The Billionaire's Bodyguard

by Elana Johnson

  He was tired of writing articles about poker anyway.

  And he’d come back to Hawaii, right here to Getaway Bay, because he’d felt something here he hadn’t anywhere else. He still wasn’t sure what it was, and at the moment, all he could feel was the weight and sharpness of Lexie’s glare.

  “So?” He stepped toward the pegboard and took down her keys. “Just a quick ride.” He sensed her wavering, because the woman loved driving at night, under the stars, when no one else was awake.

  At least she had when they were dating in New York. And they’d had to go pretty far outside the city to get a dark enough sky to see the stars.

  “You’ll lose your job,” she said.

  “I’ll find another one.”

  She snorted, but Jason felt very near victory. She hadn’t even gotten close to the word no yet.

  “This pays your bills?”

  “How about I tell you about it while we drive around the island? Just over to the volcano fields and back. Thirty minutes, tops.” He jangled the keys. “It’s really dark out there tonight. Loads of stars. And you have a convertible.” He added a smile to his statement, his memory suddenly bringing forth something she’d told him in his office at the bar in New York.

  Your smile makes me want to kiss you.

  He hoped it still did. The way her eyes dropped to his mouth might be a good indicator that she was reliving the same memory.

  “I’m tired,” she said.

  “An excuse,” he shot back. “Heard that one lots of times.”

  “I bet you have.” She folded her arms, and Jason didn’t like that. He’d taken a class on body language during his brief stint as a police officer in Baltimore. Folded arms meant closed off. Done talking. Holding something back.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll get your car.” He walked away, half-hoping she’d call him back. Or catch up to him and walk beside him. She did neither.

  He got behind the wheel of her car, folding his long legs under the steering wheel before starting the ignition. Whoever had sold her this car had done a great job, because it didn’t seem like the kind of car Lexie would like.

  Black, sleek, convertible, leather seats, and a ton of horsepower under the hood. Felt like more Luke’s style, and he wondered if her younger brother had bought her the car as a gift. No matter what, Jason liked driving it, even if it was ten miles per hour through a parking garage.

  He pulled up to where she still stood on the curb, now swiping through something on her phone. She didn’t even look up when he parked and got out. He dutifully moved the seat back, as had been drilled into him, and left one hand on the door frame so he could close it for her after she’d slid inside the vehicle.

  She didn’t move, and Jason had nothing better to do. He’d been watching a movie on his phone before the little meeting upstairs had broken up, but nothing was as interesting as Lexie Keller. Nothing ever had been, not for Jason.

  His heart bumped extra hard for a beat, then steadied while he continued watching her. She finally looked up and walked over to him, wearing such different clothes from what she did at the drink stand where she worked.

  Well, Jason was still trying to figure out if she actually got paid for her time there. He couldn’t fathom why she’d volunteer to blend up frozen drinks, but she certainly didn’t need the money.

  Maybe she does, he thought, and not for the first time. So maybe he spent way too much time thinking about Lexie. Maybe he had been for seven long years.

  “I’ll give you twenty-five minutes.” She tapped one perfectly manicured finger against his chest and walked past him and around the front of the car. He laughed when he noticed the extra sway in her hip and as she cocked one eyebrow before ducking into the passenger seat.

  Jason cast one long look at the sliding glass doors that led into the foyer, knowing that Owen Church, the general manager, had left three hours ago. No one was scheduled to come in tonight, or else he’d have their name on a list, with the arrival time of their flight. Sweet Breeze operated at the highest levels of customer service, right down to the valet.

  He could spare thirty minutes. No one would even know.

  So he moved the seat back and got behind the wheel again. With the door closed, and one hand on the gear shift, he asked, “What made you change your mind?”

  “Just drive, Jason.” Lexie buckled her seat belt, and pulled her hair out of the tight ponytail it had been in all day. She shook her head, the waves and waves of dark hair tumbling over her shoulders and down her back.

  Jason felt the silky ghost of it between his fingers, and every muscle in his body tightened and his mouth turned dry.

  He pushed the button to lower the top and then put the car in gear and got it going, thinking maybe he should just take her back to his place and see what else he could convince her to do. He’d never had to coax her into kissing him, but as he glanced right to check the non-existent traffic, he knew he’d have to do a lot of work to get out of her doghouse.

  “Music?” he asked.

  “Have we ever listened to music on our joyrides?”

  Jason noted the plural pronouns of we and our, and they made him smile. He tried to hide it as he accelerated down the main streets and through all the green lights. Soon enough, they left Getaway Bay behind and were winding along the coast.

  “It really is dark,” she said. Her hair flew around her face as she tipped it toward the heavens, and Jason thought he’d never seen anything quite as angelic as Lexie Keller, at midnight, flying along the highway on a tropical island.

  If someone had told Jason this morning this was what he’d be doing tonight, he would’ve scoffed and laughed and referred them to a psychiatrist. But things had changed the moment Lexie had stared him down from the drink stand. He didn’t try to hide when he went by The Straw, but he also never went to order anything either.

  Probably should have.

  But then he’d have to talk, as well as formally reveal his presence on the island, and he hadn’t wanted to do either of those.

  Even now, he waited for her to say something. Jason was exceptionally good at waiting. His life as a private detective in Brooklyn had taught him that.

  “How long do you plan on staying on the island?” Lexie asked.

  “Indefinitely,” he said. “I bought a place over in the other bay, right on the tip of the island.”

  “You know that area gets hit by every tropical storm that comes our way, right?”

  Again with the plural pronoun. “It’s kind of a dive already, so.” He shrugged like he didn’t care about losing his beachfront property. But just because it was a six-hundred-square-foot studio didn’t mean he didn’t love it.

  “And you’re a valet.”

  “And I work security at the hotel too,” he said.

  She made a small harrumphing noise that indicated her disapproval. He was actually surprised she hadn’t seen him standing next to the lobby or over by the restaurant. But most people ignored a cop until they needed one. Walked right on by, their noses buried in their phones, or a conversation, or in Lexie’s case, worrying over if her clothes were at ninety-degree angles.

  He smiled just thinking about her perfectionism. The headlights flashed over the sign that said they would arrive at the volcano fields in only a mile. He gunned the engine, determined to cover that mile in only seconds.

  Lexie squealed, her laughter lifting into the sky after that.

  Jason grinned and laughed too. Achievement, unlocked. He’d learned early on that it took a lot to loosen the mutual fund heiress up, but once that was done, she’d be loyal and fun and sexy….

  He slammed on the brakes, and Lexie’s laughter got sucked into her throat as she braced herself. The car came to a stop only a few feet from the gated road that continued up to the park and the volcanic fields.

  He’d explored them a couple of times already, and he found the rocky landscape as alien as it was beautiful.

  His chest heaved wit
h adrenaline, and he twisted to look at Lexie. She wore the excitement and wonder in her expression too, and relief combined with satisfaction inside him. She still had some of the Lexie he knew. Different, sure. Changed, absolutely. Better, definitely.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she said, tearing her gaze away and focusing on the stars. She unbuckled her belt and climbed up to perch on the doorframe, her head tilted back to drink in the magnificence of the stars.

  Jason usually did too, but only because he’d always wanted to see what she saw. He’d never quite been able to, and tonight, he didn’t even try.

  Tonight, he only wanted to drink in the slope of Lexie’s neck, and the beauty in her face. And while he knew, absolutely, that he wouldn’t be telling her all the nitty gritty details of his past, which meant they absolutely wouldn’t be getting back together.

  Chapter Three

  Lexie woke the next morning, a smile on her face from the fantastic dream she’d been having. Jason had driven her car at high speeds through the night, the bright pinpoints of light above them reminding Lexie of how small she was, how wonderful the world could be.

  Sometimes she lost sight of that, and nothing had ever grounded her as much as the stars, strange as that may seem.

  She snuggled into the blankets, a little smile on her face. Then her eyes popped open. “That wasn’t a dream.” She sat up, her hair feeling like a nest on her head, and found the sun streaming through her bedroom window.

  What time was it?

  She reached for her phone. After nine o’clock. She couldn’t believe she’d slept so long. Panic blipped through her as she saw all the notifications on her phone. It would be mid-afternoon in New York, and by the four texts from Luke, her brother had needed her.

  She thought about Jason as her brother’s line rang, and when he didn’t answer, Lexie pushed herself out of bed. Hanging up without leaving a message, she tried to shake last night’s midnight ride out of her head.

  It wasn’t something someone her age did, and she couldn’t believe she’d given in to Jason’s sly, charming smile. But when he’d asked her what made her change her mind, she certainly couldn’t tell him that she didn’t want to go home alone.

  He’d probably suggest he come with her, his smile switching from coy to hungry in less than a second.

  “That’s not fair.” Lexie stabbed at her phone again to dial Luke. The line only rang once before a text came from him. Meeting. Give me 15

  She ended the call, her thoughts still lingering on the wrong man. But it wasn’t fair to assume Jason would try to seduce her or get her to sleep with him. He’d never done that when they’d dated years ago, and she’d always set the pace of their intimacy. She couldn’t imagine it would be any different this time.

  Startled, she sucked in a breath. “There is no this time, Lex. Jeez.” She set her phone on her nightstand and pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a tank top the color of the palm leaves that grew in her yard.

  Luke’s fifteen minutes would be at least thirty, so Lexie put on her sneakers and went into the backyard, calling, “Slinky. Brownie.” She glanced around for the stray cats she’d adopted, and when she didn’t see them, bent to pick up their bowls.

  They wouldn’t come in the house, and Lexie didn’t really want them inside anyway. But they stayed around her property, and she fed them well and had even put out a waterproof doghouse with cat toys inside for when it rained.

  Now that summer was here, she sometimes found the cats snoozing in the shade of the house. But today, they couldn’t be found anywhere. She filled their food bowls and gave them fresh water, and then puttered around the yard.

  She spent hours in her yard, making sure every flower, every tree, every shrub was healthy and pruned and thriving. She could have weddings in her yard and charge a lot of money for them. But she didn’t have a lot of visitors over. Sasha and Jasper had come a few times. The Nine-0 Club members on occasion.

  But mostly, Lexie’s house and yard were a place of refuge for her, even if she didn’t want to be there alone sometimes.

  Her phone sounded, and she pulled it from the webbing on her outer thigh. But it wasn’t Luke.

  Sasha. Some friends and I are sunning at the beach this morning. Want to join us?

  Lexie had seen her friend leave The Straw in the middle of the afternoon with a beach bag, trading out her work visor for a floppier, more festive sun hat. She’d never asked Sasha where she was going, because everyone deserved time off. In fact, it was why Lexie worked at the stand in the first place—to give Sasha a break.

  All women. No talk of men, promise. Sasha had added a smiley face to the end of her message, and Lexie couldn’t think of a reason not to go. She and Sasha had been friends for just over a year, and she’d never been invited to the beach. So what had changed?

  Yeah, sure, Lexie typed. Which beach? She could sit in the sun and listen to women talk. She’d done worse things.

  Right on the edge of Sweet Breeze’s private beach.

  Lexie could find that easily enough, and she went back inside to change and put a few things in a beach bag. She wasn’t the type of woman to normally lie around in the sun, sipping a fruity drink while wearing oversized sunglasses. But she didn’t hate it either.

  As she got ready and drove around the curve in the island toward the huge hotel in the bigger of the two bays, she mused over the no talk of men promise. She’d mentioned to Sasha that her birthday was coming up and she’d like to meet a man, but it just didn’t seem to be happening for her.

  Sasha had asked a few questions, but Lexie had clammed up. Such conversations required a trip to the past, and Lexie had left that behind using a one-way ticket five years ago.

  She’d just pulled into the public beach lot when her phone rang. “Luke,” she said, all business now despite the flirty, fun, and fuchsia bikini she wore beneath a sheer cover up.

  “Lex,” he said. “Where were you this morning?”

  “I was out late,” she said. It wasn’t that unusual for her to have late meetings, and Luke didn’t question it. “What’s going on?”

  “One of our biggest clients has filed for bankruptcy.” Luke sounded like he’d been awake for days, and Lexie pictured her younger brother—all six-foot-four-inches of him, slouched at a desk, rubbing his forehead the way he did when he was thinking too hard.

  Everything about him was a shade lighter than her—his hair, his eyes, his skin. Of course, he spent twelve hours a day in an office building, and well, she lived in Hawaii.

  “Which client?” she asked, already fearing the answer. If he said one of their real estate moguls….

  “Bangerter Electronics.”

  Lexie breathed a sigh of relief. “Luke, electronic companies go in and out of business like it’s breathing.”

  “Not this one.”

  “So what are we looking at?”

  “Eight percent of our clients have investments in Bangerter.”

  “Well, pull them. Put their money somewhere else.”

  “All trading has been frozen.”

  Lexie stared past the line in front of Two Coconuts, wishing she were standing ankle-deep in the lapping waves as they came ashore. She wasn’t even sure why she needed to know this. She didn’t have control over any of the trading accounts. He didn’t need her authorization for anything.

  He just needed her support.

  “What does Linus say?”

  “He says as soon as the floor unfreezes, we’re dumping Bangerter.”

  “He’s not wrong.”

  “Who should we go with?”

  And that was where Lexie came in. She spent her time on the beach, or her beautiful backyard, or in her club meetings learning about the best upstarts, the rising stars in the business world, who to invest in now to make the most money later.

  She sorted through her memory. “Assuming the clients want to stay in electronics, there’s Python Products.”

  “Python Products,” Luke repeated, pro
bably for the benefit of an assistant, who would look up the trading codes for the company. “We’ve been in touch with about eighty-five percent of the clients affected. Most are simply telling us to choose a new investment. Is that Python?”

  “It’ll outperform Bangerter,” Lexie said. “But the best investment for those willing to risk is real estate.” She couldn’t believe she was saying it. The housing market crash of a few years ago had almost decimated their whole company. But it had been rebuilt, and commercial real estate was especially thriving.

  “The kind where they buy in to a big property with a small amount of money.” Luke wasn’t asking. He knew the market well enough to know things like this. But Lexie was the research arm, and she sent him several emails each week with a list of companies for their low-risk, medium-risk, and high-risk investors.

  “Yep.”

  A shadow appeared in her window, and she glanced up to see Jason standing there, miming for her to roll the glass down. “I have to go,” she said. “Are we good?”

  “Yes. Keep your phone nearby. I can text.”

  “Will do.” Lexie hung up with her brother and took her time stowing her phone in her beach bag before she got out of the car.

  Jason had backed up a few steps, and he scanned her from her flip-flopped feet to her pathetic attempt at a beach hat. By the time his eyes came back to hers, Lexie felt like he’d set her skin on fire.

  “Nice outfit,” he said in an utterly bored voice.

  Lexie knew he could see her swimming suit beneath the flimsy white cover up. She cocked her hip. “I’m going to the beach, not a board meeting.”

  He cocked his head at her, and she tried not to find it the sexiest movement a man had ever mad. “I didn’t think you went to board meetings any more.”

  “I don’t.” She glanced over her shoulder. “This is a girls-only morning. Sorry.” She took a couple of steps away, but Jason appeared at her side anyway.