Page 6 of Hunted Hearts (Black Heart Security #6)

A tiny sliver of awareness slipped low in her belly.

When she gave Theo a reluctant nod and drew the case close so she could unlatch it, a collective sigh expelled from her team looking on with wide eyes.

She opened the case. The velvet lining was pristine, her beloved baby gleaming. Every curve was sacred.

Once she cradled the instrument, she widened her eyes at Theo. “We look with our eyes—not with our hands. Understand?”

His extremely hard-looking lips twitched. Not once but twice, the corner quirking higher with each tic. Like a special operative trying not to smile in enemy territory.

When he leaned in a little too quickly, she drew her instrument close to her chest like a mother shielding her child from a charging bull.

At her reaction, Theo paused for a beat before moving slower. She tilted it for him to examine. He looked over the front and back and tried to peer inside the f-holes.

“You aren’t going to find anything in them,” she told him. “They transmit to the air outside the body of the violin.”

The delicate holes carved into the front were shaped like a lowercase f . They were supposed to be mirror images of each other, but that wasn’t always the case, especially with Italian makers of a certain period.

While Theo dragged his gaze over every inch of her instrument, Juliette flushed with heat. That reaction was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he was studying her .

With a nod, he straightened with deliberate slowness. “Mind if I touch the case now?”

She released a sigh. “Go ahead. But don’t touch the bow.”

Damn if her heart didn’t flip at how pleased he looked that she agreed. After a long minute of poking around in her case, he opened the small compartment and pointed at the rectangle inside.

“That’s rosin,” she said.

“Ah.”

One word…spoken in that soft, gruff tone…had a totally new effect on Juliette. She was burning up from head to toe.

Suddenly, this wasn’t just about safety.

It was about her proximity to her muscled bodyguard with gray eyes, shifting and ever watchful.

Her team had gone quiet, like they could sense the charge in the room. Rachel handed her a fresh bottle of water. Chris and Harper started gathering her scattered things.

All the while, her gaze stayed on Theo.

And his never left her.

* * * * *

Theo threw a look at Juliette’s closed door, gauging how much sound would carry between the sitting room and her sleeping area. The hotel was modern, but that didn’t mean his voice wouldn’t carry.

He pulled out his phone and dialed his brothers. They would still be in Lake Tahoe. The douchebags had probably spent the entire day fishing while he was playing bodyguard with a violinist .

Although he was surprised to find that Juliette was not the meek, mild field mouse he’d expected her to be. The minute she stepped onto that stage and drew her bow across the strings, she turned into a powerhouse.

For someone so slight, she carried herself with an undeniable presence, larger than life and more than worthy of her name in those neon lights.

Juliette. No last name, like she was one of those pop stars with a single name everyone knew.

Colt answered on the third ring, and he answered mid-laugh. “H-h-hey, bro! How’s it going?”

Theo stared at the pale gray wall sporting a modern painting of some tortured blue blob. “Clearly not as well as it’s going for y’all.”

“We just got in from the shore. Beer and dogs over the fire.”

“Great,” he said flatly. His empty stomach growled at the thought of a few roasted hot dogs and a couple of ice-cold ones.

“You’re on speaker. What’s happening?”

He shot another look at Juliette’s door, hoping she stayed inside while he briefed his brothers. “I was called in to protect a violinist. Did you know she’s a violinist?”

“No. Does that matter?”

The haunting notes of her performance ruffled over his memory, along with the intense way she moved when she played. He gave himself a little shake.

“No. It doesn’t matter at all,” he mumbled. Then he dove into everything he knew about the situation—facts laced with a few educated guesses, including the possibility that she’d stepped on the wrong toes in her rise to fame, even if she didn’t realize it.

When he told them about the pills, he felt his brothers sober and get down to business.

“I sent her pills and all the containers to the lab. The scorpion is on the way too. I promised to replace her pills with new supplements. So I need help finding the following: ashwagandha, NAC—” He broke off. “Is somebody taking this down?”

Dead silence met his question.

“We still connected?”

Someone cleared their throat. “Willow’s taking notes.”

“I thought you weren’t an official part of the team, Willow.”

“I’m only doing it because Gray promised he’d make me one of his famous margaritas.”

Gray had a famous margarita recipe? Theo exhaled heavily through his nose. If he wasn’t having fun before, he really wasn’t now.

He finished the list of Juliette’s supplements.

“Got it,” Willow said.

“Good. Send it all to my location. I just ordered her a pill dispenser so no more tampering can take place. It’s arriving tonight.”

A soft female voice that belonged to one of his sisters-in-law sounded in the background. “And so it begins.”

“What?” Theo shot to his feet and began pacing, phone digging into his hand he gripped it so hard.

Gray chuckled. “Your first present for Juliette. That’s so sweet.”

Irritation rolled through him. “I’m just doing my damn job—a job none of you were man enough to step up and take. This is a job. Even if it weren’t, I wouldn’t go after Juliette.”

A low chuckle filled his ear. “Does that make you her Romeo?”

He groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. He was tired, hungry and he didn’t get to catch any damn fish. But he did know his Shakespeare well enough to volley back.

“Actually, I’m more like the friar in this scenario. Forever single.”

Gray snickered. “I did notice you have a bit of a paunch going on.”

Laughter broke out among the group on the other end of the line.

“That’s funny, since I’ve only been out of the military about three minutes, and you’re all stuffing yourselves on tubes of fat topped with ketchup and relish. In fact, I think I’ll do a light workout now. You all have a fantastic—and lazy—evening.”

As soon as Theo hung up, he went straight to his bag on the floor by the sofa. When he told Juliette he would be staying right here in the hotel suite to guard her, she looked like he just suggested that he crawl into her bed and keep watch from under the covers.

She’d been ensconced in her room for an hour—for all he knew, she was asleep. Celebrities and the like were known for keeping strange hours, and she traveled a lot.

He, however, was wide awake and filled with adrenaline.

He unzipped his bag and located an essential part of his gear—a jump rope. The equipment gave him a physical outlet, a way to clear his head when shit went south or gave him a way to deplete the adrenaline in his veins.

He stripped off his T-shirt, and wearing only the gray sweatpants he donned for the evening shift of guarding a closed—and probably locked—bedroom door, he uncoiled the rope and began to jump.

The first few skips were a bit clumsy. He always jumped better with music, so he paused to find a playlist with a good, driving beat and started again.

The pulse of gangster rap music slammed through him, the rhythm catching in his chest as he moved double-time, crisscrossing the rope with precision.

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement. The next moment the bedroom door was flung open and Juliette burst into the sitting room in a pair of lounge pants and a tiny top that skimmed the waistband so when she threw her hand up on the doorframe, he saw a sliver of her bare stomach.

Her dark eyebrows arrowed toward each other like the jagged line of a lightning strike. Her eyes shot sparks…

Then they turned hazy as her gaze panned over him.

He slowed. “Can I help you?”

She jabbed a finger toward her ear and shook her head, indicating that she couldn’t hear him over the music. He leaned over the coffee table and pressed pause on the music.

When he straightened, her stare fixed on his chest. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She blinked and a pale pink flush landed in her cheeks. “Uh…I…can’t concentrate.”

“Well, you didn’t have your evening supplements.”

Confusion washed over her face again. “True, but I wasn’t talking about the supplements. I was trying to meditate, and your music is interrupting me.”

His lips twisted. “Sorry, I didn’t think it was very loud.”

“It was.” She darted a look at his phone. “Figures your taste in music is rap.”

He folded his arms over his chest, and her gaze came with it, plastering to his muscle for several long beats. Time stretched so long that he considered snapping his fingers in front of her face, but she really wouldn’t like that.

He waited for her to stop staring at his chest as if she were too timid to meet his gaze, but he knew that wasn’t the issue.

As if released from the clutches of a trance, she shook herself all over.

Drawing his attention to her . Her hair hung in long waves around her face, thick and almost too heavy for her delicate frame to hold up.

Tiny silver hoops shimmered in her earlobes, catching the deep pink and molten orange hues of the fading sunset that spilled through the tall windows of the top-floor suite.

She shifted her weight to one hip, and he followed the curve to her leg and ended on her curled, bare toes.

“I listen to a lot of different music.” His words seemed to break whatever hold she had on him, and he reached to swipe his phone off the table. “I’ve traveled a lot—in gear, in case you were going to ask.”

She stared at him. “You’re entitled to your listening tastes, and to working out…but as you mentioned, I couldn’t take my supplements, and my brain is firing in every direction except the one I want it to.”

She talked with her hands, fluttering them around her head as if she could show him the inner workings of her mind—without her supplements.

“I was just trying to clear my head. It’s been a long day.”

“I was trying to clear mine too. And ditto on the long day. I’m sure there’s an open room here on the floor. You did, after all, kick out everybody who’s not on my team.”

He tilted his head, eyeing her. “Depending on what my software reveals, your team might get kicked out too.”

She gasped. “Are you insinuating one of them is trying to scare me?”

“Guilty until proven innocent.”

“Isn’t this a free country? I thought the saying was reversed.” The pink in her cheeks deepened a shade.

A knock on the door killed anything he was about to say.

He jerked his head at the open bedroom door. “Go in your room and wait until I tell you it’s clear.”

Her jaw dropped.

He took a single step forward, towering over her, his bare toes almost touching her much smaller ones. “I can see that I get under your skin, and you want to argue about taking orders. But I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

She snapped her mouth shut and whirled in a swish of wavy hair and a peek of pale, flat stomach. She didn’t slam the door but stood in the opening, her gaze riveted on him.

He gave her a faint nod before grabbing his sidearm off the coffee table and striding to the door. A quick glance through the peephole revealed an empty corridor.

With the weapon concealed behind his back, he onehandedly twisted the locks open and cracked the door. A box sat on the floor in front of the door.

Since he’d given the front desk instructions to bring up the package, he didn’t waste time wondering who’d left it—just silently cursed that they hadn’t followed protocol and announced themselves. Still, the label matched the delivery he was expecting.

He stooped to retrieve it, scanned the hallway one more time, then shut the door with a solid click and reengaged every lock.

Satisfied the door was sealed tight, he crossed the room again, placed the box on the table and opened it with the same careful precision he used for field gear—measured, methodical, ready for anything.

When he spotted the contents, he let the cardboard flaps drop. “Juliette.”

She was braced in the doorway. “Yes?”

He carried the box over and held it out. “It’s for you.”

“I didn’t order anything.”

“I ordered it.”

She paused before reaching for the box. When she moved the flap to see what was inside, her lips formed a small, perfect O of surprise.

“It’s an automated pill dispenser and a few replacement supplements to get you through. I couldn’t source everything you need at once, but they’re on the way.”

She cradled the box in one arm and withdrew a bottle.

“I added a new one based off your former supplement stack. I thought you might like it.”

She shook her head. “These dispensers are really expensive. I researched them.”

“Don’t worry about the cost. I also plan to have a lab tech come here and you can get a blood draw to personalize your stack.”

She dragged her stare from the open box and fixed her focus on his face. Her eyes were a blue-green swirl, a mystery he couldn’t pick apart.

The depths softened as though he’d just handed her a puppy rather than a box of pills and a way to keep track of them. Her plump lips parted as a sweet sigh trickled past them.

The slow stirring sensation low in his gut was unmistakable—and totally unwanted.

The kind that came from being close to a woman he found attractive for too long, with zero distance. And the thin barrier of his sweatpants wasn’t going to do a damn thing to hide his arousal.

She was an op . His ward.

Nope. Not happening.

She was still staring up at him with those fairy lights dancing in her eyes and a trace of moisture on her enticing bottom lip.

He needed to kill the mood before it sparked, and nothing would do that better than reminding her why he’d ticked her off before.

“I already went through your bag and confiscated your pills. I thought asking for blood would be a step too far.”

He felt her soft inhalation. She gave him a flat stare that lasted three heartbeats, then she turned and walked away without saying a word, shutting the door behind her.

Bingo.

Just the breathing room he needed to keep her from noticing how hard it was to keep his mind—and his body—in check.