by Nina Singh
She leaned back farther in her chair, appearing even more accommodating. “It’ll just be a couple of days.”
He sucked in a breath. “You do realize I have to guard you.”
“Why?” She opened her hands. “Look around you. The only thing these guys care about is my ability to get them jobs, and enough money to support their kids.”
“Doesn’t matter. The official word from the estate is once we find an heir that heir gets a bodyguard.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“It’s not my rule. It’s the attorney’s rule. And it’s warranted. We had a...misstep...with the first heir we found. She was on her own in a coffee shop and somebody took pictures of her, spied on her phone, figured out who she was.”
The word misstep caught her attention, but her brain shimmied when he said first heir. She sat up on her seat. “I have a sibling?”
“You don’t read the papers? It was all over the news when the reporter outed her.”
“I work twelve-hour days. I don’t have time for tabloids, magazines or even my local paper. I read three respected online sites. They don’t print gossip and most certainly don’t write about celebrities. They didn’t even report it when my dad died. I found out from my mom.”
He shook his head, but said, “You have two siblings. We’ve found you and your sister. She’s the youngest heir, a twenty-six-year-old social worker.”
Amazement flooded her. “I have a sister.”
“Half sister. Leni Long.” He paused for a second, then said, “Didn’t you ever check to see if Mark had any other kids?”
She gaped at him. “How? Look at every birth record in every state to see if his name was on any birth certificates?”
“That’s how the estate found you. Mark’s name was on your birth certificate.”
“No kidding. I already offered up my birth certificate but apparently only DNA testing will do.”
“Hey, when there’s an opportunity for irrefutable proof available and we’ve got scam artists coming up with some really great fake birth certificates, why not use it? DNA rules out the fakes.”
“I’m not a fake.”
“I know that and you know that, but we’re holding everybody to the same standard.”
“Fabulous.” She sighed with disgust but peeked over at him. “Tell me more about my sister.”
“She divides her time between New York with her boyfriend, Nick Kourakis, and her small town in Kansas where she’s using a chunk of her share of the estate to spruce up the place.”
“She’s renovating an entire town?”
“Her hometown. She’s probably the nicest person I’ve ever met.”
The thought of having a sibling washed over her. Raised in the country, with only her mom, in a huge, four-bedroom farmhouse, she’d spent a lot of lonely hours. During the day, she’d wish for someone to toss a ball with or explore the woods behind the barn. Sometimes at night, she’d pretended she was on the bottom bed of bunk beds and her sister was above her. Sometimes that sister would be older and wiser. Sometimes she’d be younger and in need of Charlotte’s counsel. But no matter how she’d imagined her sister they’d been best friends.
She and Leni Long had missed having a childhood together. But what would it be like to have an adult sister? What would it be like to have someone who shared her blood, her oddball past? Someone who understood being Mark Hinton’s kid wasn’t a joyride.
“Sorry. That just threw me for a loop, and I needed a second.”
“You could fly to New York with me today and probably have dinner with her tonight.”
The thought almost made her breathless and tempted her far too much. Especially when she had a job to do.
“We’re still waiting for my replacement.”
He slapped his hands on his knees. “All right. Fine. Then I’ll set up shop here for a few days. Where you go, I go.”
As he rose from his seat, the squeak of the main door opening rippled into her office.
“Hey, Charlotte?” Aaron Birmingham entered the trailer, calling her.
Charlotte yelled, “In here, Aaron.”
The front-end-loader operator clamored across the common area and into her office. Seeing Jace, he winced. “Oh, hey! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had someone from corporate in here.”
“He’s not from corporate. He’s...” Oh, crap. The man was dressed too well to say he was a construction worker. And he was going to be following her around. She thought for a second, but there was only one kind of person who wouldn’t look suspicious following her around. She smiled.
“He’s my new assistant.”
Aaron’s face brightened. “So, you got corporate to loosen the purse strings!”
“A lot more than I thought I could,” she said, pointing at Jace. “Look at that suit.”
“Yeah, buddy. You really don’t want to be wearing your good clothes here. Tomorrow you should come in jeans.”
Charlotte leaned back in her chair and laughed. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, after all?
Jace scowled at her, and feminine hormones that she could usually control rose up like a tidal wave of need. She did not fault her hormones in the slightest. Jace MacDonald was tall, broad-shouldered, good-looking and every bit as cantankerous as she was. Any woman who liked a man who treated her as an equal would be attracted to him. The trick was not to let it show.
Unfortunately, she had days of him shadowing her everywhere she went. She’d have to hide the silly feelings at least eight hours a day. That was not going to be easy because he checked all the boxes of her list of things she wanted in a mate—
Her chest froze as another thought popped into her head. What if he was “The One”? He really did check all her boxes. Gorgeous. Tall. Strong. Treated her like an equal. And not intimidated by her.
Aaron snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Earth to Charlotte. I came in here to ask you about the area by the pond.”
She came to attention quickly, not wanting her gorgeous bodyguard—
Oh, damn. He was her bodyguard—sent to her by her wealthy, uncaring, mean-spirited father’s estate.
It wasn’t an accident or glorious trick of fate that this handsome man had stumbled onto her jobsite. He worked for her dad—albeit via his estate. It would be a cold, frosty day in hell before she even considered getting chummy with one of her dad’s employees.
She took another quick inventory of striking Jace MacDonald, dressed in black, looking dark and mysterious and so sexy even she could have swooned.
Too bad.
She dismissed her disappointment. Right now, she needed to get all the facts about his bodyguard duties for the next few days and come up with a plan to keep her distance, so she didn’t slip up and do something foolish like flirt with him.
Because the last thing she wanted to do was get involved with someone, anyone, who had liked or respected the dad who had made the last twenty-eight years of her mom’s life miserable.
Copyright © 2020 by Linda Susan Meier
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ISBN: 9781488065088
Her Billionaire Protector
Copyright © 2020 by Nilay Nina
Singh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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