I nod.
He rises from the bed, giving Monty a quick fuss as he passes. He walks over to my bedroom door. His naked back looks even broader when he’s standing wearing just suit pants… and a gun.
“The vanilla’s in the cabinet above the sink.”
He looks back at me over his shoulder and nods.
I lean back against the pillow as he leaves, blowing out a breath. Monty gets up from the foot of the bed and flops himself down next to me, putting his head on the pillow where Denver slept. He whines until I fuss him.
“You’re a good boy,” I coo. “I’m going to make sure nothing ever happens to you, okay? Denver and I are both going to look after you.”
He licks at my face, and I sink my nose into one of his patches of hair as I reach up to touch my necklace.
But it’s gone. My brother’s gone.
“I can’t lose you too,” I sniff, kissing Monty’s head. “Not you.”
“What’s the likelihood that the people responsible for trying to take Monty are the same ones who trashed Sinclair’s car?”
I sit on my couch rubbing at my temples as my father stands with Denver, Killian, and Jenson, going over last night again.
“From experience, I’d say it’s highly likely,” Denver tells my father before his gaze tracks to me.
He’s standing across the room, the furthest away from me, but his eyes have never left me for more than a few seconds since they all arrived.
“You okay?”he mouths.
I nod, trying not to show that I’m surprised by him speaking to me. It’s the most words he’s directed at me since he woke up and threw me down into my mattress like I was in danger from touching his gun. I thought at first it was anger that I’d touched something of his. But the way he hulked his grumpy frame around my kitchen as he made us both coffee when I snuck out of bed to watch him, cursing to himself when he thought he was alone, I realized the truth.
He's angry at himself. Angry that he let his guard down and that I could have gotten hurt if I’d handled it incorrectly. It wasthe way he’d grumbled“She’s yours to protect, idiot,”to himself as he stood, hands braced on the kitchen counter, huge shoulder muscles taut and straining, that I’d really understood something about him.
Denver’s never just mad. He’s always mad at himself when something could have ended differently. When he thinks he almost allowed something bad to happen.
And now I have even more questions about who he was before he came to work for my father six years ago, because I still know nothing about him except that he likes vanilla in his coffee… and that he has a huge dick that’s hard as steel when he wakes up.
I look away from him, as I tune back into their conversation.
“Those comments are trending online,” my father says. His eyes meet mine, softening as I reach for Monty by my feet and pull him up into my lap. “I’m sorry you had to see them, Sweetheart. But they’re not going away. We need to deal with them.”
He looks at Denver. “Killian said the posting from fans has ramped up too?”
“What?” I ask.
Denver glances at me guiltily, then answers my father, “They have. Her session times with Brad Garrett-Charles have been leaked. The groomer Monty goes to?—”
I gasp and clutch Monty tighter.
“They know where Sinclair goes to buy coffees in the mornings. Where she likes to walk Monty. The stores she’s seen in most regularly,” Killian adds.
Jenson offers me a strained smile when my father curses.
“Goddammit. They know all her movements. She won’t be able to step foot outside without an audience,” my father snaps.
“At least if the press is on her even more than usual, no one else can get close without witnesses,” Jenson offers.
“He’s right,” Killian adds, and I could jump up and kiss him for the way he’s trying to ease the worry that’s creasing my father’s forehead. Because when my father gets worried, he makes decisions that there’s no talking him out of. Like when he assigned Denver to be my bodyguard and?—
“You need to get out of the city for a while, Sweetheart.”
