Page 25

CHAPTER 25

Tristan

Birdie Able is a liar. A masterful artist of a special kind of deceit that distracts long enough to slip past the guardedness and defenses, to access something raw and vulnerable within.

I’ve always believed her lies. I’ve long fallen for them before I set foot in this house. Every tale, every word, every ache, I’ve felt them so deeply they hurt, marking me their own. How can I not when she designs them so carefully to lure you in with no intention of ever letting go? Once she catches you in her web, once you believe her lies, you’re hers to do with as she pleases. And you? You won’t run. You won’t fight. You’ll only ask for more.

In countless books she’s written, her kiss silences his demons, the only thing that can. It turns out it’s the cruelest lie of them all. Her kiss doesn’t silence demons. It awakens them. It leaves them starving in an insatiable hunger only she can satisfy.

My fingers brush over my mouth where the imprint of her kiss lingers, as if I need the reminder, as if the warm softness of her lips that molded perfectly against mine, inducing a slow burn that has scorched me harder than war flames, hasn’t carved a pathway straight to my heart, as if the intoxicating taste hasn’t nudged awake the darkest recesses of my psyche I’ve been fighting to ignore and yet reminded me that things other than the darkness that haunts me do exist.

A tightness spreads in my chest until I’m choking with memories best forgotten. In all my years as a soldier and as a security detail, I’ve never allowed myself to get emotionally involved with the people under my protection. That’s how I’ve kept my unit and clients safe. But with Birdie it’s different.

Our connection started the day we met, developed since I saw her crying in the school pantry, and was cemented after I read her first book and never stopped. I’ve always related to her, to her own brand of pain and sadness.

You’re not here to relate to her. You’re here to guard her. Keep your head clear or you’ll get you both killed.

Lusting after a client can only end in disaster. When that client is Birdie Abel, the woman who has shaped all my forbidden fantasies and taught me, without knowing, everything I’ve ever learned about romance and desire, it’s absolute ruin.

I whisk the eggs so hard they splatter on the counter, hoping that making breakfast for the whole team will distract me when a strenuous workout and two cold showers have failed.

Then she appears at the top of the stairs, and all I can think of is the moment when there was only us and the ghosts of our pasts, when she opened up to me, and I wanted nothing more than to erase the pain shrink-wrapped around her like a cocoon she can’t break out of, when she cursed me to hell and beyond with just a kiss .

Marcus behind her, she climbs down the stairs in jeans and a T-shirt, her wet hair tied back and no makeup on her face, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more beautiful. I force my gaze back on the bowl. No matter how pretty or sad she looks, I can’t allow myself to think of her like that. Why am I doing this to myself?

Because from her deft lies spring revelations that jolt you into seeing yourself for who you really are. They hold a mirror that exposes your hidden truths, which you can never understand on your own, not until it shows them to you. Because in her imagined triumphs and flaws, she makes you see the unnoticed shades of your buried struggles, fears and deepest yearnings; she is telling you the truth, revealing you to you.

She enters the kitchen and sweeps the counter with her gaze. “When I hired you, I didn’t know I’d get myself a personal chef, too.” She arches a brow at me. “Or is that another part of the protocol I’ve missed in the contracts?”

It seems she’s sobered up and got her sass back. “No, ma’am. That’s just me, making breakfast.” The eggs sizzle as I pour them in the pan. “But don’t get used to it. This live show is for one day only.”

She hops and settles on the counter, her eyes roaming subtly over my body. “I might as well sit back and enjoy it.”

My cock stirs in my pants at her mere gaze. Damnit. I clear my throat and steal a swift glance at her face. She’s smirking, her unwavering eyes on me. She knows she’s making me nervous, and she likes it. “What do you like for breakfast?” I ask, but it sounds like a warning.

“Tristan makes a mean Spanish omelet and French toast,” Marcus says, oblivious to the fire smoldering between me and Birdie.

Her smirk turns into an innocent smile. “Does he?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s an excellent cook. Back in the army, we knew we’d never go hungry if Tristan was in the unit. He knows his way with food.”

“Oh, wait a minute. Was that his position in the army? Please don’t tell me I’m paying a military cook top dollar to be my bodyguard.”

Marcus snorts a laugh, and I glare at them both. He presses his lips to control himself before he says, “No, ma’am, he wasn’t a cook. Tristan is the best sharpshooter I’ve ever seen. Simo Hayha of his time.”

“Should I know who that is?”

“Hayha was the number one deadliest sniper in history,” I say, a little proud.

Unimpressed, she just nods, keeping her gaze on Marcus. I don’t know why it irritates me or why I’m trying to impress her in the first place—or why I don’t like that she’s engaged in more than a two-word conversation with Marcus.

“But Tristan possesses great direct combat skills, too,” Marcus adds. “You should have seen him back then. He’s every enemy’s worst nightmare.”

“Why is that?”

“You never see him coming.”

She stills for a moment before her pensive gaze drops to the floor. “I hope that’s true and his skills in combat are better than in the kitchen,” she slides off the counter, “because these eggs are burning.”

As if on cue, smoke flies into my nostrils. I swear as I turn off the burner, and she chuckles, leaving. “I’m going to my office to work. I don’t do breakfast anyway.”

“I do.” Marcus winks at me. “Since you’re taking orders, I’ll take that Spanish omelet with a side of French toast, please.”

I toss the pan on his side of the counter. “You’re having burned eggs.” Then I wipe my hands and follow Birdie to her office.

“You don’t have to come with me, Tristan. My office is literally down the hall opposite to the control room where you can keep watch all you want,” she opens the door and enters without letting me inspect the room first, and then she twirls and smiles at me, “unless the real reason you’re following me around is that you can’t stop ogling my behind.”

My mouth opens, but I can’t find anything to say, not even a protest or an attempt at denial—I might have looked, once or twice. The woman has curves that are hard to go unappreciated.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She shuts the door in my face.

I rub the heat radiating from the back of my neck, looking right and left to see if anyone has witnessed my embarrassment. Marcus gives me a knowing grin from the kitchen as he gobbles burned eggs straight from the pan.

Concha de la lora . He waves at me like an idiot. If he has been oblivious to the tension between me and our client , he is fully aware of it now.

I grit my teeth at the door and open it with enough force to knock it down. “You listen to me. You hired me to keep you safe, nothing more nothing less, and for that to happen, you do as I say and follow protocol.” I stride to her desk and place both of my palms on the surface. “You never enter a closed room, not even in your own house, without me or someone from the team securing it first, do you understand?”

She takes her time before she peers at me over her glasses. “Noted.”

That’s it? “You’re a goddamn pain in the ass proud woman, too proud for your own good,” I mumble through my teeth.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re giving me shit because you think I rejected you.”

She removes her glasses, inspects them for smudges and puts them back on. Then she laughs.

“There’s nothing funny about what I’m saying,” I fume, her coldness driving me insane.

“To me, you’re hilarious. I’m a writer, Tristan, rejection is a brutal yet familiar territory I’ve learned to walk every day without so much of a flinch,” she says, typing something on her laptop. “Do you know how many rejection letters I’ve accumulated before I signed with Martha? Do you know how many one-star reviews I get every day rejecting not only my words and storytelling chops but also me as a person? I won’t last a day in this profession if rejection bothers me. But do you know what irks a writer more than a form rejection or a bad review?” Her eyes suddenly shot at me, so sharp, a blue inferno ready to devour anyone in the way. “The lack of thereof.”

Rejection she can handle, being ignored is what she can’t stand. I can imagine how it must feel to pour her heart out in a story, all hopeful the world will get to read and appreciate, but then silence is what she receives. The story isn’t good enough to be loved or noticed or induce any kind of urge in someone to leave a single word of opinion positive or otherwise.

Last night, the story was her, her reality, feelings and vulnerabilities, and today, I was the silence.

“I’ve never, ever, meant to hurt you. I was only trying to do the right thing,” I confess.

“I get it. Believe me, I do. You’re doing your job. You’re saving me, Tristan, every day, from Blake, from the stalker…from myself. You wouldn’t let me make that mistake, and when I woke up, I had nothing toward you but gratitude.”

I lean back from her desk and lower my gaze. “Then I treated that moment like it never existed.”

“You wouldn’t even let me apologize to move on.”

“Apologize for what?”

“Disregarding your triggers. I should have never done that, drunk or not, but it looks like you choose to treat them like they don’t exist, either.”

Fire scorches my veins, searing me from the inside out. “You don’t know the first thing about what triggers me and what I have to do to deal with it.”

“Then tell me. What’s the real reason you don’t like to be touched?” She takes her glasses off and studies me. “How did you get the scar on your face, Tristan?”

My hands ball into fists as my eyes snap shut to contain the wrath spreading in my chest at the unholy memories. “I’ll leave you to work.”

“Yes, run, Tristan, but it doesn’t make it any less real, what I said, what I felt, what I did, it’s all real… Same goes for you,” she says as I storm out.

“Tristan,” she calls out, and I stop in my tracks at the door, my heart violent against my chest, “it goes without saying the next time you think you can barge in and talk to me the way you did, you will be fired.”