is to have five people shoving around me with cameras and booms and I’m less upset by this outcome.

  I pull off Jack’s right shoe. “You should get some sleep—”

  “Wait,” he cuts in. “Just…” He sits up more on the couch, legs spread open. “Can we talk?”

  About the kiss.

  I ask, “Yeah, we can talk if you don’t fall asleep on me.”

  His lip quirks. “I won’t. I’m really stoked—” He tries to catch another yawn.

  I decide not to point it out. “Not shocked you’re stoked. You are Mr. McCheerful.”

  He laughs quietly. “You’re Mr. McDreamy then?”

  “Oh no, I’m Mr. McSnacky.” I grin. “And you’ve been eating my heart out.” My friends would be giving me such shit for that line, but I’m too confident to care.

  Jack leans forward, elbows on his knees. Still fighting exhaustion. “Yeah? Let me take a bite.” He playfully fists my Yale tee, and I grab his wrist.

  Heavy breath expels from us, but I cut it off first. Dropping my hold of him, I take a firmer seat on the floor and back up from the couch.

  He has to release his grip of my shirt.

  The show.

  We should talk about Charlie.

  Jack battles the umpteenth yawn.

  And in the quiet of my apartment, I tell him, “If you’re going to be following Charlie all day just like today, you need to start listening to my advice.” I rest my forearms on my bent knees, his shoe still in my hand. “When I tell you to take a nap in the car, you should actually take a nap.”

  Grid-locked in traffic on the way to the library was the best time for Jack to catch up on sleep.

  “I was trying to fix my quick release practically all day,” he explains. “And I never saw you nap.”

  “Because I’m used to this.” I absentmindedly pass his shoe between my hands. “You need to also eat when you can. Even if you’re not hungry. When you are hungry, you might not actually have time to eat.”

  He nods, looking deeper in me for answers to his bottomless pool of questions. He’s a filmmaker. He sees the subtext.

  I care about your health, Highland.

  I actually really care about you.

  Why else would I be flinging pro-tips at him? I don’t personally benefit from Jack eating a granola bar.

  But I must still be wary to put my heart on the line. Because I add, “I don’t need a casualty on my hands. And that’s what’s going to happen if your scrawny ass keeps forgetting to eat.”

  “You keep saying that.” His lip rises as he leans back. “But I’m not scrawny.” He eyes the shoe in my hands, and I set it on the floor. “What were you like in high school?” he shoots out, and off my confusion, he adds, “Did you fail Geometry?”

  “No, never failed a class. Never skipped class. I tried hard.” I laugh at myself. “I was a try-hard.”

  “How come?” he wonders. “Did your parents pressure you or was it self-motivated?”

  I muse playfully, “Highland asking all the interesting questions.”

  “Comes with the—”

  “Job,” I finish, “I knew that day one, bro. But it’s also a little part of you at this point, isn’t it?”

  He runs his fingers through his hair, slowly and languidly. “Yeah, I can’t turn it off.” He smiles more at me.

  “It was self-motivated,” I answer him. “The studying, the extra insurance I make it in an Ivy League and get an academic scholarship. I didn’t think boxing would really pan out for me, and I wanted something more mentally stimulating.”

  Jack frowns. “But you went pro?”

  “And I quit at eighteen. I wasn’t very good. Not like my little brother.” I stare off at the ground. “Thinking back, I just wish my parents had pushed Quinn and Joana towards school. But my parents—my dad most especially—value physical prowess over mental aptitude. It was one of the reasons my brother randomly took up field hockey in high school just to get him off his back. My dad’s largely unimpressed by academic achievements, but if you have a nasty uppercut, he’d gift-bag you a dozen mortadella sandwiches, coxinhas, and invite you over for dinner like you’re family. And my mom’s coxinhas are heavenly.”

  Jack lets out a breath, his smile flickering in and out. “I have so many questions. What’s a coxinha?”

&nbs
p; His pronunciation of coxinha isn’t perfect in this cute way, and it makes me grin. “It’s fried dough in a teardrop shape with shredded chicken inside. Quinn likes it with jackfruit instead of chicken. He’s—”

  “Vegetarian,” Jack finishes. “I remember.” Right. “Mortadella? Isn’t that Italian sausage?”

  “It is, but I grew up eating a lot of mortadella sandwiches in Philly. You take the meat—lots and lots of meat, add provolone, mayo, Dijon, all on sourdough.” Damn, my stomach is practically growling—I need to stop painting portraits of food. “They’re popular in São Paulo.” I think Jack knows it’s where my family is from, based on my tattoo.

  The motto of São Paulo is inscribed in Latin across my collarbone. I am not led, I lead.

  “Did your parents eat them in Brazil?” Jack asks.

  “No, they immigrated to America when they were both babies. Their families made them mortadella sandwiches growing up too.”

  Jack looks confused. “I thought your grandparents still lived in Brazil. So…how’d your mom and dad come over here alone as babies?”

  “They didn’t. My dad’s parents are still in Philly, and my mom’s uncle was already here. Her aunt was bringing her over to live with them.” I watch him nod, but I can tell something else is on his mind. “So my mom’s parents are the ones still in Brazil, along with her two brothers and more cousins.” I want to ask about his family.

  But he lets out, “Back to what you said before about physical prowess…”

  “Yeah?” I cock my head, wondering where this is going.

  “I don’t have a nasty uppercut.” He tries to smile, but it levels-out again. Is he nervous? “To tell you the truth, I don’t have any kind of uppercut. I’ve never been in a fight or punched anyone before…” He trails off at the sight of my grin. He smiles back. “You knew.”

  “I figured you’d hug it out before punching it out.” Not a surprise.

  Jack massages his hand, still seeming uncertain or…again, nervous. Maybe, though, he’s still just in a war with fatigue. “So your parents don’t care that you went to Yale?”

  “My mom brags to family and friends, but they bragged harder when I was a pro-boxer.” I add, “And they let my brother skip school all the fucking time for fights.” I shrug. “My siblings never really cared about an education the way that I did. So I went to Yale, and they both ended up in the ring.”