Downstairs, the doorbell chimed.
Charged adrenaline ripped through Liev’s veins. Snapping off the tap, he ran out of the bathroom, past his crumpled bed and from his room.
The doorbell rang again.
By the time Liev was halfway down the stairs, zipping up his fly and tucking in his shirt, whoever was outside had begun to knock as well.
“Mr. Reynolds?” Bethany called behind him.
“I’ve got it,” he threw over his shoulder.
“What’s going on, Liev?”
Chris’s voice came from the top of the stairs. Liev ground his teeth. “Go back in your room please, Mr. Huntley,” he said without slowing down.
He strode across the living area, activated all the external lights and hurried down the stairs to the foyer. With one quick look back up to the living area to find Bethany watching him from the top step—alone, he was glad to see—he turned to the door and opened it.
The young woman from the water taxi stood on the other side, the one Liev had called thanks to her
Call Me, Chris
sign. “Shit,” she whispered, stumbling back a step.
Letting out sharp breath, Liev stepped out onto the front step and pulled the door almost closed behind him. “Love,” he said, giving her a hard look, “you really need to go home.”
She nodded, and once again he noticed she was barely dressed. This close however, he could see she was younger than he thought. Hell, she had to be no older than his niece.
Jesus, what was a girl of seventeen doing out at two in the morning offering herself to an American celebrity? Where were her parents? Her family?
“I…I just…” She stumbled another step away and Liev had to grab her arm as her heel slipped off the top step. “Sorry,” she muttered, looking everywhere but at him. “I just wanted to meet him, is all.”
Liev sighed, releasing her arm. “Not at two in the morning though, love.” He gave her a gentle smile. “And not dressed like that.”
The young woman’s bottom lip wobbled. She nodded, eyes downcast.
Liev cast the dark street behind her a steady look. “How did you get here?”
“Taxi.”
He suppressed the urge to curse. Studying the top of her head, he withdrew his mobile from his back pocket and punched in a number.
Wide, terrified eyes snapped up to him. “Who are you calling?”
“Another taxi.”
The girl chewed on her bottom lip, her shoulders slumping. “Okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Louise Phelman.”
Liev raised his mobile and pressed it to his ear, waiting for Gary Turpie, a taxi driver he knew well, to answer. “G’day, Turps, it’s me, Reynolds. Sorry for ringing so late, mate. You still on duty tonight?”
Twenty minutes later, he helped Louise Phelman climb into Turps’s taxi, gave his friend her address and watched them drive away.
A few lights filled the windows of the multi-million dollar houses around him. A few shadowy silhouettes darkened some of them.
Liev turned his gaze up to them, noted their location, the size of the people in each one, and then turned back to Chris’s rented home.
Bethany stood on the doorstep, her black knickers and top covered by practical tracksuit pants and a
Twice Too Many
T-shirt. “That was impressive.”
Liev grinned. “I’m an impressive kind of guy.”
She smiled. “I’m beginning to suspect that may be true.”
“Glad to see I meet your approval. Is the boss okay?”
“You do. And he is.” Her smile twisted, and she folded her arms across her breasts. “Now all we have to do is get him to realize you meet
his
approval and the world will be turning the way it should.”
Liev’s chest squeezed. “What do you mean, get him to realize? Is he unhappy with my work so far? I haven’t really had much of a chance to do the job, given that we haven’t left the—”
“No, no.” Bethany shook her head. “He’s very happy with the way you’re doing the job. The way you dealt with the water-taxi situation impressed him greatly. It’s not your body-guarding skills I’m talking about.”
A constricting throb pressed against Liev’s temples. His throat grew thick. He studied the woman before him, eyes narrow. “What
are
you talking about then, Bethany?”
She chuckled and, without another word, turned on her heel and headed back into the luxurious house.
“Crap.” Liev drove his blunt fingernails into his palms. If he didn’t he’d go after her and make a scene. If she was saying what he thought she was saying…
How long had she been Chris’s personal assistant for? Long enough to know the actor well?
Maybe he should call Rhodes? Just to sound his friend out.
About what? Bethany? Or Chris’s sexual preference?
With a growl and one last quick scan of the surrounding area, Liev entered the house.
Bethany was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Chris.
That was good, because with the pent-up tension in his body, Liev would likely do something really stupid. Like grabbing the guy and kissing him, just to bloody well clear up the situation once and for all.
Letting out a choppy sigh, he killed the exterior lights and headed up to his room.
He needed some sleep. Chris’s first appearance for the
Dead Even
junket was at eight a.m. on Australia’s leading breakfast television program. Getting him there without being mobbed by adoring fans was going to be fun.
And he used the word
fun
in the same way aching for a man who may or may not ache for him in return was fun.
Yeah, this job was turning out to be a bloody pain in the arse.
Chapter Five
Four days into the job of protecting Chris, Liev had never been more on edge. His agitation was two-fold. For one thing, every bloody time he looked at the actor he wanted him more and more. Every. Bloody. Time. To make matters worse, every time they had a conversation, discussed shared likes, talked about movies and books and sports, which they did a lot given they were never apart, Liev wanted him even more. And every time Chris looked at him, Liev was sure a question shone in the actor’s eyes, one Liev would have willingly answered if the bloke wasn’t his boss.
For another thing, the actor’s fans were tenacious. He’d spent the last four nights turning away young—and sometimes not so young—women from the harbour-side abode. At least once an hour there would be a knock on the door. And when Liev answered it, which he always did, there would be a woman barely dressed in what he assumed was meant to be attire designed to seduce Chris into falling instantly in lust with her. Every time Liev sent the deluded female away. The
offering
s, as Liev thought of them, continued way into the early hours of the morning every night. If he knew who the idiot was at the television network that ran footage of Chris eating breakfast on the balcony overlooking the water on his second day in Australia, Liev would break the bastard’s jaw.
In all his time as a bodyguard, Liev had never understood the fascination of stalking a celebrity. It was one of the reasons he chose to protect politicians. Politicians didn’t have to worry about crazed fans trying to crawl through the bedroom window during the middle of the night.
If the nights were peppered with uninvited guests, the days were fraught with potential hazards from over-enthusiastic fans. Chris had appeared on five television programs so far, each one filmed in the penthouse suite of the Sydney Hilton. Getting the actor into the hotel for the interviews had proved troublesome. The police had needed to control the writhing, enthusiastic crowd three times. Once again, someone had leaked the whereabouts of the interviews. Liev suspected the network that had aired Chris’s residence, possibly as retaliation for having their assigned interview time taken away in response to invading Chris’s privacy.
And now, approaching the restaurant in which Chris was to share lunch with a reporter from
Empire Australia
, Liev was dismayed to see the footpath outside the eatery overflowing with screaming women.
“What do you want me to do, Mr. Reynolds?” Jeff Coulter, Chris’s friend and personal driver who’d arrived from the States three days ago asked, shooting Liev a quick glance from behind the steering wheel. “Is there a back entrance?”
Liev bit back a growl. There wasn’t. He’d had an argument with Bethany about the lack of an alternative entry last night. The one thing he’d learned quickly about Chris’s personal assistant was she was stubborn when she wanted to be. She’d studied him with those piercing green eyes of hers, folded her hands in her lap and informed him he’d just have to keep Chris close—real close—entering and exiting the restaurant.
Of course, the thought of keeping Chris
real close
made Liev’s gut knot, his heart thump faster and his groin tighten.
“If he gets hurt, it’s on you,” he’d grumbled at her before storming from the breakfast table. A cold shower had followed. It hadn’t helped. Nor had discovering Chris swimming laps in the mansion’s pool a few minutes later, his muscular body slicing through the clear water with fluid ease and perfection.
“Keep him close,” Bethany had murmured beside him, no doubt determined to make Liev suffer. “And he won’t get hurt.”
Studying the cheering horde outside the restaurant, Liev weighed up his options. He could call the cops, ask them to set up a barrier. That would be the safest option, but it would take a while to organize, and in the meantime the writer for
Empire
was waiting inside the restaurant. Liev didn’t like the idea the journalist could use the delay as a means to paint Chris as a prima-donna actor in the article. Liev was familiar with the technique. It was common for political journalists to use it to discredit their subject, and as such, Liev never allowed crowds to keep his charges away from appointed meetings with the press.
He wouldn’t do so now either.
Twisting in his seat, he gave the actor sitting behind him a steady look. “Are you okay with a mad dash into the restaurant, Mr. Huntley?”
Chris chuckled. “The last time I was in Australia a kangaroo tried to rape me. I think I can deal with a little crowd.”
Liev blinked. “Tried to rape you?”
Beside Chris, Bethany snorted, her lips twitching.
Chris pulled a face. “I’ll tell you all about it after lunch.” He cast a look over Liev’s shoulder through the windscreen at the crowd. “They don’t look that ravenous. Do you think there’ll be a problem?”
Liev shook his head. “Just stay close to me, okay?”
“He can do that,” Bethany answered before Chris could say a word.
“So I’m driving closer?” Jeff asked with a grin.
Liev bit back a curse. During introductions three days ago, Chris had declared Jeff the best driver in the U.S. So far, Liev had needed to remind Coulter six times to drive on the left. Coulter was an affable bloke, but Liev suspected the crowd posed a challenge to him. He fixed the man with a level stare. “You’re driving closer. But don’t run anyone down, don’t go over ten Ks and don’t pull into the curb.”
Coulter’s eyebrows pulled into a quizzical frown. “Ks?”
Liev bit back a curse. “Kilometres. Just don’t drive faster than a slow walk, okay?”
Behind him, Chris laughed. “I love this country.”
A minute later, Coulter pulled the Audi to a halt outside the restaurant.
The squeals and screams and cheers attacked Liev the second he opened his door. Women, and quite a few men, surged around the SUV, adoration and excitement turning their faces to masks of rabid delight. Some held signs with Chris’s name on them with big love hearts. All pressed forward, desperate to see the object of their affection.
Adrenaline turned Liev’s blood to liquid electricity. He climbed out of the SUV, planting his feet firmly on the road to scan the ecstatic crowd. No one appeared suspicious or threatening. That didn’t mean they weren’t. Moving close to the Audi, he stretched out his right arm, forcing back the wall of fans trying to cram closer to the car.
More than one person pushed back. More than one tried to duck under his arm.
Clenching his jaw, he swung to face them, fixing them with a glare he knew was borderline murderous. “Unless you want to experience what a size-thirteen boot up your arse feels like, I’d suggest you back off.”
It worked. The wall of hot flesh and delirious fans fell back. A step.
He stood motionless for another second, promising everyone lots of grief with his stare if they did anything stupid.
Charged tension stole through his muscles. His heart slammed faster in his chest. His balls rose up, prepared for what was to come. Every aspect of his working life survived on this mental and physical state—fight or flight. Enter a burning house to rescue someone trapped inside or run away from the flames? Stand down a furious protestor at a political campaign rally or let the politician deal with the voter’s rage alone? Liev’s mind, his body, chose fight every time. It was who he was. What he was born for.
He loved it.
And yet today, he was more on edge, more on guard than ever.
Because of the American man inside the SUV.
Okay, Reynolds.
He steeled himself with a sharp intake of breath, wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the door handle and positioned himself so as to immediately shield Chris from the crowd.
Here we go.