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Luke had pulled a first-rate hit-and-run bang job on me, and I’d gone for it like a moony-eyed virgin.
At least I hadn’t done the stupidest thing on earth and fallen in love with him. Close call, but now I knew that he was a bang-and-bounce kind of guy, so there was no way I’d get emotionally attached to that kind of man. No way.
But I couldn’t stop myself from looking back at the quiet street darkening with the soft light of dusk, hoping like a fool that I’d catch a glimpse of his Lexus rounding the corner and heading toward my house.
And suddenly, there it was.
I stopped dead in the driveway, positive my wishful thinking had conjured up a hallucination, but there was no mistaking the beams of the headlights bouncing off of me as Luke pulled in and came to a stop right next to me.
He’s here, I thought numbly, staring as the tinted driver’s window was lowered. Mr. Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em was really, truly there, when I was sure I’d never see him again.
Yay!
“What the actual fuck, Eden.” Less lover-like words had never been spoken as he slammed his way out of the car and loomed over me. “You shouldn’t be standing out here like a goddamn sitting duck waiting to get shot or kidnapped, for fuck’s sake. Where the hell is your security detail? Who’s on-duty now?”
“Um, a bearded man who claimed his actual name is Nix, though I have serious doubts about that, and I’ve only been out here a few seconds—Luke,” I interrupted myself as he grabbed me by the wrist and surged toward the house, clearly on the warpath for Nix’s head. “Calm down, all right? Everything’s fine. Nothing has happened since I last saw you, which was more than forty-eight hours ago.” Then I bit my lip. Awesome. Great way to sound like I had been counting the minutes since he’d left my world.
Too bad that was far more accurate than I wanted to admit.
His grip on my wrist didn’t waver, and neither did his momentum as he entered my place and made a beeline for the stairs, no doubt heading for the guest bedroom where my security detail had set up shop. “Rules are there for a reason, Eden. You’re the body. The body doesn’t go out in public without a visible guard present. You were out in public, but your bodyguard was nowhere in sight. That’s a problem.”
“Technically speaking, I was in my driveway, which isn’t considered a public space,” I began, but he was too busy rampaging across the second-floor landing and throwing open the guest room door to acknowledge my comment.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Nix?” Luke said just below a roar as he dragged me into the room behind him. My guest bedroom had undergone a startling transformation. Gone was the neat, IKEA-like order of the space. The lowboy dresser was covered in an array of electronic equipment, with all the camera angles around the house displayed on two separate monitors, along with an open laptop, which showed either end of the road outside my front door. Another laptop was literally on Nix’s lap as he lounged on the double bed, a dangerous bear of a man looking slightly ridiculous resting against the buttercup yellow frills of the pillows that matched the bedspread. “Did you not see that the protectee had left the house?”
Nix looked up at Luke like he’d never seen him before. “What the fuck back at you, Luke. You’re not even supposed to be here.”
That made my brows shoot up. “I know he’s not on my security detail anymore, but why is Luke not supposed to—”
“So I wanna know,” Nix went on, building steam, “why the hell are you here busting my chops about how I do my job?”
“So you’re saying you’re doing your job right now? Because it sure as fuck doesn’t look like you’re doing anything but playing Solitaire and pocket pool while the body you’re supposed to be guarding is wandering around outside like she doesn’t have a goddamn care in the world.”
Now wait just a minute. “I saw a client to her car and was headed back inside when you showed up,” I said on a huff, shaking my wrist loose. “I’d hardly call thatwandering.”
He ignored me. “Have you actually gotten off your ass since you started your shift, or have you taken fucking root to that mattress?”
At that, Nix tossed the laptop aside and surged to his feet. He had several inches, forty pounds of pure muscle on Luke and a really kickass beard, but Luke didn’t back up so much as an inch.
“I do not need you to tell me how to do my fucking job,” Nix retorted loudly, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the walls started heaving with all the testosterone blowing up in the atmosphere. “I don’t even know why you’re here. Cap pulled you off this security detail, so you can fuck all the way off, got it?”
Cap pulled him off, I silently repeated, a silly hope suddenly winging through me. So Luke hadn’t chosen to leave after our awesome desk sex. He’d been bounced by his boss.
Double yay!
“Eden was outside without a visible guard, and that half-assed kind of shit will not stand,” Luke shot back, his freckled, golden complexion darkening with what could only be called rage. “If she’d been hurt or taken or killed, that’d be on you. You need to remember what the fuck you’re getting a paycheck for and stop treating this assignment like it’s nothing more than a babysitting job, because it’s not.”
“You think I don’t know every fucking move she makes under this roof?” Nix shot back, turning as bright red as a Christmas light. “I knew she’d gone outside because I heard the alarm, and I watched her and her client on the monitors, watched who’s been coming in and out of the neighborhood and knew everything was safe, so don’t act like I don’t know my shit, asshole. Guarding bodies is my fucking wheelhouse, not yours. If I need you to profile some swinging dick in the neighborhood, I’ll call you. Until then, you can fuck all the way off.”
“Not a problem, since I’m taking the woman you’re supposed to be guarding and getting the hell out of here. Eden, you’re with me,” he added, grabbing my wrist once more and marching out of the guest room to my bedroom. “Pack enough shit for overnight. You have work tomorrow, yeah?”
Gamely I tried to catch up while Nix made noises about how Cap wasn’t going to like this. “Yes, I have three clients scheduled for—”
“Starting when?”
I pulled out my phone with my free hand. “Ten.”
“I’ll have you back by then.”
