Page 5 of Get A Fix

Of course he did. Because really, handsome didn’t do the man justice—those forest-green eyes, jet-black hair, chiseled features, sculpted physique… He was stunning. Whenever he walked the red carpet, all eyes were on him. When I watched him on TV or in movies, inevitably I had to go back and watch it again because my eyes were riveted on him and I missed what everyone else was doing. So truly, I had no doubt that if he showed up to things alone, he’d be mobbed.

“Apparently, he even turned down his niece’s wedding invitation when she first invited him for that very reason. He wanted her to be the one in the spotlight, not him.”

“Very thoughtful of him.”

“Yes, but the niece wants him there since he’s the one paying for the wedding.”

“Oh?”

“Her father has made some bad investments or something, or wouldn’t pay—I don’t know. Mr. Klein was very light on the details, and again, those aren’t things we need to know.”

“So Lennox is bailing out his…?”

“Half brother. Technically. But their father, Coleman Walder, never married Lennox’s mother, Barbara, so⁠—”

“He’s illegitimate.”

“Yes.”

“Which is why his last name isn’t Walder. Interesting.”

“Rich families always are.”

“But he’s done the best out of the whole group, I’m assuming, so when they need money, they hit him up for it.”

“I don’t know about that. Walder Industrial is a huge conglomerate that is not, in any way, suffering. I don’t know why Lennox is paying for his niece’s wedding, but I’m sure there’s a story there.”

“So in a nutshell, he’s going to a wedding he’s paying for and will be there to see all his extended family.”

“Correct. Plus, his father died five years ago, and he was made executor of the estate, so he’s the one who doles out the money to the rest of his relatives.”

“This sounds like it’s going to be a horror show for him.”

“I agree. No wonder he needs a buffer.”

It made sense that the person between Lennox and his family needed to at least appear to be of the romantic persuasion. A bodyguard, his family could get around, claiming they weren’t endangering him. A lover, a partner, a significant other, they could not.

“Really, though, when all is said and done, this is going to be easy,” my boss assured me. “You’ll see.”

First off, no job was ever easy. That was a given. Something was always going to go wrong. Second, my boss had a tendency to downplay things when he thought one of his fixers would balk, especially unspeakable, brain-numbing horrors like, say, Maine in early March.

“It’s not like you’re going as a caretaker. You’re simply the man’s plus-one.”

I was concerned he was having a stroke, and before his nuptials too. I coughed softly. “Aren’t weddings normally two-day affairs at most? Rehearsal dinner, then wedding?”

“No, they’re normally four days long and filled with different activities,” he informed me, and I noted a trace of judgment in his voice, like I should have known that.

“Great,” I said instead of I’d rather sit through another of Owen’s tech seminars. In my opinion, Owen was missing his calling by not working with people with insomnia. He could put anyone to sleep in seconds when he started talking about gadgets. “So what you’re telling me is that Lennox is not in any danger at this wedding.”

“Probably not. The venue in Castine has been completely rented out for the nuptials, and they have a regular on-site security team.”

“They rented the whole hotel?”

“Inn. It’s an inn.”

Of course it was. “This is a tag-along-and-guard situation.”

“Correct.”