Shared by her Bodyguards: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

  “Do you think it has anything to do with your candidacy?”

  “I don’t see why. I hadn’t even announced yet when I was attacked on my jog.”

  “But did anyone know you were planning on running for president?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Just my campaign manager. But there were plenty of rumors and speculation, both from inside our party and outside.” I paused. “We did hire a company to run a thorough background check on me. They probably put the pieces together. Maybe sold that information to someone else.”

  “Huh,” Luca grunted. He’d shouldered the weight of the doe easily, and still showed no sign of getting tired on our march back to the cabin. “Do you think you have a chance of beating Bob Pollock in the primary?”

  “I doubt I’ll beat any of the other candidates, whether that’s Senator Pollock or someone else. I’m really not much of a threat,” I admitted. “I just turned 35. I have far less experience than the rest of the field. Honestly, we’re just angling for a VP spot on someone else’s ticket. Why would anyone kill me over that?”

  “Another VP hopeful?”

  “Seems like a lot of effort to fight over second place,” I said.

  “That banker,” Luca suddenly said. “The one you grilled in the Finance Committee the other day. He stormed out of there like his tail was on fire. That’s someone pissed off enough to try to get even.”

  “His testimony in front of our committee was after I was first attacked,” I pointed out. “But I like your line of thinking. There are plenty of corporations we go after on the Finance Committee. Lots of corruption.”

  “You’d think they could do a better job,” Luca muttered.

  I looked sideways at him as we climbed over a fallen tree. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He was silent for a few steps. “I don’t want to alarm you.”

  “I can handle the blunt truth,” I said. “Pussyfooting around it only pisses me off.”

  He hesitated, like he didn’t want to say it. Finally he sighed and looked over at me.

  “You were a sitting duck up there on the Ohio Statehouse steps,” he said. “You stood behind the podium, without moving, for several minutes. The shooter had plenty of time to take a clean shot. Any mediocre assassin could have picked you off with ease.”

  I shivered. “You’re right. That does alarm me.” I paused. “The balloons probably obscured the shot.”

  “Right. Why wait until then to take the shot? The shooter must have only gotten into position at the end of your speech.”

  I looked at him. “Does that help us narrow down who did it?”

  “No,” he sighed. “Not really.”

  Or maybe they wanted to wait until I announced my candidacy. I dismissed the thought outright. If someone wanted to kill me, it shouldn’t have mattered if I was a candidate or not.

  “There we go,” Luca said as the cabin came into view. “My shoulders are killing me.”

  I grinned at the admission as we went inside.

  *

  Without much else to do, I curled up on the couch and pulled up the same book I’d been reading on my eReader for the past 6 months, a few pages at a time. Luca positioned the doe on a table outside and set to cleaning it for the next hour.

  I thought about our kiss last night. Clearly, it had been a mistake. An impulsive move by me, and a moment of weakness for him. The way he’d avoided physical contact since then showed that he didn’t have feelings for me, physical or otherwise.

  Stupid Elizabeth. You’ve already slept with Ethan and Anthony. Now you’re trying to make it three-of-a-kind?

  Yet I couldn’t help but glance out the window at my strapping Secret Service detail. Especially when he finished cleaning the deer, grabbed an axe, and started splitting logs for firewood on an old tree stump. After a minute of work he stripped off his jacket and shirt until he was wearing only a white wifebeater and jeans. His corded muscles rippled in the sunlight as he raised the axe over his head and brought it down, again and again in the frigid cold. The exercise warmed his body to the point that steam rose off his skin, making him look like some mythological creature of mist.

  When he was done, he rested the axe behind his head with both hands and stretched. The suit he wore on most days did a good job of hiding how ripped he was. Luca wasn’t a guy who got chiseled in the gym. Those muscles were from manual labor.

  He turned around and glanced at me through the window. I quickly returned my eyes to my book and hoped he didn’t realize how long I’d been staring.

  Luca got a fire going in his smoker and then cut hunks of meat off the doe carcass. Boomer sat on his haunches nearby until Luca tossed him a few strips of meat, which the loyal dog chomped on and swallowed quickly. Once the smoker was going he pulled out a vacuum-seal contraption to store the rest of the meat. By the time he was done he had dozens of packages of meat stacked on the table.

  “Doing okay in here?” he asked as he came inside and began storing them in the freezer.

  “Yep,” I said. “Need any help?”

  He turned away from the fridge. His muscular arms hung out of his wifebeater, glistening with sweat despite the frigid temperature outside. “Nah, I’ve got it. You haven’t tried to escape yet?”

  “Not yet. I’m still working out the logistics of my getaway.”

  He poured himself a glass of water and gulped it down. “If you try to make a break for it on foot, be sure to pack warm. I’ll definitely lose my job if you freeze to death in the middle of the forest.”

  “I’ll take that under consideration.”

  He smiled as he went back outside.

  In stark contrast to my days on the Hill which flew by, the day in the cabin crawled. I tried to force myself to relax and enjoy my book, but it was impossible to turn off the part of my brain that was churning a mile a minute. Thinking of campaign events, poll results, and media reaction to my candidacy. I’d spent my entire life dreaming about running for president! Now that I was officially running, it was torture to not even be involved.

  Luca didn’t seem to mind. He busied himself with tasks around the cabin. Starting a fire in the huge brick fireplace, then stacking enough logs next to it to keep it running for months. Next he went into the kitchen and took inventory of all the dry goods: sacks of beans, freeze-dried mashed potatoes, pasta, and rice. He rearranged it until he was satisfied and then set out to cleaning the dust off the cupboards.

  I lasted until late afternoon before tossing my book aside. “I’m going nuts. Can I use your Wi-Fi hotspot again?”

  He poked his head up from a cabinet. “If you promise not to login to any of your email accounts. If whoever wants to kill you is tracking your accounts, the IP address might lead them right to us.”

  “I promise,” I said as I moved to the table with my laptop.

  But as I sat down, I positioned myself so that Luca couldn’t see my screen from the kitchen.

  I spent an hour checking all the news sites. Now that a day had passed, op-eds had gone out in most of the major publications around the country. The good news? Most of the reaction to my candidacy was positive. Some very positive. The editor for the Columbus Star said the attempt on my life, “…proves that Senator O’Hare is a candidate to be reckoned with, who threatens the status-quo.” There were dozens more like that. I had to search hard for a negative opinion about my campaign. That came from the editor of a small North Carolina paper who claimed the assassination attempt was a false flag attack—that is, a fake attack orchestrated by me personally!—to generate sympathy for my campaign. I rolled my eyes so hard I might have given myself astigmatism.

  One thing was playing especially well in the media: my initial reaction to the shooting. While the bullets flew toward me I held my ground, staring defiantly out at the shooter until my Secret Service Agent covered me and escorted me off the stage. Little did they know I thought the gunshots were coming from the confetti cannons.

  I glanced
at Luca. He was still on his hands and knees cleaning the lower cabinets in the kitchen.

  I opened Chrome in Incognito Mode so it wouldn’t record my history, then logged into my personal email account.

  924 new emails in the last day. Goodness gracious.

  I searched for Megan’s email address and found a dozen emails from her. I skimmed the first few lines of each email to get a feel for what she was saying:

  Elizabeth! I’ve been praying you’re safe, but they won’t tell me where they’ve taken you. Some unspecified secure location…

  Elizabeth, the press is eating this up! As tragic as it was, I can spin it. Don’t make any public statements before talking to me first. If Special Agent Tightpants will even let you…

  Elizabeth, it’s very important that you call me AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. The longer you’re gone, the more suspicious people are getting. They need to see your face. People are starting to talk…

  Elizabeth. They can’t just kidnap and whisk you away without consulting me. I’ve canceled all the campaign stops we had scheduled for Ohio. Which sucks, since I called in a lot of favors to line some of them up…

  Elizabeth! This isn’t funny anymore. Call me ASAP.

  Elizabeth, we’re losing all of our momentum here. I don’t care if you have to crawl away from your detail on your hands and knees. Come back to civilization!

  I quickly sent her a new email telling her I was safe, and not to do anything drastic.

  “Wine?”

  I flinched as Luca held up a bottle of wine in the kitchen. It was covered with so much dust that the label was just a grey splotch.

  “I can’t promise it’s any good,” he said, “but it’s the only booze we have.”

  “You’re going to drink on the job?” I asked with surprise.

  “The offer was just for you,” he said coolly. “Want a glass with dinner?”

  I sighed. “I’ll take a glass right now, and then another with dinner.”

  He came over to the table so quickly that I had to scramble to close my email.

  “What’s the world saying about the candidacy of Senator Elizabeth O’Hare?” he asked while opening the wine next to me.

  I spun the laptop around so he could see. “The New York Times is calling me a hero.”

  He snorted. “Hero, huh?”

  “Right?” I replied with an incredulous laugh. “I heroically stood on stage while ignoring what I thought were the popping sounds from the confetti cannons. Nevermind that the real hero was the man who shielded me with his body and ushered me to safety.”

  “Nothing heroic about that,” he said. “I did what any other agent would do. By the way, Ethan did a fantastic job.”

  “Oh, right! I forgot all about him! Did you ever find out who he tackled? Was it an accomplice of the shooter?”

  Luca grimaced. “No such luck. The guy was totally unrelated. Some Capitol Policeman watching your speech.”

  I froze. “A Capitol Policeman?”

  “It makes as little sense to me too,” he said. “No idea why he was all the way out in Ohio, though. Must’ve been on vacation or something. All I know is they cleared him.”

  Anthony. He’d been watching from the crowd. And Ethan noticed him and tackled him.

  I’d totally forgotten about my other two protectors. I had too much else on my mind. If Megan was losing her mind trying to contact me, both of them were probably really worried.

  I accepted the glass of wine from Luca and drank deeply. The wine wasn’t good. In fact, it was pretty terrible. But it was better than nothing.

  “Still, that was good work from your bodyguard,” Luca said. “He’s got sharp eyes. I don’t know what you’re paying him, but he’s worth every penny.”

  I’ll say.

  Luca sat in the chair next to me. His skin was tight with corded muscle, with a smattering of freckles on his shoulders and forearms. The muscles in his arm bulged as he ran a hand through his hair and looked around the cabin. “Feels good to clean this place up. Lot of good memories here.”

  “Memories with your ex-wife?”

  “Hah! Not really.”

  He didn’t elaborate.

  “Why didn’t you two work out?” I asked. “Or is it complicated?”

  He smiled sadly. “It’s actually very simple. She hated D.C., and I didn’t want to leave my job. Every time we came back home she got all gloomy and talked about how she wished we could move back permanently. In the end, it was too much for both of us.”

  “Ah.”

  “I couldn’t go back to the simple life,” he said. “Getting a regular nine-to-five job in a small Kentucky town? I couldn’t do that. Not after spending almost two decades protecting the most powerful people in America.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Carey understood why I couldn’t leave, and I understood why she couldn’t stay. It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Do you believe in that?” I asked, feeling philosophical. “That things are meant to be? That everything happens for a reason?”

  He frowned in thought. Small wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. They didn’t make him look old, though. Only experienced. A man who knew who he was, and what he wanted in life.

  “I suppose I do,” he said. “Much of my life was random events. Catching the eye of a Louisville scout one day in high school practice, which got me a full ride. My professor encouraging me to apply to the Secret Service. I can think of a dozen little things like that which steered me toward where I am in life. It’s difficult to imagine any of that happening by chance alone.” He glanced at me. “You probably think that’s dumb.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “But I can tell you don’t believe it yourself.”

  I gave him an apologetic grimace. “I don’t. Sorry. Not that I think less of you for believing it!”

  “Everyone’s different,” he said simply. “What’s your take on all this?” His gesture encompassed more than just the cabin. He was talking about the world. Life in general.

  I thought very carefully before answering. I didn’t want to offend him.

  “Everything I’ve gotten in life, I had to work hard for,” I explained. “My high school teachers discouraged me from pursuing political science, so I had to spend twice as much time on my papers to get them to take me seriously. College was much the same. I had to search high and low for a campaign manager who would take a chance on a rookie city council member, and then when I did find Megan Hanram I spent weeks actually convincing her to work for me. Every campaign I’ve ever run, whether at the state or national level, I’ve worked twice as hard as my opponents. Not to throw out the gender card, but women have to spend twice as long on their appearance than men. Daily exercise is mandatory for someone like me, because although a male politician can be overweight and still be taken seriously, being overweight is the kiss of death for a female politician. That’s the shitty reality. But rather than let it discourage me, I pushed through it and worked my ass off every single day to get where I am.”

  Luca nodded along. “Were there no random bits of luck along the way? No chance encounters that changed your career?”

  “Maybe some. Meeting Megan right after she’d been fired from her previous campaign was lucky. But overall, my career is defined by the hard work I have put in. Not by luck along the way. If that makes sense.”

  “It does,” Luca said. “You’ve definitely worked hard to get where you are. It shows.”

  He looked away, as if embarrassed by what he’d said. Or scared of what thoughts were going on behind those sharp eyes.

  “Even though you don’t want to leave Washington,” I said, “you seem to enjoy the simple life. Hunting. Chopping wood. It suits you.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I enjoy it. But it’s not my purpose. I’d get sick of all this after a week or two.” He sighed deeply. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire.”

  I sipped my wine. It wasn’t so bad once you dran
k enough of it. “You won’t have to worry about that for a while, right?”

  “Actually, most agents retire before age 40,” he said. “Only the most elite are kept longer. Which I thought I was… Until I got on someone’s bad side.” He stared off. “I’m scared they’re going to force me into retirement as soon as your assignment is over, no matter how well I do.”

  I reached out and took his hand. “I’m really sorry, Luca. If it helps, I’ll give you a glowing review.”

  A moment passed between us. Like a jolt of electricity through our hands, fusing them together. Leaving everything all tingly.

  He pulled his hand away awkwardly. “Elizabeth…”

  “Who knows,” I said, trying to quickly change the subject. “If I become vice president I can request you personally. Call in some favors.”

  He wasn’t easily distracted. His eyes bore into mine. “Elizabeth. About what happened last night.”

  Damnit. I’d pushed too hard. I was such an idiot. He didn’t have feelings for me. Because why would he? We’d only known each other for a few days. A lot had happened in that time, but still.

  Yet I’d pushed my luck anyways.

  “It’s perfectly normal to feel… attraction to someone after a traumatic event,” he said. “It’s the typical human response. The brain attaching itself to whatever is near.”

  I listened to his speech and sipped more bad wine. I’d screwed things up, and now it was awkward and uncomfortable.

  “That’s why we can’t act on our feelings,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me now. Like he was afraid to. “We have to resist whatever urges we may have.”

  “What?” I said. “We?”

  “You’re a senator. Hell, you’re a presidential candidate now. And I’m a Secret Service agent. It would be disastrous for both of us to make a rash decision. We would both regret it later.”

  We. He kept saying we. He had feelings for me too. Urges.

  It was impossible to look at him as just another guy, a platonic robot at my side for these past few days. Luca Santos was a handsome, ripped man who had saved my life. He’d shielded me with his body, and then carried me in his arms to safety.