Page 14 of Israel

“Three. Officially, it would be unprofessional of me to allow you access to Mr. Happy. However, since all outside dates—of any kind—are hereby off the table for the duration of my assignment, if you get desperate I might be persuaded to consider it.”

He shot a glance at her. She was definitely pissed, and he had a feeling this battle of wills was not over.

He was right.

“I certainly hope so, Hottieguard,” she shot back. “Because I’m finding this whole situation very stressful, and my vibrator is not going to cut it, if you know what I mean.”

Nope, battle of wills definitely not over. He’d seen the way she’d run off the other guys with her sex talk, and she was probably thinking it would work on him too. Too bad for her he’d spent ten years as packmates with Rafe Connors, the unfiltered sexual innuendo champion of the entire western United States. Not to mention their alpha’s mate, Emma, who could—and did—hold her own with Rafe any day of the week.

Next to them, Ashley was an amateur.

He pulled a notebook and pen out of his pocket and started to write.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a note,” he said, still writing. “To ask the maintenance guys to order you some extra vibrator batteries.” He finished the note and clicked his pen to retract the ballpoint.

Her mouth dropped open, and he gave her a wicked half-smile, tucking his notebook in his pocket. “You’re welcome.”

It didn’t take Israel long to find out Ashley might be bullshitting about the vibrator, but she was completely serious about the schedule. It also didn’t take him long to figure out that Ms. Ashley Silver was a control freak who was going to run herself into the ground before the tour was half over.

Israel knew fuck-all about the music business, but he’d been Kane’s second-in-command for years, helping build both the Silverlake pack and the security business that provided a good chunk of their day-to-day income.

He knew that to run any kind of interdependent group effort, you had to recruit good people, train them well, give them clear goals, and then trust them to do what they were good at.

If you tried to micromanage every little detail, you just pissed people off and burned yourself out. The problem was, nobody seemed to have told Ashley Silver that.

Other than the tour logistics and the security arrangements, which Harrison was in charge of, Ashley seemed to run every damned detail of her career herself. People were constantly running to her for decisions on things they should be handling themselves. Same with her offsite team—agent, publicist, etcetera etcetera. It was a recipe for burnout.

She juggled phone calls and texts constantly. When she was offline due to a meeting, her assistant just stacked up messages for her.

Forget the stalker—hell, forget throwing himself in front of a bullet for her. Israel would do Ashley the most good by throwing himself between her and her “support” team.

He wondered what was driving her to hold on so tightly to every little aspect of her career—and why she didn’t seem to trust anyone around her to do their jobs or act in her best interests.

Her career was taking off, and she should be enjoying herself, reveling in her success. Instead, she seemed weighted down with shit that didn’t really matter.

Who the hell cared if she wore the green dress or the blue dress, or exactly which picture went up on her Facebook page?

Israel shook his head. With any other client, he would say “not his business.” But Ashley was his mate, even if she didn’t know it yet. It was his job to make sure she was happy. And despite her obvious success—she wasn’t.

It made his chest ache and his wolf whine.

But he had to wait. He couldn’t just jump in and start rearranging her life. Ashley was not the sweet beta mate he’d always envisioned, sane and sensible and willing to listen to his advice.

She’d be more likely to tell him to fuck off.

So he sat back and observed, trying to figure out who she really was, what drove her, what she wanted most.

As she argued back and forth with her stylist, he found his gaze wandering repeatedly to the ‘v’ of her shirt. Mostly to the hint of gorgeous cleavage he could see there, but also to that necklace she was wearing. There was something about it that bothered him.

It was lacy silver filigree collar, lying flat on her chest. About two inches wide in the front, it came to a point, with a fire opal set in the center section. The necklace tapered down to less than an inch wide where it curved around her neck.

It was the kind of expensive-looking jewelry a woman would wear on a special occasion, with a low-cut dress. Maybe she’d been trying it on with her stage costumes and just hadn’t bothered to take it off?

But it was giving him an odd feeling, the more he stared at it. Like the necklace had some kind of weird energy that was…off.

He made a mental note to ask her where it had come from. Hopefully not from a fan—especially not from an anonymous one. He would have hoped she’d have more sense than to wear jewelry from an unknown source, but his years of Enforcer work had taught him that people did all kinds of colossally stupid things every day of the week.

If the necklace had some kind of magical energy, it was a security risk. And that made it his business.