The Bodyguard 5sos

Chapter Seven

Max's head pops up from the other side of the car. 'I hope you're going to get this wreck fixed with the money I'm giving you.' 

'Why Max? There's nothing wrong with it.' I kill the motor and slide out of the door. 

We stand together looking up at the house like a couple of real estate agents checking out a property for the first time and seeing the biggest commission cheque we've ever received. 

'This plot was owned by Elvis,' Max says, 'when my guy bought it he had Elvis's house knocked down and had this built. What do you think- he designed it himself.' 

'Very imaginative Max, it's a classy effort. When he sees the White House, he'll be hacked off they nicked his design. 'I look sideways at him. 'So who exactly is your guy?'  

'When exactly did you became so impatient?' He links his arm in mine and guides me round to a flagstone path and leads me down through the hanging foliage. 

At the top of each step is a little coloured figurine. I stop and pick one up. It's a little laughing man with a beard and a fishing rod. 'What's this?' 

'Gnomes.' Max stops a few steps beyond me and looks back up. 

'Why?' I say. 

Max shrugs his shoulders, 'Modern art?' 

'Tasteless tat, but I like this one. He might lend me his sense of humour.' I respond. 'This guy does really exist Max, doesn't he. This isn't just one wild gnome chaise is it?' 

'Come on', he patters off down the steps. 

As we descend I can hear yelling in the distance, high and excitable, it bounces along the path towards us over the sound of the multitude of singing crickets pushing out their midday chorus. Max and I duck past giant ferns and push aside banana plant leaves under the dappled sunlight as we go, like a couple of intrepid explorers cutting their way through a swathe of immaculately manicured Amazonian jungle. 

We pop out at the bottom of the path and the vista opens up in front of us. A wide sparkling blue infinity pool with an azure Pacific ocean rolling off the end, two giggling bikini clad girls frolicking in the pools water, a few brilliant white circular sunshades, timber pool house with an open veranda and a barbeque set big enough to slow roast Max in. At the far end I can see a sandy tanned hulk lazing on a lounger in the full sun.  

'Hi ya, girls. Still got your clothes on I see.' Max calls out. 

'Hi ya, Maxi,' they squeal back. 

Max grabs my hand like an excited kid and leads me round the pool edge toward the figure on the lounger. Lying on his front displaying a pair of buttocks tight enough to plant the Australian flag in, is his guy. He's wearing nothing but a sunhat with red kangaroos on it. 

'Michael meet Alexis, your new bodyguard. You know Michael X, Alexis, don't you?' 

Bit of an understatement that. What girl my age hadn't swooned over 5sos back in the day, the break up, the re-formation, the comeback tour then the inevitable break up again. I'd seen them seven times, four times in the original band, once each time they'd re-formed and once when my holiday flight was delayed because of all the fans outside the LAX airport. Michael has his own successful career and still manages a world tour every year. I have a poster of him in my loo. 

Time to be cool and professional. 

'Hi ya.' I giggle like a maniac whose brain has just curdled.  

Michael doesn't move. He raises his arm and waggles an empty glass at me. 'Hi ya, get me a drink, it's a vodka and orange.'  

I fold my arms and glare down at him. 

He looks up and peers over his sunglasses and unleashes his swoony, smouldering green eyes at me. 'We're not going to get off on the wrong foot are we, you look pissed off. The bar's just over there.'  

'Then you can get it yourself.' Swoony eyes or not, he can get his own drink.  

There follows a pause that's longer than the infinity pool. I'm thinking of the climb back up to the car and the three thousand dollars I just blew. 

'Ok then. I'll do it.' He gets off the lounger, stands there just long enough to make an impression and then swaggers over to the bar. 

I've seen naked men before. It doesn't bother me. 'You've forgotten your glass.' I call across. 

'Whatever.' He says dismissively then crashes about behind the bar as if it's the first time he's ever had to make his own drink. 

Max has a serene smile on his face. 'Well, I can see you two young people are going to get along just fine then. Oh look, here's Walter, you'll be working with him. He's in charge of Michael's security. You may know him, he's ex FBI as well.' 

Walter looks like a pensioner who's wandered out of his retirement home and's ended up pottering round Micheal's' garden checking out his dahlias. He's sporting a pair of long cut linen shorts, a faded white cotton shirt and leather flip flops with little beads on top. In one hand he's balancing a tall spritzer glass with ice in it and a little stirrer with a fat Father Christmas on top of it, in the other a dripping paperback book that looks like it's just been fished out of the pool. 

'Hey Walter, come over here and meet Alexis,' Max shouts, a little too loudly. 

Walter rolls forward, finds his hands full, chucks the book back into the pool and then grabs my hand between his podgy fingers. His sharp blue eyes glitter in their quick assessment of me. 'We've never met have we? Walter Weeks. I heard you'd been invalided out of the FBI.'  

'I heard they'd pensioned you off Walter. I'm surprised to find you here.' I grip his hand so hard it makes him wince. 

'Touché,' he says. 'Well I suppose we can work together on this or grapple with each other until one of is found floating dead in the pool.' 

'Done.' I say and we shake hand again. 

'I told you its 24/7, didn't I?' Max has retreated to the safety of the far side of the pool, well out of harm's way. 

'WHAT!' I yell back over the whooping noise of the girls. I step one way and Max mirrors me and steps the other. The snake. 

For a second the clinking of glasses behind the bar stops. I look over my shoulder, Michael catches my gaze, throws me a wide smile and then starts rummaging around the shelves. 

'24/7. I'm sure I did.' Max calls. 'Hey, got to be off. Thanks for the lift up. Walter, will you sort Alexis out with somewhere to sleep. Thanks.' 

'I haven't got my stuff, Max. I'll drop you and pick it up.' 

'Don't worry Alexis, Maria will sort out some stuff to see you through. Ta da.' Max skirts the pool, away from Walter and I. 'Bye girls.' 

'Byyyyeeee, Maxiiii,' they trill together. Max stands at the bottom of the path and like a magician holds up a bikini top in each hand and the girls laugh like it's never happened before. 

'How much is he paying you?' Walter enquires over the top of his dancing Santa. 

'Three thousand a week.'  

A figure barges past me and launches itself into the water and swims half the pools length under water. A pair of solid shoulders followed by a pair of very tanned buttocks, surface, and cut through the water like two glace' buns swimming together in tight formation. Very tight formation. He ducks down, pops up between the screeching girls, water streaming down his face and says in a deep, husky voice. 'Hello girls, shall we get naughty?' 

There's a thing. I did'nt know Michael had got into swimming. I guess he never saw the attraction when he was younger. He can now.

'Three thousand? It's not enough.' Sighs Walter. 'Follow me.'

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Well, if you've got this far, that's great. If you like this story, please vote and if you want to, comment. It really does help. We're into the slightly longer chapters now. Thanks. SX!