Page 33 of Wyoming Bodyguard (Sunrise Security #1)

S pence Colton was just too pretty for his own good.

This wasn’t the first time Hetty Amos had had that thought, and this likely wasn’t going to be the last time, but it was just as annoying every time.

And, just as usual, the client flirting with him now only cared about his good looks—she didn’t actually care about him .

Hetty understood, to an extent. With his thick, dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, and that six-foot muscular form radiating a subtle power built by years of an essentially athletic sort of work—hiking, skiing, paddling—he was nothing short of eye-catching.

So, yeah, she understood. She just didn’t like it.

She’d watched the dance between him and attractive female clients so many times she should be numb to it by now.

She didn’t know—not for sure anyway—if he ever took any of them up on their blatant offers.

Didn’t want to know. Because, of course, she had absolutely, utterly, definitely no interest in the guy’s love life.

None whatsoever. He was simply someone she had to work with.

Had to put up with, even with his annoyingly juvenile habit of flirting right back at female clients… and maybe more.

Had to, because Spence wasn’t just the premier guide of her employer, Rough Terrain Adventures.

RTA was the number-one tour company in Shelby, and one of the top-ranked in the entire state of Alaska.

And Spence was also a part owner of the business.

He was the son of Ryan Colton, one of the two founding brothers of the company.

He was someone she had to get along with, since they often had to work together.

As a pilot who specialized in getting to the more remote places—RTA’s bread and butter—she needed to stay on good terms with the star.

And that required pretty much ignoring Spence outside of work.

Which was easy, because she had no interest in him outside of work at all. None whatsoever.

The denial rang hollow even in her mind.

“—be sure and look me up when you come to LA!”

“I’ll do that, next time I set foot there.”

Hetty wondered if the woman even noticed the undertone in his voice. Or maybe she was only imagining it, being the one here who knew Spence would hike to the Bering Strait before he’d set that foot in Los Angeles.

The unquestionably lovely blonde finished sending her phone number to Spence’s cell phone from her own, smiled brilliantly at him, lifted the phone to snap a final photo of him and actually giggled as she turned away and headed for the car waiting to pick her up and her thankfully much more reserved girlfriend.

Spence was grimacing now, but Hetty was certain he’d look great in the photo.

Because he always did. Other people looked silly when caught off guard, or had some unflattering expression on their face—she tended to a brow-furrowed, mouth-twisting, wry expression herself—but not Spence.

Never Spence. No matter the angle, the lighting, or the situation, he always managed to look like he’d stepped off the cover of some men’s magazine.

Something about the bone structure of his face, especially when lit up by his signature flirtatious grin, got almost any female thinking appreciative—and often racy—thoughts.

But not her. Never her. All he did for her was spark her temper, which was already on a short leash.

Still, she watched as he ran a finger down a page then signed off on the paperwork for the enamored client and put it in a folder for Lakin to get to when she could.

Which would be soon, Hetty was sure; Lakin Colton was her friend and Spence’s cousin—not to mention her brother’s girlfriend—and Hetty knew she was both quick and efficient.

Then he went back to his phone, fingers swiping it open then tapping on the screen. And out of nowhere the snark arose and the words were out before she could think better of them.

“Going to call her already?”

She saw his fingers pause. Then he went back to tapping and, without looking at her, said flatly, “Deleting.”

She felt her cheeks heat and she hated herself for giving in to the urge to make that wisecrack. But then it struck her to wonder if that was what he always did when one of those female clients—and for all she knew maybe a few males, too—insisted on giving him their number.

Deep down, she wanted to believe it. To believe that all this silliness and flirting was just on the surface.

To believe that underneath all that, he still had the depth of the Spence she’d known in school.

The Spence she’d once worked with so closely but could now hardly stand to be in the same room with.

The Spence who had needed her then but now saw her as merely another RTA employee.

The fact that she missed the days of him needing her was like salt poured over an open wound.

She had everything she’d ever dreamed of.

She’d worked hard, studied, gone to flight school as she ached to do ever since, as a child, she’d looked upward to see float or seaplanes traversing the wide-open Alaska skies.

Since the state had more registered pilots than any other, it happened often.

The family story was that, from the first, as a toddler, Hetty would reach toward the aircraft, as if she wanted to snag one for herself.

And now she had. True, she didn’t own the Cessna 206.

RTA did. But she was the only one who flew it, except for Will Colton occasionally.

Spence’s uncle had been RTA’s fixed-wing pilot back in the early days, flying his old single-engine Beaver, and still kept his hand in by taking flights now and then.

But for the most part, the Cessna was hers and she saw to it with the intensity of the experienced pilot that she was, who loved the plane that let her fly.

And if that meant she had to put up with the irritation to her soul that Spence Colton was, then so be it.

* * *

She hated him.

She hated him, and the sooner he admitted that, at least to himself, the better.

Spence didn’t blame her. And in fact, he should count it a success.

After all, didn’t he go overboard with attractive clients for precisely that reason?

Sure, he’d always been a bit of a flirt, he admitted that.

It was a skill he’d developed early in his life when he’d seen it work.

It diverted people. Kept them from pushing into areas he preferred to keep well-hidden.

Now, he also did it because he knew it annoyed Hetty. And he needed to keep that safe distance between them.

But the safe distance he’d wanted had turned into a gulf he doubted could ever be bridged. And he hadn’t anticipated how much that would bother him.

Brilliant, Colton. Work hard to keep your distance then whine about her being unreachable.

Maybe the brain quirk that made it hard for him to read like other people had screwed up more than just that.

But thinking of it only reminded him of why he was able to function at all with such a quirk.

There was one reason: the tutor who had discovered a way for him to utilize his memory and his ability to visualize and convert that talent into his atypical version of reading. It worked, and it had saved him.

True, he had kept to his decision not to go on to college.

He’d been relieved just to make it through high school with decent grades—although much better than decent in math classes—thanks to that tutoring.

He’d never been hot on the college idea anyway.

He knew, had known from childhood, what he’d wanted to do with his life.

And now he was doing it, spending his days exploring this place he so loved.

And if the people he was leading on these explorations weren’t always as appreciative as he was, he just considered it the price he had to pay to do what he wanted to do.

As for the women, if they flirted, he flirted back.

If they were single. He might be a bit loose with one-on-one teasing, but that was a line he would not cross.

Of course, he could only take their word for that single status.

When one suggested—or outright demanded—that it go further, he wiggled his way out.

Because for him the banter was the end of it.

His family might worry about it, to the point of them strongly suggesting he never do any trips without someone else along, but to him it meant nothing.

In fact, the game was a bit taxing these days, but that was because Hetty was usually his pilot when a trip required a plane.

And keeping up the front when she was there was much harder.

He’d catch her watching him with those amazing green eyes, not even bothering to hide her disgust. It stabbed at him, painfully, but he kept going.

Because, in the end, that was the goal. The more Hetty disliked him, the easier it was for him to keep his distance.

So yeah, he might go a little far with the flirting, but it was for a good cause.

Because Hetty Amos was not for the likes of him.

“How’d it go?”

The call from the hallway leading to the office wing of the RTA headquarters broke through his miserable thoughts and turned him around.

Uh-oh. Both of them?

He might be the premier, most-requested guide at RTA, but Ryan and William Colton were RTA.

His father and uncle had founded the business nearly three decades ago.

They had both pulled back a little now, especially since his cousin Parker had stepped into the main management role, but they essentially were still RTA.

It wouldn’t exist without them. And he would likely be stuck doing some other job he’d hate because it would be hard for him.

He could do it, thanks to the tricks that tutor had taught him more than a decade ago, but he wouldn’t like it.

And he certainly wouldn’t like it the way he treasured every minute of being out in the wilds of this state that was a part of his soul.

So, in a way, he owed this life that gave him so much enjoyment to that long-ago tutor.

That teenaged girl who had taken the job so seriously, worked so hard at it.

That tutor who had realized the contradiction in the fact that he was great at math but sucked at word-based math problems, and had made the intuitive leap that had helped him go from floundering to being able to get through.

That tutor who had taught him how to apply his knack for visualizing things to words and letters and sounds, enabling him to read so much easier, even if it was in a way that was different than most people.

That tutor who had showed him how to function in a world where he wasn’t the norm.

That tutor who had, in essence, saved him.

That tutor named Hetty Amos.

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