His Christmas Assignment. Lisa Childs

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      She had nothing of value. And while she had once brought a Payne Protection client to her apartment in order to guard the woman, she was alone now.

      But then she was no longer alone as the intruder boldly sauntered into her apartment. He was incredibly tall with lean muscles and blond hair that nearly touched his shoulders. Her breath caught, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Who else would have so easily picked her high-tech lock but Garek Kozminski?

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded to know.

      “I need to talk to you,” he replied. But he was looking at her that way he always looked at her—like she was an ice cream cone he wanted to lick.

      “So you picked my lock and let yourself inside?”

      He shrugged as if breaking and entering was inconsequential. But surely he knew there were consequences for crimes; he had spent time in prison for at least one of the probably many offenses he had committed. “You didn’t answer the doorbell.”

      “There are reasons people don’t answer their doorbells,” she pointed out. “I could have been gone.” If she’d packed faster, she would have been gone. That urge she’d had to run intensified—probably because she had come face-to-face with the reason she wanted to run. That she needed to run...

      His lips curving into a smug grin, he said, “But you’re here.”

      “Not for long,” she said as she spun around and headed back down the hall toward her bedroom. It wasn’t too late. She could still escape.

      But he followed her. “You’re packing? Where the hell are you going?”

      She paused as she was about to toss a sweater into the suitcase and realized that she had no idea. She had no plan. She’d only known she needed to leave—to get away for a while. Then she could decide if she wanted to come back. Ever.

      “You don’t know,” he surmised.

      “Anywhere you’re not,” she replied.

      He clasped a hand to his heart. “Oh, that hurts—like a knife through the heart.” Despite his playful tone, there was something in his gray gaze—something almost like real pain and regret. Did he actually care that she wanted to get away from him?

      “Do you have a heart?” she wondered.

      “Yes,” he replied. “So much so that I convinced Logan you’re a better man for this job than I am.”

      “Man?” Now she knew what he meant about the knife through the heart; a sharp pang in her chest felt as if he’d driven his blade deep.

      “Yeah, that assignment you wanted—it’s all yours,” he magnanimously offered.

      She shook her head. “I quit.”

      “Because you wanted that assignment,” he said.

      “No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t wanted that assignment; playing bodyguard to some reality star turned B-movie actress held no appeal for her.

      His gray eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “You just didn’t want me to have it?”

      “No, I didn’t.”

      “Why not?” he asked. “What would I steal or who would I kill if I took this assignment?”

      He had definitely overheard her argument with their boss. Her face heated with embarrassment—not over what he’d heard as much as having to explain why she hadn’t wanted him guarding a woman who rarely wore clothes on camera, or according to the tabloids, off camera either. She wasn’t certain she understood why herself.

      She wasn’t certain about anything anymore.

      She shrugged. “It’s a high-profile assignment—one that will raise the awareness of Payne Protection to the national level.”

      “Last year—all the attempts on Cooper’s and Logan’s and Parker’s lives—raised the awareness of Payne Protection,” he pointed out. “That’s why an LA actress wants to employ one of our bodyguards. We’re the best.”

      She wanted to argue the “we,” but Logan had been right earlier. He and Parker probably wouldn’t have survived if not for Garek’s help.

      “That assignment doesn’t require the best,” she said—since she suspected the entire need for a bodyguard was just the actress desperately trying to get some more minutes of fame.

      “Then why didn’t you want me to take it?” he asked.

      She shrugged. She wasn’t about to admit it had bothered her a lot to think of him with a scantily clad reality star. “It doesn’t matter now.”

      “It mattered enough to you,” he said, his voice deepening with confusion and concern, “that you quit the job you loved.”

      “Loved is right,” she agreed. “Past tense. I don’t love it anymore.” But that was a lie; she knew it even as she said it. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her job anymore. It was that she was afraid she might fall in love with something—with somebody—else.

      “Is that my fault?” he asked. “Or Logan’s?”

      That was why she couldn’t risk falling again—because she had already made enough of a fool of herself over love before. “If this had anything to do with Logan, I would have quit when he married your sister.”

      “Maybe you were just waiting around for them to fail,” he said. “It’s not like anyone really thought they’d last.” He chuckled. “Least of all me.”

      “They have a child together,” she said.

      “Little Penny,” he murmured, his grin widening with obvious love for his two-month-old niece.

      Candace’s breath caught in her lungs. Garek was so damn handsome it wasn’t fair. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You need to leave.”

      He glanced around as if just realizing where they were. “I’ve been wanting to get into your bedroom for a year now...” He stepped closer to the bed and ran his fingertips across the sheets. “Silk...”

      She flinched with anger and embarrassment and lashed out, “Of course you’d be surprised a man like me would have silk sheets.”

      “Man?” he repeated, his brow furrowing with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

      “You just said I was the best man for the job—”

      “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

      “Why not?” she asked. “Everybody else thinks of me as just one of the guys.”

      He shook his head. “I have never thought of you that way.” He stepped closer now and jerked her into his arms so quickly that she didn’t have time to react. If she’d had time, she would have stopped him—she СКАЧАТЬ