Charming Like Us (Like Us Series: Billionaires & Bodyguards Book 7)

by Krista Ritchie

  The heavy-set man shakes his head. “Not at all. Just give me a second to let the GPS recalculate.”

  “Done,” Charlie whispers to me and hands the phone back. “Your sister texted you.”

  I can’t tell if he’s trying to distract me by bringing up my baby sister. Or if he’s pointing out that he saw her message to annoy me.

  Whatever the case, I take a quick glance at the message while the Uber pulls onto the street.

  I found an apartment & roommate on Craigslist. Meeting them tomorrow. Rent is affordable. Im not living at home anymore. I cant do it – Baby Sis

  Fuck, Joana.

  I text fast and feel Charlie’s eyes on my fingers.

  Just live with me. There’s room. I hit send.

  She’s quick to reply.

  I like the Craigslist place – Baby Sis

  My nineteen-year-old rebellious sister loves to stick it to our dad whenever she can, and I’d say eight times out of ten, he probably deserves the hard time. She’s stubbornly set on Craigslist, maybe to cause waves. Because Joana rooming with me will please our parents.

  I’m the oldest by a longshot. I celebrated my thirty-second birthday a couple months ago, and my sister and brother are a whole decade younger than me.

  This is a bad time to have a text war with my sister. I’m on-duty. So after I send a brief message saying, I’ll call later, I shut out the text thread.

  Juggling family life among a never-sleeping job is hard. Anyone who says differently hasn’t met the Oliveira clan.

  My eyes flit to the car windows. Yeah, I have no clue where we’re going, but at least we’re not being trailed or flanked by paparazzi vans.

  I open up the Uber app and glance at the new address Charlie plugged in. My brows furrow.

  My veins pump harder.

  What the actual fuck?

  I figured he’d take us to the airport.

  But I’m staring at an address to The Walnut, an apartment building in Philadelphia. It can’t be a coincidence that Jack Highland lives there. I rub a hand through the thick curly strands of my hair.

  “Why are we going to The Walnut?” I question outright.

  Charlie leans back against the black leather seat. “I have an appointment with Jack Highland.”

  I wait for him to explain further.

  He doesn’t.

  “In the middle of the night?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t think to tell me?”

  “I just did.”

  I’m on a need to know basis with my client. And in his world, no one needs to know shit about his life. I get it. He doesn’t really want a bodyguard. I’m just the thorn perpetually in his side. But he’s got me, and right now I’m on high-fucking-alert.

  Highland and I have history.

  Okay, that’s a lie.

  We have zero history.

  Because the guy rejected my kiss.

  Rejected me.

  But hey, he still has my fucking bandana, my belt, and my sweatshirt that I lent him. So I’m taking this with stride. I’m killing two birds with one stone tonight and coming to collect.

  Those clothes are mine.

  I want them back.

  I may have fallen for a straight guy, but my heart is bricked back up. Duct-taped shut. Jack’s not getting anywhere near it, and once I have my clothes it’ll cement that shit.

  Charlie closes his eyes like he’s going to take a nap on the ride to Philly. I should do the same—sleep when I can—which is practically never. But my mind is on high-speed.

  I’m about to see Jack.

  Again.

  I clasp a hand over my mouth, my face hot from what happened between us.

  And what’s worse—I have no earthly clue why Charlie wants to meet with him. It’s like walking into the world’s darkest tunnel without a flashlight.

  God help me.

  OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  The Most Embarrassing Moment of Oscar Oliveira’s Life

  TWO DAYS AGO

  The skies split, rain poured, lightning cracked, and even as the storm subsided, everything felt exactly how it was supposed to feel. Happy, joyous. I just officiated my best friend’s wedding. I just watched him walk down the aisle in Anacapri and marry the love of his life.

  And now…now my urge to be in a relationship has ballooned to the umpteenth degree.

  Sign me up for sunsets, romantic strolls in the park, sweaty never-ending nights on a dance floor, and mind-blowing sex. Fuck, I’d take average sex at this point if it meant being in a steady love-affirming relationship. I just want the good stable pieces. The thing that seems to slip through my fingertips ever since I joined security.

  I haven’t been in a real long-term relationship since college and it’s starting to grind on me.

  But who in the fuck would want to date someone who can’t be around longer than five seconds?

  Sometimes I wonder if all I’ll ever get is the sex. The quick fucks. Easy to come by, but damn the novelty wears off fast.

  With the wedding reception in full swing, guests dressed in white are milling about a breathtaking cliffside restaurant. Stuff made for celebrities and for travel writers penning Top 10 Most Romantic Getaways. Waves splash against the rocks, oranges and yellows bathing the sparkling sea as the sun begins to set.

  Italy can’t be more beautiful tonight.

  I wander around, doing two things.

  1. Trying to avoid my parents and avós. Love them and their gossip, but they’ll trap me in their chatty web for too long. I already spent half an hour talking to my mom.

  She’s been snapping a thousand photos, and she thanked me again for paying for the family’s flights to Italy and making this possible. She always expected Farrow to invite her to his eventual wedding, but I doubt she thought it’d be an international destination.

  I grew up in a typical middleclass family, and money for travel always went towards flights to Brazil to see our avós.

  Farrow said he’d pay for the plane tickets, but I manage my finances well, actually better than he does. His prideful ass will just never admit it.

  I set aside a lot in savings before we all got a pay-cut from hell (downside to joining Kitsuwon Securities—a brand new firm).

  Another thing I’m doing right now:

  2. Trying not to follow Charlie. It’s a habit at this point. I’m off-duty, but I trust the temp guards on his detail about as much as I trust a gnat not to zap itself in a fly trap.

  Sipping on champagne, I unconsciously spot my client—yeah, we’re saying it’s unconscious. Charlie is kicked back and balancing on two legs of a patio chair, all while Audrey Cobalt talks his ear off. He rolls his eyes at whatever his carrot-orange-haired little sister says.

  The one good thing about Charlie being around family—they always try to drag him into their orbit. When he’s tethered to the rest of the Cobalts, it’s easier to keep track of him.

  Really, it makes it easier to relax. To stop leaning on the arches of my feet like I’m two-seconds away from an Olympic sprint after him.

  Passing rows of breakfast platters and seafood, I grab a couple shrimp off a tower, gather some crackers in a napkin, and leave the restaurant area.

  The wind is warm and the air smells like salt. I’m about to step down the stone steps toward the lounge chairs on the sundeck. The cliffside restaurant straddles a sunbathing area where people can swim in the coves.

  Just as I take that step, movement catches my eye in the parking lot to my right. All I can see is the back of a tall guy, sleeves rolled up his arms to reveal sculpted, muscular biceps, and his dark hair blows with a seaside gust.

  Like every guest, he’s in all-white. The dress code.

  That belt is mine.

  Lent him that for the ceremony.

  I waver for a second.

  Fuck it.

  I tip the flute back to my lips, and cold champagne slides down my throat, emptying the glass. Slowly, I close the distance between
me and the most gorgeous guy at this reception.

  Jack Highland is often behind a camera; yet, he looks like he could model for a cologne ad.

  It doesn’t help that he’s bent over the back of a hatchback. Car trunk lifted up while he fiddles with his camera. Ass in perfect view. His athletic build screams jock bro. But I wish I knew him better to discern what kind he actually is.

  I tend to steer clear of chest-thumping frat bros. But I like a good sports-loving jock. Let’s go to a Phillies game. Share a pack of peanuts and complain about the Mets.

  My shoes pad along the parking lot as I approach him. His skin is a mixture of light brown and red-gold hues and looks more sun-kissed in the setting light. He’s Filipino-American and biracial: Dad is white, Mom is Filipina.

  As I near, he turns his head, and his long lashes lift.

  “Hey,” he says with a smile and a genial nod of his chin. His eyes hold mine for a beat longer. A beat that makes me question every fucking thing. It doesn’t help that he does that thing that most people do when they’re checking me out.

  The up-down, imperceptible motion. A one-two movement with his eyes. Up-down. Two seconds flat. Barely noticeable.

  Maybe he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

  But those two seconds tangle the axons in my brain. Twisting. Pulling. Tying them into a confused knot. So far as I know, he’s straight, but sexuality is a fluid thing. He could be questioning, right?

  I just don’t know for sure.

  The parking lot is quiet. No one else here.

  I return the nod. “You hiding out, Highland?” I ask him casually, despite the fact that nerves ratchet up. I don’t need my Yale degree in Kinesiology to tell me why my heart starts racing or my palms get clammy.

  I have a crush on him.

  A stupid. Silly. Dumbass crush.

  I’m the one who nearly choked on my food when Maximoff used that word. Back at his sister’s first Rainbow Brigade outing, he asked me about Jack, “You have a crush on him?”

  I laughed.

  Crush.

  I thought crushes were for twelve-year-olds. But I’ve never been this nervous around someone I like. Is there something different about Jack from all the other women and men I’ve dated? Or is it just because I know this could be unrequited?

  He’s probably not even attracted to men.

  But the way he’s looking at me…

  I toss a cracker in my mouth and stand my ground. Not running away from a crush, that’s for sure.

  Jack twists off a lens to the Canon camera. “Just need to switch these out,” he says and then a smile inches across his lips. “Why would you think I’m hiding out?”

  “It’s a wedding,” I say into a shrug. “Sometimes being single at these events royally sucks. I wouldn’t blame you, if you needed a minute or two alone.”

  His eyes hold mine again. He’s got this way of staring at you like he knows you. Understands you. And I’m not a fucking idiot. A part of that is just his charm, embedded into his DNA. It’s what makes him so good at his job. As an executive producer of We Are Calloway, he’s able to pull out real emotion from the famous ones.

  Still looking at me, he wraps the strap of his Canon around his neck and shuts the trunk with a hand. “It’s not so bad,” he tells me. His smile grows. “You’re keeping me company, right?”

  He’s flirting.

  He’s definitely flirting.

  Someone should just pop out behind the bushes with a huge ass sign that says yes.

  “Is that what I’m doing?” I say, playing this cool. I pop another cracker in my mouth.

  He leans a hip against the hatchback. “You’re single, too, right?”

  The food goes down rough. “Yeah…single.” I glance down at the belt on his waist. My belt. When I raise my gaze to his, his eyes flit to the belt he’s wearing, and then back to me, down my toned build.

  The air feels warmer.

  Skin hotter.

  He has a couple inches on my six-two height, but as he leans on the hatchback, we’re about eye-level. Jack nods slowly to me, and our gazes catch again.

  I think he’s going to mention the belt.

  “It must be hard to date and be a bodyguard,” Jack says, treading a flirty line and surprising me a little. It’s not often that happens. I always feel ten steps ahead of most people.

  I nod just as slowly. “Impossible is more like it.”

  “What is it all of you guys say…bodyguards are like spouses to their clients.”

  You guys.

  It dawns on me that he’s talking about all the bodyguards. I’m lumped in with the lot, even if my style of guarding doesn’t match most. I don’t really love that phrase. I’m around Charlie more than a spouse would be. I’m not just his husband. I’m his brother. I’m his father. I’m his cousin. I’m every relationship he has all rolled into one.

  But I don’t tell that to Jack. The easiest way to send someone running would be to announce that I have someone else attached to me 24/7. I mean, technically he knows, but I don’t need to spell it out like that.

  “Yeah, it’s not easy, but I don’t want to be single forever,” I tell him. “Even if Charlie is my job, and my job is all-consuming.”

  He lets out a short laugh. “I know the feeling.”

  Production and security are fire and water. Bodyguards want to extinguish one-half of every smoldering ember the docuseries stokes among the public. We have polarizing goals, but we have to coexist.

  As hot as Jack is, I know that crossing any line with him is like stepping into a rigged heavyweight match. But it’s nice to hear that he at least relates on this level.

  My eyes flit to the camera around his neck. “You have to get back?”

  He’s here to work. Unlike me. He filmed the wedding and is supposed to be taking more videos of this reception.

  I’m distracting him.

  “Not yet.” He leans his ass more against the closed trunk. “I have a couple more minutes to kill.” His eyes flit up and down me again, and he tinkers with his camera as he says, “You know being single at weddings has its benefits.”

  “Yeah?”

  “All the single people start wishing they were in a relationship—or at the very least in someone else’s bed.”

  Can relate.

  But I don’t get the words out before he says, “Some of my best lays have been at weddings.”

  “At weddings.” I grin. “You hooking up in the broom closet, Long Beach?”

  He matches my grin. “What are you, a stickler for specifics?”

  “Maybe.” I toss the last of my food in my mouth.

  His smile hits his eyes. “Not at the wedding. After the ceremony,” he clarifies. “One time I didn’t make it that far.”

  Fuck. I’m intrigued. Full-blown, I want to dive into this conversation and never leave. But my muscles have also tensed considerably. Talking about sex and work and weddings without anyone else around feels like stepping out onto a tightrope. One false move and I’m plunging fifty-feet.

  “Now you have to tell me,” I say.

  He shrugs with just one shoulder. “I’ve probably already carved out a spot in hell.”

  I put two-and-two together, and my grin overtakes my face. “Did you…” I laugh. “Did you fuck in a church?”

  “Catholic church. Back pew. The bride was a family friend from California.”

  I cock my head. “You fucked the bride?”

  He laughs. “No. Definitely did not do that, Oscar.”

  We share a softer smile.

  He lets go of his camera, letting it hang. “I’m confirmed Catholic, but I don’t go to church as often as I did as a kid.” He pauses like he’s gauging my reaction. Maybe he cares what I think.

  “Same here,” I tell him.

  We both nod, recognizing in a quiet moment that we have shit in common. More than I think we’ve both ever even explored or given breath to.

  Jack runs his fingers across his stro
ng jaw, slight stubble coming in. Making him look a little older than twenty-seven.

  I usually go for people my age or older. I also would usually never even draw towards a straight guy like I am him. Look at me, making exceptions left and right for Jack Highland.

  “It fit well,” I tell him, motioning to the belt threaded through his white slacks. “What would you have done if our measurements were off? Belt was too big for your scrawny waist?”

  He smiles. “First off, I’d never be scrawny. Have you seen me swim?”

  “I’m suddenly having a hard time remembering. You’ll have to show me again.”

  “Make the date, I’ll be there.”

  Date.

  Jack doesn’t give the offer time to breathe. “And I knew your belt would fit me. Your other clothes have.” He means my bandana and sweatshirt.

  I could joke about how the bandana would fit anyone, but he’s not Donnelly or Farrow. I don’t want to rib him like I would a friend. “If you ever need or want more, I have a whole closet full of pants and tees.”

  “Just pants and tees?” he jokes with a smile that captivates, that could make the saddest motherfucker on this planet feel some kind of happiness.

  “I’ve already given you more than that, Highland. You think I’d stop there?”

  He laughs into a bigger smile. “Maybe I’ll just quit packing for these trips. Your clothes always smell good, and you probably have better underwear than me, anyway.”

  My blood pumps. “Always trying to pad egos,” I grin.

  He looks me up and down, the suggestion clear to me. “Is it working?”

  Yeah. My defenses fluctuate between high and low. “You’re doing your LA networking best, bro, but I’m not someone who has anything to offer you professionally.”

  He opens his mouth. Closes it. He’s rethinking something. And Jack isn’t a guy that overthinks what he’s about to say. He has the charisma of the fucking sun. That big blazing ball that is hoisted in the sky and everyone leaves their house to bask in its rays.

  It’s magnetic energy.

  But something traps his words, stumbles him up.