by Ali Parker
"What?" I jerked up in surprise, all of my thoughts dissipating. I realized that my father hadn't actually met Jeremy face to face. He would have recognized him immediately.
"Yep. He fucked me over then and I plan to return the favor."
"Why am I here?"
"You're bait, idiot." He laughed and walked toward the other end of the hall, reaching out and pulling me with him. "You're a hot little piece of ass, but I can't tell you how hard it was to get you to fall in love with me."
I held my tongue on why I didn't want to date him and on the fact that love was never part of the deal.
"Didn't seem like you had to try too hard to me. I've been attracted to you since we met." I stopped in the kitchen as he pointed to a nearby chair.
"Sit down and shut up."
I nodded and dropped down in the seat.
"I'm thinking I'll call your dad in a bit and let him know where we are and what I want in return for you." He moved toward me. A smile slipped over Jeremy's handsome face, his attire and looks deeming him a preppy jock at the top of his class.
Damn looks can be deceiving. I shuddered at the thought as he leaned over the top of me, running the tip of his gun up my dress and tapping it over my mound.
"I can think of a few things we could do while we wait here together." He licked at his lips and I pushed at the gun, my courage roaring to life every time I thought of him raping me.
"Stop it."
He laughed and stood up before swinging his arm and pushing all the dishes off of the table. The loud crash that resounded around me caused me to jump.
Jeremy laughed harder, something inside of him seeming to crack.
"Get on the table and pull your dress up. I want to see what color your panties are. You rich girls always have the prettiest little panties." He moved to stand in front of me and I jerked away again.
Something moved by the back door and I glanced up to see Ian. A sigh slipped from my lips at the sight of him. I shook my head as Jeremy began to pace in front of me, his pistol in his hand as if he expected to use it any minute.
"How can I get you to do what I want you to do without hitting you again? You're too pretty to mark up too badly." He shrugged and turned back to stare down at me.
“I’m not showing you my panties.” I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a look. “You’re being unreasonable. We could just get in the car and go have coffee and figure this out. I can’t believe for one minute that all the time we were together you weren’t happy. I was.” Lies. All lies.
He brushed the tip of the gun by his lips. “There were moments. You were a great fuck, but a lousy girlfriend. So emotional and needy. How any guy could put up with you flying off the chain over stupid shit is beyond me. You’re pretty fucked in that area.”
“I’ve had a bit of a hard go at life, thank you very much,” I growled, unable to lock down my emotion much longer. I hated myself for even trying to coax him into being someone he wasn’t.
“Everyone has shit in their past, Chloe. You need to grow the fuck up and get over it.” He pointed the gun at me. “Get on the table and show me your ass like you used to when you wanted to be fucked all night long. Remember those days?”
“Yep. They were all a lie. You were by far the worst-” I didn’t get the sentence fully out of my mouth.
He changed the gun to his left hand and reared back, slapping me hard in the face before I could get my hands up to protect myself.
I screamed as pain laced through my jaw. I stood and plowed into Jeremy about the time I heard Ian's voice behind us.
"Chloe. No!"
The gun went off and pain burst through my stomach, but I didn't care about anything in the moment. Ian was hired to protect me, but there was no way I was letting him walk in on the crazy bastard holding me hostage. He wouldn't hesitate to shoot my bodyguard.
I couldn't let that happen.
I wouldn't.
Forgotten Bodyguard 2
Chapter 1
Ian
The scene before me was surreal. I was hired to protect the senator of California's only daughter, and hadn't done a good enough job of it. She had been snatched up the one moment I turned my head to help her father.
She had played hero and attacked her ex-boyfriend, Jeremy, in order to protect me. Did the woman not understand that my life was on the line for hers and not the other way around? The run-down house the kidnapping bastard had dragged her off to from the live event at UCLA was falling apart all around us as I ran through to the kitchen where he held her hostage.
Then a gun had gone off. All bets were off at that point.
"Chloe! No!" I screamed as I reached the kitchen.
Bolting over the table, I punched the fucker twice in the face as he stood in shock. The gun fell from his hands and I scrambled to get it as sickness rolled over me.
Chloe was on the floor, blood pouring from her chest as she clutched it tightly, her long blond hair splayed out like strands of gold.
"No!" The guy screamed and got up, ramming his shoulder into my stomach and knocking me back as he tried to get to her. He was stronger than I had given him credit for, but he couldn't hold a candle to all the shit I'd been put through on the streets.
How many times had I been faced with death, a gun or knife shoved to my chest or crammed into my back. He was child's play at best, and he wasn't getting near my keep.
I turned and flipped us, ramming him against the table as it broke beneath us. Jeremy fell to the floor and I rushed over to Chloe and dropped to my knees beside her as her eyes fluttered wildly. The light in them was draining.
"No. No, Chloe. Stay with me. It's going to be okay." I pressed my hand to her chest and touched the side of her face. "Help is on the way. Just hold on with me."
Jeremy scrambled to his feet, the skinny fucker bolting for the door before I could get to him. There was no way I was leaving her. We would find him later.
"I'm scared," she whispered and pressed her hands to mine as the world dimmed around us.
"Please don't die. Just stay with me, okay?" I leaned down and pressed my lips to her head, her skin pasty and chilled. Fuck.
I wasn't in love with the girl, but I could see myself getting there. After the tense start we had, we'd finally come together in more ways than one, and I wanted to push the relationship to another level, to find out who she was and join her in the healing we both needed.
We both jumped as the back door flung open and five cops raced in, all of them with their guns pointed on me, shouting far too loudly.
"Hands up! Get up and back away from the girl. Now!"
I started to protest that I needed to keep my hands pressed to her wound, but a paramedic dropped down beside me, and another in front of me.
"I'm scared. Don't leave me." Chloe coughed softly and groaned and blood ran down from her lips.
"Fuck," I mumbled and got up. "Don't you dare let anything happen to her. I'll kill all of you if you do."
"We got her man." The EMS went to work as she closed her eyes. They had her out of the kitchen within minutes.
"You have the right to remain silent..." One of the cops started reading me my rights as another gripped my arms and forcefully pulled them behind my back before pressing me to a wall. "Do you understand your rights?"
"Yes," I mumbled and closed my eyes as fear mixed with memories from the past. Chloe would be fine. She had to be.
"Get him to the car." The largest cop with the group pushed at my back and held tightly to my wrists as he walked me through the house and out the front door.
"The guy that shot her ran toward the back forty of that property to the south of here. He's about six foot three, and weight a buck eighty. You'll find him beat up and scared as hell. Jeremy something or other. I don't know-"
"Shut up," the cop barked and walked with me down the front stairs as Pauly pulled up. The tough-looking little bastard didn't even look my way before climbing in the back of the ambulance with Ch
loe. At least she was with someone she felt safe with.
She had to survive. Had to.
I ducked my head to get in the back of the car and let my head drop back as memories assaulted me, forcing my breakfast up to the center of my chest. I swallowed and tried to think of anything but Amanda. Just not her. Chloe wasn't going to die in my arms as Mandy had.
Yeah, she's going to die in the back of an ambulance because your judgment was off. Because you're an ineffective fuck.
I glanced out the window as the cops stood in a tight circle. Two of them pulled their guns and headed for the back of the house. I sighed with relief. I would be acquitted of the situation, no doubt, but the hope was that they would find Jeremy before I got out to find him. Having blood on my hands was nothing new, but something I would rather not experience again.
Pressing my hand to my chest, I watched the ambulance speed off and said a short prayer to keep the beautiful girl in the back of it safe. It wasn't just about fucking up a job, but possibly losing someone that in a short period of time was becoming important to me.
The cops got in the front of the car and pulled away from the house as I let my eyes close. My heart was neither racing as it should be, or broken as I expected. I'd found the place I feared in myself most. Numbness. It was a requirement for the life I'd once lived. If ever forced to face the demons of my past, I'd never take another step forward.
The biggest of all of those was Amanda. My girl, my love, my loss. Visions of my rough childhood raced behind my closed eyes and dragged me deep into the one demon that always left me most crippled.
I reached for her like I always did when we finished making love. She jerked from me and laughed, sliding to the edge of the bed and glaring over her shoulder. She was far too thin, her ribs showing through the skin of her back, but I saw nothing but beauty.
"Don't." Her words were harsh, but I was almost used to them. She had never been anything but hateful. Why did I put myself through this shit again? Right. Love. Love and guilt. I wasn't willing to walk, though I should have a million times.
"Baby, come back over here and let me hold you. You know I hate it when you leave after we make love." I brushed the bed just beside her, wanting so badly to pull her back into my arms. I just needed one night in her arms like we used to have. I just wanted one, but it was too much to ask for. She wasn't the same girl as when I met her, nor did I deserve that woman anymore.
"Ian. Stop acting like a fucking girl. We don't make love. We fuck. We haven't made love since we were kids and you had plans of actually making something out of yourself." She laughed and stood up, walking away from me to lean toward the mirror.
I rolled onto my back and pressed my arm across my face. She was right. I was a piece of shit and deserved nothing more than a quick fuck by a crack whore, which is exactly what she had become... because of me.
The girl who stole my heart in high school was long gone and this monster took her place. I stayed beside her, begging for attention simply because I needed redemption. I dragged her into the fucked-up world we lived in. I would take whatever she threw my way and ask for another serving of it. I wanted to help her get back to who she was, but that wasn't possible. That girl was dead.
She turned as tears filled her eyes, a sob choking past her thin lips.
I scrambled to my knees, the sheet falling and leaving me naked, our sex still clinging to my body.
"What's the matter, baby? Come here. Come here, Mandy." I moved to the edge of the bed as she held up her hands, slapping at the air in front of her.
"No. Stay back. Tell them to stay back, Ian. Don't let them get me. Don't let..." Her scream pierced me with such force that I had to cover my ears. I tried to get out of the bed to get to her, but I couldn't push past the force of her scream, the sound having personified into an entity much greater than me.
I glanced up as blood began to trickle from her little button nose. How many times had I brushed my nose past hers? Promised her that we would build a house and have two little ones? All those words lost, the promises so fucking beyond empty.
"No. Stop it. Stop screaming, Mandy. You're busting the veins in your nose, baby." I moved toward the floor, but the ground simply sunk as my feet pressed into it. I grunted and pushed forward until her cries got to be too much.
She cried out again. Blood poured from her nose and ears, her little puckered lips white and cracked, her eyes wild and hair half pulled out. She thrusted her arms toward me, palms up. I turned from her, closing my eyes at the sight before me. The track lines from the needles on her pretty flesh left it bruised and puffy with infection. She had to have gotten up in the middle of the night and taken another hit without me knowing, without my help.
Fuck me for helping her shoot up.
"Look at me. Look at what I've become. Look at what you did to me." She screamed over and over as I began to cry, unable to help myself. Blistering shame wrapped in thick chords around my despair and dragged me into a darkness that hell couldn't contend with.
I turned back and let out a scream that shook me to the core of my soul. "I know, baby. Forgive me. Please God, Mandy... forgive me."
She hadn't forgiven me with words, and I had no clue if in those last moments that somehow she released me from my prison silently. She shook in my arms, losing her sense of reason as blood dripped from her beautiful face. I couldn't call the cops due to fear, so I did the only thing I knew to do.
I called my brother Cole, and we buried the body deep in the ground. It wasn't just her that died that day, but me too.
"You're in deep shit, Mister. You've got a record a mile long from what we can tell," the cop barked from the front seat. "You do know that girl you shot was Senator Mitch Moore's daughter, right?"
"I didn't shoot her." I kept my eyes closed, my voice steady. There was nothing they could do to me that hadn't already been done a hundred times.
"Right. Let me guess... it was the one-armed man."
I opened my eyes and let the deadness in my soul bleed through my expression. "I wouldn't hurt the girl."
"Why's that, buddy? Got a hard on for the little tart?" He snorted.
"I was paid to protect her." I closed my eyes, not willing to play into his shit. He wanted someone to fuck with, and because there was a thick metal cage-like wall keeping me trapped in the backseat and him safe in the front, he thought he could get away with it.
"You did a great job. You should get promoted, you know, get a raise."
I didn't respond. There was no need to. The fucker was right.
I had failed her.
It was the story of my life summed up in four words.
Chapter 2
Chloe
Pain laced my head as I forced my eyes open. The white walls and incessant beeping of several machines around me left me with one conclusion. I was in the hospital. Bits and pieces of the struggle with Jeremy rolled through my mind, causing the pain to increase.
I cried out and pressed my fingers to the side of my head as a nurse walked through the open door at the far side of the room.
"Chloe. I'm so glad to see you waking up. How are you feeling, dear?" She smiled warmly and touched my arm as she stopped beside the bed.
"Good as can be, I guess. Where is Ian?" I glanced around, hoping like hell that he would stick his head in the room and give me a tight smile. I needed to see him, to know that he was okay, that my sacrifice was worth something.
"I'm not sure who Ian is, but your father just walked down to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. This place has been a madhouse since you got here." She brushed my hair back and pressed the back of her fingers to my head. "I'm going to take some vitals and then I'll get you some ice to suck on, okay?"
"Yeah. Thanks." I closed my eyes as she moved about me. Fear wouldn't release its tight grip on me, and in a matter of moments, I was fighting tears. The hot lump of worry lodged in my throat was burning a hole in me.
"Hey. It's okay." The nurse's voice was soft,
kind, caring.
I opened my eyes as hot tears spilled down the side of my face and I choked on a sob that had worked its way up.
"You're safe now. No one is going to hurt you here." She brushed my hair back again.
"It's not that," I mumbled past my tears. "I need to know if Ian is okay. Is he in another room? Please... just tell me so I can stop imagining the worst."
The sound of my father's voice should have been a comfort, but it wasn't.
"He's fine. Stop worrying about him. He's an ineffective piece of shit, and we're not going to talk about him anymore." He stopped beside the bed, looking ten years older than he had just the day before. He glanced over at the nurse and smiled. "Can I have a minute alone with my daughter?"
"Of course, Senator Moore. I'll come back in twenty minutes and finish up my rounds."
"Bring Chloe something to eat and drink as well."
"She's not allowed to have anything for the next few hours." The woman gave my father a sheepish look.
"Right. Make it happen. Thank you kindly." He pulled up a stool closer to the bed and sat down, staring at me. He didn't speak until the door closed behind the nurse. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I guess." I brushed my tears away, hating the idea of the IV in my hand. "Ian isn't a piece of shit and you know it."
"He's ineffective." My dad reached over and ran his hand over the top of my head. "You wouldn't be here if he did his job right."
"It wasn't his fault-"
"No more of this. His job was to protect you, and where are we now?"
"The hospital, but dad-"
"No. He was a good guy about it, and turned in his notice the minute he got cleared from the station." He tilted his head and studied me.
"He did not. There is no way he would turn in his notice." I pushed his hand away from me as I tried to sit up. White-hot pain pooled in my side and I groaned, dropping back down. "I don't believe you."
"I don't care what you believe." My father got up and walked to the door, leaning out. "Pauly. She's up."
