“And where do you get that from?”
“Educated guess.”
He considered that. “How young are we talking?”
“Young. Like, you were an absolute nightmare in adolescence. But you chilled out when you hit adulthood. Am I right or what?”
He muttered, “You might actually be right,” and took another bite of food.
“I knew it. Likes good food. Likes a challenge. I mean, that much is obvious, given your line of work. Likes his women sexy, obviously. But also… smart,” I ventured. “And likes his music… hard, but not too heavy. I’m guessing you still like the stuff you listened to in those angry teenage years? Reminds you of a simpler time, when you were free to tell people to fuck off right to their face.”
He glanced at me, and there was a definite glint of amusement in his eyes.
“Hmm. How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Uh-huh.” I hit up Google. “And you know who was fucking huge… when you were seventeen? Ha. Got it.”
I put on 3 Doors Down, “Kryptonite.” And gauged his response.
“Did I nail it, or did I nail it?”
“I’d have to say you nailed it.”
I beamed. “Admit it. You had the CD, didn’t you?”
“On repeat. It skipped when I drove over bumps in my first car and I still listened to it.”
“Of course you did. That was back when CDs were a precious commodity. Everyone had those tower shelves in their living rooms loaded with them. Imagine all those fuckers all over the bottom of the ocean right now.”
“Shit. I never thought of that.”
“Do you still have your CDs and your CD towers?”
“Nope. I can’t even remember what happened to them.”
“They became obsolete. Like the mullet.”
“I hear that’s coming back, though,” he said dryly.
“Don’t even think about it. You have great hair. And you’re way too gorgeous for that.”
He didn’t even move, but I felt it. He stiffened. It was like he caught himself having too good a time and reeled it back in.
“And what did DJ Summer listen to back in the days of the CD?” he asked, side-stepping the compliment.
“Oh, everything you can imagine, sweetheart. But CDs came and went. Vinyl is where it’s at, for life.”
He looked at me again. I waited for him to complain about me calling him sweetheart and politely advise me not to sexually harass him. But instead, he just looked into my eyes, and… wow.
It was like he was really looking at me for the first time or something.
Me.
Not the woman he was paid to protect.
It was a penetrating, direct look… and it went directly between my legs. I wondered what it would be like to be pinned beneath that look while he pinned me in bed…
He cleared his throat a little. “I noticed the records in your music room,” he said, completely side-stepping again. “It’s quite a collection.”
“Yes, it is. I find them all over the world and bring them back with me. I have more in storage downstairs.”
“Is that what all those bins are about?”
“Absolutely.”
I picked up my fork and tried to finish my food. My appetite was coming back.
But since I wasn’t talking, Ronan went silent again.
“So… what do you make of my home?” I asked him lightly. “Am I safe and secure yet?”
He looked at me. “Yes. You’re safe.”
I tried to read between the lines of what he was saying, and what he wasn’t saying, and that look on his face.
“You think I should’ve had security before this.”
“That was up to Brody,” he said simply.
“Your opinion on the matter is obvious.”
“It’s not just you. We’re putting security in place for your whole band.”
“I’m not as famous as my band,” I protested, again. “Ashley was the frontman of a successful rock band for almost a decade. I’m a DJ, and I’m nowhere near as well-known. Plus, I look different onstage.”
“Not that different,” he said.
Which made me wonder…
He said he’d never been to my shows.
Had he been searching me online? Looking at photos?
“But you realize Vancouver is pretty chill,” I pressed. “I know celebrities who come here specifically because they can go to a restaurant like a regular person and not be harassed and swarmed. As long as you keep it low-key, you can get away with that here. If I show up at some club in L.A. in full party gear, it might be a different story, and I’d be ready for it. Especially if I’m with someone like Ash.”
“Are you in public with him a lot?”
“Yes. We actually did a photo shoot a couple months ago, when Brody had his publicists announce that we were forming a band together. There was some buzz after that. People wanted to know if we were getting back together.” I rolled my eyes a little.
“Are you getting back together?”
“No, we’re not. I’m just saying, I know what it’s like to be swarmed. But my daily life isn’t that. I had to be a little more careful when I went out for a while, avoid the media, but it died down pretty quick.”
“While we’re on the subject,” Ronan said, pushing his plate away. “If you’re dating anyone, I need to be made aware.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “So you can run a criminal check on him?”
“Yes.”
“I was kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Okay… This whole thing was getting weirder by the hour.
Now I had to run my potential dates by my bodyguard first?
“There’s this thing called situational awareness,” he said evenly. Maybe he was picking up on my irritation and decided to side-step again. “You’ve probably used it without even knowing it, like when you knew the media was paying attention after that photo shoot. You scope out your surroundings and get more tuned in to what’s going on around you. You look for quick exit paths, places you could get trapped and accosted. I do it constantly. And you should be doing it whenever you meet new people, and when you potentially get into a dating situation. You’re mentally looking for warning signs, red flags that the guy could be trouble. For ways out.”
Okay, I did not love what he was implying.
“What do I need awareness for?” I challenged. “That’s what I have you for. Right?”
It was his job to keep me safe. It was not his job to tell me that I should’ve seen the signs that Blair was dangerous. That I should’ve known.
Like it was my fault he chose to creep on me or something?
“It’s something you can work on developing,” he said calmly. “When my clients learn to think in those terms, it goes a long way to avoiding situations that I have to pull them out of.”
Yeah. That made sense.
But… “I’m pretty good at trusting my own judgment with people,” I informed him. He had to know I wasn’t a total idiot. I met people all the time, and I had a pretty strong internal radar for weirdos. Or so I’d always thought… “Honestly… I’m kinda pissed that I didn’t see what Blair was about from the start.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong there, Summer,” he told me, just like he’d told me earlier today, in my car.
Right… Then what was all that “situational awareness” stuff?
I took a breath and tried not to be so damn defensive. I knew he was trying to help. To make sure I was safe. He wasn’t blaming me.
It was me who still felt guilty.
“I went on a date with him,” I said quietly. I’d already told him that in the car. But maybe I was still looking for someone to absolve me of it. “I mean… sort of. There were other people there, with us. But I flirted with him.”
“And that gives him the right to climb the wall of your house and break into your bedroom in the night? I don’t care if you married him. N
othing gives him that right.”
“Yeah.” I pushed my plate away. I hadn’t finished, but I’d definitely lost my appetite. “Agreed. But maybe I do need to be more… situationally aware.”
I looked at him. At his solid frame, his stony face, and those gorgeous eyes. There was so much more going on in his eyes than he put across with his body.
His body was inaccessible, but his eyes… they were all-seeing. There were deep wells of compassion in there.
Surely, this was what made his clients feel safe. I could feel it when I was around him… The sure, alpha presence. The decisiveness and control.
And that compassion in his eyes.
“Maybe I’ve just always seen the world through a bit of a soundtrack,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know… Sometimes I get lost in the music in my head, and it’s like everyone is on the same track with me. They’re all part of this glorious musical and I’m the conductor.” He listened carefully, like he was trying to understand. Or at least assess. “Maybe it makes it hard to see that not everyone is hearing the same music that I am.”
“It’s good to be aware of that.”
“I wasn’t until just now.”
I studied him as he held my gaze.
Then he sat back in his seat.
“The police have released Sanchuk from custody.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “There was no easy way to tell you that. I wanted you to feel safe, to know we’ve got everything we need in place, we’ve got guys on it and we’ve got a plan, before I told you. But I don’t want to leave you in the dark.”
Well. I couldn’t exactly be pissed at him for that. But I was annoyed as shit that we’d just sat here eating dinner and he didn’t tell me right away.
“When did this happen?”
“Early this afternoon. Like I said, we have contacts in the police department. I called Brody already to fill him in.”
Of course.
Tell the men first. They need to know.
I bit back my irritation.
If I went into raging bitch mode, maybe he’d decide it wasn’t worth the trouble of telling me anything.
“So what happens now? Will he try to come after me again?”
“I’m gonna be straight with you, Summer—”
“Please do.”
“We don’t know this guy or his motives. We don’t know why he did what he did, and that makes him a threat. But you are not in danger. We’ll wait for the restraining order to come through. Meanwhile, you go about your life, and we make sure you’re secure. ”
“Right. And what exactly does that mean?”
“It means I’ll be with you twenty-four-seven. If I ever have to leave, briefly, someone from my crew or from Jude’s will be covering you.”
“Leave?”
“Maddox and his guys will be back tomorrow to install your new alarm system. I’ll probably pop out briefly while they’re here. I need to make a run over to my place, pick up some things.”
Huh. Interesting, how it disappointed me that he was leaving.
Though, obviously, he needed a change of clothes.
“Okay,” I said. Damn, though. I wasn’t scared that he was leaving, was I?
Yes, he made me feel safe, already. That was certain. As much as that certainty kinda bugged me.
But Maddox was just as good, right? He was one of Jude’s guys. Obviously, Ronan seemed to think so, too, if he was leaving him here with me. And Elle certainly trusted Jude and his team; they’d kept her safe her entire career.
One member of the team was as good as any other.
“Any travel you do,” he went on, “you’ll be traveling with two men. Me and someone else, so you always have coverage. But I’m still doing my assessment, putting together a complete security plan for you, and I’ll update you as I go. There are some things I’ll need to know. Like who has access to this house. And I want the names of everyone who regularly comes here. I need to be informed when people are coming over. Like your yoga instructor.”
“Carissa? She’s hardly a threat.”
“That may be. But I need to know.”
“Fine,” I said. “She’ll be back. She comes to practice yoga with me a few times a week, when I’m home from the road.”
“Okay. And who else can I expect to be showing up at the door?”
I considered that. “Ashley comes over a lot. He doesn’t always knock.”
“The door will be locked from now on. So he’ll have to.”
“Hmm. My friends Wendy and Jewel are here a lot. Elle’s here all the time. I have a massage therapist who does house calls. Do you want a list?” I asked, sarcastically, as he pulled a small notepad from his back pocket and produced a pen from somewhere.
“Yes,” he said. “Does anyone have a key?”
“My cleaning lady has one. But that’s it.”
He met my eyes. “And what about the key that was in the coffee can?”
“It’s in my bedroom.”
Oh… fuck. He was not gonna like this.
“There were… uh… a few more, though.”
“A few keys?”
“Yeah. Like, a few that went missing over the years.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“From the can?”
“Yeah, but that was just because my friends let themselves in and out… we’re partying, people get drunk and they lose keys.”
He made that skeptical little growl sound in his throat. I’d heard it a few times by now. Maybe it was a sound reserved for women who irritated him. “We’re having the locks changed.” He wrote something on his pad and I groaned.
“Seriously?”
“I’ll have Maddox’s guys do it tomorrow when they come to put in the alarm system. We’ll need your cleaning lady’s key back. We’ll have a limited number of new ones made, high security keys. They’re a little harder to make copies of.”
“My friends don’t make copies of my house keys,” I protested.
“Cleaning lady gets one,” he said, almost to himself. “You get one. I get one.”
I sighed.
“And I’ll need her info, so I can run a check if needed.”
“She’s a forty-five-year-old mom who sings while she does my dishes.”
“That’s great,” he said absently as he made notes. “I’m sure she does a great job.”
Fuck me. What was happening to my life?
I felt like I was being punished. And yet, according to him, I’d done nothing wrong.
I was afraid of this.
It was all becoming clear, as I sat here listening to Ronan and my body physically revolted against every word, like I’d just bitten into something rotten. This was the reason I didn’t want to tell anyone about Blair. About all the phone calls and the messages, about him showing up at my shows even though I didn’t want him there anymore.
When he’d started creeping on me, I hadn’t feared him. I didn’t realize there was a reason to fear him until he tried to break into my house.
But I feared my way of life having to change.
It was one of the reasons I’d been drawn to Flynn, yet never told anyone what was going on. I could see that now.
I wanted to feel safe before I consciously knew I was in danger.
Now, Blair probably couldn’t even get near me, yet it was happening anyway; everything was changing.
“I have people in and out of my house all the time,” I told Ronan, firmly. He was still jotting notes.
“Not anymore.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not kidding. Until I have a chance to assess things further and understand what we’re dealing with, we need to limit the people that have access to you and your home.”
“So, you go where I go, around the clock. And yet I can’t see my friends.”
“You can see y
our friends. We’re just going to keep it more manageable for now.”
“Managing my social life. Sounds fun. And why aren’t you managing Ashley’s social life?”
“I’ll be keeping in touch with his bodyguard.”
“And how will you have time to do that, while you’re watching me around the clock?”
“Honestly,” he said, looking at me, “I don’t sleep much. And my partner, Naveen, will be overseeing things from the office as well. While I’m focused on you.”
He held my gaze, unwavering, while I probably gave him a very frustrated look.
“Look, Summer.” He laid his pen down. “You’re my client. I work for you. If you’d prefer someone else as your bodyguard, we can make other arrangements.” He didn’t bat an eye when he said that.
But I was still thinking about that other thing he’d said…
While I’m focused on you.
Why did I like that so much?
Fuck no, I didn’t want another bodyguard. I didn’t want any bodyguard. But if I had to have one…
“Brody wouldn’t have put you here if he didn’t think you were the best man for the job,” I said. “So you must be the best man for the job.” Then I added, with a healthy dose of attitude, “As long as you don’t bore me, we’ll be fine.”
“Excuse me?” he said, like he hadn’t heard that right, when he knew he had.
“Bore me. Yes, you heard that right. I don’t do bored.”
“Then I guess I’ll try not to bore you,” he muttered.
“Good.”
He flipped his notepad closed. “Saving your life interesting enough for you?”
Yup. The man could serve the sass right back, in his dry, ultra-serious way.
Unfortunately, I kinda liked it.
“I guess it’ll have to do for now. And you haven’t saved my life yet.”
“Saved you from a car accident.” He held my gaze. “Do I get points for that?”
“You’re right. That was decidedly non-boring.”
He tore his eyes away. He got up and tucked his notepad and pen in his pocket. “I’ll help clean up.”
“You will not.” I swept his dirty dishes away and started cleaning up. “I can fill my own dishwasher. What do I owe you for the meal?”
“It’s on me,” he said, and when I gave him a look, he added, “I insist.”
Sweet Temptation: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 3) Page 12
