He barks a surprised laugh, gripping the steering wheel and half-turning his head to smile at me. “Jesus Christ,” he says, starting the engine. “She’s got teeth.”
“Yeah,” I agree, feeling myself enjoying this little game a bit too much. “Yes. They make it a lot easier to chew my food.”
He chuckles. “You know, as your boss, I could reprimand you for talking back to me.”
I lower my head, chewing nervously on the inside of my cheek. “I’m sorry, sir. I got carried away.”
He narrows his eyes, pulling out onto the main road before glancing over at me again. “I’m fucking with you, sweetheart. But if you keep calling me ‘sir’, this tour is going to get very personal.”
“Sorry, s--” I close my mouth and then my eyes, wishing for a reset button to try this whole thing over again.
“Damn,” he says. “I thought things were about to get interesting there.”
“So,” I say quickly, desperate to change the subject before I burn alive from the combined effects of embarrassment and arousal. “Where are we going?”
“Hmm. We can take the tour in a little, but I think if you’re going to be my employee, I should get to know your skillset better.”
“My skillset?” I ask.
“Yeah, you know. Strengths, weaknesses, turn-ons, that kind of thing.”
“Did you just--”
“Here,” he says quickly, yanking the steering wheel and swerving into the parking lot in front of a convenience store. “I just need to run in and grab something. Wait in the car.”
Before I have a chance to object or even comprehend, he’s jogging inside the store. I notice a long line at the counter and figure it’ll be a while before he gets back. I try to calm myself down a little. Everything has been happening so fast since he came back. It’s all threatening to make me lose focus on what’s really keeping me sane, which is this job and his mother. As cantankerous as Roxanne is, she has been like a tether keeping me anchored to the memory of my mom. Before I found her, I was becoming more and more lost every week. I guess it’s selfish of me, but I’m afraid of losing my connection to her because of how far I might go spiraling out of control if I do.
So no matter how good he looks in that suit. No matter how sexy his voice is or how I get tingles across my entire body when he calls me sweetheart, I can’t let this become a thing. I have to be firm and stop acting like a lovesick little girl. This man is my boss. I need to keep him happy, but not too happy. Yeah, that should be easy.
The door swings open and a slightly breathless Liam hops in holding the strangest assortment of items. He tosses a pack of women’s razors on my lap, a bottle of hairspray, a deflated beach ball, and then he shakes out two lipsticks from his sleeve. I frown down at the items and then the line inside. “Did you steal this?” I ask in disbelief.
“Yeah,” he says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
“You have billions of dollars and you steal what, like thirty dollars worth of stuff? How do you live with yourself?”
“See that’s the thing. The object of the game is for you to get the items back inside without them realizing they are stolen. Get it? You have to un-shoplift them. If you’re going to work for me, you need to be resourceful enough to pull this off.”
I glare at him. “I’ve already been working for you for two months. Why do I have to prove this now?”
He grins. “Maybe I’m trying to decide if you’re qualified for some more delicate aspects of the job.”
I clear my throat. “Well, what’s to stop me from just walking in and explaining this?”
“You’d lose the game, for starters. You’d also be admitting that you’re an accomplice in a crime.”
“Accomplice? I hardly think--”
He shrugs. “You look a lot like a getaway driver from where I’m sitting.”
“Getaway driver? I’m not even driving!”
“Yeah, I noticed that. You’re terrible at this.”
I shake my head, failing to hide the hint of a smile creeping across my face. “You know what? Fine. Give me that,” I say, snatching a tube of lipstick he had plucked from my lap and started to mess with.
I open the door and stand, reaching under my dress to tuck the lipstick tubes in the elastic of my panties. I try not to pull my dress up too much as I do, but Liam seems to be enjoying the effort immensely. He’s leaning across the center console, not showing any shame in watching. I breathe out a frustrated sigh. Operation: “Don’t make the boss too happy” is off to a horrible start, but in all honesty, the game sounds fun, and I’ve never liked losing.
I tuck the package of razors under my bra and add the beachball too. Then I sort of palm the hairspray can, pressing it against the side of my thigh and hiding it with the fabric of my dress as I walk stiffly in, hoping none of the merchandise is jiggled loose as I walk. I try not to make eye contact with anyone as my heels click across the linoleum so noisily that Liam can probably hear it from the car. I imagine every head turning to watch me awkwardly waddle toward the makeup section.
I do my best at casually glancing over my shoulder before plucking the lipsticks from my underwear and shoving them back on the shelves “Sorry, whoever ends up buying these. I bathed, I promise,” I whisper.
I walk, slightly less uncomfortably now, to replace the hairspray. I’m pulling the razors out from under my dress when a hand clamps down on my shoulder. “Miss. You’re going to need to come with me,” says a stern, matronly woman.
I turn toward her, mouth wide with shock and hand still clutching the razors I’ve half pulled from the neckline of my dress. “This isn’t what it looks like. See, I’m actually putting these back.”
“Uh huh,” says the lady, pulling me toward the back of the store by the arm.
“Can I just explain?” I plead.
“You can explain to the cops when they… what the?” she asks, turning her head toward the entrance of the store, where Liam is…
Oh my God.
Liam apparently followed me inside, and now he’s undoing the buttons on his dress shirt. His suit jacket is already on the ground, and he’s walking toward us looking every bit a model coming down the runway. Each button reveals more and more tanned skin and smooth, muscular skin. The woman’s grip on me softens completely as she stands, as in awe as I am, watching Liam’s strip-tease.
His eyes go to where her hand rests limply on my shoulder. He grins, lunging forward to grab my arm and yanking me away from the woman. “Run!” he shouts.
In my hurry to follow, my shoes fly off and I realize he left behind his expensive jacket, but he doesn’t seem to care. We both charge out of the store at full speed, him laughing and me making a noise between a scream and a sob. He opens the passenger door and practically tosses me inside, and as soon as I land I realize I still have a deflated beach ball in the back of my bra.
Liam hops in the driver’s seat, revs the engine, and pulls out just as three store employees emerge from the exit, shouting for us to stop.
I pull the beach ball free and hold it up for him to see. “I forgot to put this back,” I say quietly.
“Damn,” he says. “I guess I’ll have to take you back there sometime.” His shirt is still mostly unbuttoned, and I can clearly see the ripples of muscle across his torso, including the perfectly defined set of abs running from his strong chest to his navel.
“What were you doing?” I ask.
“Creating a distraction to bust you out of there,” he says.
I bite my lip, fiddling with my hands in my lap, not trusting the swirling emotions in my chest. I’m so desperately afraid of falling for this man and risking my job, but I’m starting to become more and more afraid of letting him pass by. I’ve waited so long to give myself completely to a man, and some stupid, romantic voice in the back of my head is telling me maybe it was because I was saving it for a guy like Liam.
“So,” says Liam as we drive down the main road through town. “H
ere’s everything.”
“I’m starting to think you just wanted an excuse to take me out,” I say with a small smile. “You don’t even seem to know much about this area.”
“Guilty,” he chuckles. “I’ll be straight with you. I’ve got some shit going on with my ex-wife and I really needed to have a good time to take my mind off it. And sweetheart, you’re giving me a hell of a good time already.”
“I see. So I’m your property and you’re just using me to take your mind off your ex-wife. I feel so honored, Mr. King.”
“You can make anything sound unpleasant if you try hard enough.”
“Fair point,” I say, “but you’re not making me try very hard.”
He barks a laugh. “Let me put it this way. I have enough money to do just about anything in the entire fucking world that I want to do right now. And what did I decide to do?”
A tingle runs across my skin and I smile. “Me,” I say quietly. “I mean, I didn’t mean you decide to like, do me.”
Liam grins. “Says you. Besides, your boyfriend thinks I already did,” he says.
“He wasn’t my boyfriend. That was Jake. We dated a couple months ago, but I broke up with him.”
“Did he always treat you like that?”
I look down, feeling my words all fail in my throat. Liam’s strong hand grips my thigh reassuringly, as if to tell me I don’t need to answer. His skin against my bare leg feels intoxicatingly good, and within seconds, I feel my core heating and throbbing as my mind pictures his hand sliding slowly up my thigh, pushing my dress up as he goes until his fingers brush against my panties.
I am briefly lost in the fantasy until a faint moaning sound snaps me back to the present. I clap a hand to the base of my throat, eyebrows furrowing as I try to replay the last few seconds and figure out if that moan just came out of my throat or if I imagined it. Without turning my head, I sneak a peek at Liam, who is grinning so wide I know I didn’t imagine it. I just fucking moaned out loud because he had his hand on my leg.
Oh my God.
“Wow,” I say quickly. “Did you hear that deer outside? Crazy…”
“Yeah, those damn, moaning deer. They are a real problem. Sounded like that one was in the car with us.”
“Yep,” I say, eyes glassy as I stare forward, wondering if this will be the moment that flashes before my eyes on my death bed. The moment that slowly killed me from the inside out. Death by embarrassment. Tragic. It’s apparently an epidemic when Liam King is around.
“We should probably be getting back,” I say.
Liam gives me an odd look. “It hasn’t even been an hour.”
“I know,” I say. “I just don’t really leave Roxanne and Sophie alone for much longer than this to get groceries or run other errands. I’m starting to worry about them.”
“Damn,” he says. “She knows how to reverse shoplift, and she actually cares about doing her job well. You’re quite the catch.”
“I don’t think of it as a job, Mr. King.”
“That’s the right answer.”
“It’s the truth, I mean, I--”
His phone rings and he glances down, grimacing, “Hold that thought, sorry. I should take this.”
I watch him suspiciously, remembering the woman I saw him with at the restaurant. They didn’t exactly look to be on the best terms--considering she slapped him and all--but she was very pretty, and I can’t help wondering if that’s the kind of woman he’s really into. Maybe I’ve been completely misreading the signals he has been sending me.
You should be ignoring his signals, reminds a small voice in the back of my head. Being near Liam makes it almost impossible to think of how getting in a relationship could ever be bad. He’s handsome, charming, successful, and the way he stepped in to protect me from Jake still has my stomach fluttering just to think about. Yet he’s my boss. If I let anything real develop between us, there’s really only one realistic way this ends, and that’s with me losing the job and the guy.
But maybe. Just maybe things could work out between us and I could have both. It’s a foolish, reckless hope, but it’s too hard to ignore, and I worry that it’s gaining more and more control over me by the minute.
“What is it,” he demands into the phone. It’s not even a question. It’s a statement, a command. Tell me. “Okay,” he says.
I watch his fist gripping the steering wheel, fingers squeezing hard until his knuckles turn white. “Okay. Yeah. Got it. Loud and clear,” he drops the phone into a cupholder and I can see his jaw muscles flexing and relaxing.
“Everything okay?” I ask hesitantly.
“Depends how you look at it,” he says. “If you’re the glass is half full type, you could say things are just great, because it sounds like I pretty much have a month to find a good, wholesome wife to convince a judge I’m not a billionaire playboy who shouldn’t be raising a daughter by himself. If you’re the glass if half empty type, well, you could say things are shit. Because I only have a month to find a woman who will agree to marry me.”
“Wait, who is trying to get Sophie taken away from you?” I ask.
“My ex-wife,” he says.
I wait for him to say more, but he’s apparently not in a sharing mood. “Well,” I say, thoughts churning. “What if you pretended? You know? Just get some woman to agree to pretend to marry you. I’m sure you could sign a contract and protect yourself. Then once the judge is off your back, you and the woman could go your separate ways.”
He half turns to me, cocking an eyebrow. “You volunteering?”
I laugh too loud and too suddenly. “God. No. I mean, it would make sense and everything since I’m already staying at the house, but,” I laugh again, shaking my head. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s a terrible idea.”
“No,” he says, squinting out over the road. “No, I don’t think it is.” He looks at me and a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “I think it’s a fantastic fucking idea.”
“Oh,” I say, suddenly seeing where his thoughts are going. “No way. I wasn’t talking about me.”
“You said it yourself. It’s just temporary. You play along, I’ll make sure you’re compensated for your effort. Nothing complicated. As soon as the judge gets off my back, you’re free to go. Simple as that.”
“I really think this was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have said anything,” I say. My heart pounds in my chest and it feels like the car is spinning around me. “I hardly…”
“Fine. Let me make it simple for you. Pretend to marry me or you’re fired.”
“You can’t,” I blurt.
“Oh?” he asks. “Why can’t I? Because you can sue me for wrongful termination? Go right ahead. I’ll forward your information to the team of fucking lawyers I have. I’m sure they could work your case in.”
I cross my arms, looking at him like I’m seeing him for the first time, maybe the way other people in his business do. He’s ruthless. He can be charming and sweet, but when it comes down to it, Liam King gets what he wants, no matter the cost. I don’t think men rise to the heights he has on pure charm alone. It takes a man with bite behind the smile to conquer corporations, and now the full weight of his will is focused on me.
“Pretend to marry me,” he repeats.
I shake my head, looking out the window, clenching my jaw to hold back from saying the dozens of suddenly nasty things that are popping into my mind.
“I know how this sounds, but you’ll be taken care of.” He smirks, somehow managing to turn the charm back on like he didn’t just blackmail me. “Besides, Aubrey King has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? There’s no woman I’d rather have be the fake mother of my daughter.”
Even though he’s joking with me, and even though I’m furious, a small part of me is tempted by the idea. God knows I could use the money, but this could also be a chance to get in something resembling a relationship with him where there is an end date, and that end date doesn’t involve the kind of hard feelings that would lose me m
y job. It could also send a really clear message to Jake that I’m taken and there’s no point in still trying to win me back.
Agreeing might also be my only chance to make him pay for forcing my hand like this. If he fires me, it all ends. I walk away from Roxanne and the last link I have to my mother. I leave behind Sophie who has become like a daughter to me. And of course, I leave Mr. King behind, and all the fantasy filled dreams he has already fueled in my mind. It may not be my proudest decision, but I close my eyes and mutter the words. “Fine. I’ll pretend to marry you.”
29
Liam
I lean on the kitchen island, watching Aubrey and my mother sitting by the pool. My mother has her toes in the water and Aubrey is sitting on the diving board, casually kicking her long legs. Sophie snaps her fingers at me.
“Daddy, you’re staring.”
“Hm?” I ask, looking down at the glaring face of my daughter.
Sophie sighs and gives me a look like she’s about to explain something very simple to someone very stupid. “I see what’s going on here, daddy. I’m not a child anymore.”
I raise my eyebrows, considering she’s still in elementary school, but I figure it’s wiser not to interrupt right now.
“And,” she continues, “I think you should leave her alone. I love you, but I like Miss Aubrey. And when you like a girl, she’s always gone in a week.”
I take my time digesting her words. They sting, especially coming from my own daughter. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let an elementary schooler talk me out of what I’ve already set my mind on. “Honey, this is an adult thing. Miss Aubrey and I are going to be spending some time together over the next month, but you don’t have to worry about it. I’m not going to send her away.”
Sophie crosses her arms and sighs. “How do I know that’s true?”
I glare. “Soph, just because I was gone for a few weeks, it doesn’t mean you get to start disrespecting me.”
The Bodyguard: A Navy SEAL Romance Page 21
