“Romero.” I nod, but I don’t offer him my sweaty hand. “Sorry to disrupt your rest day. This is urgent. This is Miss Diana Jensen. Your assignment.”
The woman next to him turns her full attention to me, and the ground I’m standing on feels less solid than it did three seconds ago.
I know who she is.
I’ve known who she is for months. I’ve studied Diana Jensen the way a sniper studies terrain. Every photograph I have of her, they were all the same woman. Tailored blazers. Pencil skirts. Heels that added three inches to a frame that didn’t need them.
The Diana Jensen I’ve been tracking is not the woman standing in front of me in sweatpants.
This woman is stunning. Not that her photographs aren’t. But stripped down, no filter, no makeup, she is the most arresting person in a room full of supermodels.
This is Diana Jensen getting out of bed. This is what Jack Rutherford wakes up to. My stomach turns over once at that thought.
Jack Rutherford has impeccable taste. Of course he does. The man is a billionaire who only wants the finest, not some illegitimate blood that would smear his good name. Why would the woman on his arm be any different?
She slides her sunglasses off and looks at me straight on. Her eyes are dark, sharp, and they hold mine. I’m shirtless, sweat sliding down my chest, blood drying on my temple, and she doesn’t blink.
“Diana received a credible threat this morning,” Vance says.
I know why she needed a bodyguard in the first place. The biggest sexual scandal in the country, and she’s the lead counsel. It’s the reason Halo Protective Group got the contract. It’s the reason I spent months positioning myself to be the agent assigned to her.
“I know we agreed on tomorrow,” Diana says. Her voice lands clean and direct, no apology stitched into it. “And I know it isn’t what you’d prefer. But I need you to start today.”
The assignment is live-in. I only have a few more things to pack.
But I wanted one more night. One more night to sit with the plan, to let the hatred settle into the right channels, before I step into the current of her life and let it carry me where I need to go.
That night is gone now.
“My things are at my apartment.”
“I’ll come with you.” She doesn’t miss a beat. “We pick up your things, we go to my place. I’d rather not be alone right now, given the circumstances.”
My teeth press together. My studio apartment. She’s about to walk into the place where I have Jack Rutherford’s photograph taped to the wall I look at first thing every morning.
I need an alibi. I need to figure out how—
“Is there a private room here I can use?” Diana turns to Vance. “Somewhere I can speak with Kai alone?”
Vance’s eyes flick to me, then back to her. He runs his tongue over his teeth. “Conference room on the second floor is open.”
2
Diana
SOME WOMEN COLLECT shoes. I collect men.
The thought isn’t new, but it sharpens when I watch the man in the ring land a hook that rattles his sparring partner’s head. My new bodyguard. My newlive-inbodyguard. And he has the face and body that look the way trouble always looks when it’s about to ruin your life.Gorgeous.
I’ve been a lawyer for seventeen years. High-profile cases, vicious opponents, courtrooms that swallow ordinary people whole. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with cartel attorneys, with senators’ fixers, with men who believed their net worth made them untouchable. Not once have I needed a bodyguard. Not once has anyone threatened me with enough specificity that the senior partner slash owner picked up the phone himself.
The Torresse case changed that.
The details of the threat don’t matter to me right now. What matters is that I’m standing in the basement gym of the most elite security firm in Halo City, watching my new bodyguard dismantle a man for sport.
When the Jack Rutherford called Vance Landon, Vance took the contract personally.We’ll assign you our best.I told himgood, because I didn’t care what “best” looked like. I only cared about staying alive.
But now I’m watching “best” duck under a right hook, and his torso rotates, and my mouth goes dry. The overhead lights catchthe sheen of sweat on his neck, on his forearms. He smells—from twenty feet away, even through the rubber-and-metal scent of the gym—warm. Salt and exertion and skin.
