“Because that’s what they would have expected us to do,” Wrath said impatiently. “Just follow me down. And if I get to the bottom and you’re still up here, I’m leaving.”
Her pale face didn’t affect him one bit. At least he told himself that it didn’t. And he didn’t care that she was pretty and blond either, or that her eyes were like two pieces of the sky. She was just a woman.
“Fine.” She narrowed her gaze. “But when I see my father, I’m going to tell him that you’re horrible at your job.”
“Really?” He jumped onto the ladder and started sliding down with his boots lodged on either side of the structure. “Because you’re still alive.”
Chapter Two
“He’s an absolute beast!” Tegan shouted. She paced angrily from one side of her father’s office to the other. “He would have left me there! He said so. I listened to him say it, Daddy. Do you even understand how terrifying it is to not know what’s going on? To be lying in the street with some nasty man squashing you down onto the ground and claiming that he’s saving your life when he’s probably just trying to cop a feel? It’s horrid!”
Tegan had no idea how long she had been ranting. Honestly, she was a little surprised that her father hadn’t put a stop to it several moments ago. It wasn’t like he actually cared if she was inconvenienced or something. He was just sitting behind his desk with his hands steepled before him. He always seemed to do that when he was thinking about something very seriously. He would press his fingers together and just sit there until he felt that he had come up with a viable solution to the problem at hand. The list of those solutions often made Tegan shiver with a horrible sense of apprehension.
“That’s enough.”
Tegan stopped pacing and stared at her father. “That’s all you’re going to say? That’s it?”
Stedman Hyde-Pierson lifted his hands and held them out, palms up. “There is nothing else that can be said, Tegan. The man was hired by me to come and find you and to protect you by whatever means necessary. He put his life on the line for you. I would think that was self-explanatory enough.”
“Put his life on the”—Tegan’s brain stumbled over that notion—“How do you figure that?”
“Was somebody shooting at you?”
Tegan resumed her pacing. It helped her think. The thick Persian rug in her father’s office felt good to her sore bare feet. Her heels were a complete loss. And that did not even begin to cover the rest of her wardrobe damage. The entire outfit was a loss. And her jacket was ripped in several places from all the rough treatment. But her father was talking about bullets. She did not have any bullets in her clothing.
“No,” she said finally. “I’m not sure someone really was shooting. The only person I saw firing a gun was the madman you call a bodyguard,” Tegan maintained stubbornly.
Her father pressed the button on his intercom. “Mr. Nash, could you please come in here?”
Moments later, the heavy double doors opened and a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped inside the office. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and his face looked a bit weathered. He was at least cleaner than her previous savior had been, but Tegan didn’t like the way he was looking at her. It made her feel—insignificant.
“Mr. Nash?” Stedman Hyde-Pierson addressed the man. “Please meet my daughter, Tegan Hyde-Pierson.” Tegan’s father looked directly at her. “This is the head of my personal security team, Tegan. His name is Jason Nash. He is a former commander in the US Marines, and he comes highly recommended by several very high-profile individuals.”
“Then maybe he could hire some personnel who have decent attitudes,” Tegan said irritably. “The man who accosted me earlier was rude and disgusting! I think he was worse than the bum I gave money to in the street!”
“The bum that then shot at you?” Nash said mildly. “Wrath has explained to me that the man dressed as a bum was actually one of the mafia family’s hitmen. He waited for you to get close enough to him to make a clear identification. Once you spoke to him and looked him in the face when you put the money in his cup, he was sure that you were his target. At that time, he essentially got your attention by being rude to you, which made you turn around and expose yourself to a very simple gunshot execution. Wrath intervened by knocking you out of the bullet’s trajectory.”
Nash turned back to her father and gave him a curt nod. Stedman Hyde-Pierson returned the nod and looked at Tegan. “You don’t think that shots were fired, and yet the man who protected you took one in the shoulder this evening in order to make sure that you came home safe.”
Tegan could not speak. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. That man had been shot? But he hadn’t—he was climbing those ladders and running around as if he were just fine. Why hadn’t he…
“It’s his job,” Mr. Nash told her in a severe tone of voice. “Something you made very difficult for him with your behavior this evening. But that’s what we do. We protect people.” He gave Tegan a once-over that made her feel awful inside. “Even from themselves.”
*
Analise Vega poked at Wrath’s shoulder with the forceps. “Leave it to you to get shot the first day out on assignment.”
“You didn’t see what I was dealing with,” Wrath grunted. He took another slug of whiskey straight from the bottle. He knew Ana had no choice but to dig around and drag the slug out of his shoulder, but it didn’t make him want to hit her less for inflicting that kind of pain.
“Oh, I saw her,” Ana laughed. “I heard her too. She was ranting up one side and down the other about your lack of manners. What did you say to her?”
“I told her I’d leave her there if she didn’t do what I told her.” Wrath figured it was pretty simple. “The girl is a liability, Ana. I’ve never met anyone like her. She just sat down in the middle of a fucking alley and decided she would wait for the cops.”
Ana sighed. The bullet plinked as it hit the metal dish sitting beside Wrath’s elbow. She doused his shoulder in iodine, which hurt worse than the digging. “You’ve never been a civilian, Wrath. That’s what they do. They wait for the police to show up and deal with criminals. That’s the life we’ve been fighting for.”
“Wait.” Wrath was feeling ill-tempered. “You’re telling me I’ve been bleeding all over three continents so people here at home can sit on their asses and wait for someone to protect them instead of just doing it for themselves?”
“Yup.” She started the process of winding the bandage around his shoulder.
“I want a refund,” Wrath muttered.
Nash stepped into the room. They were in a small guesthouse behind the enormous Brookline mansion that Stedman Hyde-Pierson called home. This was where Nash had decreed they would set up operations while they looked into the current security issues of Mr. Stedman Hyde-Pierson. Nash’s security firm was not just an average protection agency. He also solved problems. If there was a threat to one of his clients, he gathered intel and went after the source so that his clients would not need him long term. It was a unique way to do business, but nobody could say that it had not been successful.
“How is she?” Wrath asked before he could stop himself.
Nash raised an eyebrow. “She’s pissed as a hornet at you. Apparently, you have no manners. You’re a beast—I think that’s what she said. Yep. Beast.”
“Accurate,” Ana joked.
Wrath grunted. That was pretty much how he answered most things.
“How’s the shoulder?” Nash addressed this question to Ana and not to Wrath.
Ana shrugged. “It’s Wrath. I could tell him to take it easy for a few weeks and let the thing heal up, but you know he won’t listen anyway. And he won’t take anything for pain. So, I’ll just shoot him full of antibiotics and hope that gangrene doesn’t set in.”
“Ha. Ha!” Wrath said sarcastically. “We’re in the middle of a job. What do you propose? I should go take a vacation to the beach for a few weeks?”
Why had he sa
id beach? He didn’t vacation at the beach. He took long solitary hikes into the mountains with nothing but a pack on his back and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He hunted and fished for his provisions and never saw another human until he returned to civilization. He did not go to the beach. He hadn’t done that since he was a kid.
It’s that damn woman. She smells like coconut, like the beach.
“No.” Nash was, fortunately, completely unaware of Wrath’s internal musings. “I’m not proposing you take a vacation and neither is Ana. Just don’t hurt yourself again for a few weeks. How is that for a suggestion?”
Wrath made a face. “Like I intended to get shot. The woman just stood there while he pulled out a gun and aimed it right at her! It was like she had no idea what was going on.”
“She probably didn’t.” Nash sighed. “You have to realize that an average citizen doesn’t expect that sort of thing to happen in the middle of a busy street during evening rush-hour traffic. That street was crowded! There were other pedestrians and cars everywhere. She’s not part of our world.”
“And at this rate she won’t even last to be part of hers,” Wrath fired back. It was strange, but that possibility really bothered him. He didn’t like the idea of Tegan’s life being snuffed out before she got to grow up a little.
“Well, it’s your job to make sure she does last,” Nash pointed out.
Ana finished up her bandage and swatted Wrath on his uninjured shoulder. “Are you hungry? I think we should put some food on top of that whiskey before you do something even more beastly, like puke all over the floor.”
“Fuck off.” Wrath felt grumpier than usual. “I need to go check on the princess.”
Nash frowned. “Princess?”
“Yeah. That Tegan chick. I should apologize or something. Right?” Wrath could not believe that he was even suggesting it. “That’s what you’re always saying in those sensitivity training classes you make us take.”
“Oh God,” Ana said dramatically. “Nash, I think he’s been listening in class!”
Nash’s expression suggested he didn’t quite believe that to be true. “I’ll buy that when I stop getting complaints about his people skills.”
“Can you guys not talk about me as if I wasn’t here?” Wrath hated that. It reminded him too much of other times. He gave them both the finger and stalked out of the guesthouse on his way to the big house. He was not the kid with the screwed up family any more. He was a man who could stand on his own.
Chapter Three
Tegan curled up in the cozy chair in her sitting room. She had been in the same rooms at her father’s house since she was a little girl. Once she had reached her teen years, she had redecorated the playroom and made it into a place where she could hang out with her friends and gossip like any other normal girl. Nowadays, she didn’t spend much time at her father’s estate. She had a townhouse in Back Bay that suited her much better. But for the moment, it felt good to wrap a fuzzy blanket around her legs and wind down after her hellacious day.
She had been texting back and forth for nearly an hour with Hailey and Jennifer. The girls had been worried when Tegan never showed for dinner. Of course they had been distracted by all of the EMS and cops that had shown up after someone reported a gunshot.
Tegan could not help but think that if her would-be rescuer had just waited, they could have saved the trip up and down the fire escape that had pretty much ruined what was left of her day.
A knock on her door made her glance down at her attire. The big, thick robe was decent enough, especially since it was probably just their housekeeper, Mabel. “Come in, Mabel.”
The door opened, but it was a dark male head that poked its way inside. “Not Mabel, sorry. Don’t think I would have liked that name very much either. I would have gotten into even more fights as a kid.”
Tegan couldn’t speak. She drew the blanket even tighter around her body as the beast that had “rescued” her stepped into her room. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” Tegan said primly. “Don’t you have accommodations elsewhere?”
“I’m not trying to bunk in here with you.” He seemed to be looking around her room. “I wouldn’t want to.”
“What?” She was insulted. Why was she insulted? Why did she care what he thought? “It’s a nice room!”
“I guess.” He shrugged. “I think I’d have to turn in my man card if I slept in here. Too much pink.”
Tegan stared at him. Without the long coat he’d been wearing earlier and without all of the situational crap going on to distract her, she had to admit that this man was not bad-looking. In fact, if she had been into bad boys—which she certainly was not—he would have been almost irresistible.
His dark hair was shaved close on the sides and just a little longer on top. His face was rugged but handsome in a very working-class sort of way. His nose was crooked, and his lips were full and looked soft. He had a strong jaw, and his body was—well, she would just try and ignore the body. The guy was totally ripped. She had never seen muscle like that on anything but those the MMA fighters that her brother was always watching on television.
Shit. She was staring! Tegan tried to regain her composure and pretend that she had not been shamelessly staring at a man that she had already professed very vehemently not to like.
Tegan cleared her throat. “Now that we’ve established your disapproval of my personal quarters, can we establish why you’re bothering me?”
“I was checking on you to make sure you were okay after your ordeal.” He actually shrugged as though it was completely normal for him to do such a thing.
“Checking on me,” Tegan said disbelievingly. “You expect me to buy that?”
“I don’t expect you to do anything.” His tone was careless, and he even shrugged those incredibly broad shoulders into the bargain. “You can believe what you want and think what you want. I’m just telling you why I’m standing here, because you asked.” He started to turn around as though he were going to leave.
“Wait.” Tegan could not decide why she was asking him to wait. She should have been ordering him out of her quarters. “Your—boss—told me that you were shot today.”
“Yeah.” He nonchalantly lifted the short sleeve on his right arm and showed her the bandage that appeared to be anchored up around his shoulder. “It’s no big deal. I’ve been shot plenty of times. This one doesn’t hurt as bad as some. In fact, sometimes it hurts more to get shot center mass while you’re wearing a vest.”
“It hurts to get shot more when you’re wearing bulletproof armor?” The actual notion of body armor was completely foreign to Tegan to begin with. The idea that it still hurt had never occurred to her. “Why?”
“The bruises,” he informed her. “When the bullets get caught in the Kevlar, they still pack a punch, right? So, all of that force is transferred to the soft tissue beneath. No puncture, but nowhere for the force to go. It’s physics.” He looked extremely unconcerned by all this. “When a bullet rips through flesh, the skin, muscle, and bone take some of that energy away from the bullet so it doesn’t really hurt as much unless it hits something important.”
Tegan snorted. “Because skin, muscle, and bone are superficial, I suppose.”
“Pretty much.” A slow smile spread across his face.
The effect of that smile was devastating to Tegan’s composure. It shouldn’t have. He was a bad boy. He was a man who thought nothing of getting shot. And yet there was more to him than what he showed on the surface. He’d talked of physics as though he were comfortable with the subject. And the man’s smile would make any pair of panties in a bar drop fast.
What a strange thought. Why would Tegan even begin to wonder what Hailey and Jennifer would think of him? Why did it matter? Unless Tegan had become one of those ridiculous sorts that tried to show off their beefcake bodyguard just to wow their friends. Ugh! She was such a dork!
WRATH COULD NOT decide what the woman was doing. No. That wasn’t entir
ely correct. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was having an entire conversation in her head without saying anything out loud. And from the looks of things, she was giving herself a real talking to. In a negative way.
“You want to share any of those circling thoughts that just keep running through your mind?” Wrath finally asked.
Her eyes opened wide, as if he’d just shocked the hell out of her. “Excuse me? What are you referring to?”
“I’m referring to the lecture you’re giving yourself in your brain right now,” he drawled.
Wrath took a few more steps into the room and looked around. Who wanted this much damn pink in their house? Seriously. It was like someone had hosed the walls down with Pepto-Bismol.
“I’m not”—she stopped talking—“What makes you think that’s what’s happening?”
“Look,” Wrath said with a gusty sigh. He hated this touchy-feely shit. “When a man has been all over the world with all kinds of soldiers, fighting everyone else’s wars and watching the guys in charge first-, second-, and even third-guess themselves, he learns to pick up the signs of a good mental tilt-a-whirl.”
“Mental tilt-a-whirl?” Tegan looked utterly confused.
Where had this girl grown up? “It’s a carnival ride.”
“I’m familiar with the carnival ride,” she said stiffly. “I grew up in America, thank you. What I don’t understand is how you can mentally ride one.”
“I’m talking about the spinning thoughts. The circular way you go through doubts in your mind about things you’ve said or choices you’ve made. They follow the pattern of a tilt-a-whirl. Around and around while going up and down on this endless loop that makes you feel like no decision you make is the right one.” It was quite possibly the longest speech that Wrath had ever made. What the hell? He needed to get out of here.
“That’s strangely insightful, thank you.” She looked surprised. He liked the way she was sitting there in her chair. It sort of humanized her a bit. She gestured to the other chair sitting at an angle to hers and separated by a tiny table of some kind. “Would you like to sit?”
Nash Security Solutions Page 2
