Get answers.
Don’t fall for the bodyguard.
Except my lips still tingle.
And my heart is already keeping time wrong.
Chapter 4
Knox
Therearerulestoprotecting assets. Some are written down in training manuals. Most aren’t.
The most important one: don’t get attached.
She’s a person, yeah, but she’s also a job. The job is to keep her breathing until the threat is neutralized. You don’t flirt. You don’t bend the line. You don’t look at her legs or wonder what her laugh sounds like when it’s not edged with fear.
And you sure as hell don’t kiss her.
Which I did.
The thing about rules is they exist to be tested.
Sierra Hayes Quinn is temptation wrapped up in a curvy little package. She sits beside me in my truck, clutching her purse like it’s a life raft, and all I can think about is how her pulse fluttered under my thumb.
How if circumstances were different, if she wasn’t an asset, if there wasn’t so much age between us, I’d be leaning over to taste that mouth instead of reciting security protocols in my head.
I tighten my grip on the wheel.
Focus.
She’s a job. She’s an asset. She's not yours.
Grayson trusts me with assignments like this because I get things done. I’m good at staying detached. It’s how I survived the military and a family that shattered when my brother died, and my father poured whiskey on his grief until it burned everything around him.
Distance is my default.
It’s also why I live alone in a cabin on the far edge of The Ranch, why I spend more nights riding fences and breaking colts than I do sitting at bars in town. My world is quiet by design.
Sierra is not quiet.
Even in her silence, she hums with life. She fidgets with the hem of her shirt, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, sighs softly as she stares out the window. Like she’s trying to hold herself together with small motions, so she doesn’t fall apart.
We roll into Valor Springs and turn off the two-lane highway into a pool of yellow light thrown by a flickering neon sign that reads THE GRILL.
The parking lot is mostly empty. It’s near midnight on a weekday. A couple of pickup trucks sit nose to tail near the entrance, and a lone motorcycle rests in the shadows like it belongs to somebody who doesn’t care who sees it. A string of white lights hangs around the door. It’s kitschy and homey as hell.
Sierra looks at it like it’s a foreign planet.
“You’ll love this place,” I tell her. “Trust me.”
She unbuckles her seat belt and reaches for the door.
I’m out and around before she can hop down. Old habits die hard. Chivalry is a reflex instilled by my mother before she left and cemented by the military after. I open the door for her.
She gives me a look that says she’s not sure if she’s annoyed or pleased, then slides out.
Stop looking at her ass,I tell myself.
