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“Nah,” she laughed. “You apparently made one hell of an impression on Xander. He called to let me know how pissed off he was that I mentioned you when I
talked to Rhys Campbell, the financial guy I told you about.”
I dropped my head down onto the desk and banged it a couple of times for good measure. In the span of one day, Xander had gone from being not-so-subtle around the office by kissing me in front of his other employees to being completely obvious by calling to yell at people because I was going to be protecting a Hollywood heartthrob. At the rate he was going, he’d be hiring a skywriter to announce our relationship to the whole city tomorrow. “He did what?”
“You heard me. Mr. Hollywood uses Rhys as his financial guy, too, and that’s how he got the recommendation for Gray Security. Xander is beyond pissed that the guy knew about you and pretty much demanded you provide his personal protection—while posing as his girlfriend.”
“Fuck,” I groaned. That had to have gone over like a lead balloon with Xander. “Ewan didn’t mention the girlfriend idea or how he knew Rhys when I bumped into him in the hallway while he was on his way to his meeting with Xander.”
“Luckily for me, most of his anger was directed towards Rhys. They’ve known each other forever, and they don’t hold back any punches when they’re fighting. All I got was a growly phone call, but Rhys got a call to his wife that’s bound to put him in the doghouse for a little bit.”
“Sounds like I’d better hold off on transferring my accounts over for Rhys to manage,” I grumbled. Handing over my life savings to a guy who wasn’t getting any from his wife in part because of me didn’t sound like a smart move on my part.
“Nah, he might fool most people with the suits he wears, but he’s just as much of a macho caveman as Alex… and Xander when it comes to you apparently,” she trailed off, her voice turning up questioningly at the end.
“Yeah, about that,” I sighed. “A funny thing happened after I got off the phone with you the other night. Xander was at the bar down the street from my hotel, and I bumped into him. Only I didn’t know he was the owner of Gray Security at the time.”
“From the way Xander was acting, it sounded like you bumped into him an awful lot.”
I could practically hear her wagging her eyebrows suggestively. “Enough that he wants me to skip the apartment hunting and move in with him.”
“Damn,” she whistled. “He’s even faster than Alex. It only took him a day to talk me into a week-long trip to Fiji, but it took two for him to convince me not to go house-hunting in D.C. so I could move in with him instead.”
“Well, shit. When you compare him to Alex like that, it makes Xander’s suggestion sound semi-sane.” And it also made me wonder if I should just give in and tell him I’ll move into his place.
“At least he knows about your career with the CIA,” she pointed out drily. “The same couldn’t be said for Alex or me, and look how well everything turned out for us.”
Their marriage was like something out of the damn movies. They were together for four years without either one knowing the other had a secret life as a spy, until the agency assigned them different objectives on the same case. “Who would have ever thought the CIA’s best snipers would settle down quite so much?”
My hand drifted down to my belly as I thought about Emmy and Ash, Evie and Alex’s children. In nine months, I might be a mommy, too.
“Holy shit,” I breathed out, as the reality of it all hit me.
“Calista! Are you still there?” Evie’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m sorry, but I need to go. There’s something I need to talk to Xander about.”
I didn’t wait for her to say goodbye before disconnecting the call and jumping out of my chair to race to my door. When I flung it open, Xander was standing on the other side. I yanked him inside and slammed the door shut again.
“I swear, between me thinking the offices were bugged by Evie and your ability to seek me out right when I want to talk to you, my new job could give my old one a run for its money when it comes to gathering intel.”
He chuckled at my irritation, earning himself a death glare that should have had him worried but only made him smirk at me. “I didn’t know you needed me since I came to talk to you about a case.”
“Yeah, I already heard all about how I’m going to have to pretend I’m Ewan’s girlfriend in my role as his bodyguard.”
“Over my dead body.” His eyes iced over as he paced back and forth. “I don’t care what anyone says about the customer always being right. The fuckwad isn’t going to get that close to you. I get that it would be easier for him to pretend like he doesn’t have someone guarding him, but if that’s what he wants, then he’s going to have to work with someone else. There’s no fucking way I’m going to stand by and—”
I rolled my eyes and interrupted his rant. “Yeah, yeah. I hear you. You’re the boss around here, so it’s completely up to you how to handle this. Although I would like to point out that I’m one of the best employees you have, so not using me because you can’t handle watching me stand next to another guy sounds like a stupid, macho decision to me. But, I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“What?” he asked grumpily, dropping down onto one of the chairs in front of my desk.
“I thought about what you said, and I’ve decided to go the easy route.”
His dark eyes lit up and his lips curved up in a pleased grin. “You’re going to move in with me?”
“Yes,” I sighed, holding up a hand when he went to stand up. “But we need to lay down some ground rules. The first one being no more sex at work. You’re the one who suggested me moving in as a way for you to be able to treat me platonically at the office, and I expect you to put some damn effort into it to make sure you hold up your end of the deal.”
“Oh, I’ll always hold up my end of the deal, baby,” he replied in a raspy voice. And then he winked at me!
“Xander,” I growled. “Being all sexy and flirty is the opposite of platonic. It’s shit like that I’m hoping to avoid while we’re at work.”
He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry! I can’t help it. You’re so damn hot that all the blood rushes out of my brain and into my cock whenever I’m around you.”
“Which brings me to rule number two—if I’m going to live in your house, you’re going to keep it well stocked with condoms, assuming I’m not already pregnant.”
His expression fell in disappointment.
“I’m not saying you’ll have to use them forever.”
“Fine,” he grunted, eyeing my belly. “But I get to be there when you take the test. You move in tonight, you sleep in my bed every night, and I reserve the right to convince you to go bare while we wait to find out that my swimmers did their job already.”
“You can try all you want, but it’s not going to work.”
“I’m going to enjoy showing you just how wrong you are.”
He got everything he wanted. He had me moved out of my hotel and into his house that night. Plus, he arranged for the moving truck with all my stuff to deliver everything there the following weekend. And, it turned out the motherfucker was right. I spent each night in his bed… after he’d wrung as many orgasms out of me as it took to get me to say he could take me bare.
8
Xander
Sitting in a van outside the premiere for Ewan’s newest movie, my eyes were glued to the monitor, specifically to his hand on my woman’s lower back. If it dropped another inch lower, he was going to have to learn to live without the appendage.
Calista looked fucking gorgeous in her sleeveless, blood-red dress that hugged her body until the skirt flowed out from the knees down. Her long hair was swept up into a twist at the back of her neck, and her red-tipped feet peeked out from under the skirt as she walked, showing off sexy, glittery stilettos. I couldn’t wait to rip that dress off her later that night and fuck her in nothing but those heels.
It irritated the fuck out of me that it wasn’t my arm she was holding onto while looking so fuckable. I wasn’t sure how the fuck she talked me into le
tting her take the job playing another man’s girlfriend. It had been two weeks of keeping the fact that she lived with me a secret, hiding our relationship in public, all the things I’d sworn I wouldn’t do. I should have put a fucking ring on her finger the day she moved in with me, I thought grumpily.
In order to survive the job, without murdering Ewan, I focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. I’d be walking into it tomorrow. We had an appointment for a blood test to determine whether Calista was pregnant. I didn’t know precisely why, but my instincts were confident that it would be positive. I might have been worried about her reaction, especially since it meant a vast change in her responsibilities at Gray Security, but whenever I brought it up, her face softened and her lips tipped up into a tiny smile.
She played the game well, but in the short time since we’d met, I already knew her better than anyone and her poker face was non-existent to me. And, it was obvious, even if she hadn’t recognized it yet, that she wanted this as much as I did. It was just an extra perk that she wouldn’t be able to guard pretty-boy any longer.
My team had been surprised when I showed up for surveillance duty at the event. I was very selective about the jobs I handled personally and staking out in the van was a rarity. But, as the night went on and I got more and more tense at the sight of Ewan touching my woman, their knowing looks told me they’d heard the rumors about Calista and me.
I supposed it was a good thing they recognized it because when Ewan had briefly kissed Calista’s lips while being interviewed by the press, they held me back from jumping out of the vehicle and knocking out several of his perfect, white teeth. Calista kept her cool like the professional she was, but I was slightly mollified by the tinge of pink on her cheeks. To the rest of the world, if they noticed it at all, it would look like she was blushing. The truth was, it was a flush from aggravation. She was not happy with his actions either.
