Page 22 of The Bodyguard's Fall

“Will said he left you alone for a while?”

I sighed. “I didn’t hear from him again for a long time after Will’s wedding. I thought it was over. And then about six months ago, he made his move.”

“What happened?”

“That’s classified,” I teased, curiously awaiting his reaction. I could feel myself relaxing beside him. There was something about earning his hard-won smile that kept me wanting to try. It brought me back to the old days, and that was more enticing than I had remembered.

“Tell me,” he said.

I sat there, lost in a memory that seemed like the beginning of a bad dream. The kind of bad dream that happened in movies or books, not in real life.

“There was a coffee shop by my house and I used to go there a few days a week to write. One morning, a barista left me a drink on my table and pointed out a guy sitting in the corner. I didn’t recognize him at first. Before I knew it, he came over and sat next to me at my table.”

“Did he pay with a card?” Tate interrupted.

“Cash. Will already checked that out.”

He nodded. I could feel my body tensing as I thought of that morning. I’d been peacefully tapping away at my computer when all of a sudden a man sat beside me, crowding my space.

And not just any man. Him.

He sat next to me on the bench seat and angled his body to face me—trapping me in my booth.

The problem was, Leroy had the kind of face that was forgettable. Ordinary. In my screenplays, I always gave the bad guy a scar, or a scowl, or a leering grin. Something to mark him. But Leroy had nothing physical to set him apart. He was completely average all across the board. Average light-brown hair combed very neatly. An average nose. His eyes seemed too close together, but I couldn’t recall the color. I hadn’t even noticed him in the shop until he was right in front of me. The perfect face to blend in however and wherever he wanted.

“What happened?” Tate asked, his voice calm and full of quiet authority.

I shrugged. “At first, I was polite. The coffee shop was crowded, and I…wasn’t sure how else to act.”

I shot a glance at Tate when I said that, but he only rubbed his face and motioned for me to continue.

“He kept referencing our first date. He was ultra touchy. Uncomfortably long eye contact. Talked about our future plans together. He even mentioned you.”

Tate looked interested. “What did he say?”

“He said that he hated how you forced me to dance with you at the wedding, and how he thought about stepping in. He said he could tell I didn’t want to be with you, but he didn’t want to cause a scene or hurt you in front of me.”

“Clearly you weren’t selling it. You should have kissed me,” he teased softly, before motioning for me to continue.

“But the longer he sat there, the more I felt sick. He knew details about my life that he could have only known if he’d been watching me for a while. He said how much he loved seeing me in blue, and he asked me if I liked my Honda better than my RAV4.” At his questioning gaze, I added, “That was the car I owned just before my new car.”

He nodded, turning us in the field once more. Thankfully, no more men dressed in black greeted us.

“And then he kept getting ahead of himself. He started talking to me like we’d already discussed everything. About what we wanted to do when we got to the villa he was going to reserve for us in Mexico—for our honeymoon after the wedding.”

Tate seethed out a breath. “Jeez.”

“Yeah. Up until that moment, I had been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was confused? Or had a mental illness? And then he called me by my full name, grabbed my hand, and told me that he’d come to get me when he had all his ducks in a row for our wedding.”

I became lost in the moment, the feelings all coming back to me in a rush. The way his cloudy eyes remained serious but very delusional. The way he’d pressed in close and his serious expression when he said he’d be back to get me. For a moment, I wondered if this was a prank for a TV show. But no director popped out from behind a hidden camera. It was just a regular day at the coffee shop–everyone else rushing around, making small talk, and grabbing their coffee on their way to work. All around me seemed so ordinary; Leroy felt like just a bad dream.

“How’d you get away?”

I blinked and glanced over at Tate, who was watching me with a measured expression across his face.

“I told him I needed to use the bathroom. And I took my purse and laptop with me and climbed out the window.”

“Why didn’t you just go out the front door?”