“I’m sorry for being a limp-dicked idiot who doesn’t know how to respect women.” Resentment poured off him in waves.
“Do you accept his apology?” I asked Bridget. “If you don’t, I can take this outside.”
Frat Boy paled.
Bridget tilted her head, her face pensive, and another shadow of a smile ghosted my mouth. She’s good.
“I suppose,” she finally said in the tone of someone who was doing someone else a huge favor. “There’s no use wasting more of our time on someone insignificant.”
My amusement tempered some of the anger running hot in my veins at Frat Boy’s earlier comment. “You got lucky.” I released him. “If I ever see you bothering her or another woman again…” I lowered my voice. “You might as well learn how to do everything left-handed because your right one will be out of commission. Permanently. Now leave.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. Frat Boy fled, his pink shirt bobbing in the crowd until he disappeared out the exit.
Good riddance.
“Thank you,” Bridget said. “I appreciate you dealing with him, even though it’s frustrating it took someone else to intervene before he got the hint. Isn’t me saying no enough?” Her brow puckered with annoyance.
“Some people are idiots, and some people are assholes.” I stepped aside to allow a group of giggling partygoers past. “Just so happened you ran into one who was both.”
That earned me a small smile. “Mr. Larsen, I do believe we’re having a civil conversation.”
“Are we? Someone check the weather in hell,” I deadpanned.
Bridget’s smile widened, and I’d be damned if I didn’t feel a small kick in my gut at the sight.
“How about a drink?” She tilted her head toward the bar. “On me.”
I shook my head. “I’m on the clock, and I don’t drink alcohol.”
Surprise flashed across her face. “Ever?”
“Ever.” No drugs, no alcohol, no smoking. I’d seen the havoc they wreaked, and I had no interest in becoming another statistic. “Not my thing.”
Bridget’s expression told me she suspected there was more to the story than I was letting on, but she didn’t press the issue, which I appreciated. Some people were too damn nosy.
“Sorry that took so long!” Jules returned with Stella in tow. “The line at the bathroom was insane.” Her eyes roved between me and Bridget. “Everything okay?”
“Yes. Mr. Larsen was keeping me company while you guys were gone,” Bridget said without missing a beat.
“Really?” Jules arched an eyebrow. “How nice of him.”
Neither Bridget nor I took the bait.
“Calm down, J,” I heard Stella say as I returned to the table now that I’d handled the situation with Frat Boy and her friends were back. “It’s his job to look after her.”
Damn right. It was my job, and Bridget was my client. Nothing more, nothing less.
Bridget glanced at me, and our eyes locked for a split second before she looked away.
My hand flexed on my thigh.
Sure, I was attracted to her. She was beautiful, smart, and had a spine of steel. Of course I was attracted to her. That didn’t mean I should or would act on it.
In my five years as a bodyguard, I’d never once crossed my professional boundaries.
And I wasn’t about to start now.
3
Bridget
One of the worst things about having a round-the-clock bodyguard was living with them. It hadn’t been an issue with Booth because we’d gotten along so well, but living in close quarters with Rhys put on me on edge.
Suddenly, my house seemed too small, and everywhere I looked, Rhys was there.
Drinking coffee in the kitchen. Stepping out of the shower. Working out in the backyard, his muscles flexing and his skin gleaming with sweat.
It all felt strangely domestic in a way it hadn’t felt with Booth, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Aren’t you hot in those clothes?” I asked one unseasonably warm day as I watched Rhys do push-ups.
Even though it was fall, the temperature hovered in the high seventies, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck despite my light cotton dress and the ice-cold lemonade in my hands.
Rhys must be roasting in his black shirt and workout shorts.
“Trying to get me to take my shirt off?” He continued his pushups, not sounding the least bit winded.
Warmth that had nothing to do with the weather spread across my cheeks. “You wish.” It wasn’t the most inspired answer, but it was all I could think of.
Honestly, I was curious about seeing Rhys shirtless. Not because I wanted to sneak a peek at his abs—which I grudgingly admitted had to be fantastic if the rest of his body was anything to go by—but because he seemed so determined not to be shirtless. Even when he left the bathroom after a shower, he was fully dressed.
Maybe he was uncomfortable getting half-naked in front of a client, but I had a feeling not much discomfited Rhys Larsen. It had to be something else. An embarrassing tattoo, maybe, or a strange skin condition that only affected his torso.
Rhys finished his pushups and moved on to the pull-up bar. “You gonna keep ogling me, or you got something I can help you with, princess?”
The warmth intensified. “I wasn’t ogling you. I was secretly praying for you to get heatstroke. If you do, I’m not helping you. I have…a book to read.”
Dear Lord, what am I saying? I didn’t make sense even to myself.
After our moment of solidarity at The Crypt two weeks ago, Rhys and I had settled right back into our familiar pattern of snark and sarcasm, which I hated, because I wasn’t a typically snarky and sarcastic person.
A shadow of a smirk filled the corners of Rhys’s mouth, but it disappeared before it blossomed into something real. “Good to know.”
By now, I was sure I was beet red, but I lifted my chin and reentered the house with as much dignity as I could muster.
Let Rhys bake in the sun. I hoped he did get heatstroke. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have enough energy to be such an ass.
Sadly, he didn’t, and he had plenty of energy left to be an ass.
“How’s the book?” he drawled later, when he’d finished his workout and I’d grabbed the closest book I could find before he entered the living room.
“Riveting.” I tried to focus on the page instead of the way Rhys’s sweat-dampened shirt clung to his torso.
Six-pack abs for sure. Maybe even an eight-pack. Not that I was counting.
“Sure seems that way.” Rhys’s face remained impassive, but I could hear the mocking bent in his voice. He walked to the bathroom, and without looking back, he added, “By the way, princess, the book is upside down.”
I slammed the hardcover shut, my skin blazing with embarrassment.
God, he was insufferable. A gentleman wouldn’t point something like that out, but Rhys Larsen was no gentleman. He was the bane of my existence.
Unfortunately, I was the only person who thought so. Everyone else found his grumpiness charming, including my friends and the people at the shelter, so I couldn’t even commiserate with them over his bane-of-my-existence-ness.