Blake
I’m cooking when her door clicks and I look up to find her sidling out of her room. If I’m being honest I didn’t think she would, and there’s a very large part of me that wishes she hadn’t. This would be easier if I didn’t actually have to look at her.
I wanted to smack her scrawny little arse earlier when she called me Henderson. That reaction alone is a long trip down multiple levels of hell. I can’t and won’t allow myself to think of her like that—like anything other than my client. In my head, over the years, I’ve made her into a mythical dragon with scales and fire and claws that could drag me to my undoing.
Walking out of her room she looks nothing like a dragon. My body twitches in all the wrong places at the sight of her long, slender legs in denim cut-offs.
I’ve already fucked up in my new role as Sophia Henderson’s bodyguard. I promised myself I would keep it professional.
It can’t be anything less than professional—I can’t go down that road of dark obsession again. But instead I’d allowed her to rile me up.
She’s eight years my younger. She’s my client.
This is my mantra.
None of my clients ever got under my skin the way she does. My eyes graze over her long legs as she hesitates on the deep pile cream carpet. But then not all my clients look that good in tiny shorts.
She saunters to the counter, resting her elbows on the marble worktop, twisting the loose rings on her fingers. As hard as it is I avert my gaze from her shorts and the arse they’re covering and concentrate on the vegetables on the chopping board. I need to keep my professional mask in place at all times. It’s the only way I can survive this in one piece.
"Thanks for the phone." Her lips pout like she’s sucked a bag of lemons and I turn away quickly to hide my smile.
"You’re welcome."
The rings spin around again and then again. "So why only four numbers?"
I grind some salt into the noodles boiling on the hob. I’ve already salted the water, but I need to be busy so I don’t look at her too closely. "Because they are the only numbers you need right now."
"You know I don’t talk to Erica about anything other than business, right?"
I shrug my shoulders up to my ears.
"And Dad? Well I think I’ve spoken to you more, recently."
Ouch. That’s dry.
My eyes briefly meet hers. I’m cursing myself but it’s impossible not to look. I want to see her, to read her, to discover how these five years have been on her. She’s been in a mess I know that, but if I can just read her face I could begin to understand why. I ignore my mantra as I absorb the sight of her: the smooth skin; the sharpened cheekbones; the slender neck, slimmer than before. But as I get to her eyes she averts her gaze, pulling the fruit bowl towards her, picking out a green apple, and sinking her white teeth into the juicy flesh. "Marty?" I ask, but she makes a job of chewing so she doesn’t have to answer.
I know she hasn’t spoken to Marty in a year, and the reason I know that is because Marty, Sophia’s PA, was the second person I called on touching down in the LAX. She loves this girl and I know she’ll come back and offer Sophia the stability she needs, but Sophia needs to apologise first and judging by the way she’s studying her apple I don’t think an apology will be coming any time soon.
Once again, I wonder what went wrong after I left, but I block the thought, cranking the volume on my mantra after my momentary lapse.
Sophia’s mistakes are her own. She’s a grown woman now, not a little child. I’m here to keep her from harm, that’s all.
That’s what I’m telling myself. However, I’m not blind, and the fact she’s all woman is staring at me from across the kitchen counter. Her denim shorts hug her hips, which despite the weight-loss of her addiction, still curve. Her T-shirt is on the wrong side of see-through and through it I can see her whisper of a waist leading to the edge of a black, racer-backed sports bra.
If silence was visible, or tangible, it would be floating around us, pushing us into making conversation. Instead, it’s filling the air between us with awkwardness. Hopping onto a counter she watches me as I move around the kitchen. I wish she’d just go back to her room, either that or I want to shake her for doing this to herself. "I really don’t want you here, Blake." Her legs kick up and down higher. "In fact, you are the very last person I want here."
I chew the side of my mouth and curve an eyebrow. "Seems that’s not your decision to make."
Her gaze narrows into catlike slits. I can sense her planning her next line of attack as she purses her lips—she hasn’t changed that much. A realisation I find oddly comforting. I wonder if she knows her changes are only surface deep, that inside she’s still the same girl I used to know.
"Why can’t I add a number?" she asks, waving the new phone at me. "There’s someone I want to call."
My stomach plummets and I cringe inwardly as I realise it’s not the professional response of a bodyguard making me react in that way. "Best you don’t right now." She’s worked out the pin quicker than I thought—she’s far cleverer than anyone gives her credit for.
"So, are you my sober companion, is that what this is about?" Her eyes darken into topaz flints and I hate the hardened planes of her prominent cheekbones.
"Do you need a sober companion?"
She laughs, but it’s a bitter sound ringing in my ears. "I’m a fucking addict, Blake. What do you think?"
I wave the chopping knife at her. Her words make me get hot around the collar of my shirt and I can’t wait to get out of the damn monkey suit.
This day needs to be done fast.
"I think you need to stop labelling yourself and get on with life."
Her eyes widen. "And what the fuck do you know about it?"
I know she’s swearing to wind me up. And hell, it’s working. I clench the vegetable knife—my knuckles straining—and continue to chop the onions ready to throw in the wok.
"What I know about anything is none of your concern. Clean up your act, Soph, and get on with your life."
She scorns me with another angry laugh. "Get on with my life? I’ve got one day before I’m due on set. One sodding day and then the circus begins again."
I stare at her. My chest rising and falling as if I’m partway through a marathon. No chance of that, my lifestyle hasn’t been that healthy of late. I’m just lucky it’s not showing in a flabby midriff yet.
"Don’t do the film then." It’s a stupid thing for me to say, but then Sophia has always managed to drag the stupid out of me.
She snorts with spiteful derision. "Don’t do the film then," she mocks my tone. "Are you mad? If I don’t do that bloody film I’ll be blacklisted. The girl who couldn’t finish a series. That would keep those offers rolling in."
This is interesting. The Sophia I knew before, the teenager laughing her way through fame, wouldn’t give a monkey’s shit about offers.
"Isn’t your boyfriend on set with you?"
Shit, that cut deep to say out loud. I might have been avoiding the gossip pages laden with Sophia Jennings news but I haven’t been under a rock for the last five years.
Sophia’s eyes meet mine, flint hard and ice cold. They pull a sharp intake of air into my lungs. "Yes. I can’t wait." She throws her apple core into the recycling caddy, wiping her hands on the miniscule material of her shorts. "Just as well I have tomorrow to rest and recuperate."
"Actually, tomorrow you have plans." I cringe a little on the inside. There’s about to be the mother of all door slamming events but there’s no point not telling her.
"And what might they be?" Her eyes watch me like a hawk and I despise the hard lines of her face all the more. I want to erase them, to soothe them away with my palm. I shove my hands deep into the pocket of my suit pants.
"Tomorrow you are giving an interview on Good Morning America."
Clearly, I’ve flummoxed her because she just stares open mouthed.
"I suggest an early night. Davies has arranged the interview." The words churn on their way out and I feel like a total bastard. I know she shouldn’t be put in front of the cameras on a live interview—but then I’m not her agent or manager. Her eyes narrow.
"I thought you hated Davies?"
God, how I hate him. I haven’t seen him in five years and the repulsion is still there, piled high and slime thick.
I shrug, smoothing my features into my professional mask. "It’s not my place to judge or hate."
Surprise lifts her fair brows and I’m pretty sure she’s going to choke on her own saliva as she turns a raging red. "It’s not for you to judge or hate? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Her voice pitches ten decibels louder.
I keep my response cool, despite the fact inside I’m an erupting volcano of bastardness. "I’m just saying it’s not my job to have opinions on anyone." I can’t meet her eyes, my low opinion on Simon Davies screams in my head loud and clear but I can’t let her see that. This needs to be professional and clean. Erica is the hirer and firer; she has been for a long time. It’s why I’m here now, but a few years ago she’d been all too keen to see the back of me when she thought my influence over her daughter was meddling in her affairs. "He says he’ll be here at four fifteen with a car."
"I’m not going anywhere tomorrow."
"I think you are." This time I do meet her gaze which has turned into fiery resentment, and I hold it still with my own. "If you don’t show and do the interview, then it will look worse. The entire world knows you are out of rehab." I hate I’m lying to her. The knife slips in my hand and I place it on the chopping board.
"Of course they do." Her lips twist into a bitter line.
I nod, placating her, and root myself to the spot so I don’t step forward to calm her. The instinct is still there, to give in to every whim she has. I fight against it, refusing to allow it to overtake my common sense.
"So they are going to question me, make me spill my guts. If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it in rehab." She wipes her palms down her legs. "Or I would go for the big guns and cry on the Ellen Show. Hell, maybe Oprah will come out of retirement and coax all the nasties out of me."
I roll my eyes. "You are being ridiculous. You just need to show people you want to change."
She laughs, and it does something painful to my insides as my guts twist into a knot. She throws her hands up in the air, her body rigid, her hands clenching into tight fists. "I’m ridiculous now, am I? Of course, I am, I’m still the same ridiculous child you used to protect." Her skin’s a vivid pink. "And people wonder why I want oblivion." She spits her words with bitterness.
I slam my hand onto the counter. Why had I called her ridiculous? It’s the last thing I think. "No one likes oblivion, Soph." My tone softens. I tell myself this daily. I must because I need to believe.
She slides off the barstool and sashays her long legs back towards her room. At the door, she flicks her hair and turns, my eyes have trailed her the whole way, mesmerised. "You don’t know anything about what I like, Henderson."
And just as I predicted she slams the door hard enough, it’s a miracle it’s still on its hinges.
I pick up the knife and continue chopping the veg for my stir fry. I know one thing for damn sure. This is not going to be easy.