Seducing the Bodyguard

by Capri Montgomery

  “Yeah,” he snapped. “What did I have for breakfast this morning?”

  “It’s Tuesday,” she said. “That means you had eggs—scrambled, two pieces of turkey bacon, four blueberry pancakes, one piece of sausage and a glass of grapefruit juice.”

  “You forgot the oatmeal.”

  “You didn’t have oatmeal today. That’s your Thursday breakfast.”

  “How the hell do you know all of this?” She was right about everything and on some level that scared him. Maybe she was his stalker.

  “I make it my business to know everything about a potential client. It’s how I decide if I care enough to invest my time in keeping them safe.”

  “You interview your client? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

  She shrugged. “At the end of the day, Mr. Sinclair I have to be willing to put my life on the line for my client. I have to be willing to take that bullet. And if I don’t believe in my client; if I don’t think my client is worth that, then I don’t take the case. Is that understood?”

  It was. She had been interviewing him and the whole time he thought he was picking her. He could have agreed to protection and she could have walked away—just that simple. At the end of the day his decision didn’t make a world of difference because if she didn’t think he was worth it she would have left him standing there. “Understood,” he mumbled.

  “We’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Drake pulled on Geneva’s hand as he urged her to give the two some time to pull together their strategy.

  Once the door closed Harrison set about getting answers to his own questions. She wasn’t black. He could tell that, but she had some black in her and with a last name like Mishoto he wanted to know her lineage.

  “So what are you?”

  “Human,” she said as she sat down in the leather chair and motioned for him to take the chair across from her.

  “You know what I mean. What’s your lineage?”

  She shook her head. “I’m Hawaiian, Japanese and black.” She flipped through her folder.

  “Elaborate.”

  “My father is Japanese. My mother is considered seventy-five percent Polynesian and twenty-five percent black given her lineage. Is this really important?”

  He shrugged. Just knowing that he seemed to be getting under her skin made him push forward. “You ever try to pass.”

  “Pass what?” She narrowed her gaze. “Pass math class, pass science, pass the butter…what?”

  “For black,” he stated.

  “Why should I?” She flipped through the dossier again. “Listen,” she looked up, her eyes cold as ice. “In Hawaii I don’t have a huge problem with racism from the locals. Everybody knows my family and so they know my heritage. Mostly, they know I’m a native Hawaiian and I respect our land, our customs and honor our traditions. On the mainland,” she kept her tone level. “I run into idiots all over the place who make themselves appear dumber than dirt by making assumptions about me. I’m either not black enough because of my hair, or I’m black with fake hair. If my lineage bothers you, Mr. Sinclair, feel free to hire another bodyguard.”

  He held up his hand in surrender. “I’m sorry. I was just curious. You have beautiful brown skin, but your features are very exotic. I hadn’t seen a woman who looked like you before now. I mean you’re not quite brown sugar, but you’re smooth, like honey—at least you look smooth.” He had really only had limited contact with her skin, outside of her hands. Those hands, though smooth, had been strong and had seen work.

  “Perhaps this will be a problem for you.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said quickly as she started to get up. He knew she was ready to walk out on him.

  “Sure you did,” she said smoothly. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  He nodded. “Noted,” he sat back in his chair. She was nothing like the women he was used to, not in looks and certainly not in temperament. He may have meant to goad her a bit. He, of course, wanted to get back at her for practically eviscerating his manhood in front of Drake and Geneva, but he hadn’t meant to come off as some racist brother who was trying to attack her heritage.

  “Now, let’s go over the itinerary and the cover, shall we;” she sat back in her chair and once again returned her attention to her dossier.

  Clearly he had already put his foot in his mouth with this woman. He was surprised she hadn’t gotten up and walked out on him. Then again, she had accepted an assignment and he gathered she wouldn’t readily walk away from one because she was too honorable for that. Now he felt guilty. He would have to find a way to make it up to her. How could he make it up to her? Any other woman and he would just buy them something nice and expensive and be done with it. But this woman…she looked like she could afford her own brand of expensive, and she didn’t seem like the type to go for being seduced with presents.

  Chapter Two

  Valencia already knew Harrison was flying commercially, and she also knew there were seats available because she had already booked her flight long before he accepted her as his bodyguard. She was sure he would say yes. They always said yes. Due to her size she spent a great deal of time doing a pre-hire proof session with male clients who assumed she couldn’t protect them. The only clients she didn’t have to go through that process with were those who came to her with a recommendation from a previous client. People were always surprised to find out she took references in consideration before saying yes to their request. They all seemed to assume she was desperate for business when really she wasn’t. She had turned down clients before without hesitation.

  Most people assumed women would be less judgmental, but they weren’t. In fact, she hated working with women because they were the most annoyingly petty people to work with. The worst was the husband who needed a bodyguard. The wife was so insecure that the thought of another woman spending time with their husband sent them into witch mode fast. She limited her acceptance of those types of cases, but occasionally an old friend of a friend would call her and plead for her to take the client on. It was good money, but being a bodyguard was far more stressful than things were when she was just an assassin. Being an assassin for the government was easy. She was the best of the best and she answered to one person only. Her job was simple, find the target and eliminate it. Being a bodyguard meant protect, save a life, make sure the bad guy or girl, didn’t get to the target. That responsibility, the responsibility of protecting a life instead of taking one, was a heavy load to bear.

  It wasn’t that her job as an assassin hadn’t helped save lives. Killing one monster inevitably saved the lives of several relatively innocent people, but years of killing…it was enough. Saving Thomas McGregor’s life had been the apex of her turning point. The feelings she received from saving a life far outweighed the adrenaline rush she had when she was on the hunt to take one. She was out of the assassin game—mostly anyway. Now she was a bodyguard, protecting and keeping safe the average man or woman so that they had a chance to live another day.

  This new assignment would be a challenge. Harrison Sinclair was a…jerk seemed like too strong of a word to use right now. She would reserve jerk-status until she spent a little more time with him. She would, however, say he was cocky. He was too cocky and being cocky could easily get him killed. He underestimated his enemy because she was a woman. And, like a lot of people she had spent time protecting, he was a man who didn’t want to readily admit having a weak spot. She shook her head. The safest cover they had come up with—safe to protect his manhood while still being safe enough to keep her by his side at all times, was that she was the girlfriend who was thinking of investing in his next opera. As if Harrison really needed an investor. His family had enough money to back each other without outside help, but given the fact that he had, on occasion, allowed an outside backer behind one of his projects, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary that he would do it this time.

  She walked around his estate making sure the grounds were secure before heading
back inside and checking the inner parameter once more.

  “You almost done?” His deep voice vibrated right through her body.

  “Almost,” she said without truly acknowledging his presence.

  “I’d like to get some sleep tonight,” he snapped.

  “I’m not stopping you.” She did one more check of the office window.”

  “Your pacing around this place is keeping me up.”

  “No it’s not,” she noted as she turned to look at him. “Your problem is that you still don’t quite know what to make of me and so you feel the need to pester me.” She looked him over from head to toe. “If you’re trying to see just how far you can push before I leave, or snap your neck, don’t waste your time. I’m a professional.”

  “Snap my neck?” He nearly choked out the words. “And you’re supposed to be protecting me?”

  She shrugged. “I have some background on the people you work with, and the people in your opera, but what I need to know more about are the things I can’t find on paper. So, tomorrow, when you have some time I want you to tell me more about all of them. I also want to know more about your former assistant. Her name is mentioned, but there are few details as to why she left. So, details on everybody in the opera, and on this Lani Davison woman.”

  He laughed. “There are a lot of people in my opera you know…and that’s not even taking into consideration the people who are behind the scenes outside of the show.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay tough girl. I’ll give you details as I can. But Lani is a non issue so we don’t need to go there.”

  “You think she’s a non issue. Maybe she is; maybe she isn’t, but I’d like to cover all bases before I dismiss any possible threat. I just need you to answer some questions and provide some details. That’s all I’m asking.” Was he finally starting to warm up to the idea of a female bodyguard? She doubted it. He was too arrogant for that.

  “Valencia,” he let the name roll of his tongue. “Does anybody ever call you Val?”

  “Not if they want to live,” she mumbled.

  “You don’t like the name?”

  “If my parents had wanted my name to be Val they would have named me Val. The name is Valencia and I like it.”

  “Me too,” he admitted. “Look, I’m…I want to apologize for earlier.” He seemed to be having a hard time getting the words out of his mouth. Clearly he wasn’t a man who was used to delivering apologies. “I shouldn’t have inquired about your heritage. It’s not important to your job, and I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s just you’re so…beautiful,” he exhaled sharply.

  She knew the signs and she figured she should nip it in the butt before it went beyond a budding crush. “This is business,” she stated firmly. “We should be sure we keep it that way.” She watched the hardened expression grace his eyes. Harrison was clearly a man who wasn’t used to having women turn him down. She knew from some of the articles she had read about him that he was popular with the ladies, although he hadn’t had as many girlfriends as she would have assumed he would have had. Apparently he was highly focused on his work when he was working on a new opera…when he was on hiatus that was a different story.

  “If we’re going to pretend to be intimate with each other I need to know more about you.”

  “You know what you need to know, but I can understand that there may be some questions you’ll face and I’ll help you prepare for them.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled. “I’m going to bed,” his voice was cold and distant. Had she offended him? Probably. But she couldn’t let him think their pretend relationship was going to become a reality.

  “Harrison,” she waited until he looked at her. “You’re good with your attack skills. If you’d like I can help you acquire some new techniques.” A smile graced his lips. She wasn’t trying to flatter him. He was good, and had he been going up against the average fighter he would have been equally matched. She wasn’t the average fighter. She had been training in several forms of martial arts since before she could walk. She was skilled in martial art forms that the average person had never heard about. She had trained to be the woman she is her entire life, and so he wasn’t equally matched skill for skill. Although that didn’t matter much in her book; equal match or not he had to be ready to take on the opponent. He had to put brains above brawn and figure out what the best line of attack would be. That was something she could help him master—if he could get over his ego long enough to listen and learn.

  “I’d appreciate that,” he grinned. “About tomorrow…how are you planning to get a gun on board the plane?”

  “I don’t carry a gun,” she never had use for one. She could shoot like a sharp shooter, but she preferred using her hands for a kill and for defense. The weapons she wore everywhere always made it through any security checkpoint. She had even walked right into the Whitehouse with ten deadly weapons on her, and she did it unnoticed. “I have other weapons of choice. You’ll be protected. Don’t worry about your safety because I promise I will protect you.”

  “I know you will,” he acknowledged. “But I just don’t think this is necessary.”

  “Then why did you agree to protection?”

  He shrugged. “Geneva,” he let the one word tell the story for him. She was his sister and he was doing this because she wouldn’t let it go.

  “You don’t see this as being a serious problem?”

  “No. It’s just some crazy letters.”

  “I’d say;” she had read the letters and she knew very much that some dillusionally obsessed woman had latched on to Harrison and she wasn’t going to let him go easily.

  “We’ll give this a go for a month or so. Nothing will happen and Geneva will see this wasn’t necessary.”

  She shook her head. “First lesson,” she kept her tone unattached as always. “Never underestimate your enemy.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You do that,” she prepared herself to do one more walk through of the downstairs before going up to bed herself. She was prepaid for a little more than a month of service. Whether or not Harrison decided to keep her on past that time was up to him. If he decided not to then she would go back to her home in Hawaii and be done with Harrison Sinclair. Of course, she was determined to figure out who this stalker was and stop her before she left. She knew Harrison’s ego wouldn’t allow him to hire another bodyguard. She knew once her time was up he would go back to living his life unguarded and if he did that he wouldn’t be living it for long. It was evident from the letters that his stalker wanted control, love, and his complete attention. Harrison was too stubborn to pretend to give affection. He would underestimate this woman because she was a woman and he would think there was nothing else he needed to do other than ignore her. And at some point, she would stop with the professions of love and go on the attack in anger.

  “There’s one more reason I said yes, Valencia.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You,” he stated flatly. “A man would have to be insane to say no to somebody as beautiful as you guarding his body. The fact that you can fight was the icing on an already beautiful cake.” And on those words he left her there with her thoughts. This man was going to be trouble. He was cute and sexy, arrogant as the day is long, but something about his confidence was alluring—and he knew it. She was a professional. No matter what seduction Harrison Sinclair threw her way she was going to have to resist. One of her rules was to never get involved with a client. Getting involved would be a distraction—a distraction could get him killed.

  “What was I thinking?” She mumbled. Thomas had called her and asked if she could help out a friend of his. He was so sweet and genuine. He told her that he knew he didn’t have a right to ask this favor of her, but if she could just meet with Drake Daniels and consider protecting his brother-in-law, it would mean the world to him. Thomas wasn’t an easy man to say no to. It wasn’t that she had a hard time saying no in general, but every time
she thought about Thomas she thought about the man she helped get out of Afghanistan and get to some place where he could have a chance of survival. She thought about the man with big blue eyes and jet black hair. The man who looked up at her while he was in that hospital bed, and the man who tracked her down—a near impossible task, and he thanked her. There was something about him that pulled at her heart. And in some ways he reminded her of her brother. Percileo and Thomas were the same height, six-four and muscular with the type of personality that told a person they meant business. For some reason she felt a need to protect both men at all cost—even though they were both highly capable of taking care of themselves. Funny, they were both a year older than she was. Thomas and Leo had both been born in the same month which meant they had both just celebrated a birthday. They were both thirty-three now, to her thirty-two years of life and ironically, she had more experience in her thirty-two years than either of them had in their thirty-three years. All of her experiences had been hard, tough, cold and deadly life experiences mixed with the right amount of love from her family, but she was definitely a different breed than Leo.

  He was outgoing, had a lot of friends and worked in the honest profession of saving lives. He was at the top of his game on the bomb squad in Waikiki. She, however, had trained to be lethal, just as he had, but she had taken it to a deeper extreme. She had been recruited at the age of ten to work for the government and her father supported that decision. He, of course, had some advantages to her employment as well. There was no surprise in the fact that her father’s side of the family had been mostly on the opposite side of the law. Her father was taking the family legit, just as his father had tried to, but at the same time, the old Mishoto ways existed. If anybody messed with one of the family, they didn’t live long to talk about it. What she had become, the lethal link in the family, is what most thought Leo would have been…had he wanted it he probably could have, but Leo wasn’t that kind of guy. Thomas reminded her so much of that good nature, that protect and keep alive nature that her brother had been lucky enough to inherit from their mother. While she, she had managed to inherit the Mishoto family law—strike to kill or don’t strike at all.