Page 18 of Last First Kiss
“Forget it. I’m just being . . . I don’t know, just forget it.” He flipped the steaks over.
“I’m thinking that your definition of friendly is not the same as mine,” Paul teased.
A small delicate knock from the glass doors startled Rocco just as he was about to glare at Paul.
“Guess your enigma’s here,” Paul whispered as he signaled for her to join them.
“Shut your mouth,” Rocco whispered before Annie stepped out.
“Sorry to interrupt. You think I can borrow your blender now?”
“Cabinet next to the microwave.”
“Thanks,” she said, tucking some hair behind her ear.
“Err . . . hi. You must be Annabelle Clad. I’m Paul Allen.”
“Hi,” she replied sweetly, taking a step outside to shake his friend’s hand. “Annie, please.”
“Well, Annie. My buddy here can be a pampered prima donna. So let me be the one with manners and invite you to have dinner with us.”
She looked up at Rocco and smiled and then back at Paul. “Actually, he did invite me earlier. I’m good, though. Nice to meet you. Enjoy your dinner,” she said, glancing up at Rocco. When their eyes met, she quickly averted them and walked back into the house.
“Dude. She’s hot. No wonder you’re all fucked up in the head.”
A low snarl came out of Rocco’s chest and a possessiveness he’d never felt before burned through his body. Never had he fought for a woman before, especially not with his best friend, but he would if he had to.
“Relax,” he chuckled. “You need to get your shit together. Hot or not, interested or not, it’s out of the question.”
Rocco had turned around and was flipping the steak over. “And why’s that?”
“Because the shit with the studio is real, man. The threats are happening. You may not be getting them directly here in the form of a courier, but people are pissed off. She needs to protect you.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Rock,” his friend warned. “If she quits and you’re left without a tail, not only will the studio fine you or maybe even fire you, but she could get fired too.”
He looked at her through the glass doors. Loose cotton shorts, the bottom of her ass unintentionally hanging out when she bent forward to get the blender. His dick tightened. Paul was right, he had to keep things professional. At least for now. Otherwise she’d quit and he’d either get fired or a Neanderthal for a bodyguard. Neither sounded pleasant.
“Fuuuuck.” The next four months were going to suck.
* * *
Annie woke up startled. The complete lack of light that slipped through the sheer billowy curtains told her it was still dark out. Not even a hint of dawn.
Her heart pounded as she sat up and wiped sweat from her forehead. Like the VA therapist had taught her, she closed her eyes and counted backwards from one hundred while taking in deep breaths and exhaling slowly, focusing all of her energy on her breathing and not the nightmare that haunted her day in and day out.
After eight years, the death of Yagana, the barefoot, wide-eyed, little seven-year-old Afghan girl who’d died in Annabelle’s arms, still haunted her. It had been the first time she’d discharged her firearm with the intent to kill, but she hadn’t been on time, and Yagana’s screams echoed in her dreams together with her own. In her dreams she rocked the little girl in her arms while mayhem swirled all around, together with all the bloodshed.
So much blood.
It had taken her so many showers, hours and hours of scrubbing her skin raw, to get all the blood off of her hands. All these years later, she still felt the film of blood on her every time she looked down at them.
To this day, she didn’t know how she’d gotten from the alleyway in Kandahar, between two street vendors—both dead from the explosion—back to the nearest FOB, one of many operating bases in Afghanistan. It had been explained to her numerous times, but she could not remember it.
Her pulse would not settle down. If she went back to sleep, there’d be more of the same and she wasn’t ready to see those big brown lifeless eyes again. She moved her arm to wake up her Fitbit, and it showed her pulse was at one hundred and five. She also saw that it was four in the morning.
With a yawn she stood up and did her morning stretches. Stretching helped her feel centered, got her blood moving, and more important, cleared her mind. Twenty minutes later her pulse was down to almost normal at seventy-six when she stepped into the shower. She began to wash her skin, and when she felt a tinge of pain from scrubbing the same area over and over again, she let go of the sponge, remembering that the pain it caused her, the self-inflicted pain, wouldn’t bring Derek or Yagana back, nor would it make her feel any better. No one knew of her nightmares or her constant self-loathing, and she couldn’t let it affect this job. Her first real job.
