Beauty And The Bodyguard. Lisa Childs

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      Megan was scared. Even though she lived a relatively boring life as a school librarian, she knew fear well. She had been very frightened when she’d broken up with Gage. She’d had a horrible feeling then that she was making a mistake. And when he’d reenlisted and been immediately deployed…

      She’d been scared out of her mind that something would happen to him. Even worse, he’d gone missing and had been presumed dead…

      She had nearly lost her mind. She wasn’t that scared now, because she knew what she had to do. She was going to thwart Gage’s assignment. There was no way she was going through with this wedding.

      Minutes ticked away on the clock hanging on the yellow wall of the bride’s dressing room. She was still alone inside—although she didn’t feel alone anymore. While Gage had been gone for long moments, his presence was palpable in the room, which was another reason she needed to leave it. She needed to find the groom’s dressing room and tell him that she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t marry him.

      She shouldn’t have accepted Richard’s proposal in the first place. While he was okay that she wasn’t in love with him, she wasn’t. As he had convinced her, it was safer to marry someone you didn’t love. There was no chance of getting your heart broken. But then there was no chance of passion, either. She’d had that passion with Gage.

      While she’d had boyfriends before—Richard and a couple of high school boys before him—she’d never felt the passion she had with Gage. Only with Gage…

      The first moment she’d met him—during a Super Bowl party at her father’s house—she’d been overwhelmed by attraction.

      He was tall, with broad shoulders and heavily developed muscles. He had looked like a gym rat—then. But not now…

      While he’d looked good—damn good—in the black tuxedo, he’d also looked thinner than Megan had ever seen him. What had he endured throughout those long months he’d been missing?

      She wanted to know. Most of all she wanted him every bit as much as she’d wanted him that day they’d first met. When she’d closed the refrigerator door to find him leaning against the side of it, she’d thought he was big then, towering over her.

      But he wasn’t just big physically.

      It was his personality that was so big. His voice carried to the point where she’d been able to hear him above the other men gathered in the family room around her father’s enormous TV. She and Ellen had bought him that TV for Mother’s Day because he’d been both mother and father to them. She’d been invited to sit around that TV, too, but she’d been too shy to join the group of rowdy guys to whom her father had introduced her when she’d come home from a short and boring date with Richard.

      Gage Huxton was the rowdiest with his booming voice and his even louder laugh. Or maybe he was the one she heard because he was the one she’d thought the most handsome with his golden-blond hair and smoky green eyes.

      She’d never seen a more beautiful man. And, thanks to her father being bureau chief, she’d met some good-looking guys over the years. But they had never noticed her; they’d never sought her out like Gage had in the kitchen.

      “Do you need something?” she’d asked him. “More beer?” Her father had a bar in the family room, but the fridge was small. With that many guys, they had probably already emptied it.

      He’d shaken his head. “No.”

      “Food?” she’d asked.

      Her father was an excellent cook. He’d had to be, or they would have starved. But maybe he hadn’t made enough for the number of guys who’d showed up at their house.

      Gage had shaken his head again. And there’d been something in his eyes, a wicked glint that had had her pulse racing.

      “Then what do you need?” she’d asked.

      He’d СКАЧАТЬ