As soon as I pull up to the house, I get a strange feeling in my stomach. It’s the feeling I got out in the field back when I was a SEAL, that odd premonition that something is about to go very wrong.

But there are no terrorist commandos here, just some woman looking for private security help. I shut off my truck’s engine and sit there for a second, trying to understand why I feel this way.

I haven’t been out in the field as a SEAL for a long time. It’s been nearly ten years since I left and went into the private security world, but those instincts and all that training never goes away no matter how long you’re away. I may be an ex-SEAL, but I’ll still always be part SEAL, if that makes any sense.

I take a deep breath and release it, calming myself, and then I step out of the truck. The house is pretty damn large, obviously one of the most expensive houses on this block, and it’s immaculately kept.

That makes sense, given what I know about the client. Julia Hall is a few years older than me, and is the CEO of Rydell Electric, a company that manufactures computer components. It’s one of the last computer manufacturers on US soil, and Julia Hall is known as a very competent and ruthless CEO. Or at least she is in the press.

I don’t know how she got my contact info, but it doesn’t much matter to me. I’ve been working the security thing for a while now, ever since I left the SEALs, and my big clients have always been rich ladies with too much time on their hands. Julia Hall doesn’t seem like my usual over paranoid socialite that needs someone to babysit her at Coachella, but it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve had hard jobs with real high stakes and I’ve had easy ones, and I always prefer the fucking easy ones.

Less chance of getting killed on the easy jobs.

I head up the front walkway and ring the bell. I have to wait a minute before the door slowly opens and Julia Hall herself smiles out at me.

She’s an attractive woman with an intense look to her. Short, dark hair, and full lips, she smiles when she sees me.

“Mr. Powell?” she asks.

“Call me Connor,” I say. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Hall.”

She smiles. “Julia.”

We shake hands and she brings me into her kitchen. Right away, I’m assessing the premises from a security standpoint. It’s pretty weak, which shouldn’t surprise me, considering she lives in such a nice neighborhood. She probably never thought about security before in her life.

But it’s a nice house, and the kitchen is spacious and modern. She offers me a drink, which I decline, and we finally end up sitting at the island.

“So, Julia,” I say. “Before we get started, I’m just wondering. Who recommended me?”

“Ah,” she smiles slightly. “It was a friend of mine. Jessica Byron.”

I grunt and nod, remembering Jessica very well. I still refer to her as crazy Jessica, the one-night stand that just wouldn’t stop calling for almost a week straight until I told her outright that I wasn’t interested.

It’s surprising that she’d recommend me. We didn’t end things on good terms. She was a client at first, but I ended up fucking her nice and proper in the back of my truck after her pissed off ex-partner tried to throw a brick through her window. I break the guy’s tibia and she sucked my cock like it was the last thing on earth.

We had a nice time, but I’m not the type to get close. I never needed to. I like my job too much to risk getting myself stuck rooted in one place. I get to travel around, meeting new people, fucking who I want when I want to, and that’s enough for me. Crazy Jessica wanted more, and I can’t blame her, but it just wasn’t happening. Better I was straightforward than to string her along.

“Well,” I say. “Tell her I said thanks.”

“I will. She spoke very highly of you.”

“Good, I’m glad. That was a tricky case.”

“Not just your security skills.” Julia smiles big at me and I can’t help but think she’s flirting, which isn’t so bad. She’s an attractive woman, after all, although not exactly my type.

“Let’s get down to business then, shall we?” I say, changing the subject. I don’t want to mix business and pleasure right now. Maybe after the job is done.

“Okay then.” She stands up and walks over toward the window looking out the back. I notice someone sitting out by the pool, but I can’t really make out whoever it is. Julia turns back toward me. “How much do you know about my family, Connor?”

I frown at her. “Julia Hall. Brother is Evan, father is Mitchell. Mother deceased. Your father still owns Rydell Electrics, and your brother is jockeying for your job. Fairly aggressively, if the business tabloids can be trusted. How’s that?”

She smiles big at me, shaking her head. “I see Jessica wasn’t exaggerating.”

“I like to be prepared.”

“You’re right, more or less,” she says, and comes back over to sit down at the island. “My brother does want my job, and my father still owns the company. But he’s sick, Connor, very sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.

She shrugs. “I’m not, not really. He’s an old bastard.”

I raise an eyebrow, smiling slightly. “Okay then. Maybe I’m not that sorry.”

“Good. I’ll be frank with you, Connor. My father doesn’t like me very much, and I don’t really care for him.”

“I can see that.”

“But he has all the power,” she continues. “As much as I despise it, I have to play his games. Right now, my father prefers my brother, mainly because he sees my brother as a more traditional choice.”

“Why is that?” I ask, beginning to understand the job. She wants me to protect her from her brother, or at least that’s my guess.

“I’m a single mother,” she says. “My daughter, Sydney, was born when I was only eighteen, and my father has never forgiven me for it.”

“Is her father in the picture?” I ask, doing some quick mental math. That makes her daughter nineteen.

“No,” she says, laughing. “Her father was some drunk frat boy I fucked while out visiting colleges.”

“And he saddled you with a baby,” I say.

“More or less. I love Sydney, she’s the best thing in my life, but my father has always hated me for her. Evan, meanwhile, is happily married and a father of three beautiful babies all born within wedlock. Not to mention he’s a man.”

“And yet you have the CEO job,” I point out.

“That’s true. Mainly because I’m older and more competent than Evan is. My father may dislike me, but he can’t argue with my results.”

I nod, understanding that. “So how do I fit into all this?”

She gets a bashful smile on her face, which surprises me. Julia Hall doesn’t strike me as a woman to feel bashful, and yet I can tell she’s hesitating, rethinking what she’s about to say.

“I need to make... changes, Connor. I need to make some life changes, or at least appear to. Do you understand?”

I frown at her, shaking my head. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

She takes a deep breath then meets my gaze, level and cool. “I want to marry you, Connor.”

I stare at her, totally taken off guard. I can tell that she’s being completely serious, but it sounds like a joke. How could she want to marry me? She doesn’t know a damn thing about me, and besides, I wasn’t exactly kind to her friend. She must know that I’m not the marrying type.

“You’re going to have to elaborate on that,” I say to her simply.

She smiles and nods. “Of course. What I’m proposing is not a marriage, exactly, but a business arrangement. You’ll marry me, help me get total control of the business from my father, and pretend to be my husband. In exchange I’ll give you a very large sum of money. Something in the range of one million dollars.”

I stare at her, totally shocked. In all my time as a security guy, I’ve been asked to do some fucked up and shady shit before, but this is by far the weirdest.

“How?” I ask her, totally at loss.

“The business alone will be worth billions,” she says. “I can find an extra million to pay you for your time. We’ll be married for a year, maybe two at most, and then we’ll divorce and that’ll be that. My father’s cancer is aggressive and spreading, and the doctors don’t think he’ll last longer than six months if he’s lucky.”

“This is insane,” I say to her, shaking my head. “I’m not the marrying type. You talked to Jessica about me, right?”

She laughs softly. “That’s actually why I want you, Connor. You won’t get attached. You’re handsome, qualified, skilled in certain areas. You’ll be an asset to me, and when it’s all over, you’ll be ready to walk away without any messy emotions getting in the way. When Jessica told me about you, I knew that you’d be perfect. When you came here and I actually saw you, well, I wasn’t disappointed.”

I can barely understand or believe what I’m hearing. This woman wants to actually marry me and then she wants to pay me a million dollars to do it.

That’s a lot of fucking money. It’s more than I make in a year, hell, it’s more than I make in three years. I do pretty good, but I’ve never really been a money motivated kind of person. That’s just not what gets me off.

Still, it’s very tempting. I don’t know the first thing about pretending to be her husband, though. “Wouldn’t an actor be a better choice?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “You’re ideal. Evan will get aggressive as my father gets worse, so you’ll provide some security help as well. Plus, you’re a military man, and my father is a sucker for that sort of thing.”

“Military man,” I repeat, totally mystified.

This is crazy, absolutely crazy. I can’t believe what I’m hearing, much less that I’m actually sitting here and considering it. I have no interest in marrying someone, even if it’s a fake marriage. I don’t want to spend a year or two locked down in one place, lying to the world, pretending to be in love and married to this woman that I don’t even know. There are just so many unknowns and so many things that can do wrong, the risks are just too great.

I can’t do it. I shake my head at Julia and stand. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m not—”

Just then, the back door opens. My attention is drawn over to it as a woman steps into the room, still slightly damp from sitting out in the sun, wearing nothing but a bikini.

She’s young, probably nineteen, and it has to be Julia’s daughter. But where Julia is thin and harsh, this woman is absolutely beautiful. Her breasts are full and thick, and her long auburn hair reaches down to the middle of her back in heavy waves. Her wide green eyes blink at me, and her pale skin is smooth and beautiful. For a second, I want to walk over to her, grab her by the hips, and kiss her on the lips. It’s crazy, because she must be nineteen years old, but I can barely control myself. I feel my cock stirring in my pants just looking at her in a bikini.

She blushes slightly and looks at her mother. “Hey, mom,” she says.

“Oh, Sydney. This is Connor.” Julia gestures at me. “Connor, this is my daughter, Sydney.”

I walk over to her and we shake hands. I have to force myself not to stare at her body. “Nice to meet you,” I say to her.

“You too.” Our hands linger for a moment longer than is normal before she releases me. Her eyes bore into mine, and for a second I know she’s thinking the same thing I am, I can see it clear as day on her face. She wants me, needs me to take her out back and fuck her tight little pussy rough and deep, make her feel what a real man can do to her.

But the moment passes and she looks back at her mother. “I’ll be upstairs,” she says. “Nice to meet you, Connor.” She flashes me that radiant smile again and then disappears.

I have to see her again. That’s the only thing I can think of as soon as she’s out of the room. I haven’t been so struck by a woman in a long time, maybe never before. I feel a strange absence without her around all of a sudden, and I don’t even know how to explain it.

“What were you going to say, Connor?” Julia asks me, snapping me out of my trance.

I look at her though I still feel like I’m in a daze. “I’ll do it,” I hear myself saying from very far away.

She smiles huge. “Wonderful. We’ll discuss the details. Come, sit down, let’s get started.”

I move robotically over to my seat, not sure what the hell just happened. I should get the fuck out of here before I really marry this woman and commit myself, but I can’t do it. If I leave, I’ll never see Sydney again, and that just isn’t a fucking option.

I sit down and we begin to discuss the details, but all the while my mind is upstairs with Sydney, slowly undressing her, making her mine.