Sam

I could hear him following me as I made my way to the elevator. He had a very distinct cadence to his walk, a rhythm that set him apart from everyone else. There was a bounce to his step, a confidence and a swagger that shone through the way his shoes tapped against the tiles of the floor. I felt him approach me from behind as I slid my leather jacket on, his eyes still on me as he studied me.

“Enjoying the view?” I asked.

“A bit impressed is all,” Derek said.

“A partial truth, but it’s better than a partial lie.”

“What?” he asked.

“You’re very impressed, but you believe admitting that to a woman you find attractive somehow diminishes the power you think you wield over me. Rest assured, I know you’re impressed. But I’m not here to impress you. I’m here to protect you.”

The elevator doors slid open, and I stepped in, feeling him follow closely behind me. We rode down the building in silence, my eyes closed as I took in the sounds around me. The dinging of the floors as we passed them. The sound of the whirring of the cords that descended the elevator. The deep breathing Mr. Steele was still doing.

Typical of his species.

The doors flew open, and we stepped out into the main lobby, my eyes scanning the room for the men who were so easy to get past. I could see their shocked glances as I walked alongside Mr. Steele, but soon, a bouncy young woman appeared in front of me.

“Mr. Steele, might I steal you for a second?” she asked.

“Hello, Emma. I’m kind of on a time crunch. What do you need?” he asked.

“Well, I just ... people were talking about the woman in the main office, and I tried to come find you. But when I went back there, she wasn’t there, so I figured maybe you had found her. And it’s obvious you have. But now that begs a new question. Should I start new employee paperwork for her?”

Emma’s eyes gazed up at Derek, her pupils dilating bigger every second. Her body was open to him, and her arms were at her sides. Her nonverbal cues were all but hurling themselves at Mr. Steele. Whoever she was to him, she was interested in him romantically.

But I could tell by his body language that he wasn’t.

“No, you don’t need to start any new employee paperwork for her. She’s been hired personally by me. Not by the company,” he said.

“Well, we’ll need a record of anyone who comes in and out of the building with you, remember? The security measures you put forth?” she asked.

“I’ll be taking care of those, and we’ll start by slashing that necessity,” I said.

Derek turned his head toward me, and our eyes locked. But instead of defying me like I figured he would in front of one of his employees, he simply nodded his head.

Interesting.

“It’s no longer your priority to know who comes and goes with me. This is Samantha Williams, and you’ll leave all new and evolving security measures to her,” Derek said.

“You can call me Sam. Everyone does.”

“Oh,” Emma said. “So, you don’t want me to take down any information about her?”

“No,” Derek said. “I do not. This is no longer any of your concern, Miss Emma.”

“Well, where are you headed? You know you need to stick to your schedule this morning. You have a very important phone call to take just after lunch. If that’s where you’re headed, you can’t be too long.”

“Miss Emma, thank you for your concern. Trust that I know my schedule as well as you do. I will see to it my schedule is handled today. You’re dismissed.”

“But Mr.—”

“Goodbye, Emma.”

She looked put off as we buzzed by her and kept walking for the door. Emma was jealous. Another woman was walking with Mr. Steele, and she wanted to know if I posed any sort of competition. But she didn’t need to worry. It wasn’t that I was competition.

It was that she thought she was when she really wasn’t.

“I’m sorry. My personal assistant isn’t usually that rude. I’m not sure what’s gotten into her,” Derek said.

I grinned as we got into his limo, choosing to keep my mouth shut. It would be interesting to see how that played out in his world, but if her possessiveness ever turned ugly, she very well could have been a suspect in all of this.

And the last thing I needed was for him to fire her.

“Not a problem. People have bad days. Maybe she’s having one. You never know,” I said. “Especially with women.”

“What? You didn’t analyze her every move while we were standing there? I’m disappointed. I thought that was your schtick.”

“Like being a pompous billionaire is yours?” I asked.

Our eyes connected, and I could tell he was studying my reactions, trying to play on the field level I inhabited. But no one played on the field I inhabited.

I’d created the field I inhabited. It was private property, and I kept it that way for a reason.

We took his limo to the restaurant he’d chosen for lunch, and I kept my glances to a minimum. I clocked all the exits and made sure we sat at a table where my back was in a corner with no windows. I wanted no one ambushing us, and I wanted a clear path toward the nearest exit if we needed it. There were seventeen windows with four of them locked. Five different exits with two routing through the kitchen. A ventilation system with no more than twenty vents throughout the main room and no more than twelve in the kitchen.

But to Derek, I was grinning and “enjoying his company.”

“I’m still not sure about hiring you,” Derek said. “Keeping you at my side is going to blow this out of the water.”

“Not if you paint me as someone you’re courting,” I said.

“One, you aren’t my type, and two, this is supposed to be professional.”

“One, your cock says differently, and two, you’re also keeping this quiet, which means whatever I need to be painted as to deal with that is par for the course.”

“Then you agree that having a bodyguard following me around closely is going to raise red flags,” he said.

“Which could lead to theories or admissions that could hurt your business. Slap you in your pockets and rob you of your millions. I get it. Is there anyone at your company who knows about the threats being made?”

“I just told you I wasn’t sure if I was going to hire you,” he said.

“And yet you haven’t gotten up and walked away.”

We stared at each other for a long time as the waiter set glasses of water on our tables. Derek ordered for himself before he ordered for me, and I sat back and watched him. Analyzed him in his own environment. How pompous he was and how he assumed he knew everyone around him. He talked friendly with people as if they were old friends, but all of it was a ruse.

There was something he was hiding, and I still wasn’t convinced someone was legitimately threatening his life.

“My COO knows. Jacob Carl,” Derek said. “He knows about the threats.”

“Anyone else?” I asked.

“Obviously, the security personnel at my home know. But in terms of the company? He’s the only one.”

“Not even Emma?” I asked.

“Certainly not Emma,” he said. “She’s a young girl who can’t stop flapping her jowls. She’s good at what she does, but secret-keeping is not her forte.”

“I take it you’ve learned from experience,” I said.

“No, but with the gossiping she does in my office when I call her in to change something in my schedule, it’s obvious.”

“So, Jacob. Your COO.”

“He was the one who encouraged me to get the police involved, but I wasn’t going to have it. If the media gets wind of this, it’ll be a massive event.”

“A massive event might scare the assailant off,” I said.

“It will also tank my reputation and taint my company. They’ll start digging into my past to try and figure out why someone would want me dead.”

“Care to enlighten me?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m cocky. Slightly arrogant. I built a billion-dollar company with my own two hands all throughout my twenties. When kids my age were accruing thousands of dollars of educational debt, I was accruing thousands of dollars in profits. Of course, people hate me. People love success stories but hate actual success.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

Spoken like a true pompous asshole.

“If you don’t want me pretending to be someone you date, I can be another assistant or whatever you want. But just to make this clear, you’re the one who reached out to us. You’re the one who decided you needed additional protection. And you can’t do business if you’re dead. You built one company, so you’ll build another. My job is to keep you alive.”

I could see the shock rolling over his face. A man like him wasn’t used to people talking so bluntly to him. This was probably the first time he was experiencing this kind of demeanor from a woman. He struck me as the kind of man who enjoyed a proper woman. Thin legs, petite nose, milky skin with a nice smile. Graceful in a dress and tactful in heels. I could be that when necessary, but that was part of my training.

I wasn’t that way naturally.

But he was also uncomfortable. My bluntness had put him on high alert. His eyes were darting around, and they were growing wild. He was shifting in his seat, probably turning my words around in his head. I had to get him to calm down. If he wanted to keep this under wraps, then having some sort of mini breakdown in the middle of a nice restaurant like this would prove fatal to what he wanted.

“Tell me a bit about your company,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Your company. How did you start it?”

“Well, that story starts with my family.”

“Then start there,” I said.

“I came from wealth. My father was a millionaire, and I was the son destined to take over his business. I was put through private school and Yale, my father’s alma mater. Got a degree in business, exactly like he did. He groomed me to be his replacement, but his business wasn’t what I wanted. Real estate wasn’t my passion.”

“What was?” I asked.

“It started in the business-to-business supply chain stuff. I moved into corporate investment after I excelled in that field, and that was how I broke off into my billionaire status. Made my first billion in corporate investing when I turned twenty-six. I did very well picking companies and opportunities I could pour my resources into and make great. Restructuring failing companies is what I was meant to do, not sell land to over-fattened assholes. It hurts most companies in the short term, with layoffs and the shutting down of stores if they’ve franchised, but it helps the economy in the long term by giving them the ability to expand stability and provide jobs to communities that need them the most. Sucks for the short term, helps for the long term.”

“Good,” I said.

“Good? That’s all you have to say about that is good?” he asked.

“Do you want me to pat you on your back? Yes, it’s good. You didn’t lie to me. That’s a good thing. Trust is a two-way street. I have to be able to trust you as much as you have to be able to trust me.”

“So, you knew all that,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Every bit of it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You just let me ramble on about it to see if I would lie to you.”

“Yeah. I researched you thoroughly before I even decided to show up for your fun little interview. I enjoyed our wordplay, by the way. Very interesting,” I said.

“Fine. You know about my background. What’s yours?” he asked.

“I already know you’ve read my file,” I said.

“I also know there are always details in files like those that are overlooked for the sake of conciseness.”

I grinned as I drew in a deep breath.

“I was an MP in the Army. Military police officer. I was also on an SRT. It’s the Army equivalent of a SWAT team. I wanted to go directly into Special Forces, but they weren’t taking women at the time for those kinds of teams when I wanted to apply. When I couldn’t do what I wanted, I left to find somewhere I could. I got a job with a private military contracting firm so I could better utilize my strengths but ended up specializing in hostage rescues when it came to terrorists.”

“Why did you specialize in that?” he asked.

“Because I can speak their language.”

“What? You know how to think like a psychopath or something?”

“No,” I said flatly. “I actually speak their language. I’m fluent in Pashto, Dari, and Kurdish, and I can muddle my way through Arabic.”

Derek nodded his head as if he was listening intently, but I could tell he was once again blindsided by my admissions. This man really was an idiot.

“After that, I transitioned into asset protection,” I said.

“Bodyguard work,” Derek said.

“Sure. That too.”

“You’re hired,” he said.

“You don’t need to state that. I know I already am.”

“You really are confident, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Most could say the same about you. I can start immediately.”

“You can start tomorrow,” he said. “I have a fundraiser function where I’m accepting an entrepreneurship award. I can’t take you there with me.”

“You’re not going alone. There’s a death threat looming over you. You hired me, so I’m going to protect you no matter where you go,” I said.

“Well, you can’t go dressed like you are. And you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who has a formal dress simply lying around somewhere.”

“Do I strike you as the kind of woman who knows how to shop?”

His eyes raked up and down my body as his cheeks twitched with a grin. Of course, he would take that as a prompt to study my “assets” again. For a man whose life apparently hung in the balance, he sure as hell didn’t act like it did.

I was still having a hard time convincing myself this situation was as bad as Deac made it out to be when we were communicating.

“You’ll need to be more elegant. Sexy, if you’re coming with me. I have an image to keep up, especially if this is going to stay out of the press,” Derek said.

“I’m trained to take down entire regimes, Mr. Steele. I can walk in a pair of heels.”

“But if you plan on being at my side for the duration of all of this, you can’t throw flags at all. That means an entire wardrobe change.”

“Question, Mr. Steele. Would you make a male bodyguard do this same thing?” I asked.

“I wouldn't hesitate in putting him in suits that matched the quality of mine. He would need to blend in just as much. Your current wardrobe is fine for the house, but at my company and at my functions, it is not.”

“Fine,” I said.

“And nothing is to be mentioned to the press. At all.”

“Confidentiality is something I take very seriously. It comes with me, and it’s also stated in my contract,” I said.

“Good. If anyone asks, you’ve been hired on as my new personal assistant.”

“Are you sure Emma will be okay with that?”

“A busy man like me can have two personal assistants. Emma holds down everything I do at the company. You will hold down everything I do in my personal life. It will explain why you come and go with me, as well as why you come home with me.”

“I agree to your terms,” I said.

As the two of us ate dinner, I kept my sights on the exits and the front door. Physically, this job was going to be easy. But mentally? It was going to be exhausting. This man was annoying and a pain in the fucking ass. He was cocky, insolent, and a sugarcoated womanizer. I had spent enough time with him in his own surroundings to know how much I would want to kill him once this was all over with.

If there was some sort of threat looming over his idiotic little head, I could see why someone would want him dead. Which didn’t make my job any easier.

Nonetheless, no matter what I believed, I had to be professional. If a new wardrobe was required, then I had the money to do that. With the amount of money this man was going to be paying on my contract, I could replace my wardrobe with the finest fabric one hundred times over and still be able to by my own fucking private island.

Annoying or not, this contract was going to set me up for the rest of my life.

This guy was all about money, though, and that was going to get old. He was one of those guys who believed his money made him powerful. Not his intelligence or his empire. Not the people around him or those he chose to surround himself with personally. But his money. He felt his money could buy him anything. Any house. Any car. Any woman.

And those men were always the most dangerous, no matter who was attacking them.

I was going to have to keep my eyes peeled in every single direction. Because I had a feeling Derek Steele had created more enemies than friends.