by Cate Remy
“It looks good on you,” Cy remarked. “Dahlia is an expert at that.”
“Cy, you didn’t tell me your client was a famous makeup artist. She has her own line and everything.”
Dahlia shifted, getting a little uncomfortable. “I’m just getting started.”
“Don’t be modest, sweetie. You wouldn’t have your own line if you didn’t know what you were doing.”
Cy stared out the window. “It looks like the rain is coming down harder. We’d better go, Dahlia.”
She went to his mother. “I’m happy it all worked out. It was nice meeting you tonight.”
To her surprise, the woman gave her a hug. “You and Cy be careful driving into the city.”
Chapter Ten
Dahlia waited for Cy to say goodbye to his family. He embraced his mother and gave his brother a clap on the back before ruffling his hair. “Remember what we talked about,” he said while the teen protested.
“I will. Just quit doing that.”
Dahlia put her coat on and went with Cy out the door into the cold. Freezing rain coated the ground in a slick finish. She started to slip when her feet touched concrete at the bottom of the porch steps. She flung her hand out to catch hold of a rail. Cy’s hand closed around her arm.
“Thanks. I could have taken you down with me, you know.”
“Then we’re going down together.”
“Is cushioning my fall part of the package deal?”
He aided her to the passenger side of the car. “Keeping you safe is part of the deal, isn’t it? I’m sure somewhere that includes preventing slips and falls.”
She settled in the safety of the passenger seat. She watched Cy cross over to the driver side with no problems walking on the ice. “Showoff. Are you secretly wearing snowshoes?”
“I once stayed at a mountain base in Afghanistan. There was plenty of snow and ice for me to trip on until I learned to walk on it.”
His reminder of his military background made her think about his mother. “I know your mom is glad that you’re home. Of course she’s proud of you for serving, though.”
He backed the car out slowly from the driveway. The windshield wipers cleared a fine layer of ice that settled on the glass while he was inside the house. “I think about how everything happened while I was away. My parents divorced. Jeff started getting into trouble. I hate that I couldn’t be there for them.” The volume of his voice went down.
Dahlia studied him. Did he think it was his fault that his family went through those problems? “You seem to be very close with your mother and your brother.”
“It hasn’t always been that way. I guess, like any kid in high school, the last thing I wanted to do was be around my family.”
She remembered how eager he was to go to basic training and the fight they had because of it. She winced at her immature responses at the time. “Being in the Special Forces was one of your goals.”
“I don’t regret going after it. Still, what I saw overseas made me learn to appreciate what I have here.”
She played with the zipper on her coat. Why was she starting to get fidgety? Everything Cy was talking about was old, water underneath the bridge. So why was she reacting as though it happened recently rather than ten years ago?
They made it to her house. She grabbed the car door handle. “I think I can make it to the front door without falling on my face.”
“You sure? It doesn’t cost extra for me to lend a hand. It’s included in your security package, anyway.”
“And I thought you were just being a gentleman. I should have known better.”
Seeing the change in his facial expression, she realized her teasing came off a little too snarky. “I didn’t mean you weren’t a gentleman or not polite or anything. It was just, you were making a joke, so I thought I’d counter and-”
“I got what you said. I knew it was a joke.” He stopped talking for a moment and gave her a serious look. “You don’t think I’m that uptight, do you?”
He got out of the car while she stammered for a response. When he came around to her side of the car, he had a smirk on his face. “You do think I’m uptight. Look at your face.”
“I do not. You don’t see anything.” When she shut the door, she viewed her expression in the reflection of the window.
“I saw that. You were trying to cover up how you feel.”
“I wasn’t doing... I get it. You’re putting me on the defensive. Nice try.”
“I still like teasing you.” Without being asked, he helped her to the front door.
Dahlia opened it so they could both come inside. “It is getting pretty bad out there. Let me check the weather report.” She took out her phone and opened the app. “We have a freezing rain warning until eleven.”
“That’s about 30 minutes from now.”
“You can hang around a bit if you want. I can brew some tea. My stove isn’t as fancy as your mom’s single serve brewer, but it’ll get the job done.”
“Water’s fine.”
She shrugged and went to get a bottled water from the fridge. When she came back into the living room, he had unzipped his coat. He didn’t sit down. She sensed a hanging tension in the room. “Cy? Is there something the matter? You seem a little different.”
He accepted the bottled water from her, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig. His face clouded over with an emotion before it was hidden again beneath the rigid planes of his face. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you this before. It meant a lot to me that you helped out my mom while I was out looking for Jeff.”
Suddenly embarrassed, she looked down at her feet. “Don’t mention it. I liked talking with her.” She raised her eyes again.
His smile came out and softened the planes of his face. “I may just have to buy my mother some purple eyeshadow for her birthday. She deserves it after tonight.”
She pictured him standing over a makeup counter trying to decide which eye palette to buy his mom, and giggled. “I’m glad it all worked out in the end.”
“You’re amazing, Dahlia.” His hazel eyes focused on her with a clarity and depth she hadn’t seen before.
She stopped thinking humorous thoughts about him. There was nothing funny about that intense look he gave her. She felt the tension come into the room again. This wasn’t the kind that made her fearful. It was laced with excitement, an electric energy that found her pulse and made it start to jump. She remembered that feeling before from when they were much younger.
Did her feet take her closer to him? A second ago, he was arm’s length away. Here she was now, staring at him face to face. She didn’t have to reach out to touch him. She merely lifted her hands and placed them on his chest. There, she felt his heartbeat. It increased its pace.
She hesitated for a moment as she experienced the warmth of his skin radiating from his shirt. He leaned in and she felt his hands on her back. He got rid of the tiny remaining distance between them in one fell swoop by sweeping in for a kiss.
She could only describe what happened next as an electric jolt that started at her lips and spread through her body when they made contact. His lips were soft and firm at once. For a moment, she relived their first kiss. However, this was something more. Something stronger, and definitely more adult.
She tasted him as he made the kiss go deeper. His arms tightened around her waist. Pressed against him, she didn’t want to step away. Dahlia put her hands behind his neck and ran her fingers through his hair. She felt his heart beat faster. Hers was catching up to his in a fast, dancing beat. She could hear it in her ears as he moved from kissing her mouth to putting his lips on her cheek and down the side of her neck.
She felt the back of her knees bump against the couch. She fell down and he got pulled along with her. Her fingers grazed the buttons of his shirt collar. They continued to kiss before he pulled away and stood.
“I should leave.”
Dahlia felt like she got ice water thrown in her face. “Why?”
> He straightened his jacket and zipped it up. “Sorry for doing this to you, Dahlia. This was my fault. With everything that happened tonight, I also got caught up in the nostalgia of us.”
She got to her feet. “Caught up? I wanted to kiss you. You didn’t want to kiss me?”
“Of course I did. This isn’t going to work. We need to stick to the mission.”
“Is that all I am to you, just some task or responsibility you need to take care of?”
He moved his head in the negative. “It’s just an expression.”
“Come up with a better one because I don’t understand.”
“We can’t let things like this happen. I have to focus on my job to protect you.”
“You keep saying that. There’s no one around right now that you need to protect me from.” She started to feel embarrassed for letting her feelings for him manifest, especially since he was shutting his and hers down. “I hate how you keep rejecting me and then expecting me to pretend like it’s perfectly okay. Just go.”
He went to the door. When he turned to look at her again, he wore a torn expression. “Again, I apologize, but we can’t get distracted.”
Chapter Eleven
Burned again. How could I keep falling for it?
Dahlia didn’t rest well at night after Cy left the house. Alone with the thoughts of what he said and his kiss that still left a scorching mark on her mouth, she tossed in bed. She let her emotions get control of her again when it came to him. Of course, he was always quick to master his. The job, the mission, always came first.
She hired him to protect her. It wasn’t as though she had a reason to fault him for delivering on his promise. She just wished he wouldn’t keep using it as an excuse to brush away the attraction he felt. Dahlia knew it was there in the way he looked at and touched her.
She pulled the covers higher to her chin. What did she want, to date him? Cy was a billionaire owner of a security firm, a very busy and powerful man. Aside from being her bodyguard, he probably thought they had nothing in common. Maybe the kiss and them making out on the couch brought nostalgia for him, but nothing else. So he left because he didn’t want things to go further and mislead her into thinking they could have a real relationship.
Why am I doing this to myself? Dahlia turned over in bed, annoyed with her thoughts. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, hurt and preoccupied with her boyfriend leaving to join the military. She was grown and had her own goals and dreams, yet here she was, tossing in bed thinking about Cy and a few kisses cut short.
The launch of her line was in six days. From this point forward, she would take Cy’s advice and focus on what she needed to do. No more distractions. He was there to be her bodyguard. Nothing less.
And definitely, according to him, nothing more.
SHE SPENT THE REST of the week and half of the next with her head down working to prepare for her makeup line’s launch. Cy was always quiet. She didn’t have time to decipher his moods, and chose not to make time to do so.
The day before the launch, Nelle showed her the list of orders on the computer. “We haven’t even officially launched yet and we’re nearly sold out of the lip and eyeshadow kits.”
“That’s incredible.”
Nelle set the tablet aside. “Are you sure everything’s going well with you? You seem distracted a little today. No, scratch that. You’ve been quiet all week.”
She chose her words with care. “I guess I’ve had a lot on my mind lately in addition to the launch.”
“I feel so bad about Mary Marsters.” Her intern nodded, with understanding and sympathy. “At least we can be positive about this, right?”
“Absolutely.” Dahlia straightened her work area and got up to stretch. It wasn’t doing any good for her to let Nelle see her in a sour mood. Her interns worked hard to help her make this launch possible. She owed it to them and herself to be happy about the accomplishment. She willed herself to focus on that instead of letting thoughts of Cy and the ongoing Mary Marsters investigation compete for her attention. “Did you hear from the news studio about tomorrow’s segment?”
“I just got off the phone with the station manager. They’re expecting you on set at seven sharp tomorrow morning.”
“Bright and early, huh? Guess I better go home and get some rest so I’ll be able to wake up and put my game face on straight.”
“You know you’re gonna rock it.”
Dahlia was glad she hired Nelle and Brandon as interns. They were both positive in an industry that could often be mean and petty. She hoped wherever they went to next, they didn’t lose their enthusiasm. “See you late tomorrow morning, then.”
“Nope. We’ll be seeing you at seven, along with everyone else in the greater Atlanta metro area.”
“Now that you put it that way, I’m really nervous. I’ll try to tell myself it’s like uploading a video on social media, only in real time with thousands of people watching.”
Nelle looked doubtful. “Are you sure that’s a better way of looking at it?”
“Probably not.” Dahlia laughed it off. “See you tomorrow.”
She left the office and joined Cy outside by the conference room. He was looking over something on his phone. She was certain the app designed by his firm had more coding and programming in it than two blocks of real estate in Silicon Valley.
“All done preparing for your launch tomorrow?” He asked, putting the phone down.
An emotion ran through her as she looked at his face. She tried to move past the momentary feeling. “Yes, finally. Now I just need my beauty sleep. I’m going home and calling it a day.”
He drove her home. Along the way, she let him in on the details surrounding tomorrow’s launch and television spot. “I’m supposed to be live on the air at seven in the morning, so that means I need to be there by six-thirty at the latest. Which also means—”
“I need to be at your house at dark-thirty to pick you up.” He turned to her with a handsome half-smile. “I got it.”
Her stomach did a little somersault. Even a decade later, his smile could still cause a reaction. Did he know what he was doing? Likely not, because if he knew how she felt, he’d probably frown. Or worse, grimace. “Don’t stay up too late tonight.” She got the car and went to her house.
During the next couple hours, she ironed her dress and picked out shoes to get ready for tomorrow morning. She made sure her makeup bag was fully-stocked for the demonstration. She shampooed the makeup brushes and let them dry on the sink while she prepared a quick dinner of spaghetti noodles and parmesan cheese, an old standby from when she had to work long days and spend her evenings in cosmetology school.
By the time she ate her dinner and got everything together for the next day, it was a little after nine. She changed into a t-shirt and pajama pants to go to bed. She hoped the chamomile tea she made would do the trick to send her off to dreamland.
Sure enough, she felt the first of its calming effects by a quarter to ten. She turned out the light and drifted off.
Sometime later, she was jolted awake by the blaring sound of an alarm. Was it a police siren? It sounded like it was coming from inside of the house. That’s when she realized it was her burglar alarm system going off.
Her heart tried to tear a hole in her chest. Someone was either breaking into her house or already inside.
She jumped up from the bed, grabbed the softball bat from under it, and scrambled to lock the bedroom door. She heard another ringing sound, this one softer than the blaring alarm. She looked to her nightstand and saw that her phone was ringing. She scraped it up and glanced at the caller ID. It was the alarm system company. “Someone’s trying to get into my house.”
“We received the alarm signal,” a man’s professional, monotone voice droned calmly from the other end. “Am I speaking to Dahlia Dean?”
She tucked the bat under her arm and covered one ear so she could hear him over the loud alarm. “Yes. Can you help me? I don’t know what’s going
on. I was asleep when the alarm went off.”
“Yes, ma’am. A call has been dispatched the police to come to your house. May I have the code to turn off your alarm?”
Dahlia had to focus hard to remember the code. She never thought she’d have to use it. When she remembered it, she gave it to him. “One five five one seven.”
“Thank you. Just a moment.”
Ten seconds later, the alarm stopped. Dahlia’s ears were still ringing. She dropped down on the bed, relieved the loud alarm was gone, but knew she wasn’t safe if there was an intruder in the house.
“The police should be on their way.” The man on the line talked to her as though they were discussing some pizza she ordered online. “We’ll call back later to schedule a system maintenance check. In the meantime, is there anything else I can do for you, ma’am?”
Not unless you know who or what tripped my alarm. “I’ll wait for the cops.” She hung up and dialed Cy’s number. He answered on the fourth ring.
“Yeah?” Sleep made his voice heavy.
“It’s Dahlia. I know it’s really late, but I need you to come over. My alarm went off. Somebody tried to break into my house and I don’t know if they’re still here.”
“Where are you at in your house?” His voice became clear. He sounded completely awake.
“In my bedroom. I locked the door when I woke up and heard the alarm. The alarm company said the police are on their way.”
“Stay in your room. Don’t unlock the door. I’ll be right over.”
She got off the phone and sat on the edge of the bed. She rested the bat on her knees. Dahlia listened for sounds inside the house. The house was still. She got up and carried the bat with her to the window. Using the head, she peeled back the curtain at the corner.
The streetlamp shone in the cul de sac. Everything looked normal. She edged closer to the window to peer down in the driveway. What happened to the night patrol? Shouldn’t they be circling the neighborhood? She wondered why tonight the night patrol went missing.
