"How do I tell her we can't afford it?"

Lucas leaned against the countertop as he pulled his shoes on while he chewed a slice of toast. He had no-handed toast-eating down to a fine art. All he had to do was hold it with his lips while he chewed on the previous bite. It probably looked awful, but you learned not to care about things like that when you were a SEAL.

Of course, he hadn't been a SEAL for a couple of years now. Not since Lottie lost her husband.

Lucas glanced across the kitchen to the table where Lottie's little girl sat eating her breakfast and playing a game one-handed on her mom's tablet. Tamsin was a smart kid, but then Lucas was starting to realize pretty much every kid was hella smart.

Just, you know, Tamsin was smarter still. Six years old, three years without her dad, two years with Lucas as a stand-in because his sister couldn't manage a New York apartment and Tamsin's medication on tips alone.

He gnawed the last corner of toast into his mouth as he finished lacing his shoes, and swallowed before he stood up. "Just straight up tell her," he whispered to Lottie, turning his back to try and minimize the risk of Tamsin overhearing.

His sister held a letter in her hands from Tamsin's school. There was an outing to the Bronx Children's Zoo for all the kids in her grade, but the cost of entry would only be the start of it. What looked like twenty bucks would be another five for lunch, then ten or twenty for Tamsin to take with her so she could buy souvenirs or food for the petting zoo. All in all Lottie could be looking at a fifty dollar outlay if she agreed to let Tamsin go, and that was before any considerations like whether or not Tamsin lost one of her injector pens while she was there.

It wasn't hard to see the problem.

"It's okay if I can't go," Tamsin piped up from behind him.

Lottie's cheeks burned bright red and she turned to face her daughter. "Are you sure, honey?"

Lucas turned, too. He fastened his tie and drew the collar of his shirt down over it. "Why don't we think it over first, see if we can't make it work somehow? When do they need your decision by?"

Lottie eyed the note. "Next Friday."

"Okay. So let's put a pin in it for now, then we can sit down at the weekend and see what we might be able to cut back on to make this work."

Tamsin smiled widely. "Okay. Thanks, uncle Lucas!"

"Nuh-uh. It's your mom, not me, you should be thanking, sweet-pea." He crossed the room to pat the top of her head, then he leaned down to kiss her hair for good measure. "You be good at school today?"

"Uh huh!"

"You gonna be the best?"

"Oorah!" Her nose crinkled with the width of her smile.

"That's my girl!" He straightened and waved to Lottie. "Catch you later, sis."

"Don't get killed," she answered.

They'd considered moving out of New York, but the trouble with that idea was it cost more to move than they could ever hope to save up. Supporting a kid with Type 1 Diabetes wasn't a cheap way to live, especially with the huge price hikes in Tamsin's meds over the past year. Lottie had always said the prices kept on going up and up, but since Lucas got back from deployment it seemed to have gone completely crazy. If it wasn't for Lottie's rent stabilized apartment they'd be in serious trouble.

Hell, they were in serious trouble, and that was with Lucas's decent pay packet to support them.

The trouble was they weren't married. Obviously. So Lottie couldn't take advantage of Lucas' health insurance. She had to cover her and Tamsin, and with a pre-existing condition Tamsin's insurance was mind-bogglingly high before they even counted the cost of insulin, lancets, injector pens, and all the rest of it. So Tamsin made do with pens and pencils Lucas brought back from the office. She learned to cope with clothes that she'd have to wait to grow in to. Lottie made sure Tamsin's shoes always fit and that she had all the right schoolbooks, but even an education was starting to feel like a goddamn luxury these days.

But what could they do? Lottie needed time at home to raise her child. Lucas's main area of expertise was stealth and killing, neither of which really helped in this particular instance. He could sit in freezing water with muck on his face for six hours waiting in ambush, but if he wanted to earn more money he might have to move out of the personal security industry and into something more hazardous like a private military company, but the problem with those was that they were shady as hell and any SEAL worth their salt just wouldn't do it.

It was a problem. But he would solve it. That's what SEALs did.

He hopped off the Subway and took the stairs three at a time, then marched double time to the doors of his office's building. It wasn't a flashy place, despite being a block from some of the tallest skyscrapers on Wall Street. Instead his company rented a couple of floors in a mid-level place that only had twelve stories. Lucas showed his ID at the desk, swiped it for the elevators, then headed for the fifth floor.

Pinnacle Security had its own reception desk, and Lucas had to check in there to be assigned his hot desk for the day, though if there wasn't any work lined up for him his hot desk was most likely going to be another day at the gym with any other staff at a loose end.

"Lucas!" Penny smiled up at him as he emerged from the elevator. "Great, just who I wanted to see!"

He tilted his head faintly as he handed her his ID. "Does that mean I'm heading to Ranjit's office?"

"Yep!" She swiped his card through a reader along the top of her keyboard, then handed it back with a grin. "Probably more babysitting. It's New York, not Kandahar."

"Hey, that babysitting pays the same as Kandahar." Lucas hung his ID back on its lanyard. "I can't complain."

"You know what I like about you?" Penny chuckled.

"My positive mental attitude?" It was an in-joke they'd had for two years straight now.

"Got it!"

Lucas knocked on Ranjit's door, then entered when called in.

"Lucas! Great, have a seat!" Ranjit put his coffee aside and wheeled his chair toward his keyboard so that he could poke at it. "Got a client for you."

Lucas nodded as he sat. He didn't need to tell Ranjit that clients were good things. The guy had a dozen ex-SEALs on his roster, he knew damn well they liked to work their asses off. "What's the deal?"

"Could be anything." Ranjit wheeled back to the edge of his pristine desk so there wasn't a barrier between them, and leaned one elbow on the wood. "Background check is underway, profile isn't complete yet. The call only came through about twenty minutes ago."

Lucas nodded. "No problem."

He needed a client profile to be as effective as possible, but no plan ever survived first contact with the enemy. Like every SEAL ever, he was comfortable being uncomfortable. The profile would arrive once the admin team had assembled it, but they should have the most rudimentary details by lunchtime. He had full confidence in his support.

"What we know so far is that the client is in the middle of a legal battle and has received a death threat in the mail."

Lucas nodded. "Someone trying to put him off the case, huh?"

"Could well be, and his assistant made it clear he's not the kind to be dissuaded."

Lucas let loose the briefest of smiles. He liked people who refused to cave to threats, but sometimes that made them tricky clients, too. "NYPD involved?"

"Not yet. They're keeping the letter in case anything comes of it." Ranjit ran fingers through his short, neat beard.

"Wise." He nodded again. It was one thing to consider a death threat nothing more than a hoax or intimidation tactic, but hiring protection was also a smart move. It showed that the client wasn't messing around and refused to be messed around.

"I agree, and not only because it means we get paid." Ranjit grinned a moment, then wheeled back to his screen. "What we have so far is incomplete, but reliable. The client is Jayden Deus."

Lucas felt his eyebrows climb slowly against his will. "Deus? That's hardly a common name. Are we talking Deus Pharmaceuticals here?"

Ranjit glanced to him, and his dark eyes narrowed slightly. He was quiet a couple of seconds, then he murmured, "Your niece?"

Yeah, Lucas hadn't exactly kept quiet about the cost of Tamsin's meds around the office. He clenched his jaw and considered telling Ranjit to find someone else for this particular client. Or even to bounce him altogether. Hell, maybe-

No. He couldn't let himself even think down that road. That was his old life.

"I can see why someone might send him a death threat," he said with care. "But you know I won't let that affect my handling of a client."

"I know." Ranjit nodded. "That's the nature of this business. Every now and then you've gotta protect a real peach. It is what it is."

"It is," Lucas agreed. "What else do we know?"

"Well I'm sorry to lay this one on you, but everything points to one of the rebellious teen phase that turned out not to be a phase kinda kids," Ranjit sighed. "Sole heir, genius, took himself off to Portland - Oregon, not local Portland - to study biochemistry and didn't come back until his dad died last year, after which his company's board of directors ousted him in a coup."

"Hence the legal case," Lucas surmised.

"Yeah. You were in Portland last year with a client, weren't you?"

"Yessir." He'd been part of a team there. The client wanted 'round the clock coverage, which meant there were times when he was off the clock and able to sample the local nightlife. Portland sure knew how to let its hair down.

"Great. Hopefully some shared experience will help the client warm to you and do as he's damn well told."

Lucas grunted in agreement. Every personal protection agent was fully aware that the greatest threat to a client's life was the client themselves. They wanted to go off-plan, they darted away from their protection the moment they saw something shiny, or they straight up wanted freedom of movement and would fight their bodyguard to get it. No amount of explaining to these people that slipping away from their protector was what put them at the highest risk ever stopped them doing it.

"Fingers crossed. Where's he based?"

"CPW."

"Nice." For those that could afford it, real estate along Central Park West was among the most expensive on the island. Celebrities, old money, business moguls, they all had property along the western edge of the park with views no other building would ever be erected to obstruct. "Can we ID the client?"

"Yeah. Plenty of news coverage, so the first few pages of Google hits are your guy." Ranjit typed, then turned his screen toward Lucas. "Here you go."

Lucas' throat turned drier than any desert. His heart leaped into his throat.

Jayden Deus wasn't some middle-aged businessman. He was young, head almost always held high, bright blue eyes piercing even behind glasses and in photographs. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and everything about those pictures made Lucas want to fuck him.

He blinked, and the reason why came back in a sharp flood of memory.

Lucas had fucked him.

Oh shit. Shit. That tall, beautiful, nerdy-lookin' guy he'd fucked in a stall in a nightclub in Portland. That kid had a dirty fucking mouth, and an even dirtier mind to go with it. He'd all but dragged Lucas into the restroom and begged to be fucked right into next week, and that asshole was Jayden Deus.

Lucas blinked slowly. All SEALs learned never to show a damn thing on their face if they could help it. Keeping a lid on their emotions kept them alive. He took a breath and stood, turning for the door immediately just in case Ranjit noticed anything off. "Understood, sir. I'll make my way over there now."

"Good luck," Ranjit called.

Lucas nodded and left the office quietly.

This was a bad idea. Such a bad idea. So bad that he almost walked straight back in to tell Ranjit there would be a conflict of interest.

No.

He could do this. He'd been in far worse situations and got the job done.

But damned if he wasn't gonna give Deus a piece of his mind some day about the way his company was screwing Lucas' family.