Page 10 of Guarding the Rock Star
Whatever I was going to say was interrupted by a loud bang. Before I took my next breath, Wanda had shoved me to the floor between the seats.
“Stay down,” she ordered, drawing a gun from a holster that was hidden beneath her jacket.
“Keep driving,” she ordered Nate as he lowered the privacy partition between our seats.
“I think it was just a car backfiring,” Nate called back, “No cause for alarm.”
Wanda crouched on the seat, looking through the windows, her head on a swivel as she looked in all directions. Finally, she slid her gun back in place.
“All clear,” she said.
“Could have told you that,” my driver grumbled from the front seat. “Now get your feet off my seats, please.”
As the partition closed, I heard him mumble, “Your cousin is a piece of work, Tasha.”
Wanda grabbed my hand and pulled me back up onto the seat. My heart, already racing from the excitement of the last few minutes, somehow sped up even more as her fingers wrapped around mine. In an instant, I was aroused, something that I was pretty sure Wanda realized, given the flare of her nostrils. I knew that vampires, like all supernatural creatures, were said to have a super sensitive sense of smell.
If Wanda was surprised that I got excited by a little manhandling, I was doubly surprised. I never got turned on this fast.
I shifted onto the seat, and reluctantly released her hand, turning to stare out the window. My palm was still tingling from Wanda’s touch, and I pressed it against my thigh to ground myself. I didn’t understand why I felt such a strong pull towards this woman who obviously didn’t think much of me, but I was determined to resist it. The last thing I needed right now was complications with my bodyguard. No matter how hot she was.
Wanda
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. I accompanied Tasha as she went to her magazine interview, then we had lunch with some smug record company assholes who spent the entire lunch condescending to her and staring at her tits. It was all I could do not to rip their heads off.
“Why do you let those guys talk to you like that?” I asked in the car on the way home.
“Like what?” Tasha asked.
She had that confused look again. She seemed to have that a lot around me, like we were speaking a different language.
“They talk to you like you’re an idiot or something. They were totally rude.”
“Oh, that’s how all those record company people are,” she laughed. “But the joke’s on them, because I’m smarter than they think I am. I get farther by letting them underestimate me.”
“They were also staring at your tits,” I told her. I sounded the slightest bit perturbed, but I didn’t care. I didn’t appreciate anyone staring at my mate’s tits. Besides me of course.
“Yeah, I wore this shirt for a reason,” she said breezily. “With the bra I’m wearing underneath, it makes the most of my cleavage, makes me look more femme. You know how hetero men are, if you hypnotize them with your boobs, you can do whatever you want.”
I was impressed. My little mate was smarter than I’d given her credit for.
I repressed a sigh, wondering what I was going to do about the mate thing. All day I’d been hyper focused on her, and as much as I told myself it was about the job, it was more than that. The thought of anyone hurting my mate made me feel almost feral. I was not happy about that. I liked being cool and controlled and my bratty, sarcastic mate was wrecking that for me. I just needed to keep my emotions in check. After all, I had a job to do here.
When we got home, Tasha announced that she would be in her music room, seeming eager to get away from me.
Meanwhile, I was working on one side of the dining room table, where I’d set up a temporary office. A lot of the work we did at Sapphic Security was computer based, things like background checks, remote surveillance, and, in my case, a fair amount of computer hacking. Not that I’d ever admit that outside of the secure walls of my employer. Officially my title was IT Director, but I did a fair amount of field work as well.
Tasha was still in her music room practicing the guitar while her personal chef prepared a healthy dinner for us. The fact that the girl had a personal chef clearly demonstrated the difference between the two of us.
Monica was a petite woman dressed in pressed khakis and a chef’s jacket, as if she was working in a restaurant instead of in someone’s kitchen. She had mousy brown hair she’d pulled back into a severe bun, a pointy chin, and the thinnest lips I’d ever seen on a woman. When she leaned forward to shake my hand, I caught a glimpse of a large crucifix necklace.
“You look familiar,” I told her. “Have we met before?”
Monica shook her head. “No, but you might have met my brother.”
“Who’s your brother?” I asked.
“Mark. Big bald guy on the security team. He’s part of the team that accompanies Tasha around Seattle when she’s here in town. He helped me get this job too,” she beamed.
