Page 16 of Nothing Special X: The Last Stand

He’d made every one of them delete their accounts in front of him.

Cassidy had trusted his instincts for a long time, and right now every one of them was screaming that these men weren’t going to cut it.

Xander Vale needed…deserved better.

Cassidy noticed the fear the moment the actor had stepped back onto Stage 8.

Not nerves, or stress…but genuine fear.

He knew all too well what that looked like, and how that kind of fright hollowed a person from the inside out.

He’d watched Xander struggle through rehearsal, his hands shaking around a prop bottle while trying to remember lines he probably knew better than the writer.

At least his manager had enough sense to give Xander the out he’d so desperately needed but was too professional and considerate to ask for.

Cassidy still didn’t know what made him move in when Xander had frozen at the bay doors.

One moment he’d been hanging back while everyone crowded around Xander, and the next he was pushing through them, and settling his hand at the small of his back.

“Come on. I’ll walk you.”

The visible relief that’d softened Xander’s face when Cassidy had touched him, affected him in a way he wasn’t prepared to acknowledge.

Or the way those wide, baby blue eyes flicked toward him every few seconds during the thirty-two-minute publicity setup outside the gates, as if he’d needed visual confirmation he was still there.

But the part he couldn’t stop replaying was the way Xander clutched his card to his chest after the SUV window rolled up.

Cassidy exhaled slowly.

He’d never given a client his personal cell number.

His job wasn’t personal, it was business.

His business.

And West Protective Solutions had been built on that exact principle from the start.

Professional. Skilled. Controlled.

Three years after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group—with a bullet scar on his left thigh and scar tissue from the one that’d gone through his right kidney—he’d built his security company from the ground up with that mindset branded into his bones.

Protect and secure. Make no attachments nor blur the lines.

Getting personal led to sloppiness.

Devyn Frost’s bodyguard-slash-boyfriend could attest to that. If he’d been watching his client’s back instead of gazing into his eyes, he would’ve seen the threat coming before it was too late.

So why the hell did it matter so much that Xander felt safe instead of simply making sure he was?

Why had he liked that the actor had searched for him instead of the overdressed, protein-shake-guzzling boy band surrounding the SUV?

No one ever sees me. They especially don’t look for me.

The memory of those blue eyes stayed with him longer than it should’ve. Soft, tired, pleading without saying a word.

For one irrational second, Cassidy had nearly gotten into his Mustang and followed the SUV just to make sure the detail handled things correctly.

It was an impossible thought because he had an overflowing desk of paperwork waiting to be signed off on. Reassignments, shift rotations, gate patrol adjustments, perimeter reports, studio escort schedules, and a shit-ton more.