“Webb here.”
“Hey Webb. How’s it going? I just want to see how my daughter’s holding up.”
I flexed my jaw, feeling the muscles around my mouth tighten. “She’s doing okay. How ‘bout you?”
The best way to deflect was to ask about the other person.
“Well, things are going. But they’re well on their way in the right direction.” He was being extra vague and for good reason, even though the phones were secured, there wasn’t a hundred percent guarantee that no one else could be listening.
“Good.” I sat on the wooden chair in the office. Mom had hired an interior designer to decorate the place and while I didn’t agree on the abstract, colorful paintings on the walls, I had to say that the chairs were pretty fucking incredible.
“Listen Webb – I have a favor to ask.” He sounded apologetic. For a man who had the world at his fingertips, he was a picture of humility.
“Anything.” I would do any favor for this guy.
“Do you think it would be feasible for Athena to fly?”
“I don’t see why not.” Her stalkers would have a hard time going through security without being flagged so there was no immediate threat for her to go anywhere by plane.
“I want her to be with me in Stockholm.”
“Stockholm? Are we talking Wisconsin or Sweden?” When I was a recruit in the Navy, one of my roommates came from the small town of Stockholm, Wisconsin. He didn’t make it because he didn’t know how to swim and even after he learned, he just couldn’t keep up with the drills. Last I heard, he was running for town mayor.
“Sweden.”
Alright. “When?”
“Second week of December. Hopefully we can be there for a few days before the Nobel.”
“The Nobel? Christ, Joseph, did you win the Nobel? Again?”
Nonchalance spread in his voice, “My team did.”
I didn’t think the Nobel was an easy prize to win, but the man on the other line made it sound like it was an everyday occurrence. Apart from what he did for me, the integrity and humility that Joseph Bridges had was more than enough for me to want to work for him.
And it is also one of the biggest reasons why I couldn’t pursue anything with Athena.
Respect for her father, my client, was number one.
Keeping her safe was also closely tied with the first one.
She was young, in college, and the world was her oyster.
I wouldn’t allow her to be involved with someone like me.
Jaded.
Absorbed in my own world of black and white.
Too many negatives in my corner.
I wasn’t the man she could expect to be open and wild and free like her.
I wasn’t a man who would go with her on her adventures.
I wasn’t the man I was before…
If I was, maybe I could’ve given us, her, the slightest possibility.
But possibilities were for fools.
And many fools were now six feet under.
I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by anything, especially her, because we were at war with a man who could order thousands of his own people be murdered without blinking twice.
A man who had no conscience, his brutality incomprehensible.
And as long as I was breathing, I wouldn’t allow him to touch even a hair on her head.
She was too pure, too innocent and heavenly for men like him.
And men like me.
“She likes you.”
Liam was knocking down a cold Miller while I was soaking up a Guinness.
I tracked her with my eyes, ensuring that no one could come close to her without me getting to her first.
“She kept asking about you; where you were, why you had to leave and when you came back – shit, brother, I got a boner just watching her kiss you.”
Ignoring his comments, my eyes remained trained on the woman who could give me a thousand boners just by breathing.
She’d asked, Liam not me, via text if she could go to the beach before sunset. She hadn’t gone to the beach in a while since she was busy with school, but I heard her talking to Liam in the car that she’d missed the sand between her toes and the sweet smell of the ocean water.
She’d ignored me in the car; Liam sat in the front passenger and Athena swiftly jumped back in the seat behind Liam. The silence was palpable in the first ten minutes of the drive. My Land Rover barely made a squeak and I’d had the radio off, so it was for sure to say that Operation Ignore Webb had commenced.
I asked her if the air was cool enough for her. She didn’t answer.
I asked her if she wanted the radio on after the twelfth minute, still she remained mute.
It was only when Liam asked her how long it had been since she was at the beach that she decided to speak.
I tried to get in on their conversation, but whenever I engaged, she pulled out from making any comments.
The 101 and the 5 freeways were extra bitchy, so I had to sit for an hour and twenty-two minutes watching the cars in front of us weave left and right while Athena and Liam laughed, joked, and bickered.
I was put in solitary confinement. Incomunicado within the confines of the driver’s seat.
An ignored Uber driver.
I could’ve screamed at the top my lungs, not that I was inclined to, and Athena wouldn’t have reacted.
I was relieved when I pulled into Seal Beach’s public parking lot.
My relief was only temporary because when she’d removed her t-shirt and shorts, revealing a black and white polka dotted excuse for a one-piece, I heard myself growl.
I’d never heard myself growl.
I’d also never found myself in a situation where I wanted to cover every fucking eye that landed on her magnificent body.
Athena wasn’t a skinny, reed-thin, pre-pubescent wafer like the models that magazines loved to tout.
She had the body of a woman.
Legs that ran a mile-long.
An ass that filled her swimsuit nicely.
And curves –
Fuck, curves that shaped her breasts, the indentation at her waist, and the sexy lines that only a natural female body could hold.
Liam had let out a whistle and I refrained from smacking his head.
He walked with her to the shoreline while I lingered in the car to carry the small cooler that housed snacks and drinks. I actually had to adjust myself in my board shorts, so thank God for the cooler excuse, it was a welcome reprieve.
A blonde-haired guy in green shorts, carrying a surfboard, was inching closer to her while Athena was busy creating a sandcastle that kept getting destroyed by the waves.
Christus, she could build the castle farther away from the water, which Liam had suggested, but she was of her own mind. She’d merely smiled and mouthed, “I can build another…and another.”
I was already standing up when Liam reeled me back, “Leave her be, brother. He’s not a threat.”
“How would you know?” I asked, the point moot.
Of course I knew surfer dude wasn’t a threat, but he was invading her space.
“You think he’d be packing a glock in his wet, puny shorts?” The mirth in his voice wasn’t even hidden. “We’re twenty steps away from her. If he’s a kidnapper, by the time he steps a foot away from where she’s sitting, he’d be dead on his feet.”
Slowly I threw my leg down on the sand, intently watching where Surfer Dude was touching Athena. He wasn’t but if he was, Liam’s description was accurate, he’d be dead on his feet.
Sand had always been my friend.
I grew up in it.
I walked faster on it than on solid concrete, even with my leg injuries.
I could reach Surfer Dude in less than fifteen seconds, including the time I cut off the air circulating in his body.
I reached for the beer bottle that I’d haphazardly left on the sand and tried to ignore the growing burn in my chest as I heard her laugh at what Surfer Boy was saying.
“She’s free to date.” Liam had just set off a bomb. “Whomever she wants.”
A bomb that was slowly ticking, counting down the seconds before it completely detonated.
I swallowed a mouthful of the bitter beer and said, “You think I don’t know that?”
“I wasn’t quite sure.” The glare I was giving him from the side of eye only encouraged him to say, “You can’t expect her to show you how much she likes you while you set up some fucking rules on why she can’t like you or why she has to keep her distance – and keep pining for you while you make up your mind on what to do with her.”
Even for a talker like Liam, that was a mouthful.
“How do you know I set up some rules?” I haven’t even had the chance to talk to Liam about what happened in my office, not that I was inclined to do so any time soon.
He tsked.
“I’ve been on two missions with you.” My eyes were fixed on Athena who now had Surfer Dude helping with her castle. They’d moved farther from the water which made them seven steps away from where Liam and I were sitting. “From the minute you get up, your mind is already creating the rules. Two minutes to brush, seven minutes to shave, ten to shower.”
“Eight minutes.” I countered, “It takes me eight minutes to shave.”
“Whoop-tee-fucking-doo.” He raised his beer up in the air. “You’re one hell of an SO, Webb. I wouldn’t be here, alive, toasting to the fucking sun if it wasn’t for you. You saved my ass in Libya and kept us safe in Syria. My mother and my Nana are forever grateful to you.”
My mouth thinned when I saw Surfer Boy checking out Athena’s rack, while pretending he was stacking up the castle. From this distance, I could throw one of the empty beer bottles and it would hit him right smack dab in the middle of his forehead.
“Your point?” I clenched my jaw, half-listening to Liam. He was a great soldier. Now inactive because of the injuries he’d sustained in Afghanistan.
“You, me – we’ve been through some shit.”
I was unprepared for the vigorous sentiment in his voice, so I let my eyes drift away from Athena and Surfer Dude and looked over to my side, to my brother-in-arms, a man who’s seen the face of death and braved through it. When I needed cover to go to Lauren for my check-up, I knew he was one of the few I could fully trust Athena with. He’d only been out for a few months and was already itching to be back in action. I’d briefed him about the situation and he accepted it within the hour after packing up a suitcase from his apartment in Oregon.
“She’s not a woman you screw and leave.” His words had taken a harsher tone, but no offense was meant. He was giving it to me straight. “I’m guessing that’s why you’re troubled with her. You’re not sure if you should get involved with her.”
“I can’t.” For the first time, I let the truth I’d been holding in escape my mouth, my hand dragging back to the beer bottle that had somehow remained cool. “I need to keep her safe. I won’t allow her to be touched by violence. She has a great future ahead of her.”
“You like her.” The awe mixed in with his deep voice was an uncommon blend. “You’ve thought about her.”
“Sometimes I let myself dream. It’s fucked up and screwed up…” Athena was now holding her hair with her right hand while Surfer Boy was talking. I reached down to the right pocket of my shorts and grabbed a black hair tie. “I tell myself she’s too young, too inexperienced, too…something. But then she looks at me and I feel like everything’s right in the world. That with all the fucked-up things that have happened in my life, she’s why, she’s the gold at the end of the rainbow. I feel everything. I’m not a stupid rock. But I can’t act on it. Because if I do, heads will roll and I need hers to be intact, attached to the rest of her amazing body.”
“Shit bro.”
Handing Liam Athena’s hair tie, I pushed to my feet and started to stand, “She’s not just my detail – I just don’t think she’ll understand. I know she wants me and she likes me. Hell, I ain’t dumb.”
Liam shook off the sand that had accumulated on his clothes. “I get it.”
“Do you?” I couldn’t stop now. “As much as I want her, because only a blind man who’s been amputated in the nut sac couldn’t want her, I have to keep my hands off of her. She destroys my concentration. And I need to keep everything together because she’s caught in a war that she didn’t even start. Her father is the target of the worst creatures of our time and she just happens to be in the crossfire.” The rage building inside me was phosphorus to napalm, penetrating deeply, the power enough to become nuclear. “Those motherfuckers will never harm her, Liam. Not ever. I would turn the world upside down if anything ever happens to her.”
Before we’d settled on this area of the beach, Liam and I had been aware of Athena’s tail.
They were there, lurking behind the beams of the bridge by the pier. Three men trying to blend with the tourists by taking pictures of the ocean waters. I’d known they were there the minute their sandals touched the sand. While Athena had been busy chatting up Surfer Boy, they were busy checking out the women who were decked out in skimpy bikinis. Some had even eyed Liam and me, but they’d stayed out of our way.
We couldn’t carry ammo on the beach and we were both nursing two beers, which was really nothing, but still, we had to be on high alert.
Anytime we were out in the open was an opportunity for Athena to be seen and followed.
Surfer Boy was now kicking at the sand while Athena, standing a shoulder’s breath apart from him, pointed to the horizon. It was her favorite part of the day, and she was sharing it with someone whom she just met forty-five minutes and twenty-eight seconds ago.
“Can you give it to her?” I averted my eyes from the twosome, asking Liam to give her one of the stretchy ties that she used to keep her hair out of her face.
Liam pinned me with a look, and said, “It sucks to be you, brother.”
I deadpanned and shrugged my shoulders, “Don’t I know it.”