by K. M. Scott
Lauren followed. She didn’t lead.
But at that moment, after hours of his emotions ping-ponging from angry to scared and then to furious when he saw them sitting there on the beach as two men harassed them, he couldn’t separate his anger from his relief that he’d gotten there just in time.
As tears filled her eyes, she lowered her head and quietly said, “I would never do anything to hurt her. I swear I wouldn’t, Hunter.”
He felt for her. Of all the people in Alexis’s world, Lauren saw as much of the awful parts of it as she did the good. If anyone deserved a break, it was her.
“I know. Just give me a little time alone with her.”
She wiped her eyes and held out Alexis’s bag. “Here. Give this to her. I put her fudge in there for her.”
Hunter took the bag and tried not to be angry at her for still enabling Alexis even then. As he got into the car, he tossed it onto the passenger seat and looked up at the rearview mirror. Alexis sat curled up in a ball, her face once again hidden in her knees.
As much as he wished he could say something kind or sweet, all he wanted to do was lash out at her. She could have gotten herself hurt or even killed. Why wouldn’t her stalker know she went off on her own without even a single goddamned bodyguard to fucking Atlantic City? He seemed to know her every move, and yet she ran off with no protection and just her best friend to shield her if anything happened.
Which, of course, it fucking did. What made her think she could just put on a brown wig and nobody would recognize one of the most beautiful women in the world? That unforgettable face had been on magazine covers in dozens of countries. How could she have thought she could ever just go sit on the beach like anyone else?
He drove off and headed up the Garden State Parkway, stewing over everything that had happened. As he settled into the drive, he looked up in the rearview mirror again and saw her still sitting there terrified. The sight of her curled up and rocking back and forth made his anger soften enough that he wanted to let her know she had him to protect her.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. You can relax now.”
Alexis looked up and her gaze met his in the mirror. She stared at him with her big brown eyes still full of fear but didn’t say a thing. She didn’t look away before he turned back to focus on the road again, and as he navigated through traffic, he couldn’t get the look in her eyes out of his mind.
The way she seemed so small and vulnerable back there did something to him he hadn’t expected. Without even knowing when it happened, he realized now that he wanted to protect her more than just because it was his job.
The mere idea of her being hurt made his chest ache. That blond guy had his hands on her, and just the sight of that made him want to tear his head off.
As they slowed down for traffic, he grabbed her bag off the passenger seat and reached back to put it on the seat next to her. “Lauren said there was fudge in there.”
She didn’t say anything, and a few minutes later he looked back and saw she hadn’t opened the bag either. Maybe he should have let Lauren come along with them. She seemed to be the only one who knew how to reach Alexis. Obviously, he couldn’t.
The cars in front of him began to speed up as they passed a broken down car in the slow lane. Hunter looked at his watch and saw it was two o’clock already. Most of his day had been spent either worried or angry.
Or a combination of both.
Now he felt strangely calm, like the relief of knowing she sat safely in the seat behind him made all the anger and worry fade away. Odd. He never thought of himself as emotional. In fact, back at the estate, he considered himself one of the more reserved of all the guys there. He certainly was no Gideon or Xavier with their yelling and arguing over sports all the time. And he definitely didn’t act like Julian with his con man bullshit he liked to use to play tricks on people.
All this ran through his head, and he realized just how much being around Alexis had made him feel more of everything. First, it was disgust when he didn’t know much about her. Then curiosity. Then worry and anger over her antics today. And now as he looked back at her while she slyly popped a piece of candy into her mouth and then looked around like she’d done something wrong, he felt protective.
He’d never felt that way about any other client, and more than one of them had been in far greater danger than her. Convinced the difference had to do with the circumstances of this case, he chalked up his changing emotions to her effect on everyone in her world. As soon as he finished this assignment, he’d go back to being his normal self.
At least he hoped he would. God help him, he couldn’t continue feeling like this for much longer.
“I’m hungry. Can we stop somewhere?” Alexis asked in a quiet voice.
He looked up at her in the mirror. “This is the Garden State Parkway. You’re not going to find a four star restaurant here.”
She shrugged and then shook her head. “I don’t care. I don’t need that anyway. Just a burger would be great.”
On the side of the road he saw a sign for the Forked River exit. “Two miles ahead we might be able to find something.”
“Thank you, Hunter,” she said softly.
She sounded so tiny he wondered if she was really okay after what happened back at the beach. As much as he wanted to know, though, he didn’t ask.
He parked the car in the service plaza and turned around to face her. “It looks like you can have a hamburger, hot dogs, or pizza. They’ve got a Starbucks if you want coffee too. I’ll get you whatever you want. Just stay here with the doors locked.”
Alexis gave him a faint smile. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s everyone out here. Keep the doors locked while I’m gone, and I’ll be right back. What do you want me to get you?”
“Just a burger, but tell them no pickles and no lettuce, please,” she said after thinking about it for a moment.
“Do you want fries?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely fries. I’m dying for French fries.”
The way she sounded so thrilled to have fast food seemed almost charming. Hunter guessed she didn’t get to enjoy things like that much, likely because if she ate like that all the time, she wouldn’t have a gorgeous body like hers. Whatever the reason, the way her eyes lit up at the mention of fries made him smile.
“Anything to drink?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Just a diet soda, please.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back with all that. Don’t open the doors for anyone but me.”
And just as quickly as her mood had brightened, it darkened again. With a frown, she nodded. “I won’t. Don’t worry.”
He didn’t like seeing her sad like that, although he didn’t know why it bothered him like it did. He barely knew her. Why should he give a damn how she felt?
“This is just a job,” he said as he headed into the service plaza building. “She’s a client, and no matter what Persephone seems to think, my job isn’t making people happy.”
A busload of senior citizens milled around the doors, blocking access to the restaurants and making Hunter nervous. Alexis had already bolted one time that day. What was to stop her from doing it a second time?
In truth, he doubted she’d leave without someone to go with her. He’d had a sense from the moment he met her that being alone wasn’t something she liked. If Lauren was sitting in that backseat with her, he’d have bet money on them taking off again, but alone?
No way. She wasn’t stupid or even thoughtless. He had a feeling she was just tired of feeling trapped by her life. He could understand that, even if it pissed him off to no end that she’d forced an entire household of people to drop everything and search for her for hours.
As he pushed through the crowd of old people, he kept his eye on the doors. He may not have believed she’d run, but he put nothing past her. The woman had a free spirit he suspected didn’t take to being caged like her
life demanded.
Ten minutes later, he returned to the car with all she’d asked for and something for himself. Before he could hand her the food, she climbed into the front seat and sat down next to him.
Shyly, she said, “I thought it might be nice if I sat up here to eat.”
She wouldn’t look at him now, avoiding his gaze. Confused, he didn’t give it much thought and handed her the burger, fries, and diet soda. “Bon appétit.”
“Do you know French?” she asked as she unwrapped the burger and took a bite.
Hunter laughed. “No. I just know all the foreign words everyone else does and a few curses in Spanish. Well, more than just curses, but nothing I’d use around you.”
“I’m not sheltered or ignorant, Hunter. You don’t have to watch what you say around me. I’m a grown woman.”
He took a bite of a French fry and washed it down with some soda. “I wouldn’t say the things I know around you because it’s not something a man should say around a woman.”
His explanation stopped her talking until she finished her burger. After she crumpled up the wrapper into a tight ball and stuck it in the bag, she quietly said, “I’m sorry, Hunter. I shouldn’t have run off like I did.”
Residual anger kept him from responding to her apology, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her looking at him and waiting for him to say something. He didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like he was scolding her, though.
Staring out at the parking lot in front of him, he asked, “How was the burger? I’ve had better. That’s for sure.”
“It’s something. I think I used up all my energy when all that happened with those guys. I was pretty much running on a sugar high from the fudge anyway. If I didn’t get something in my stomach, I was going to be sick in the back seat.”
Her reference to what happened at the beach made him turn and look at her, and he saw she had a dab of ketchup on her upper lip. Unable to stop himself from smiling, he handed her a napkin.
“Wipe your mouth. You have ketchup on your lip.”
She snatched the napkin from his hold and turned away to clean her face. A few seconds later, she glanced over at him again with a worried look.
“Is it gone?”
He studied her face for a moment and couldn’t help but be struck by how beautiful she was. Even with that brown wig, she was gorgeous. He didn’t know if it was her perfectly formed mouth or the straight nose that fit her face just right or the sculpted cheekbones. Or maybe it was a combination of all those and her deep brown eyes that made her such a knockout.
Whatever it was, he had a feeling he knew at that moment what Gideon and Xavier and all her fans saw when they looked at her.
“You’re good.”
They ate the rest of their food in silence. When he opened the door to throw the garbage away, Alexis gently touched his arm, stopping him dead. He looked down at where her pale pink fingernails sat against the tan skin of his arm and then up at her face as she stared at him with wide eyes and felt his heart skip a beat.
“I am sorry, Hunter.”
He still didn’t know what to say, so he fell back on what he’d been assigned to do. “I’m not around to control you or make your life miserable, but I can’t protect you if I’m not around you, Alexis.”
She hung her head and quietly said, “I know. I never meant to do anything to disrespect you or anyone else. I just wanted to go to the beach and be out of the house for a day.”
Seeing her looking so sad bothered him more than he wanted to admit. He’d never felt trapped a day in his life. No matter how bad being a cop got, never once did he feel like he had no way out. He couldn’t imagine how much she wanted to break free from so much of her life.
To everyone else, she looked like she held the world in the palm of her hand. The truth was much less glamorous. All her success meant the world controlled her instead of the other way around.
Reaching out, he pushed her hair off her shoulder. “Next time, just let me know. I’m not here to stop you from living your life. My job is to find out who’s stalking you, but it’s also to protect you. That doesn’t mean keeping you locked up in your house, though.”
She lifted her head and her smile lit up her face. “Okay. Thank you for understanding.”
He didn’t understand. He knew that. But he wanted to. He wanted to help her break free of this stalker and everyone else who thought it was their job to keep her under their control.
When he got back into the car after throwing away the garbage, he turned to face her and said what he should have said earlier that morning. “Thanks for what you did with my room. It was a really nice thing for you to do.”
The smile he received in response for just those few words made him forget all the anger he felt toward her for so much of the day. She had a way of lighting up a space with her happiness that made him want to be around her.
“I’m so happy you like it, Hunter. I didn’t want you to have to suffer on that couch. From one bad sleeper to another, you know? At least if you’re going to be up half the night, you can be comfortable in a bed. And now you have somewhere to put your things, although I have to admit I haven’t seen that you have much. You changed clothes, though, so you must have things, right?”
He turned the ignition and chuckled. “I’m pretty low maintenance, so I don’t require much. Just a few change of clothes and a few pairs of shoes. I travel light, as a rule.”
Alexis narrowed her eyes like what he said sounded completely foreign to her. He started to explain that he was like most men, but she said, “I bet you think I’m very high maintenance, right?”
Until just a few minutes before, he would have responded with a resounding yes. Any woman who acted the way she did with her bodyguards, forcing them to move rooms full of furniture on a whim and then sneaking away so everyone around her nearly lost their minds trying to find her, would definitely be classified as high maintenance.
Very high.
But now he saw her differently. True, she still came with a lot of maintenance required, but he understood why a little better. Plus, when you got past all the Hollywood diva stuff, Alexis Marchand wasn’t that different from anyone else he’d met in this world.
“No more than any other woman, I’d guess,” he said with a smile.
He began to drive again as she said, “Oh, really? So you’re one of those kinds of men who like only low maintenance women. I bet you like the kind who doesn’t expect anything from anyone and looks great even when she doesn’t wear makeup.”
“No. I don’t like that kind of woman. I’m not a fan of doormats, even if they do look good first thing in the morning,” he answered honestly.
“Hmmm. So you don’t like women who require work, and you don’t like women who are low maintenance and will take whatever you dish out to them. So what kind of woman do you like?”
Merging into the passing lane, he glanced over at her and saw by the eager look on her face that she genuinely wanted to know the answer to her question. He didn’t know exactly what to tell her, though. His history with women was nothing less than checkered, to say the least. That he didn’t hesitate for even a minute when Nick first asked him if he’d be interested in joining Project Artemis was a good indication of how single he’d been and for a long time.
He and women didn’t equal anything lasting, and his past was littered with ex-girlfriends who’d be happy to tell Alexis why he wasn’t good for any woman.
But she waited for an answer, so he gave her the best he had. “I guess it depends. For me, a woman should be herself. She should be strong too. There’s nothing sexier than a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it.”
“So strong women don’t intimidate you?”
Hunter shook his head and smiled. “Nope. It’s a lie that strong men like weak women. We don’t. Strong men like a challenge, and any woman who can show them she doesn’t need a man even if she wants him is definitely a challenge.
”
“Really?” she asked, her voice full of surprise.
He stared straight ahead as he drove north toward the penthouse. “Really. Nothing sexier.”
“Hmmm.”
The conversation ended, but when he glanced over at her a few minutes later, she looked happy, smiling as she watched out the window.
Chapter Eleven
Alexis saw Paul waiting outside the building when they pulled up, and dread replaced all the happiness she’d felt because of her conversation with Hunter on the way back from Atlantic City. His deep frown and eyebrows drawn in like angry blond slashes told her she was in for a terrible lecture from her longtime manager. She knew she deserved it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear anything he had to say after the day she’d just been through.
She took a deep breath right before she opened the car door and braced for the shit storm that awaited her. Paul had been angry before, but she’d never seen him look so furious with her. This would make that chewing out he gave her that one time when she foolishly answered a reporter’s question about a director she didn’t like much look pale in comparison. Her truthful comment about his being a little too friendly had created a weeklong drama with Paul practically losing his mind.
His expression now told her this one would last even longer. Great.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” Hunter said with a smile.
If only she had to just deal with him instead of Paul too. Suddenly, she had the desire to shut the door and tell Hunter to drive to someplace where she could hide for a day or so.
She looked over at him and wondered if she asked, would he do that for her? Studying his rugged face, she guessed he probably wouldn’t. He was Paul’s hire, after all, so no matter how pleasant he looked and how nice he’d been since that rest stop, he likely wouldn’t understand why listening to her manager ream her out about her behavior once again was something she desperately wanted to avoid.
