“This is the guest room,” Briar waves around a large room papered in pale grey. “Will you guys be staying here or going home at night?”
“That’s up to you,” Kenta says. “Our commute is around an hour, which obviously isn’t ideal in an emergency. We’ll go home sometimes, but probably not every night. You can either let us stay here, or have your people book us into a nearby hotel.”
She nods. “The pool house has two bedrooms and a bathroom, if you’re okay staying out there. Feel free to use the pool and the gym. And you can take whatever you want from the kitchen, but I’m vegan, so you might want to buy your own food.”
“You got it, princess,” Matt drawls from the doorway.
Briar whirls on him, her eyes flashing. “Princess?”
Matt shrugs a shoulder. “Your code name. Fitting, don’t you think?”
She gives him a cold look, crossing her arms. “How exactly is this going to work? Will you just… follow me around?” She glances at me. “All the time?”
“We’ll split the day into three eight-hour shifts,” Kenta explains. “12AM to 8AM, 8AM to 4PM, 4PM to 12AM. Whoever’s on shift will stay with you, the others will do their own thing. If it’s necessary, we’ll increase protection when you go out.”
Her nose wrinkles. “When is it necessary?”
“Just one of us would be fine if you wanted to pop to the corner shop. All three of us will attend formal events with you.”
“So you do have to follow me around all the time,” she says flatly.
Matt lopes over to the window and starts examining the view outside. “That’s what 24-7 means, yes.”
“I’ll never get to be alone?”
“We’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want,” Kenta says soothingly. “But there will always be someone within earshot of you. They’ll check in on you once or twice an hour, make sure you’re okay.”
“Great,” she mutters. “Absolutely fantastic. When did this become my life?”
I’m surprised. A celebrity who likes her alone time is pretty unusual. In my experience, most of them are desperate to be around people.
We leave the guest bedroom and she starts showing us down the hall. I look around, kind of gobsmacked. I’ll never get over celebrity houses. Briar’s is actually relatively small—just a standard three-bedroom—but the whole place is dripping with luxury. She has two walk-in closets full of clothes, a professional chef’s kitchen, and a ‘glam room’ which I think is dedicated to doing her makeup. There’s an in-home gym, a weight room, and a huge, rippling swimming pool behind the house. Most of her walls are papered in shimmery pink, hung with oil paintings and giant gilt mirrors. Like all celebrity clients I’ve ever met, she has ridiculously large bowls of fruit placed decoratively on all the counters.
As she leads us back into the kitchen, she trips, her heel catching on the doorframe. I reach for her automatically, grabbing her waist to steady her. My fingers splay over the soft leather of her skirt.
Heat touches my face. I clear my throat, pulling my hands away. “Okay, lass?”
She blinks. “You’re Scottish?”
I give her a small smile. “Aye.”
She doesn’t smile back, but her face is curious as she looks me over.
“That’s why he never speaks,” Matt drawls, kneeling to examine the window pane. “He’s embarrassed about it.”
I fight the urge to flip him off.
Truth is, I’ve not said much since I got here because I’ve been slowly dying from the inside. Matt might not remember why Briar looks so familiar, but I sure as Hell do.
While we were on one of our first tours, years back, I had a photo of her pinned up in my barracks; a modelling shot, cut out of a magazine one of the guys got sent. Every goddamn day, I woke up to Briar Saint’s pretty face smiling down at me.
And now I’m here, in her house.
She’s nothing like I imagined. In my photograph, she was smiling brightly on a beach, eating an ice cream. I always pictured her to be bubbly. Sweet.
The woman standing in front of me is certainly not bubbly. She’s pure ice. She’s wearing a white leather miniskirt and stilettos in her own house, and her eyes are cold and sharp as she assesses us. She looks like a woman who doesn’t take any shit.
I only realise I’m staring when she takes the opportunity to do the same. I can feel her eyes trailing the side of my face. It’s probably the first time she’s seen a scar so bad. In the industry, celebrities call their plastic surgeon every time they get a paper cut. When my face got sliced open, all I had to fix me up was Matt, crouched in the bottom of a dripping, damp cave, sewing up my face without anaesthetic while I bit my tongue to pieces to stop myself from yelling. I know he feels bad about how shitty it looks, but honestly, I’m lucky the damn thing healed at all.
I glance out of a window as an excuse to turn my head away. “Your house has too many windows,” I blurt out.
She raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” she says slowly.
I feel my face reddening. I nod awkwardly and step past her, scanning the ceiling for good CCTV spots.
She follows me. “What did you do in the army?”
“We were SAS. Special forces.”
“And that’s how you met? You were in the same… squadron? Troop?”
“Patrol,” I grunt. “We worked in a four-person patrol.”
“You three?” She looks between Matt and Kenta. “Who was the last person?”
“Damon didn’t make it.”
She freezes. “He died?”
I nod, trying not to think about it.
She’s quiet for a minute. We walk into the next room. Kenta and Matt start arguing about blackout blinds. I can feel her cold blue eyes on me, like lasers melting through my skin.
“What does the SAS do?” She asks suddenly.
“Lots of things. We mostly focussed on counter-terrorism.”
She opens her mouth to ask another question, but I cut her off. “How come your agency didn’t give you better security? You had, what, one guard?”
Her lips press together. “Money. They like to cut corners.”
I frown. “Security isn’t something you can skimp on. Your life is always more important than money.”
She tilts her head. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about me in weeks.”
Something about her voice makes me think she’s not joking.
Kenta steps forward, scanning his notebook. “Okay, I think we have everything. I’ll put in an order for the new equipment.” He smiles at Briar. “So, what do you think? You want to sign the contract?”
She hesitates, pursing her red lips. I’m suddenly nervous. I don’t know what I’m going to do if she says no. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sleep at night, knowing that she’s in here all alone with perverts climbing in through her bedroom windows.
To my surprise, she looks up at me, her ponytail flicking over her shoulder. “What do you think, Glen?” She asks quietly. “Do you think I need all this?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “I do. I’m sorry.”
She nods firmly. “Then, yes. Let’s sign the paperwork.”
“Great,” Kenta says brightly. “Don’t worry. We can be very discreet. You won’t even know that we’re here.”
