Page 101 of The Bodyguard's Fall

“Gettin' scared now, little girl?” he taunted, grinning up at me.

“Hardly.” I feigned disinterest and tried to concentrate on the game, not the man beside me.

It was impossible.

Next to me, Tate’s arm brushed lightly against mine. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the low rumble of his voice saying, “Yeah, probably,” that caused my focus to slip once again.

We turned another card, and before I could register anything, Luke slapped his cards down on the table.

“I win, sucker!”

“Best out of three,” I demanded. “I got distracted.”

“Distracted? How?”

When I didn’t have a good answer, his eyes flicked toward Tate.

“We’ll be back in a minute,” Ann murmured as she grabbed a bandage from a cupboard.

I thought Luke would demand another game, but instead, he watched Tate, who stood and stretched.

“What are you doing?” Luke asked.

“Changing Tate’s bandage,” Ann said, coming out of the pantry holding some alcohol swabs.

I took a sip of my orange juice, somehow still completely naive to the devious nature that was Luke Walker.

“Why are you doing it?” Luke asked his mom before pointing at me, a devilish grin across his face. “Isn’t she his wife?”

I blinked. All the blood slowly drained from my face.

Tom snickered from behind his newspaper.

To my horror, Ann began to smile. She pursed her lips and looked at me in her sweet way, but this time with a bit of rascal in her gray eyes that looked a lot like her son’s at that moment. That same bit of rascal that had her bypassing my plethora of sweatpants and packing me shorts for my wedding night.

“That’s true,” she said, biting her lip and looking at Tate.

I followed her gaze, only to discover him shaking his head and a smile playing on his lips. Maybe a hint of color on his cheeks if I looked closely, but the handsome oaf just folded his arms across his chest and looked at me, his eyebrows raised, almost like a challenge.

Which wasn’t a good sign.

I breathed out a laugh, determined to play this off. I tried to shuffle the cards, but my hands decided to stop working and instead sent the stack flying in all directions.

“I would love nothing more than to…get in there and take care of that…but I need to beat Luke really quick. You two go ahead.”

I made a big show of gathering the cards I’d just sent flying, but it was no use. Luke’s chair scraped against the floor as he jumped up from the table.

“No, no, no.” He grinned at me and motioned toward Tate. “I humbly forfeit. You better go take care of your man.”

And so, amid stifled laughter and teasing glances, I took the offering of bandages and antiseptic and followed Tate out of the kitchen.

He led us to our bedroom—his bedroom, the room I was staying in platonically—and shut the door.

After a moment of weighted silence, I decided that it was probably best to be proactive here.

“Alright. How upper hamstring are we talking here?” I asked, my hands on my hips.

“It’s…the north end of upper.”