But then… nothing. The trail went cold. No photos. No interviews. No scandals. No receipts. For a man with a grin that cocky, it was almost suspicious how carefully he’d erased himself from the outside world. Like how the world perceived him was at the bottom of the list of his priorities.
I certainly knew what priority number one was.
And right now she was staring back at me threw the window… Christ I needed to run a brush threw my hair.
My slipper-covered foot kicked the door before I hopped over the wall that separated our front doors, and slid insidebefore he charged back out here. I pushed the door shut behind me, but as I passed the living room, the sound of scurrying and a loud thud stopped me in my tracks. My brows knitted as I stepped inside, then froze at the sight of my housemates, scattered across the room in the least casual “casual” poses I’d ever seen.
I crossed my arms, hip cocking to the side. “Were you spying?”
Goldie’s eyes flicked to mine, her body stiff against the fireplace. “No. No, absolutely not.”
Rory peeled her nose from her book, which would’ve been normal had it not been upside down. “Spying?” She repeated the word slowly, like she’d never heard it before. “Why would we be spying?”
Daisy, who was nestled on the floor, right underneath the windowsill that coincidentally looked out onto the porch, lifted her head, her curls bouncing with the spring that only came from it being freshly diffused. “We’re just… being casual. This is us being casual and not at all spying.”
I fought a laugh, my bottom lip sinking beneath my teeth as I nodded. “Oh. Cool.” My eyes darted to each one of them. “If you’re all just being casual and have no pressing questions about where I just was, then I’ll head up to my room to get changed—”
“What’s he like?”
“Why did he have bags?”
“Where on earth didyou find him?”
“Does he just exist with that smouldering look or does he only do that with you?”
I rolled my eyes as I turned back around.
Such busybodies, this lot.
I sighed, the air filled with the secret that I loved a good gossip as much as the rest of these girls, as I collapsed down onto the sofa on the back wall, crossing my legs. “He’s… weird.”
Like a flash, all the girls shuffled to face me, falling out of their staged poses and handing over their attention to me.
“He doesn’t look weird,” Goldie hummed, her chin nestled into her palms.
My face screwed as I tucked my hair behind my ears. “Not a weird weird, more of a mysterious weird.”
“That’s hot,” Daisy giggled.
Disagreeing was pointless. It was hot. But that didn’t cancel out the arsehole-ness of him.
“Even so, I don’t fucking know the guy. He just showed up at the doorstep last Monday, was very cryptic about why he was here, and then appeared in the corner of the conference room and didn’t mention to Louellen that he’d been to see me.”
Repeating that all in my head only made the questions start to pile up again, and this time I couldn’t hold them in.
“He’s hell-bent on keeping me safe, and I just don’t get it.”
Rory shrugged, sweetness popping in her rosy cheeks. “Well, he’s a bodyguard, right? Surely he’s just doing his job.”
“But it’s not even his job to do.” My hands raked through the damp ends of my hair. “He’s the owner of the company, he shouldn’t be out here actually doing the job. The onlyexplanation he gave me was that the whole reason he built his company was because of an incident like what happened between me and…”
I didn’t say his name. It was banned in this house.
Instead I flailed my hand.
Daisy shuffled as she gathered her hair at the top of her head, wrapping a broidery scrunchie around her curls. “Maybe it’s just guilt.” She shrugged, her hands still in her hair. “If I’d built a company because someone was attacked, and then years later the same thing had happened under my watch, I’d probably want to do everything I could to ensure that person’s safety.”
“She’s probably right,” Goldie chimed in, slipping to her knees. “There’s probably nobody he trusts more than himself, and therein lies the out-of-the-blue protectiveness over you.”
