Necessary Risk (Bodyguard) Read online

  “He may not have been violent—and seriously, that’s like, the only nice thing I can say about him—but he is a jerk. Who told you you’d regret breaking up with him.” Taylor leaned closer and pointed at her own chest. “In my book, that’s a threat.”

  “So he’d publicly attack me? Several months after I broke up with him? That doesn’t make any sense. Trust me, defending Jack is the last thing I want to do, but I’m pretty sure we can rule Senator Shithead out.”

  Sierra’s phone rang, buzzing softly against the island’s surface. When she checked the call display, she shot Taylor an apologetic smile. “It’s Mom. I have to take this.”

  Taylor waved her away, topping up their glasses as Sierra padded through the living room, the overhead light winking against the row of gold records hanging on the wall. She swiped her finger across the screen to answer the call as she stepped out onto the terrace.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Oh, honey. I got your messages. Are you OK?”

  Sierra swallowed around the lump that formed in her throat at the sound of her mom’s voice, which was tight with worry. “Yeah, Mom. I’m OK. Just a little shaken up. I’m staying at Taylor’s tonight.” As she rehashed the day’s events with her mom—the attack, the break-in, what the police had said—she paced slowly around the terrace, her eyes roaming over Taylor’s backyard and the view of the Hollywood Hills and Los Angeles sprawling at her feet. The famous white Hollywood sign glowed in the distance. Standing outside in the cool night air, the city pulsing with life around her, cars crawling by in the distance, she suddenly felt small and alone. Untethered and insignificant. She slipped her free hand into the back pocket of her jeans, and her fingers bumped against the stiff paper there. Pulling it free, she studied the card, the blue-and-gray Virtus Security logo visible even in the terrace’s dim light.

  “So, anyway, the cops are looking into Sacrosanct,” she finished, chewing on the inside of her lip as she stared at Sean’s card.

  Her mother let out a long sigh, and Sierra rubbed at her chest, feeling guilty that her mother was worried about her. “Honey, are you sure you want to keep going? You could just quit working with Choices and then everything would be OK.”

  Sierra bit her lip and tipped her head back, squinting to make out the few stars visible against the light pollution seeping up into the night sky. Maybe her mom was right. Maybe she should just walk away from Choices for her own safety. In one day she’d been attacked and had her home violated and vandalized. Clearly someone was targeting her because of her work with the organization. And now she was scared, angry, and likely giving her poor mother an ulcer.

  But deep in her heart, she knew that walking away wasn’t the right thing to do. Not for her, because she didn’t want to give in to the harassment and let whoever was doing this to her win, and not for Choices. Keeping her chin up, refusing to be bullied, and sticking with Choices was the right thing to do, hard as it might be. She looked down at Sean’s card again, her mind made up.

  “I’m sure, Mom. This is important to me, and if I let them scare me away, what does that prove? That doesn’t help anyone.”

  “It helps me sleep at night, for starters.”

  Sierra closed her eyes, wincing at the guilt slicing through her. “I’ll be fine, Mom, I promise. I’m hiring security.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. At least until this all blows over.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “I love you, honey. Give Taylor a hug for me, and promise me you’ll be safe.”

  “I promise, Mom. I love you too.” She disconnected the call and stepped back into the house, the night air following her in.

  “How’s Renee?” asked Taylor, plopping down on the leather sofa in her living room and extending a wineglass toward Sierra. She took it, sitting down beside Taylor and tucking her feet under her.

  “Worried. She wants me to quit working for Choices.”

  “I can understand why. What are you going to do?” Taylor sipped her wine as she crossed her long legs.

  “I feel bad that she’s worried, but I can’t just leave Choices. Not only is that unfair to them, but then I’ve let myself be bullied and the assholes win. So I’m going to keep working with them, and hire security.” She handed Sean’s card to Taylor, who glanced at it quickly.

  “I think I’ve heard of Virtus…yeah. I think I’ve seen one of their billboards or something. This logo looks familiar. You know this guy?”

  “I just met him today, at the convention center.”

  Taylor shot her a teasing smile. “Big Family Tree fan?”

  Sierra laughed, relaxing into the couch. “Actually…” She trailed off, dropping into the memory of meeting Sean again. How hot and protective and in control he’d been. Her stomach swirled as she conjured up the way his hands had felt on her skin, the delicious way his eyes had crinkled when he smiled, the way she’d felt instantly safe and comfortable with him…

  “Uh, hello? Earth to Sierra. Where did you go?” Before she could answer, Taylor plowed ahead, her eyes wide. “Is he hot?” She picked up Sean’s card from where it lay between them on the couch and pointed it at Sierra. “He is hot, isn’t he?”

  Sierra’s cheeks heated and she snatched the card back. “Yes, he’s hot, but that’s not why I want to hire him.” He’d made her feel so safe. Protected. While sitting with him, she’d known that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.

  “Oh my God! Look at you!” Taylor slapped her leg playfully, a wide smile on her face.

  “What?”

  “You’re all swoony.”

  Giving up any pretense, Sierra let her head tip back against the sofa and rolled her neck to look at Taylor.

  “Tay, you should see this guy. Hot doesn’t even scratch the surface.”

  Taylor took a sip of her wine. “Start from the beginning, and tell me everything.”

  Chapter 3

  Sean took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of fresh-cut grass, old leather, and cooling evening air. Metal baseball bats clanged softly together in his gear bag as he walked across the diamond to his team’s bench, puffs of dust swirling up around his feet with each step. Dozens of spectators dotted the bleachers of Pote Field, chatting among themselves and watching the players set up. Dropping his gear by the bench, Sean bent over to unzip the bag.

  “Hey, man. Glad to see you didn’t get stuck at work. For once.” Antonio Rodriguez, one of Sean’s oldest friends, clapped him hard on the back, a bat tipped casually over his shoulder.

  “What do you mean, for once? I’ve only missed a couple of games.” Sean straightened, shoving a pair of black-and-white batting gloves into his back pocket, mentally tallying how many games he’d missed since the start of the season two months ago.

  “Actually you’ve missed six.” Antonio leaned against the chain link fence separating the bench from the diamond, studying Sean.

  “Shit. Really?” Sean shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. Work’s been crazy lately. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Hey, look! It’s the ghost! How you been?”

  After exchanging greetings with a few of the other teammates, Sean pulled his cleats out of his bag, dropping down onto the bench to lace them. “So how’s it going? You good?” he asked, glancing up at Antonio.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Caught a few big cases at work.”

  “Oh yeah? Anything interesting?”

  “Dude, it’s Major Crimes at the LAPD. It’s all interesting.”

  Sean stood, brushing his hands over the pants of his uniform. “Lap?”

  Antonio nodded. “Yeah. You should probably warm up nice and slow. Get all that rust off you.”

  Guilt gnawed at Sean, and he shoved a hand through his hair before tugging his cap down over his eyes. “I know. Some stuff’s come up at work, and—”

  Antonio blew out a breath, his lips flapping together. “Man, you work too much.”

  Sean didn’t say anything. What the hell was he supposed to say
? Antonio was right. He probably did work too much. He prided himself on his work, and if a client needed him, he did his best to be there. Over the past several years, he’d taken on more and more responsibility at Virtus, and now that meant not only working with his own clients, but supervising a team of four other bodyguards, and making decisions about staffing, company expenditures, and training. His dad expected a lot of him, and Sean expected a lot of himself, so it worked—from a professional standpoint, at least.

  From a personal standpoint, things were a big fucking mess, and there was really no way to fix it. Unless someone had a time machine, Sean and his father were both stuck, living with what had happened over ten years ago now.

  It was the only time Sean had failed to protect someone. And he lived with the guilt every day, regret and remorse eating at him like a cancer. So yes, he worked a lot, and yes, he took his job damn seriously. Never again would he fail someone like that. No matter the cost.

  Jogging side by side, they traced the perimeter of the field. The diamond was nestled into the southeast corner of Griffith Park, and to the east, the Hollywood sign glowed faintly pink in the fading daylight. Sean barely registered the famous landmark as he jogged, having seen it thousands of times. He’d grown up in Los Angeles, and he was numb to the exotic allure it held for tourists. A large hill separated the baseball diamond from the golf course on the other side, dotted with trees and shrubs. The sun dipped behind the horizon, painting everything a hazy pinkish-yellow hue. As they passed the stands, Sean could feel Antonio’s eyes on him.

  “Hey, is Jana coming?” Antonio asked, slightly out of breath. He was having a hard time keeping up with Sean’s long, easy strides.

  “Oh. Uh, no.”

  “She busy?”

  Sean glanced sideways at Antonio. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

  “What happened?” They each grabbed a glove, and Sean picked up a ball and tossed it to Antonio, who backed away several feet before throwing it back. Other members of the team hung around, stretching and talking, a few others also tossing a ball back and forth.

  “Nothing. She just…I had to cancel a few times for work. She couldn’t deal with my schedule.”

  “Can’t say I blame her,” said Antonio, his voice flat as he shot Sean a pointed look. “That’s too bad, man. I liked her.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Sean adjusted his cap, tugging it lower over his eyes. He and Jana had only dated casually for a few months, and he couldn’t honestly say he’d been surprised when she’d pulled the plug. It wasn’t the first time his schedule had made trying to date pretty damn difficult.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, bro, but you need to loosen up a little. I get that your job’s important to you. Trust me, I do. But you gotta live your life too, man, otherwise what’s the fucking point? I’m not saying take it less seriously, but you need to check your priorities. Work-life balance, man. Google that shit.”

  Sean just laughed, knowing Antonio was right, but also knowing he probably wasn’t going to be changing his schedule. Protecting people, helping them through difficult, sometimes dangerous, situations, gave him a sense of purpose. Each person he helped earned him the tiniest measure of redemption. And making sure Virtus remained one of the best private security companies in California eased some of his guilt. Sometimes. So he worked his ass off because he didn’t know what else to do with himself.

  By the time the game ended, the sun had set completely and the floodlights had switched on, illuminating the field in a harsh white flare of artificial light. Sean peeled off his batting gloves and dropped them into his bag.

  “Victory beers at Frank’s Bar. You in?” Antonio’s car keys jingled in his hand.

  Sean nodded, a grin spreading across his face. “Yeah, sure. And beers are on me, since I’ve been MIA lately.”

  Antonio clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, you wanna buy us all beer, you can disappear as often as you like.”

  Frank’s Bar and Grill was a tradition for the team. After every game they gathered to either celebrate or commiserate over burgers and beer. Frank reserved a section at the back for them every Wednesday, knowing they’d be in.

  Red vinyl booths lined the walls, with thickly shellacked wooden tables and chairs filling the floor space. A long, wide bar dominated the left side of the room, with a row of wooden stools standing at attention in front of it. Frank waved from behind the bar as the team filtered in, and he turned up the volume on the classic rock pumping from the speakers, already compensating for the cacophony of over a dozen men celebrating and blowing off steam.

  Sliding onto the chair next to Sean, Antonio elbowed him. “You got any new celebrity stories?” A few other heads swiveled in his direction at Antonio’s question, and Sean smiled, shaking his head slightly. They were all under the impression that being a bodyguard was something glamorous and exciting, and asked him often about the celebrities he met. He shared stories when he could, but only within the bounds of confidentiality. There was something hilarious about a bunch of guys who lived within spitting distance of Hollywood asking him for celebrity gossip, thinking he was connected, and he was having too much fun to disabuse them of the notion. He actually didn’t deal with celebrities that often. While Virtus had several actors and musicians as clients, the majority of its business came from politicians, business executives, and athletes, and from acting as a security consultant for various events.

  “Actually, yeah, I did meet someone today.” And damn if something tiny and light didn’t flutter in his chest at the thought of Sierra, weighted down only by the accompanying brick in his stomach as he remembered how scared she’d looked at first.

  Antonio rolled his eyes and set his beer bottle down. “Are you gonna make us guess?”

  Sean sat back in his seat, his fingers wrapping around the neck of his beer bottle. “It’s no fun if you don’t.” He smiled and brought the bottle to his lips.

  “Man or woman?” asked one of his teammates.

  “Woman. I met her at 90’s Con.”

  They all threw out incorrect guesses, Sean shaking his head at each name. “I’ll give you a hint,” he said, taking another sip of his beer, and he didn’t realize just how tense his shoulders had been until they started to relax. “I bet at least one of you had that famous poster of her wearing a red bikini.”

  “Sierra Blake!” Antonio shouted out her name, and the entire team agreed with his guess. The red bikini hint had given it away. Any straight male between the ages of twenty-five and forty knew that poster. It featured an eighteen-year-old Sierra, tanned and smiling, wearing a tiny red bikini and washing a car. It had been a promotional tool for a cheesy prime-time soap, Sunset Cove.

  “So are you working for her?” a teammate prompted. Sean picked at the label of his beer bottle, the tension returning to his shoulders. No, he wasn’t working for her.

  And everything about that felt wrong. Helping her, looking after her today, had felt good. Right. She’d seemed OK when she’d gone back into the convention center, and he really hoped she was. And even more than that, he wished he had a way of finding out whether she was, in fact, OK. She was clearly strong and intelligent—not to mention beautiful—and it wasn’t that he didn’t think she could look after herself.

  He just wanted to do it for her.

  The same tug in his chest he’d felt that afternoon pulled the air out of his lungs, and Sean finally recognized it for what it was.

  Need. The need to protect her and keep her safe. The need to comfort her. The need to be near her again, and to touch her again. These urges swirling through him, they weren’t wishes, or wants, or ideas. They were needs, the way food, water, and air are needs.

  Quickly Sean recounted a watered-down version of the story of how he’d met Sierra, simply indicating that she’d had a run-in with some protesters, and was upset. She’d been embarrassed enough; he didn’t want to get into the gritty details of the attack.

  He was protecting her, even w
hen she wasn’t around. Even when he’d probably never see her again.

  The tug was almost painful.

  “What was she like?”

  “She was great. Upset about the protesters, but also really nice.” Sean paused, searching for the right word, but there wasn’t one. He wanted to find a word that summed her up, that wrapped her neatly into a little package, but he couldn’t. She’d seemed a lot of things to him. Smart. Warm. Funny. Sexy. Vulnerable. Strong. Fucking adorable.

  Beautiful.

  “Is she still hot? I can’t remember the last thing I saw her act in.”

  Sean rubbed a hand over his mouth, smiling. “Yeah. She’s still hot.” A round of approving noises rose up from his teammates.

  “I heard about her getting hit with that diaper at the convention. Poor girl.” Mike, the oldest member of the team, shook his head sadly.

  “She handled it really well,” said Sean, a wave of pride washing over him at how strong and together she’d been despite what had happened.

  “She single? Married? What’s her deal?” Antonio asked, nudging Sean.

  “No idea.” He picked at the label on his beer bottle again as his jaw tightened, the image of Sierra walking back into the convention center with Rory searing through his brain.

  “Isn’t she dating that state senator? The one who was on the cover of Men’s Health?” asked another teammate.

  “Jack Nikolaidis?” Sean sat up a bit straighter, and a drop of condensation from the beer bottle rolled down over his fingers, mirroring the cold trickle working its way down his spine. Through work, Sean had heard whispers that Nikolaidis wasn’t quite what he seemed. Some of the other politicians he worked with had mentioned rumors about corruption, and bribery, and maybe even criminal ties. But they were just rumors, and a lot of people loved Jack. He was attractive, wealthy, well-educated, and charming. Some even thought he might be the next governor of California, if he played his cards right.

  “Not anymore. They broke up a few months ago now. The rumor’s that he wanted to settle down, have a family, and she wasn’t interested, so when he got too serious, she dumped him,” said Mike, leaning forward conspiratorially on his elbows. “Didn’t exactly paint her in the best light, but given that he’s a politician, and he’s the one who got dumped by a beautiful woman, I’m sure his people are spinning it.” He was met with several puzzled, surprised looks. “What? My wife has a subscription to People.”