The Bodyguards Sweetheart

CHAPTER SIX

     WHY COULDN’T HE KEEP his damn mouth shut? Things had been going smoothly—and then he had to go and lay all that truth on her like a load of bricks. It wasn’t his job to be her Jiminy Cricket. If she didn’t have a conscience about how she spent her life or how she frittered away her blessings, that was her problem. So why did it bother him so much that she refused to see the truth? He didn’t know her, not really. True, all he knew about her was from the tabloids and maybe that was his fault for only caring to look that deep, but it drove him crazy when people did so little for their fellow man.

“You know, I’ve seen people with so little to their names that they could carry everything they owned on their person, and yet they’ll be the first to offer you something if you need it. And then I’ve worked with people who owned yachts and mansions and throw lavish parties for their dogs but wouldn’t drop a dollar into a collection cup. There’s something wrong with the world when that’s okay.”

“Not everyone has to live by your definition of generosity,” she shot back hotly. “No one has to toe the line because you say so.”

“Maybe not but I think the world would be better off if they did. Every year I donate a big chunk of my income to charitable causes because I know what it’s like to go home hungry, to be cold, to wear clothes two sizes too small. My brother used to dig through a trash can behind a restaurant so that we could have food. Your idea of roughing it is staying at a place like this. When I was a kid this would’ve been the Taj Mahal. It’s all about perspective, I guess. It’s just my opinion, but I think you have a screwed-up sense of what’s right and what’s wrong in this world, princess. So yeah, my judgment comes on pretty strong because I’ve lived it.”

“But it’s not my fault that you were poor,” she said, blinking back tears. “Do you treat everyone who has money like this? All of your clients are rich. Do you treat them like dirt simply because they have more money than you?”

“No, of course not,” he said, frustrated. “But for some reason with you, it bothers me. It bothers me a lot. I know you could be a better person.”

What had he just said? He needed a roll of duct tape to stick across his mouth because he was saying all sorts of loopy things. “Arrrgh! You’re right, this was a bad idea. We shouldn’t have started this conversation. I’m sorry I got sucked into it. From now on no more talking of personal stuff. Let’s just keep things superficial and we’ll be cool. Yeah?”

“Fine,” she agreed grumpily. “I’m going to shower.” She scooted from the bed and disappeared into the bathroom and he was glad. He needed time to get his head on straight. How could things disintegrate so quickly between them? There was something about her that twisted him sideways—and maybe what bothered him the most was that he couldn’t stop looking at her. Everything about her represented something he didn’t believe in but his eyes sure liked what he saw. He couldn’t seem to stop noticing the way the slender column of her neck joined the soft flesh of her shoulders, and how her eyes lit up with passion when she was putting him in his place. It was stupid and he didn’t like the way his heart jammed to a foreign beat whenever his gaze strayed to her ass or her breasts.

For one, he shouldn’t even be looking at her like that—he never messed around with clients, that was bad business. For two, there was nothing about CoCo that encouraged a casual hookup and he didn’t have the time or the interest for anything beyond a superficial good time.

He fell back on the bed, listening as the shower started. Great. Now he was thinking of her naked. He rubbed his eyes, trying to remove the images his imagination gleefully threw at him. She had a smoking-hot body—there were plenty of pictures on the internet of CoCo in a bikini—and she had that European mystique coupled with a California sass that was hard to forget about. As if he needed another complication, his cock tried to get in on the action by suddenly tenting his jeans. Good gravy, that’s all he needed—CoCo seeing that he was rock hard. That would horrify them both. He pushed at his cock with an irritated growl. Settle down, not gonna happen. He popped up from the bed and gathered their trash from lunch and stuffed it into the small wastebasket, then slid the chain across the door before taking his gun and double-checking his rounds. He hated to admit it but CoCo was right—they might die from boredom in this hotel room.