Bodyguard...To Bridegroom?

‘What if I pledge not to publish any manifestos while I’m here?’ she joked.

He couldn’t match her light laugh. That was exactly the sort of thing he was hired to restrict. ‘I’ll be resetting your device passwords daily. More often if I need to.’

‘Of course you will,’ she grunted. ‘Why not just take them off me?’

‘Because you’re not a child.’

The irony of that made her laugh. ‘Thanks for noticing.’

‘My job is to create an environment that limits risk, Sera. I’m your protection, not your parent. You already have one of those.’

Again, the flash across her gaze. But while her irritation was real it didn’t seem directed at him.

‘You can’t work around the clock, Brad,’ she said, and he got the sense that the idea was genuinely troubling her.

‘You’ll barely know I’m—’

‘I’m not worried for me,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s not fair on you. I’m sorry that you have to be inconvenienced for something that won’t even be happening. I had hoped that no one would be put out by me this Christmas,’ she muttered.

Was it his imagination or was there an extra subtle leaning on the word ‘this’? But curiosity belonged between them about as much as empathy did.

Indifferent acquiescence...

‘It’s not an inconvenience. It’s my job. Besides, personal protection isn’t exactly taxing,’ he said.

‘Until it is?’ she guessed.

Again, that sharp mind at work.

‘Nature of the beast,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all waiting around and watching until it blows up.’

‘Well, it won’t be blowing up because of me,’ she vowed with determination in her eyes. ‘No matter what my father thinks. I’m afraid it’s going to be a dull month for you.’

Yeah... The road to hell was paved with good intentions. ‘Did your last protection detail buy that gentle sincerity?’

Right before he got reassigned over the whole research-lab debacle.

He deserved her annoyance, but the flush he got instead was shame. It peaked high in her cheeks and cast her eyes downward.

‘I’ll be all right,’ he assured her in lieu of apology. ‘I’ll take my downtime as I can.’

‘I just want you to know that I’m okay with the idea of personal space,’ she murmured.

He couldn’t help the laugh then. ‘I’m sure. Unfortunately, I’m required to intrude on yours quite a bit.’

She sighed and moved to the bedside table to collect her key. ‘Well, we might as well get on with it, then. The resort schedules a complimentary spa session for anyone who has come in on an international flight. Mine’s in half an hour.’

Back on the job. ‘I’ll call up the buggy.’

‘I’d like to walk. To get some pictures before the spa,’ she said. ‘Then perhaps some more shooting after lunch.’

It wasn’t a request, no matter how politely delivered. Here was a woman who’d been negotiating with protection details her whole life, though, while she was good at it, her tension told him she didn’t enjoy it. Fortunately, he did. Clear, confident directions boded well for a client who would accept his daily intrusions into her life.

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

In reality, protection details were dull more often than they were good. The trick was in staying alert and on your game while your mind turned to mush watching some client reading a book or watching their kid at a ball game or catching a movie. The consequences of losing focus could be bad. And prevention was a whole lot better than cure.

As he knew from experience.

Sera grabbed her camera from her luggage and a wide straw hat from her bedhead and turned for the door.

‘Let’s go.’

* * *

‘Did the floor say something to offend?’ Sera asked him, her voice husky from an hour of languorous spoiling in the spa. The rest of her was buried in her oversized robe, enjoying the dazed, spaced-out, post-massage moments.

Brad’s grey gaze shot upwards as he pushed to his feet. ‘Sorry, what?’

Her smile was as slow to form as her slurred words, but the uncomfortable expression on his face as he looked her over made her want to double-check that the robe was closed everywhere it should be. It made her want to fix her just-massaged hair, too, but she resisted the urge.

‘The floor,’ she clarified. ‘You’re frowning at it pretty severely.’

‘We, uh, disagreed on a few fundamentals.’

His gruff chuckle did more for undoing the stresses of her arrival in Umm Khoreem than the hour-long rubdown she’d just enjoyed. Or the good, cathartic cry she’d had in the pool. A laugh, on this man, was as surprising and rare as the light out here.

‘Feel good?’ he said, dragging himself up into professional guard stance.

‘Amazing.’ She smiled.

Her new favourite word. The desert was amazing. The suites were amazing. The massages were amazing. For someone who so easily found the beauty in the visual, her grasp of the verbal was taking a real hit this trip. It had to be connected to those eyes.

She never should have ordered him to take his sunglasses off.

‘I’ll wait by the door,’ Brad said, nudging her towards the changing room. She stumbled forward in her half-drugged state.

The Sera that emerged from the change rooms fifteen minutes later was more the woman she liked to present to the world. She’d taken her time redressing and scrunching her hair into something vaguely stylish—using every complimentary product in the place and delighting in the complex, Arabian smells—and her bare arms and throat practically glistened from whatever oils her masseuse had used on her. She felt spoiled and mellow and fresh.

She signed her tab at the spa’s reception desk and then turned and floated out the door. Brad trailed behind her, playing Sherpa to her camera gear.

‘Don’t forget to eat,’ he murmured. ‘One banana isn’t going to keep you going for long, no matter how delicious it was.’

‘After that massage I’m ravenous. Let’s go get lunch,’ she said. Sometimes—just sometimes—it was nice to have someone to do your thinking for you.

They headed for the resort’s pretty hub, stopping only once to take a photograph along the way—a leggy young gazelle standing in the sand, its little tail waggling madly. Sera captured its markings, coat colour and the deep, watery depths of its eyes. Then she remembered her growly stomach.

Brad had ditched the suit in favour of dark jeans and a light shirt, but he’d kept the pricey glasses firmly in place and added a neutral baseball cap for good measure. Totally Secret Service now. Did he imagine he blended right in with the other guests? Given how he carried himself, he probably blended in nowhere outside some elite force of Arab mercenaries.