AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are you a card game person?” I asked her. “Maybe we could play something while we wait.”
Card games weren’t sexy at all. The perfect distraction.
“I’m not much of a card person, but I have Scrabble,” she said, a shy smile coming onto her face. “I’ll go get it.”
She disappeared into another room and returned with Scrabble. We sat in her living room, her sitting on the floor next to the coffee table. Harrison did the same, so Cody and I followed suit, even though all of us were too big to really get comfortable.
“Are you any good at Scrabble?” Cody asked, pulling wooden letters from the box and lining them up on his stand.
“You’ll have to see for yourself.” Taylor shot him a flirty glance, batting her lashes. Maybe accidentally, but the way Cody swallowed suggested that it affected him in that way.
She went first, putting down the word “toga,” and Cody went next, putting down an I and a D to create “aid” off of the A. We fell into a groove with the game, our focus solely on it until the pizza arrived. I volunteered to go get it.
It only took me three minutes, but by the time I returned, Taylor, Cody, and Harrison were laughing at something. I raised an eyebrow and put the pizzas on the kitchen counter, which was visible from their spot in the living room.
“What’s the joke?” I asked.
“Cody was just telling us about the time he got pantsed while surfing,” Harrison said, getting up. “It was relevant, I swear.”
“I put down the word ‘shark,’” Taylor said, as if that made his story make more sense. Harrison extended his hand for her, and she took it, pulling herself up to her feet. “I didn’t know you grew up surfing at all.”
“I did all the time.” Cody was still smiling, but his eyes were more guarded. He didn’t elaborate on his past at all, which didn’t surprise me. It was split into two parts—before his fiancé’s death, and after. Harrison and I had only found out about her death after working with him for two years, so I doubted he’d go into it now.
We all got ourselves slices of pizza and sat around Taylor’s kitchen island, her preferred place to sit despite her enormous dining room one room over. As we dug in, the smile in Taylor’s eyes got pensive. Almost sad.
“My dad always wanted to try surfing, but he was always too busy to,” she said, delicately wiping grease off her fingers. “I think it would have been the kind of thing he’d try once and never do again, honestly. He was like that with scuba diving and skydiving. Then again, most people never even try that kind of thing.”
The sadness in her voice was familiar to me—filled with the grief of losing someone and a yearning to fulfill a dream that never came to be. My relationship with my father had been tense and cold, but I still had that feeling, too. All my life, I’d tried my hardest to be the kind of man he always told me I could be with effort. Hardworking. Sticking to the rules. Being a leader.
Would he have thought I was enough by now? He’d died seven years ago, but the question of whether he’d be impressed or approve of me still popped into my head, even now. The closest he’d gotten to being proud of me was when I got through all the training to become a SEAL, and I wasn’t even sure if it was pride. He’d just nodded in acknowledgment when I told him, and then he asked me follow-up questions about the work I was going to do.
My work weighed heavily on me for more reasons than not getting my dad’s approval.
Yet another reason for me to stay far from Taylor. The idea of touching her with these hands that had taken lives when most of her life was devoted to creating beautiful things felt perverse.
“He sounds like an adventurous person,” Harrison said, pulling me from my dark memories.
“He was. Always very active, too.” Taylor’s brows furrowed, and her eyes dampened. “Which is why I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that he’s gone. He never really got sick, and he took good care of himself. His doctor had even given him a clean bill of health the month before. But maybe he missed something during his exam.”
We ate in silence. Her father’s death had been all over the news, but the cause was vague—a sudden illness. It sounded like that was the case, but something didn’t sit right with me. Her father had been one of the wealthiest men in the world. He’d had the best medical care possible. Of course, death was inevitable, and being wealthy didn’t shield you from that reality.
But someone that wealthy had to have enemies. If Taylor’s cousin thought she needed bodyguards to protect her, maybe her father had needed protection, too.
Maybe I was just being paranoid, but my gut feelings usually led me somewhere. I hoped this feeling was one of the times it didn’t lead to anything bad.
CHAPTER11
Cody
We’d only stayed with clients for two nights at most, so staying with Taylor for a full week was a new experience. Her place fit a billionaire heiress, with every comfort anyone could ever need. She was happy to share that with us, too, which was another new experience.
The lines were starting to blur between us. We still operated as her guards during the day, but once we were settled back at her place at night… Well, I had no idea what we were. Friends, definitely, with a heap of sexual tension thrown in.
It was getting to me. A lot. I’d never jerked off so much in my life. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to strangle Ethan for being a cockblock or thank him for helping me stay on task. His secondary mission was making sure none of us touched Taylor, no matter how tempting she was. Every night was something as dry and non-sexual as possible on its face—a fuck-ton of Scrabble and working. I’d never been so productive.
I sighed, glancing at Taylor as she worked on her laptop. Her plump bottom lip was between her teeth, and she’d curled her legs up on the chair so she could rest her chin on her knee. At this point, I’d seen her in everything, from formal wear to pajamas, and she was beautiful in anything.
But I was particularly fond of this version of her. And most importantly, seeing this version of her made me want to shield her from everything dark in the world. That was another problem, though. Lust I could handle. Love? I wasn’t sure.
