Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 36987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
I had missed the food delivery completely. “You do love me.”
“Yes,” he rasped, hand on my cheek for a moment before he leaned in and kissed me.
I wanted the kiss, it warmed me down deep, and I’d missed him when I was gone this last time more than I had on the previous deployment. Each time I left, the longing for him got worse. I honestly hadn’t expected that. I had no idea that the longer we were together, the worse the pain when I left would become.
“Okay,” he said, smiling against my mouth as he leaned back. “Eat this revolting burger with enough cheese on it to stop your heart. I got onion rings too, though I do plan to kiss you later.”
“Yeah? You’re gonna kiss me? Like, a lot?”
He grinned. “Or maybe not until tomorrow. I think I’m just going to watch you sleep tonight.”
That had been how we started. With him watching me sleep.
We’d met when I was on the job, being a bodyguard. I worked for the in-house security division of Sutter Incorporated, a real-estate development company that did business all over the world. Basically, though I loved the Army, I realized that ten years in, I was bored. There were only so many life-and-death situations you could be in before you lost your edge. Since I always wanted to be an asset to any team I was attached to, I’d returned to civilian life with the stipulation that, being in the Individual Ready Reserve while working in the private sector, all the Army had to do was call me up when I was needed. And while sometimes the timing was total shit, I wasn’t ready to ever tell the men in my unit no. We were all in the same boat at this point, all of us out, doing other jobs, most in law enforcement, some bodyguards like me, others private investigators. But we all jumped when we were called up, ready to fly to the other side of the world when needed.
That night I was guarding my charge, Hannah Kage, whom I could confess to adoring, though nine times out of ten I wanted to strangle her. She was, at this point, the little sister I never wanted but had probably always needed. The expression trouble magnet must’ve been coined for her. How a twenty-year-old junior at the University of Chicago had a hit put out on her by a cartel in Mexico was beyond my ability to grasp. Watching over her, being her guardian angel, was my first priority, as she was the god-niece—and was that even a thing?—of the big man himself, billionaire real-estate mogul, Aaron Sutter. I worked for him, like all the other twenty-eight thousand people at the company all over the world, and my main job was to make sure no harm ever came to Hannah. It had sounded so cushy when she originally picked me, but then, fairly quickly, I realized she had a propensity for danger I hadn’t factored into my thinking.
Horrible.
Not to mention the fact that she had absolutely no boundaries where I was concerned. All in with my health, like my diet and cholesterol, as well as with my love life and whether I should have a pet. She was insidious and obnoxious, and I would have shut her down and put space between us and told her that it was just business, nothing more, that we weren’t going to be friends because I was paid to protect her, but…it was too late from the start. She saw right through the tough-guy facade that worked for most people. I was a cold, deadly Army sniper, but she never saw me like that. To her, I wasn’t her brother, because she already had one. It was worse. She thought we were buddies, and with every passing day that I had to pick her up and take her somewhere, put myself between her and the world, the bond got deeper. I had no idea how it happened, but she got into my booby-trapped heart, under the trip wire, and made herself at home. It was maddening. The thing was, though, caring for Hannah opened me up for others, like Kurt, so really, I owed her for that. Because even though I hadn’t said it, I was head over heels for the man.
When I met Kurt, he was with Hannah at a fundraising event, having been brought along as her plus-one to first, network, and second, to meet me. Not like she was playing matchmaker, but because Kurt, as Hannah’s psychiatrist, wanted to meet me.
A month before, in the process of saving Hannah, her brother, and her brother’s friends from peril, I’d killed a couple of guys. To me, since I was doing my duty, it was not traumatic when I had to put the assailants down. For the kids, they needed to talk to a shrink and make sure there was no buildup of shock or damage that could hurt them down the line.