Page 28 of Gunnar

I jolt upright, my eyes springing open. “What?”

“Who is he?” Leslie’s voice rises, taking on a manic energy she gets when she smells an opportunity. “The public is absolutely obsessed. The photos are everywhere. You’re trending on Twitter, and everyone wants to know about him. Who is this guy who carried you out of the restaurant? The hot guy with the arms, the jaw, and the⁠—”

“He’s one of the new bodyguards,” I interrupt, not wanting to hear where this is going.

“Well,” Leslie purrs, “he could guard my body.”

“Leslie!”

She laughs, a rich, full-bellied, delighted sound. “Oh, come on. Tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

I open my mouth to deny it, insist that I hate him, and that the only thing I feel when I look at Gunnar is annoyance and disdain. But I can’t, because I have thought about it—briefly when he first arrived and constantly since last night.

How could you not think about a guy who looks at you like he wants to devour you whole?

My thoughts are consumed with his hands, that deep, gravelly voice, and the way he makes me feel both small and safe when he towers over me.

“He’s insufferable,” I exhale. It’s true… even if it’s not the whole truth.

“Yeah,” Leslie drawls, clearly not believing me for a second. “Based on the photo TMZ posted, the smile on your face is screaming how much you hate him.”

“What photo?” I ask, already scrambling to open the TMZ app. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t smiling. I was furious. I was⁠—”

The photo loads, stealing my entire train of thought. It’s not one of the ones where I’m upside down with my hair swinging and my dress riding up to a dangerously risqué territory. Nor is it one of the images with me pounding my fists against his back. It’s the moment after, when he dropped me into the passenger seat of my Aston Martin. I’m looking up at him, my face tilted toward his, and my expression is undeniably a smile. It’s not a big toothy grin, but I am clearly pleased. My eyes are bright, and my lips are curved. I look like a woman who is exactly where she wants to be, getting manhandled by a towering brute.

“Dev?” Leslie’s voice is distant and tinny. “You still there?”

“Yeah,” I breathe, scrolling to the next photo before making my way through the entire gallery. There are tons of them. The paparazzi were more than thorough, capturing every moment of exit from every imaginable angle. As I scroll, I see things I missed before. Details I was too angry—and humiliated—to notice before.

I had thought that his hand on my ass was a grope. That he was taking liberties and using the situation to touch me inappropriately. But looking at the photos of me slung over his shoulder, the placement of his fingers and tension in his forearm weren’t to cop a feel.

The silk dress barely covered me when I was standing upright. Upside down, it would have pooled around my hips, exposing my underwear—or worse—to the cameras, but Gunnar held my dress down. His large hand spans the curve of my ass, pinning the fabric in place, while his muscular forearm shields me from the kind of photos that would have ended up on porn sites before midnight.

He might have been a caveman, but he was also a gentleman.

“Dev?” Leslie sounds more concerned. “You okay?”

“Yeah… uh… I have to go,” I whisper, my throat tight.

“Wait! We need to talk strategy. The public is eating this up. We could leverage this, make it work for us. A little mystery, a little romance: the brooding bodyguard and the movie star⁠—”

“I’ll call you back.”

Hanging up before she can protest, my thumb hovers over the screen, my gaze fixed on the photo where his palm cradles me with such careful possession. He protected my modesty. While I was screaming at him, hitting him, and calling him names, he was making sure the world didn’t see more than I wanted to show.

I keep scrolling, my heart racing a little faster with each swipe, and I find a video from someone who captured the whole thing on their phone. I watch myself disappear over his shoulder. When he adjusts his grip, his free hand comes up to steady my legs, to keep me from slipping and make sure I’m safe even while I’m fighting him.

The video continues as he deposits me into the car. When he reaches across me for the seatbelt, his face inches from mine, I watch myself smile. And for the first time, I see his reaction to it. His face shifts, the corner of his mouth twitching, like he’s fighting the urge to smile back at me. His eyes drop to my lips, and I can feel the electricity between us for a brief moment before he pulls away.

My pulse racing, I set my phone down on the couch beside me, the video paused at the second the seatbelt clicks, staring up at me. With his hands on me and the expressions on our faces, we look like something out of a movie. The realization of what I’m looking at hits me like a physical blow, stealing my breath.

I like the controlling, overbearing neanderthal…

And judging by the way he’s looking back at me, the feeling is mutual.

I stand at the kitchen counter with my coffee in front of me, watching the steam curl upward in lazy spirals that evaporate before they reach the cabinets. The morning sun cuts through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting long rectangles of light across the room.

Since the restaurant incident, or more correctly, the tabloid fallout, Devyn won’t speak to me. Two days. Forty-eight hours of silence that feels like a lifetime. I simply did my job.