‘A race?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You and me?’
‘I’m pretty sure I’ll kick your ass.’
A tiny flicker of a smile curls Jules’ lips.‘I could beat you.’
‘Could you, though?’Lachlan muses as they walk outside.The sun is peeking through the clouds, but the rain has left behind somespectacularmud if you know where to look for it, and Lachlan does.‘I just don’t know.What do you think, princess?’
Mimi reaches for Jules’ hand, holds it while Lachlan carries her outside.She’s wrapped in a warm jumpsuit, brand new of course.She never had coats for outside before Lachlan came here.
Now she has dozens.
‘No one stronger than my Daddy,’ she whispers, head on his shoulder as the sunlight hits her face.
Lachlan lets it wash over him too.
‘Damned right, babygirl,’ he promises.
And so the rest of that first year in the Penhalyx Estate passes without incident.The new routine is formed to perfection.The kids are both safer and more secure than they ever have been, although those words carry double meaning in this place.All but one of the childminders are let go.
Lachlan’s one-year anniversary being the bodyguard to these children comes with a large bonus cheque and larger, more impressive quarters closer to theCovewhere the kids sleep.He’s given a new car.
He’s given a new budget forAppliedInnovations,although he keeps Jolene well out of Penhalyx’s clutches, despite how the old man sometimes asks for an introduction.Lachlan designs several new things to keep the Estate tightly guarded, and she brings them all to life from a distance.
He’s given whatever he likes, limitless rewards.
But it’s the flower Mimi picked for him that sits on his bedside table, and it’s Jules slowly coming around to the idea that Lachlan isn’t here to make his life worse that helps him sleep at night, and it’s that one picture that Blaire took of all three of them on the sunny day they took turns doing cartwheels that he looks at whenever things are hard, and it won’t stop raining and the crows caw so loud he has to go be with the kids to drown it out.
That first year has aged him.
Changed him.
Reshaped him.
But Lachlan Tanner canbereshaped.
He can withstand change.Torture.Pain.Loss.
Maybe that’s why Alistair chose him.
Maybe because anyone older and more experienced wouldn’t have touched that contract with a ten-foot pole.
But after a year he understands more than he thought possible.
He’s the bodyguard.
He will die for these kids.
It’s a certainty.
He’s made peace with it.
And then the second year hits him like a fucking meteorite.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
