First Star I See Tonight by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Author:Susan Elizabeth Phillips [Phillips, Susan Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

13

The street below the terrace wall was quiet, with only a dog walker and a female jogger in sight. “You stay here,” Piper ordered as she pulled her T-shirt back over her head and bolted toward the French doors.

“Like hell!”

They spent the next hour scouring the neighborhood together. It would have been more efficient to split up, but Piper wanted to keep him in her sight. No one on the street had seen anyone operating a drone, but all of them wanted to talk to Coop about his career.

On the elevator back up to his condo, he finally got around to the question he’d been waiting to ask. “Are you always packing?”

“Not in the club, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

He had been. The image of Piper turning into a one-woman SWAT team to protect him from whatever she defined as a threat wasn’t anything he cared to contemplate. “No more guns,” he said, after she’d gone to the terrace to bag up the pieces of the drone.

“You grew up on a ranch,” she protested.

“And I can shoot. But that doesn’t mean I want ’em around me in the city.”

She looked up at him and grinned. “Admit it. That was one hell of a shot.”

A shot he doubted he could have made. “Respectable.”

She laughed and picked up her jacket from the kitchen barstool. “Good news. I’ve decided to take that bouncer job you offered me.”

He should have anticipated this. “Forget it. The offer’s off the table.”

“And why’s that?”

“You only want the job now because you’ve decided I need a bodyguard. In my own club!”

“Nonsense. You can take care of yourself.”

She said it with an absolute sincerity that didn’t mean a thing. He was caught in a dilemma. He needed her, wanted her, but on his terms, so he poked his finger toward her forehead. “If I hire you, you’re a bouncer—only there to take care of the women.”

“Of course.”

“No bodyguard needed. None.”

“Understood. Completely understood.”

“Okay. You can have the job.”

“Great.”

As she walked back into the kitchen, all he could think was—shit, now he had a bodyguard.

She grabbed her jacket and turned back into the Woman of Steel. “There won’t be any more physical contact between us. Not while I’m working for you. Agreed?”

She wasn’t the only one who could dish out crap. He rested his shoulder against the refrigerator door and gave her his laziest drawl. “Now, sweetheart . . . Do you really think you can keep your hands off me?”

Then he kicked her out.

***

Piper fingered the broken wing of the drone. She’d pieced together enough to make out the model and manufacturer, but an online check and a couple of phone calls revealed that the company had sold thousands of these. The creepiest part was knowing this particular model offered live-streaming video. Whoever had sent it up had seen her heavy make-out session with Coop.

She gazed morosely out her office window into the parking lot. What had almost happened between them this morning was, in a way, worse than what had happened at the lighthouse, because she should have been prepared.

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