"Then my job gets harder. I don't like when my job gets hard."
"That sounds like a you problem."
"It'll be an everyone problem if you don't follow the rules." He nods toward my door. "I'm in the room next to yours. Adjoining door. Lock's on my side."
I make a face. "There's no adjoining door."
"There is now. Your father had modifications made before you arrived." He says it like he's discussing the weather. "If someone gets into this house, I need immediate access to you."
"So you can just... walk into my room whenever you want?"
"If there's a threat, yes."
"And if there's not a threat? If I'm sleeping, or changing, or?"
"Then I'll be on my side of the door, Miss Sterling. Doing my job."
I stare at him. He stares back. The silence stretches until it's almost unbearable, but he doesn't fidget, doesn't blink, doesn't do any of the things normal people do when a conversation gets uncomfortable.
He just waits.
"I want a different bodyguard," I say.
"No."
"You don't get to tell me no. I'll call my father!"
"Your father is the one who hired me." Still no inflection. Still no reaction. "He was very specific. You stay here. You follow the rules. I keep you alive. That's the arrangement."
"I didn't agree to any arrangement."
"You didn't have to."
The fury rises so fast I almost choke on it. I'm twenty-three years old. I have my own money, my own life, my own apartment in the city that I chose and decorated and paid for with brand deals my father thinks are beneath me. And now I'm being shipped off to a house I hate, babysat by a man who looks at me like I'm nothing, all because some psycho on the internet can't handle rejection.
"Go to hell," I say sweetly.
"I've slept in worse places," he deadpans.
He turns and walks away. Some petty part of me can't let him have the last word.
"I'm going to make your life hell," I call after him. "You know that, right? I'm going to be the worst assignment you've ever had."
He pauses. When he looks back at me, there's a hint of amusement in his expression.
"I spent eight years in prison, Miss Sterling. You're not even close to the worst thing I've had to survive."
And then he's gone, disappearing around the corner without another glance.
I stand there for a long moment, heart pounding, mind spinning.
Eight years in prison.
My father hired an ex-con to protect me. A man with tattoos up his neck and scars on his face and hands that look like they've done terrible things. A man who looks at me like I'm nothing—not pretty, not rich, not special, just ajob.
***
The master suite looks exactly like it did seven years ago.
