Page 217 of Duty and Desire

“I won’t lie to you. Crowds massively increase the amount of moving parts in your environment. You never know who or what might be hiding in them. And right now, you’re bound to have people following wherever you go.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s my job to assess threats and keep you safe.” His cell started to vibrate somewhere about his person. He pulled it out of his back pants pocket, checked the screen, and dismissed the call with a slide of his thumb. “But only you can decide what risk is important enough, for whatever reason, to be worth taking.”

“If they’re all still out there then I guess I might cancel my plans.” I planted my ass on the carpet and picked up my cell, sending Lena a quick text to let her know. Given the situation, I cancelled my appointment with my hairdresser in the afternoonas well. “Looks like I’m spending the day at home. You probably don’t need to hang around.”

“You won’t be leaving your apartment at all?”

“Only maybe to go down to the apartment building’s gym later.”

“Then I’ll stay. There’re some other tasks I have to do while you’re busy here.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but then changed my mind. After a long night of jumping at every little noise, keeping the bodyguard around might be for the best. Calm the savage nerves and all that. If it was a choice between annoying hotness and crippling fear, then I’ll go for the heat every time. “Okay.”

“Any update from Detective Ortega?”

“No. Not a word.” I sighed. “I tried going through some of my emails and messages last night, to see if they mentioned hearts or knives or anything like that. There’s some seriously deranged people out there. I mean, can you imagine sending a message to a complete stranger saying that baby Jesus was going to strike them down dead and send them to hell? Or that you wanted to strangle them and have sex with their corpse? Who the hell says that sort of thing? Just because they can hide behind a bullshit email address or fake avatar they think they can let all of their ugly out to play and inflict it on other people.”

His gaze narrowed, lines furrowing his brow. “Why don’t you let the police deal with that in the future, Miss Cooper? You don’t need that sort of shit getting into your head. Excuse my language.”

I attempted a smile. “It’s fine. Swear all you like. This situation makes me want to swear too.”

“There’s a lot of sick and cruel people out there. It doesn’t mean you need to give them a moment of your time.”

“True,” I said. “I guess you’ve seen a lot of this sort of stuff before.”

“Enough to know you’re better off staying away from it and leaving the detective work to the professionals.”

“I know, I know.” My shoulders slumped, my back bowed. My bones felt hollow and weak. Tonight I’d take some Melatonin and try to knock myself out. Actually get some decent sleep. “I just hate being so out of control. Having to put my life on pause because of this asshole.”

“Understandable.”

Around me were towers of books waiting to be shelved. Romance mostly. Since I had the time, I might as well place them in alphabetical order. His gaze wandered over them with something close to interest. Made me curious about his hobbies. Apart from being a fulltime card-carrying member of the badass club, of course. He probably kick boxed and scaled tall buildings and saved kittens from burning trees. I really shouldn’t have sat down. From this height, he seemed even more imposing. Like a mountain towering over me, taking up all of the view. I’d been around plenty of big shot actors, sports stars, and business tycoons over the years, courtesy of various events and V.I.P. lounges. Ziggy Thayer had more presence than all of them put together. It’s like he sucked the air out of a room just by generally being cool and existing.

Or maybe he only had that effect on me. If so, I could seriously do without the complication. Dammit.

“Miss?”

And I’d been staring at the man again. “I’m sorry, Ziggy. I kind of zoned out there for a minute. Were you saying something?”

“Only that I better get on with it. I’ll be down in the garage. If you need me, just contact me on my cell.”

“Why the garage?” I asked, curious.

“I’d like to give your vehicle a quick check over, followed by your apartment.”

His phone started to vibrate again.

“Do you need to take that call?”

“No, miss.”

“What are you looking for in my car and apartment?”

“Anything that shouldn’t be there. Listening devices, mostly.”

“You think that the crazy person who mailed me a skewered heart might be bugging my car? Psycho nut does Mission Impossible?”