Carly had a look in her eye now, the kind of look that made me think that life had tried to do the same to her, but it hadn’t worked. Still, she had that soft and gentle feel to her. Not weakness. Hell, no. She was one of the strongest people I knew. With her, it was caring, compassion. Hope. Some people, they never really lost it, no matter what the world did. Somehow, they just kept believing in things. In people.
And, for some crazy reason, Carly had decided she was going to believe in me.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice gruff.
“Because.” She shrugged and turned away.
“That’s not an answer,” I said to her back.
She swung around, walking backward with a grace that belied the four-inch spikes she called shoes. With a wide, easy smile, she said, “That’s the best you’re going to get for now. Ask me again in a few days.”
***
That night sucked even worse than the morning had, and it was far worse than the past night. It was so bad I was ready to gouge out my eye with the dessert spoon before we’d been there thirty minutes. I knew it was the fucking dessert
spoon because Jake had hammered that fact, and several others, into my head over the span of two hours. We were attending a dinner banquet, and while Jake, Ryan and the ever-silent Ridley would get to stand in the shadows, I would, apparently, be dining with Carly.
“If I’m supposed to be a bodyguard, why am I sitting at the table and eating?” I asked during a break in the conversation. I kept my voice low. I was getting the hang of the subtle thing, I thought.
Carly didn’t seem to agree. She kept a smile on her face even as she leaned in closer and murmured, “Not here.”
I pinned a glare on her, but I didn’t ask again.
She picked up her wine glass and took a sip. Then she held it to her lips and sighed. “It’s complicated. You’re doing more than being a bodyguard at the moment. I’ll explain later.”
Before I had a chance to press her to explain
now
, some guy who had to be twice her age said her name. He was standing on my other side with the sort of look that said he fully intended to take the seat at her side as soon as I moved.
Carly clutched at my arm and gave him her signature smile. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Hank. I hope you understand if I keep Bobby with me, though. It’s his first time to one of these and he’s nervous.”
“Of course.” The smile Hank gave back didn’t fit his words.
He walked around the table and took the seat across from her as I pulled out her chair, pushing it back in the way I’d practiced.
I sat next to her, stiff and uncomfortable, but ready to do what needed to be done for my job. When I felt her tense ever so slightly when Hank leaned forward, I realized that I no longer needed her to explain why she wanted me to sit next to her. Although the width of the table separated them, something about her body language was subtly broadcasting it was nowhere near enough space.
I shifted my attention to the guy, my jaw clenching.
Hank was staring at Carly the same way I would have stared at her if we’d been alone back up at the hotel. He didn’t let the fact that he wasn’t alone with her bother him. Nor did he let the fact that she was clearly not interested bother him. This guy didn’t know how to take a hint. My hands curled into fists. Maybe I needed to make the hint a little less polite.
“I’ve been hoping we might have a chance to have a drink together while you’re in town. It’s been a long time since we’ve talked, Carly.” His voice was so oily, I could’ve run a car on it.
I didn’t look directly at her, but I could see how her nails were digging into her palms. Going on instinct, I curled my arm around her shoulder. She leaned into me and I felt the tension drain out of her body. Carly smiled at Hank.
“My schedule is pretty full this trip, Hank. With the foundation meetings and the opening of the school, I’m slammed.”
Then to my surprise, she reached up and touched my cheek. Electricity shot through me and I tried to keep it from showing.
“I had a little bit of time, I thought, but...” Her thumb brushed against my bottom lip. “Fate sort of intervened.”
When I tipped my head down to look at her, she was staring up at me. The look on her face was enough to remind me that it had been a damn long time since I’d had a woman beneath me. Or on top of me. Or caught between me and a wall. Bent over a table. Any position at all.
Her breath caught, a blush rising on her cheeks and I forced myself to look away. Shit. This was definitely not the time or the place.
“You look at a woman like that for too long, she’s going to start thinking she needs protection,” Carly said, her voice soft and silky.
I tensed. She couldn’t think I’d ever hurt any woman, let alone her. “I would never–”
“I meant a different kind of protection.” She tossed me a quick look. “I feel like you already know what size bra and what color panties I’m wearing.”
I sucked in my breath as I caught her meaning. Then her fingers brushed my thigh under the table. Fuck. My muscles tensed and jerked in response to that light touch.
“Bobby?” she said my name in a low voice.
She was going to be the death of me.
Instinctively, I tipped my head closer. She reached up and laid her hand on my cheek. Now my instincts were fighting a war. One part of me was telling me to put my mouth on hers. It was a damn nice mouth, wide and soft and lush, the kind of mouth a guy could spin entire fantasies around. And I’d already had a taste of it.
But the other part of me was saying all the things I already knew. She was out of my league. I didn’t deserve her.
Ryan and Jake would kill me.
Plus, we were in public.
But then she took the matter out of my hands, leaning and pressing her mouth to mine. I could’ve stopped her then, but I didn’t. I kissed her back. Her lips parted, and I traced the entrance with my tongue. She sighed and opened wider. When her tongue came out to tease mine, I closed one hand into a fist. My cock started to pulse, stirring to life. The scent of her, the taste, went straight to my head, and just as I was about ready to reach out, catch one of those curls she’d left trailing down her neck, Carly pulled back.
A flash of white out of the corner of my eye had me tensing. I’d forgotten we weren’t alone. She put a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s just the cameras.”
I didn’t quite realize what she meant until the flash came again. Before I had a chance to react, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine in a quick, chaste kiss. Another camera flash. I felt oddly frozen and then she pulled away. I stared at her, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
She wiped at my mouth as she murmured, “Smudge proof, my ass.”
I caught her wrist. “What are you doing?” I could barely keep my voice under control.
“Do you really want to wear my lipstick? Harlot red isn’t your color, Bobby.” She gave me a sensual smile.
A low chuckle that was devoid of true humor had me looking up. I pushed my own feelings aside. I had a job to do, and it didn’t include anything about me.
“Well, I’ll admit, when I saw the news clips of the two of you, I had no idea things had become so...intimate.” Hank was staring at us with a greasy sort of smirk on his lips.
I gave him a hard glare and watched as that smug, sneering look on his face faltered, then faded away completely. Only after he was no longer looking at Carly, I allowed myself to look away.
A moment later, there was a faint noise from the podium. It was time for whatever in the hell it was to start.
***
It was boring, that’s what it was.
The problem with boring was that it left me with too much time to think, and almost every single thought centered around Carly and the sleek, silvery-blue dress she wore and how much fun I could have peeling it away.
It had been nearly twelve months since I’d had sex.
The first thing I’d done after I got out was sit through a full physical and health screening. Disease was rampant in prison, and I’d lived with that fear for pretty much my entire incarceration.
To my relief, I’d gotten back a clean bill of health just a few days later. The first chance I had after that, I’d found myself a bar, and when the opportunity had presented itself, I’d gotten laid. I didn’t remember her name, and I was pretty sure she didn’t remember mine either. We’d had a box of condoms and we’d used the entire damn supply in a single weekend.
That had been a little over eleven months ago.
Since then, the only relief I’d received came from my own fist.
But I was pretty certain that even if I’d had sex three times a week, and twice on Sundays, my body would still have been misbehaving around Carly Prince. She seemed to drag it out of me. The mischievous grin, the way she watched me, the way she moved...oh yeah. I’d want her no matter what.
Now, as the third speaker of the night was escorted onto the stage, I found my eyes studying the elegant lines of Carly’s profile, the pretty bow of her lips, the curve of her jaw down to her neck. The dress she wore had an odd sort of sparkle to it, as if the designer had crushed up jewels to make it.
It clung to her breasts, accentuating her curves while still looking elegant, demure, even. It slid down along her torso, along her waist and hips, ended a few inches above her knee. I could only imagine what she wore under it. That sparkly thing fit like a glove, and while I was positive she had on something
underneath it, I preferred to pretend she was naked.
Completely naked.
“...Carly Prince!”
The sound of her name jarred me out of my erotic stupor and I moved, half on autopilot. Jake and Ryan had walked me through what I was supposed to do, and I was already on my feet, drawing her chair back by the time the spotlight found our table. I could only hope that my suit jacket would cover the partial-erection I had, thanks to the direction my thoughts had gone.
She gave me a wide, open smile, and when I offered my hand to help her stand, she accepted as though we’d done this a hundred times. I escorted her up to the stage and passed her hand to one of the men there, then stood off in the shadows to wait for her to return.
Hands folded in front, I let my gaze roam over the crowd, just as I had seen Jake and Ryan doing. I was half-listening, but paying more attention to any potentially dangerous threat that might’ve presented itself.
On the stage next to me, Carly started to speak.
Her speech, I realized moments later, was all about second chances.
***
Things began to blur as we moved back and forth to events regarding what I soon realized was the music program Carly was funding in her father’s name.
The dinner I’d escorted her to had been a two thousand dollar a plate fundraiser and the place had been sold out. While I was glad she was raising money for the program, I couldn’t imagine paying two thousand dollars for a dinner where I’d have to listen to boring speakers.
The program itself, however, wasn’t boring. It was going to be multi-faceted, and despite myself, I was interested. Music lessons would be offered to disadvantaged youth, but there would also be a program for the politely named ‘troubled’ youth. Troubled like I’d been.
Sometimes I wondered what I might have been, who I might have been, if I’d realized I had better options. I’d made my choices knowing full well they were the wrong ones, and I had nobody to blame but myself, but her speeches about second chances made me think about what might have been.
We spent most of the day following the dinner dealing with stuff at the music center. Or rather Carly did, while we stood around looking stupid in suits and sunglasses. At least, I was pretty sure I looked stupid. Even with his arm in a cast, Jake looked like a natural.
Carly was exhausted when she got back to the hotel, and collapsed into bed almost immediately, while the rest of us stayed up to watch basketball. The Kentucky Wildcats had done pretty well so far, and I wasn’t opposed to them continuing on to the tournament.
My opinion on the matter provided some good-natured ribbing from Jake – and twenty dollars in my pocket when his team lost.
“Sucker’s bet,” I told him. “Anybody could have seen they were going tonight.”
It wasn’t until everybody else was asleep that I realized how long it had been since I’d just sat around bullshitting with a bunch of guys just for the hell of it. It had been...nice. Sitting in there, talking to guys who knew about my past and didn’t care. I liked it.
And I only had a couple days left.
That thought left me in a foul mood the next morning, and it wasn’t going to be a good day anyway. It turned out to be a lot worse than I’d planned. It wasn’t just less than stellar. It fucking sucked.
It turned out to be a tooth-grinding exercise in patience and bullshit as Carly made the rounds to all the local news stations, and then a couple of radio stations on top of that. At each one, she talked all nice with everybody and in turn, people played nice back – right up until they had her in front of the camera, and then they asked questions that were either borderline rude or right over the line.