“Do you have a woman in your life, back home?” she asked, maybe a little out of desperation, but definitely as another reminder to herself that she most definitely was not it.

  “No one serious.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I dated. Not seriously. When I get back and am exonerated, those women will still be there. Maybe attached now. Maybe not.”

  “Did any of them stand by you after your arrest?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Sounded exactly right to her. Based on what she knew of the keep-up-appearances society in which he lived.

  And yet, he couldn’t wait to get his life back. Was spending huge amounts of money to that end.

  “How about you?”

  His question made her sweat. Or the exercise did. Quite suddenly.

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “It’s not about my dating life, either, but you asked.”

  Valid point.

  “It’s easier when we’re talking about you. Since you’re the client, the one this whole situation revolves around...”

  “Easier for you, maybe. And you haven’t answered my question.”

  They’d been walking for half a mile. Another mile at least of unfettered ground stretched before them. She watched a speedboat pass. Saw some brave kayakers riding the wake.

  “I date. Not seriously. Most guys who ask me out aren’t as enamored of me once they find out what I do for a living.” Okay, she hadn’t meant that to come out.

  “What about the ones you ask out?”

  Yeah. “I don’t tend to do that much.” She’d grown up in two worlds, with two sets of friends, which left her on the outside looking in with both groups.

  And with her families...the same.

  “I’m a bit of a loner,” she said aloud. Finding the words kind of sad, though she was perfectly happy with her life. “Not everyone has to grow up and get married and start a family to be happy and fulfilled.”

  “I agree with you completely on that one.” When he gave her hand a squeeze, as though to shake on the agreement, her groin came to life again.

  From a hand squeeze.

  Added to the entire situation into which they’d been thrust.

  “What made you want to become a bodyguard?” His question disappointed her. Mostly because most men asked it with a tone that said they just didn’t get it. Like she wasn’t normal for making the choice.

  It took her a second to realize he hadn’t had the tone. And so, for the first time, she answered the question rather than parrying it.

  “My dad says it’s because of what happened to my mother, and he’s probably right. From my point of view, I like the idea of being able to protect people, not just with brute strength, or guns, though I can do both, of course, but by using a whole-life approach.”

  “Like disguises.”

  “Like disguises,” she agreed.

  There was more. She’d grown up afraid. Petrified to be alone in society—not just her grandparents’ society, but in public, period. Until she’d run to Shelter Valley and found her own strength. From there, training to be a protector rather than a victim had seemed like a natural course. She was the person she’d been meant to be.

  And if that meant she never married or had children of her own...

  The whole concept was one she’d left for the future to figure out. Hadn’t been bothered that it wasn’t happening for her yet.

  Until Joe had asked her about dating.

  Speaking of which, a couple was walking toward them. One they’d passed half an hour before. Going in opposite directions then, too. Only now they were much closer.

  Close enough for her to tell that she’d seen them once before. Getting off a boat that had just tied up at the one long dock attached to the far end of the road filled with pay-as-you-go campsites. The woman couldn’t seem to take her eyes of Joe.

  While she was holding hands with another man...

  Her foot lifted to take her next step, but she swung around instead, slamming her body into Joe’s, pushing him up against the closest tree. She lifted both of his arms, tats showing, positioned them so that his newly inked neck was in full view and planted her lips on top of his.

  There was no time to warn him, to tell him to play along.

  Keeping her eyes half-closed, she turned her head, as though to better fit her mouth to Joe’s, but kept her gaze intent on the couple.

  The mouth beneath hers opened. Joe’s tongue, warm, but not sloppy wet, pushed at the opening of her lips. It had to look real. Believable.

  Moving her body against his, their arms still both raised against the tree, she opened her mouth, too. Letting her tongue mingle with the one that had gained entrance.

  Saw the young woman glance immediately away, out to the water, and then lean in, as though saying something to her partner, after which the two of them immediately turned and went back the way they’d come.

  And... Joe’s mouth was devouring hers. Small kisses in between deep, intimate thrusts, until their mouths seemed to become one entity, meant to keep them together forever.

  It took her a full minute to drop his wrist down from the trunk of the tree.

  To pull her body away from the rock-hard heat against which she’d been pressing.

  And another few seconds to get her mouth apart from his.

  She’d done the right thing. Followed the plan exactly.

  And it had worked perfectly.

  Disaster of recognition by some young social media user averted.

  But one look at Joe’s face, at the shock in his eyes before he turned away, and she knew that another disaster had just fallen upon them.

  Between them.

  The disaster was them.

  The couple who had just had hot, undeniable sex with their mouths.

  Who had burning bodies that were careening toward total coupling.

  But who knew that if it happened, it wouldn’t be anything more than a side effect of the job.

  Just like the kiss had been.

  Chapter 16

  Had Joe’s life been his own, he’d have walked back to the rig alone, fired it up and headed out. As it was, all the way back, walking hand in hand, in total silence, with the woman pretending to be his wife, he formed the words that would get her out of his life within the hour. Over and over. In differing versions.

  “Look out at the water.” The command came with purpose, and he followed it immediately, felt a jerk on the hand holding his as McKenna waved in the direction away from the river with her free hand.

  “That couple was watching us. Now they aren’t,” she said without speeding up their slow, steady pace.

  “Wouldn’t it look more like we’re a couple enjoying an engrossing time together if we were talking to each other?” he asked, somewhat to be perverse, but also because the question was valid.

  “Yes, it would. I’m just not sure what to say. And it’s taking most of my energy at the moment focusing outward. One missed bit of interest and you could be splashed all over the internet...with our location right alongside the picture.”

  And...he felt like an ass. All worked up over a little kiss that he’d known could happen. That had happened for good reason. She’d been working. Doing her job.

  And he’d...forgotten for a few seconds that she was on the job. Forgotten that he was paying her.

  “You’re free to go as soon as we get back,” he told her. “I’ll tell Glen that having a bodyguard is driving me crazy and I’m willing to take my chances without one.”

  “Aside from the way that reflects on me, are you telling me to leave?”

  One word. Yes. All his rehearsing and he couldn’t come out with one word? “I’m a good man, McKenna,” he said instead. “I live by a strict code of ethics, which most definitely includes zero sexual anything in the workplace, not because we’re so socially conscious about it now, but because that’s who I’ve always been.” Not that he’d given her any reason to believe him. Just the opposite.

  And there was the rub.

  Coming from the life he’d been born to, he had to stand straighter, work harder, live cleaner than others to live beside them.

  He couldn’t carry on an affair with his bodyguard and come out liking himself.

  “So, actors, who have to come together with costars on-screen, or in the theater, you think they’re bad people?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How is this different? Other than the camera crews and overall coolness of being a movie star. We’re doing a job here. As planned.” Her words sounded forced.

  And he couldn’t pretend.

  “It’s different because I wasn’t working. Or going along with the plan to keep me safe.”

  “Of course you were.” Her immediate response, the adamant way she said it, riled him up more. He couldn’t afford to live in shades of gray.

  “No, I—”

  “If you hadn’t been following the plan, you’d have had your arms around me, not staked up to a tree exposing your tattoos,” she interrupted.

  She could have been right. Except that he’d been turned on by the whole pinned-up-on-the-tree thing, too.

  “Your body’s reaction was natural, Joe. As was mine. We’re human.”

  As was mine. He’d known, of course. But to hear her admit she’d been as turned on as he’d been...

  “And we still got the job done. That young social media influencer wannabe, or whoever she was, had been following us, staring, getting closer, studying...and with one kiss at a tree, we lost her interest.”

  He hadn’t known. About the woman. He’d known why McKenna had kissed him—to make their relationship clear to anyone around the campsites along the river. That there’d been someone suspicious, ready to expose him...

  He’d been lost in her kiss. She’d been working the whole time. Watching some woman he hadn’t even been aware of.

  “Besides, I’m the one who made the advance, not you. It’s me who, in your scenario, would have been wrong. I’m also the one who came up with the plan. All you’ve done is follow orders.”

  If only it were that simple.

  “So if I crawl into your bed tonight and proceed to have sex with you, it’s all your fault?” He was being facetious. Completely. And still felt the pull. “I have carte blanche just to take what I’m driven to need, because there’s a plan?” He had to make her see that she was playing with fire. That he was.

  And that he wasn’t sure he could keep them from getting burned. If it was just him at risk, he’d bear the scars, as he had the others. But if he knowingly let himself hurt her...

  She had to go.

  There was no other option.

  As soon as they were back at the rig, they were parting ways.

  * * *

  She wanted him.

  In the worst way.

  More than she’d ever thought about wanting a man.

  It would only be for the moment—during the job—while they were playing a part. But realistically, her life choices didn’t accommodate any more than that, anyway.

  Yards away from the rig, her mind was spinning. What was she doing?

  Thinking?

  Who was she kidding?

  It was going to happen.

  Either that or Joe was getting ready to fire her, and she couldn’t let him do that. Not if it meant leaving him out there on his own.

  Or even finding someone else to take her place.

  Someone who didn’t know the job. Or him. Who wouldn’t be able to protect him as well as she could.

  Chances of him letting another bodyguard in were slim.

  There’d been nothing but a strained silence between them in the five minutes since he’d challenged her with his mock threat to climb into her bed and ravish her body.

  “I think a better plan would be to do it in your bed,” she put out there, knowing that she was crossing a point of no return. “That couch isn’t long enough for your legs and doing it all scrunched up could get a little awkward.”

  He didn’t miss a step, just kept forward motion toward the rig, but she was pretty sure his hand was sweating.

  “That way I come to you,” she continued, “which lets you completely off the hook in terms of harassment accountability.”

  Of course, he could then have a case against her...

  “Which I will not do without your prior consent,” she amended.

  They’d reached the rig. Pulling her behind it, where they’d set chairs in the trees on the lot, out of view, he lowered her to her chair and then took his.

  “Enough with the craziness,” he said. “You might think this is all fun and games, but—”

  She kissed him. Quickly. Instinctively. To silence him before he could make a bigger mess of things.

  “I’m being serious, Joe,” she told him, looking him straight in the eye. “I can’t explain this thing that’s sprung up between us. I’ve been on plenty of jobs with men before and had absolutely no desire to get any closer to them, in any way. And I’m guessing you’ve worked with a lot of women and also not had this problem, or you’d have been quitting jobs.”

  “I’ve never worked with a woman in as intimate quarters as this,” he said. She noticed, right away, that he hadn’t denied the main gist of her assumption.

  What he was feeling for her was new to him, too.

  But he wasn’t closing up the rig and driving away from her.

  Yet.

  “Answer me this...do you think you could have sex with me—in a world where there was no reason not to do so—and be okay leaving me behind?”

  “That’s the whole point,” he told her, sitting forward, frowning at her. “It can’t lead to anything. And I’m not going to start something that I know I’m not going to finish.”

  “Right.”

  “Which means you need to—”

  “It means that we’re on the same page,” she interrupted, feeling as though she was fighting for life.

  His life.

  “Because I fully believe I can have sex with you and be okay when the job ends and...we do.”

  His stare was intense. She just couldn’t tell if it was in her favor—their favor—or not. The man was certainly a stickler for doing what he thought was right.

  To the point of sacrificing himself maybe a bit too much.

  “Don’t you see? You wouldn’t be starting something you aren’t going to finish, because we know there is a finish—and what it is—before we start.”

  Was she really sitting there begging a man to have sex with her?

  It was a new one, that was for sure.

  One she’d never in a million years have seen herself doing.

  “Ground rules.” His blurt sounded a bit guttural. Not at all as though he was convinced. Or capitulating.

  “We’d have to have ground rules,” he said while she was scrambling to figure out what he needed so she could give it to him.

  And it came to her. “I’ve got one. We only have sex at night, after we’d normally part to go to bed, and I don’t sleep in your room. I have to be on alert out front, and checking cameras, every two hours.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “What about you? What are your rules?”

  Did he have any? If he had some, did that mean he was going to agree to her plan?

  Stomach clenching, chest tight, she waited. Not sure if a small part of her was hoping he’d refuse. What she’d proposed, what they’d do, carried some risk.

  Which scared her.

  Like, what if sleeping with him didn’t cure what made her ache? What if she was really falling for the guy? Would having sex with him make it harder for her to leave him behind?

  Did she want to have to wonder, for the rest of her days, what his lovemaking would have been like?

  And what was life without taking risks?

  She’d had that one drummed into her for most of her life. Mostly from the counselor she’d seen during her early teens.

  Joe’s silence was making her far too edgy.

  Were they going to do it?

  Were they?

  “You have any rules, Joe?”

  “One.”

  Oh, God. They were going to do it.

  They were going to do it!

  While her crotch flooded with wanting, she asked, “What’s that?”

  Who the hell cared? They were going to do it. That night. Leaving them a good part of a day to get through without doing it first.

  “That it only happens in the rig. Period.”

  Kind of confused, based on her one rule, she said, “Of course.”

  His nod wasn’t a happy one.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I’m getting rid of the thing the second this is over.”

  Ah. He’d drawn boundaries.

  Good ones.

  Probably wasn’t good that she was hurt by them.

  Chapter 17

  Hell. He was in more hell. A different kind of hell. His body ached for one thing only, and he had about twelve hours to get through, undetected by anyone around him, surrounded by temptation on steroids, before he could get lost in whatever sublime universe McKenna took him to. She’d said nighttime only. Who knew the rule might kill him?

  On the one hand, he couldn’t believe his good luck.

  On the other...sheer torture to a man who’d never felt the kind of connection he did to his temporary bodyguard. It was physical, for sure. With added sugar on top in that the woman herself intrigued him.

  Unlike anyone he’d ever known or even imagined knowing.

  He’d just gone inside for his laptop, thinking he’d spend the day sitting outside in their makeshift hideaway, focusing on the only thing that would be able to engross him at that point—getting his life back—when McKenna’s phone rang.