Tempting the Bodyguard (Gamble Brothers #3)(11)
Author: J. Lynn

When he finally lifted his head, she was panting and her stare was unfocused. “You taste just as I imagined,” he said huskily, loosening his hold on her and putting some space between them. “And I have a vivid imagination. You taste sweet.”

“Why?” she demanded, placing her hand over her lips. She felt unsteady, as if she’d topple right over if he hadn’t still been holding her by the nape of her neck.

One side of his lips tipped up. “I figured it was the only way to get you to stop arguing.”

Alana stared up at him, stunned that he’d used that tactic. “You kissed me to shut me up?”

“Basically.” The smug grin appeared as he tipped his chin down. Those shorter strands grazed his cheeks. “It worked, didn’t it?”

She jerked away, breaking his hold and stumbling back a step. Anger infused her cheeks, chasing at the pleasant pleasure his lips had given her. Now she was offended. “You kissed me just to shut me up? You overbearing, inappropriate son of a—”

Chandler caught her once more and kissed her again. This time there was no sweet brush of his lips or barely there touch. He delved right in, soaking her up and kissing her until she couldn’t breathe. A bone-deep wanting exploded, making her swollen and hot, but she cocked back her arm, punching him in the stomach.

A laugh burst from him as he caught her wrist and then her other, intercepting before she could get another indignant hit in. “Ouch, that could’ve hurt.”

“I hope it did!” she seethed, torn between being turned on and ticked off. “You just can’t go around kissing people to get them to stop talking.”

“And why not?” He hauled her toward him as he took a step back. The next thing she knew, he was sitting on the edge of the bed and she was very much perched in his lap. “I thought it was actually really fun.”

There had been times in Alana’s life when she’d wondered how she got where she was. Her work? Determination. Gumption. Balls-to-the-walls type of approach. But this? She had no clue how she’d ended up sitting in Chandler’s lap, her lips swollen from his kisses and her body burning for more while she seriously wanted to choke the ever-loving crap out of him.

Chandler looped his arms around her waist, the hold not tight but firm. She wasn’t going anywhere, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to sit here. She raised her hands, ready to do bodily harm.

“It wasn’t the only reason I kissed you,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed as her hands froze on his shoulders. “It’s not?”

He dipped his chin, pressing his forehead to hers. His warm breath danced over her lips and her hands dropped to his shoulders, fingers digging into the tough muscle. “No, it’s not. I’ve wanted to kiss you since you showed up at my door looking for Chad.”

Surprise blasted through her like a bomb. He’d wanted to kiss her then? Alana knew she wasn’t the kind of woman men typically lusted over for any length of time, but she believed him. She’d felt it in his kiss.

“And I’m serious,” he continued, his lips grazing her cheek, eliciting a shiver from her. “You’re not staying at a hotel. You’re staying here.” He drew back, so that his gaze locked with hers. “It’s not going to be someone else. It’ll be no one else but me.”

Chapter Eight

Whoever came up with the idea to take this woman shopping was out of his f**king mind. Oh, yeah, that’s right. It was his astonishingly dumb idea.

Alana was worse than a guy.

Chandler had to drag her into the shops, which she conveniently argued didn’t carry the kind of clothing she’d wear. After about the fifth store, he refused to allow her to leave without purchasing enough clothes to get her through the week.

And then the arguing really began.

“That looks like a man’s suit.” He curled his lip in disgust at the black, drab suit she held in one hand.

Her eyes rolled. “It does not.”

Poking at the blazer, he frowned. “Does it have shoulder pads? What year is this?”

Alana moved around a rack, muttering under her breath. He picked up words like “dick” and “a**hole,” among other sweet nicknames. “I guess you think I should be in skirts?”

He fought a smile as he cornered her between two more racks. “What’s wrong with a skirt? I bet you have beautiful legs.” He leaned in, and when her breath caught, he didn’t mistake the sudden light in her dark eyes. Catching her gaze, he tipped his lips up as he reached around her and gently tugged on a loose strand of hair. It was soft as satin. “You wore your hair down today.”

Her eyes flashed furiously behind her glasses. “Not because of you.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” As he straightened, he scanned the store for any oddballs. No one really looked out of place. The only man in the store was up at the counter, his back to them.

She tightened her fingers around a hanger until he thought she’d snap the plastic. By the looks of it now, he wouldn’t believe that she’d actually sat in his lap last night for a few moments, calm and serene.

“The only reason I’m wearing my hair down is because someone came into my room while I slept, like a total freak, and took my bobby pins and hair bands.”

Barely resisting the urge to laugh, he widened his eyes. “Really?”

She snorted, shoving that horrific suit back onto the rack. “You must have a small critter in your home that has an affinity for pins and rubber bands, because they were also missing from my purse.”

He couldn’t help it then. He laughed, and one would think they were knee-deep in a debate about politics or something actually relevant, based on how flushed her cheeks were. She shot him a glare that would have most men cupping themselves. It only made him hard as steel.

It took another thirty minutes to load her up with jeans, linen pants, suits, and so on, and he finally saw the end in sight.

Guiding her back toward the dressing rooms, he kept an eye on their surroundings and a hand on her shoulder. Normally on his assignments, he made sure those who were under his protection were kept out of the public. He couldn’t very well do that with her. She seriously had only the clothes he was lending her.

Hell, he really liked seeing her in his clothes. So this was a double dumb idea.

“Why are you scowling?” she demanded, the pile of clothes almost as tall as she was. “You’re not the one being pushed around.”

He leveled a mild stare at her as he pushed open an empty dressing room. “There you go.”

“I do have two eyes in my head,” she spat back, unceremoniously dumping her load on the floor. “Captain mother f**king obvious.”

Raising a brow, he grinned. “Man, you really did wake up in a great mood this morning.”

It was true. She had been as prickly as a hedgehog since she grumbled into his kitchen, her hair in cute disarray and her clothing rumpled. He should’ve been the one pissed off because he’d found her actually cute, like he was a girl or something, but she stole those rights right away from him. Instead of responding to his comment, she slammed the dressing room door in his face.

Chandler growled low in his throat, startling the woman sitting on the bench behind him.

“You don’t scare me,” came Alana’s muffled voice through the door. “Make all the animal noises you want. It’s not me who comes across as needing a rabies shot.”

“I beg to differ,” he muttered, dropping onto another bench directly across from her room.

Today was the longest Saturday ever.

He’d already avoided two calls from Chad, which told him that the first thing Chase had done when Chad’s game was over was call him and gossip like a woman. He’d have to talk to Chad at some point, but right now, there wasn’t a pressing need for it. Hours had also passed since he’d spoken to Murray and asked him to check out Alana’s apartment and gather as many personal items as he could. He hadn’t heard back from him yet, so he wondered if Murray got himself arrested sneaking into Alana’s apartment.

He was also tired, hungry, and horny. So f**king horny it was like being sixteen again. He went to bed hard, woke up hard, and was now sitting outside a dressing room, hard.

It had been a long time, if ever, since he’d wanted a woman this badly.

Tipping his head back against the partition wall, he scanned those shopping in the store. Last night, he’d barely gotten any sleep knowing that Alana was across the hall, and now he was paying for it. Half of it was his fault. He’d put the moves on her yesterday, kissing her. At first, she had frozen against it, but when she’d gotten into it, damn if she hadn’t responded. Just thinking about Alana sliding her tongue against his had him bursting at the seams. He wanted to bust into the dressing room, take her home, and get her on her knees. Maybe even tie her wrists, spread her legs…

“What the hell?”

Chandler’s head jerked up in time to see a scrap of red lace fly over the dressing room door. His lips split into a grin. When Alana had been busy arguing over the jeans he’d picked out, he’d slipped the teddy into her pile of clothing.

A second later, the door cracked open, revealing Alana’s glare and pink cheeks. Her shoulders were bare with the exception of two tiny ivory straps. “You pig! I’m not sleeping in something that a stripper would wear when she’s working the pole.”

Now he was picturing Alana in the teddy working a pole. With her glasses on.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, as if she knew the direction of his thoughts.

“That’s okay.” He stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. He’d been wrong before. The end was nowhere in sight. “You can just sleep nak*d. I honestly like that idea better.”

…

It was in the evening when Murray swung by, and Chandler’s temper had been stretched thin. The whiskey he was nursing wasn’t doing much to help.

“About damn time,” he muttered.

Murray huffed. “That’s not how you should answer the door.”

Not in the mood to bullshit, he cut the crap. “Find anything?”

Edging past him, Murray carried in two large tote bags. “I brought whatever personal girlie stuff I could find. It took a while. The place was a complete mess.”

“So it’s as bad as we thought it was?” He led Murray into the kitchen, the farthest away from the stairs. He hoped Alana didn’t come down, because rehashing the condition of her apartment surely wouldn’t put her in a better mood.

Murray deposited the totes on the counter. “Absolutely f**king destroyed. Took a knife to anything that could be torn apart, even the walls. The f**ker even emptied out her fridge. That’s some major kind of rage.”

Chandler rubbed an ache along his shoulder. The old wound gave him trouble from time to time. “Did he get inside the way I thought?”

He nodded. “Right through the sliding glass door. The woman needs an alarm system and needs to replace that door. Those are the worst possible pieces of shit ever.”

“Find out anything else?” He picked up his glass of whiskey.

“Spoke to William Manafee. The man didn’t have anything really nice to say about Miss Gore.”

A flash of unexpected anger zinged through him. “What did he say?”

“Other than Miss Gore being a bitch of the highest order and that she destroyed his marriage?” Murray crossed the kitchen. “Nothing else. But I don’t think it was him. Even though he’s not a fan of the little publicist, there was a level of reluctant respect in his voice.”

That did little to soothe his rising anger. From personal experience, he knew Alana was hard to deal with, but she helped these people, even his brother, and at great cost to herself. Was he the only person who seemed to understand that?

“I also went ahead and tried Van Gunten’s agent,” Murray continued. “She said that Jennifer wouldn’t be available to speak with me until two weeks from now. She’s on a movie set in Australia or some shit. Wasn’t able to search down any of her friends, except the Ryan fella. It’s definitely not him.”

“How so?”

“Because he overdosed about three months ago.” Helping himself, Murray grabbed a beer out of the fridge and propped a hip against the counter. “Did she mention anything about a message?”

Chandler’s brows lowered. “No. What message?”

Popping the lid off the bottle, he took a quick swig before he answered. “In her home office, the words ‘You lying whore’ were carved into the wall.”

Chandler’s hand tightened around the glass. “No. She did not mention that.”

“Maybe she didn’t see it.”

Anger whipped through his insides with acid-tipped barbs. “Seems like a hard thing to overlook.”

Murray eyed him closely. “All depends on if she went into her home office and how shocked she was by seeing her apartment. I’m telling you, man. That placed was f**ked up. She might not have noticed it.” He took another gulp of beer and then tossed the bottle into the garbage. “Are you sure she’s being honest with you?”