Page 12 of Escorting the Bodyguard (Hearts for Hire #4)

Ford

The Azerbaijan contract stares back at me from my desk. Six months protecting an oil executive’s family in Baku. Six months of running from what I left behind on a busy street corner three weeks ago.

I pick up the pen. All I have to do is sign.

I’ve slept six hours in the last three days. There’s a tremor in my hands I keep trying to ignore. Every time I blink, I see her face. The way she looked when I walked away from her.

I tell myself it was for her own good. I tell myself it was the right call. But it doesn’t feel like relief.

It feels like bleeding out slowly.

I focus on the contract details. Remote.

Isolated. Far enough from New York that I won’t catch copper hair in my peripheral vision or see a pregnant woman on the subway and think about what I left behind.

It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I need to stop hearing Gemma’s voice echoing in my head: Don’t disappear.

Too late for that.

I roll up my sleeves and lean back in my chair, staring at the city lights beyond the windows. Somewhere out there, she’s probably asleep. Maybe lying on her side now, protecting the life growing inside her. The life I helped create and then abandoned on a street corner in Brooklyn.

The image of her alone, one hand protective over her belly, makes my chest seize up. Like someone’s clamped a vice around my ribs. I can’t breathe around it.

I drain the last dregs from my glass, welcoming the burn.

The pen sits heavy in my hand. Six months of escape, waiting for my name. Maybe by the time I come back, I’ll have figured out how to live with myself. Or maybe I’ll just take another contract. And another. Until the guilt stops following me around like a shadow.

The sound of keys jingling in the outer office makes me freeze. JJ’s voice carries through the door before he even reaches my office.

“Jesus, Ford. What the hell is this?”

I don’t look up from the papers. Can’t meet his eyes right now. Not when he’s going to see exactly what I’ve become in the three weeks since I fucked up everything that mattered.

JJ fills the doorway—broad shoulders, dark skin, the kind of steady presence that made him one of the best snipers in our unit.

Even in civilian clothes, he moves with the controlled precision of someone who spent years watching for threats.

His voice carries that sharp edge I know well—the one that means he’s been worried and is now pissed off about it.

I can feel him taking in the scene: the empty bottle, the papers spread across my desk, my wrinkled shirt and bloodshot eyes.

Cold coffee sits in a ring of mugs around my workspace, and my jaw itches with days of stubble.

The office reeks of whiskey and desperation.

Taking every dangerous job I could find, drinking myself to sleep, trying to outrun the moment I walked away.

JJ moves closer, his gaze landing on the contract. “Azerbaijan?” He picks up the top page, scanning it with a furrowed brow. “Since when do you take overseas contracts? Especially without discussing it with me first?”

“Since now.” I try to sit up straight, pull some authority together, but my body feels like lead. “It’s good money.”

“Bullshit.” JJ tosses the paper back onto my desk. “You’ve turned down every overseas contract we’ve been offered. Said you were done with that life, remember? You wanted to build something here, something stable.” His voice gets harder. “You’re not actually considering this job, are you?”

“Yes.” The word comes out flat, final. “I’m taking it.”

He steps closer, not buying it for a second. “Why? This isn’t like you.” He gestures at the contract, then at me. “This doesn’t seem like just work anymore. This almost seems like...” He pauses, studying my face. “Like you’re running.”

Fuck. That hits too close to home. “I’m not running from anything,” I say, but even I can hear how defensive it sounds.

JJ’s expression shifts, frustration building.

“Then what the hell is going on with you?” He starts pacing now, energy building.

“Because the evidence says otherwise. Three weeks, Ford. Miami with that diplomat’s family, DC with the Senator, now fucking Azerbaijan?

You’ve been taking every high-risk job you can find since—” He stops, eyes narrowing.

“Since that Elite Companions contract ended.”

The mention of Elite Companions makes me feel like I’ve been sucker-punched. I look back down at the papers, shuffling them unnecessarily. My hands aren’t quite steady.

“What happened on that job?” JJ’s voice gets quieter, more focused. The way it used to when he was lining up a shot.

My jaw tightens. “Nothing happened. We caught the guy, job’s done. She’s safe.”

The words sound hollow even to me.

He circles around the desk, forcing me to look at him. When I finally do, his expression is a mix of frustration and genuine concern.

“This isn’t just about work, and we both know it.” His voice is steady, patient. “You don’t drink yourself stupid in the office. You don’t throw yourself at every volatile assignment. And you sure as hell don’t plan to disappear to another continent unless something major fucked you up.”

I try to deflect, muttering something about needing the money, expanding the business, but JJ slams his hand on the desk hard enough to make the empty bottle jump.

“Talk to me, Ford. What the hell is really going on?”

My hands shake as I reach for the whiskey bottle again, find it empty again, stare at it like it might magically refill itself. For a long moment the only sound is the hum of the building’s ventilation system and the distant traffic twenty floors below.

The fight goes out of me all at once.

I’m too tired to keep pretending. I slump back in my chair, suddenly feeling every one of my twenty-seven years.

“I got involved with her,” I say, voice so quiet JJ has to lean in to hear. “The client. Gemma. We...”

I stop, run both hands through my hair until it’s probably a mess. The words feel impossible to say, but they’re clawing their way out of my throat anyway.

“And then she told me she’s pregnant. With my baby.”

I can’t look at him when I say it. “And I walked away. Left her standing on a fucking street corner in Brooklyn.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

I can hear my own heartbeat, the whiskey making everything sound too loud and too distant at the same time.

JJ stares at me for a long moment, his face cycling through disbelief, anger, and something that might be pity.

“You throw yourself in front of bullets for strangers. And you walked away from your own kid?” His voice is thick with shock. “Why?”

I won’t meet his eyes, just stare at my hands. They’re still shaking. “My job is too dangerous. What kind of life is that for them? Me coming home with bullet holes, or maybe not coming home at all? What if I take a bullet meant for some billionaire and leave Gemma to raise our kid alone?”

“So change the job,” JJ says, but I’m already shaking my head.

“It’s not that simple.” My voice gets rougher, more desperate. “I make the wrong calls, JJ. People die when they count on me. Just like Mason.”

Something shifts in his expression—recognition, like he’s finally seeing the shape of the problem he’s been watching me wrestle with for years.

“There it is,” JJ says. “That’s what this is really about.

” He starts pacing, energy building. “You’ve been nursing that guilt like it’s your job, Ford.

Feeding it, tending to it, letting it control every decision you make for two years.

And now it’s cost you everything—Gemma, your child, your future.

But you’ve got options, man. You could step back from fieldwork, run the business side.

Hell, you could buy me out and become a fucking accountant if you wanted.

But you’re choosing to see this as impossible. ”

I try to protest, opening my mouth to argue, but JJ cuts me off with a sharp gesture.

“That story about Mason, it controls everything in your life. Who you get close to, what jobs you take, how you see yourself.” He starts to raise his voice. “And the only reason that story has this much power is because you keep it locked up inside, never talking to anyone, never getting help.”

He stops pacing, turns to face me directly. “You’re beating yourself up for not being psychic. You couldn’t have predicted that IED any more than you could predict a meteor hitting the building.”

The words slice through me, each one deeper than the last. I want to argue, to explain that he doesn’t understand, that the weight of that decision will always be mine to carry. But something in his voice—the frustration, the genuine care—makes me listen instead.

“I’m terrified I’ll fail them the way I failed Mason,” I say, and suddenly I’m back there—dust and heat and the sound of Mason choking on his own blood because I made the wrong call. “He trusted me. They all did. And I got him killed.”

My hands are shaking now. “Mason had a daughter. I can’t... I can’t do that to another family.”

The words feel like they’re being ripped out of my chest. I’ve never said it out loud before, never let anyone see how completely that moment in Kandahar destroyed my faith in my own judgment.

“Fuck,” JJ says quietly. “You’ve been carrying that for two years.” He’s quiet for a moment, processing. “But Mason’s death wasn’t your fault, Ford. And this—walking away from Gemma—that’s a choice you’re making right now.”

“I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to be what they need.”

“Do you love her?”

The question catches me off guard. I see Gemma curled against me in that safehouse bed, makeup gone, defenses down, trusting me with the real her.

I see her hands moving as she talks about her designs, alive in a way that made me feel like I was witnessing something sacred.

The way she never flinched when she saw my scars, just looked at them like they were part of something worth loving.

“God, yes.” The words come out broken. “I’m so fucking in love with her it’s destroying me.”

JJ’s voice gentles for the first time since he walked in. “Then get help. Real help. Not more dangerous jobs to distract yourself.”

Part of me wants to fight him on it. The bigger part is just... exhausted.

The truth is, I’m tired of running from myself.

“You’re right.” My voice is low, but the truth is loud. “I can’t keep doing this. Whatever this is.” I gesture at the empty bottle, the mess I’ve made of my office and my life. “I don’t know how to fix this, but I need to try. For them. For me.”

JJ nods, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “That therapy group I mentioned? The one for veterans? It meets Thursday nights.”

I look at the Azerbaijan papers for a long moment—all those pages representing months of escape, of running from the truth I can’t face. I pick up the contract and tear it in half. The sound is surprisingly satisfying.

Somewhere out there, Gemma’s building a life without me. Our kid will be born before the end of the year. I can’t fix what I broke overnight, but I can make sure she has what she needs while I become the kind of man they both deserve.

“You free Thursday? I could use the backup.”

The surprise on JJ’s face shifts into relief. “Yeah, man. I’m free.”

It’s not a fix. But it’s a beginning.

And for the first time in weeks, that feels like something I can hold on to.